Archives (page 429 of 457)

July 7, 2011 / 13 Comments

Will Hindmarch: The Terribleminds Interview

I think I can be upfront and say that Will Hindmarch, though he describes himself as a “mooncalf,” is pretty farking awesome and I’m happy to call him friend and cohort. He’s a freelance penmonkey such as myself, crawling through the trenches, chucking word grenades and getting blood on his face as good as anybody, except it’s worth noting that the guy’s prose has a forthright, yet poetic air to it. Anyway. You can read more about him HERE. Read his latest Escapist article: “Truth In Fiction.” And purchase the Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. Please enjoy this, the first of (hopefully) many terribleminds storyteller interviews. Feel free to ask Will questions and taunt him into answering.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling, so before we do anything else, I’d like you to tell me – and, of course, the fine miscreants and deviants that read this site – a story. As short or long as you care to make it, as true or false as you see it.

Alas, I don’t tell stories lightly. I can’t just launch into one on command. I need time to fret and ogle, to weigh and measure, to test and retest the tale. The last time, I think it was, that I tried to just tell a story on the fly, it was a story from memory that I augmented to make more compelling for the audience. But it wasn’t my story, it was a story I’d heard on the Internet. (“Heard,” I say—I’d read it.) It was a story about how William Gibson forms his novels, about how he does research and what he reads when he’s writing, that sort of thing.

Anyway, I was speaking at a convention seminar in Atlanta. I was talking about writing and diligence and discipline, which is hilarious of me, and like an idiot asshole I’m telling someone else’s story about someone else’s deadlines and someone else’s method. I start off by invoking William Gibson. “William Gibson once said,” I said and then paraphrased a quote of his about reality and the muse. (And I say “paraphrased” generously—I may have made up a bunch of the quote, but the gist was there.)

I keep going. I mention William Gibson again, this time talking about deadlines and inspiration and how a novel (I’ve never written a novel) knows when it is finished. The audience is real quiet.

I keep on going. I cite William Gibson a third time, saying how I once read an interview with him where he used to struggle with how to get characters to cross rooms—to handle blocking and staging—and how he’d avoid the problem and just leave it to the reader and how if William Gibson could do it, then dammit, so could we.

A hand goes up near the back of the room. There’s maybe forty, fifty people in attendance. “Yes?” I say, pointing at the hand.

Heads turn and lean out of the way. I see the spectacles and the face. My imagination flashes to the back-cover author photo of, I don’t know, IDORU. The black-and-white windswept author photo overlays on the man across the crowd from me. It’s him. William Gibson is among us. I’d invoked his name three times and now he was here.

“Yeah,” he says. “I never said that.”

I stay real still. Then I die. I die dead. Right there. Dead.

Now, that story’s not true. The only time I’ve ever seen Gibson in the flesh was when he signed my copy of PATTERN RECOGNITION in a suburban bookshop outside Minneapolis. But this is why I try not to tell stories on the spot.

How would you describe your writing style?

I figure that’s for other people to do. I change voices and styles a lot, depending on the needs of the assignment I’m working on. I haven’t had a lot of time to write my own material lately, so my style has sort of been developing into a melange and what, from all of those different styles and voices, is mine? I don’t know.

Here’s something that’s true, though: my style is certainly developing still. Maybe it’ll always be developing. I aim for honesty in my own writing, but beyond that, the voice and approach I take to getting that honesty out is always in motion. This is good, I think, right? I don’t want to be one of those writers whose stories are all the same.

In high school, I once had my writing style compared to Mark Twain’s. I’ve been carrying that around with pride ever since. Earlier this year, my business partner, Jeff Tidball, who is a stunningly great writer, compared my voice to Michael Chabon’s. I’m going to keep that on my keychain and thumb it whenever I get the serious doubts.

What’s awesome about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

The work is awesome. It genuinely awes me. My imagination is probably my strongest muscle and I have a job that lets me use it. That’s pretty great.

Of course, I’m almost never not working. The pay is shit and the hours suck. I sort of love that, too, though. I always know what I should be doing—I should be working. When I’m not working, I should be. When I am, I should be. I should be working.

What’s awesome is that I’m doing the only thing I’m good at—writing. What sucks is that I’ll probably never be happy with my skill level—I always need to be getting better. That sucks, but that’s sort of awesome, too. Always something to do.

I should be working.

Deliver unto us a single-serving dollop of writing or storytelling advice that you yourself follow as a critical tip without which you might starve and die atop a glacier somewhere:

I once saw this written on a 3×5 note card on my brother’s bedroom wall, over his desk. He’s a writer, too:

The cardinal sins of storytelling:

1. Boredom

2. Confusion

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

I don’t play favorites. Today I tell you that my favorite word is that old writerly chestnut, _defenestrate_, and tomorrow I say to myself, “Come on, man! That’s a pretty obvious choice, isn’t it?” So I say, “I put the word _mooncalf_ in my biography for a reason,” and then I find out that somebody is offended by that word. Or I go, “Let’s just say _zeppelin_ and be done with it,” but then you think I’m some kind of obsessive, when really I’m just fascinated by dirigibles. No way to win this game. So, yeah, I don’t know.

Favorite curse word, though, has got to be that classic: _fuck_. I like its versatility. Excuse me, its fucking versatility, you fuck. I like fuckery and motherfucker and fucktastic and their many kin. It’s like an atomic cuss, from which many vulgar molecules can be wrought. I mean, fuck.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

Again with your favorites. Lately I’ve been drinking Hendricks gin and tonics (a large pour of Hendricks gin and an eyeballed dose of tonic) and white russians (one part vodka, one part Kahlua, one part cream). Also, I like scotch neat or with one ice cube. If you’ve got port, I’ll drink a lot of it.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, game: something with great story. Go!

How about a game that surprised me with its storytelling? Months and months ago, a game came out called ENSLAVED: ODYSSEY TO THE WEST that was written by Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER, NEVER LET ME GO) and co-directed by Andy Serkis. Serkis also acts in this game, doing dialogue and motion-capture work. It features some of the best, most nuanced performances I’ve ever seen in a video game and all of it was sadly overlooked by the gaming public. The gameplay is solid running-and-jumping adventure-type stuff in an overgrown post-apocalyptic world (the game’s especially lovely in the early levels) and it’s all loaded up with ongoing character-building dialogue a la PRINCE OF PERSIA: SANDS OF TIME. It’s not a perfect game, but it was overlooked for sure and now you can get it cheap, new or used. Well worth the time you’ll spend in that world.

Where are my pants?

Not until I get my $240 in small, non-sequential bills, Wendig.

Got anything to pimp? Now’s the time!

My new book is THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES, which I share with a crazily wonderful contributor roster that I’m just going to list here, because when you list all these names together they make some kind of harmonic resonance pulse: Holly Black, Greg Broadmore, Ted Chiang, John Coulthart, Rikki Ducornet, Amal El-Mohtar, Minister Faust, Jeffrey Ford, Lev Grossman, N.K. Jemisin, Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, James A. Owen, Helen Oyeyemi, J.K. Potter, Cherie Priest, Ekaterina Sedia, Jan Svankmajer, Rachel Swirsky, Carrie Vaughn, Jake von Slatt, Tad Williams, Charles Yu, and many more.

This is a vast, multi-author, multi-artist anthology exploring the fascinating collection of artifacts and doodads gathered by the sadly deceased Dr. Lambshead during his remarkable life. Inside you’ll find stories, essays, and art galore. It’s really a hell of a book, envisioned and assembled by the cunning and imaginative intelligences of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

How did you get involved with the Cabinet of Curiosities?

I’ve long been fascinated by collectors like Dr. Lambshead. My family is full of avid collectors and I married a museum professional, so my fascination is nearly utter, really. Dr. Lambshead, perhaps best known as a medical pioneer and adventurer, also amassed something approaching a museum of his own—the “cabinet” of curiosities is not so much a cabinet at all—and it’s one of those iconic storehouses of occult and esoteric lore that I dreamt about visiting.

I work with Jeff VanderMeer at a creative-writing summer camp called Shared Worlds (http://shareworlds.wofford.edu), which he co-founded, and when I heard that he was working on a new book about Dr. Lambshead, I pestered him and bought his cigars until he let me do some research and write about an item from the collection all on my own. In the end, Jeff gave me the task of writing about the Auble Gun, because I have some (modest) experience with antique firearms.

Some of that is even true.

Care to tell us about your story, “The Auble Gun?”

“The Auble Gun” began with an illustration by Greg Broadmore of a tuxedoed gentleman with a spectacular, steaming Gatling-style gun on his shoulder. I added a faux-academic exhibit writeup, drawing a bit on my own feelings of inadequacy and my own limited experience with archaic firearms, and created a familial legacy of ambition, desperation, and failure that I probably think is funnier than it actually is. And, of course, we get to see how Dr. Lambshead’s own history intersects with that of the Auble Gun.

The truth is, “The Auble Gun” has a lot of pathos in it for me, all hidden under a layer of stiff academia. It’s a dynastic tale about reaching beyond one’s grasp, dedicating one’s self to someone else’s obsession, and always coming in second place. While it’s about the Auble family, it’s also about my experiences, to some degree. But I don’t want to say much more than that—I want to keep the focus on Dr. Lambshead and the Aubles, if I can. It’s their story, really.

You’re also a game designer. Tell us how playing and designing games helps you — or hinders you — in the act of writing prose fiction.

This is something I wrestle with and have written about a bit at my blog, actually. The short version is that storytelling games like table-top roleplaying titles (your Dungeons & Dragons and your Trail of Cthulhus) have helped me internalize and gain valuable traction in thinking about storytelling on the fly. I’m much more comfortable with story structure and characterization thanks to these games than I would be otherwise. Four hours spent running a great story game are solid experience for dealing with questions of boredom and confusion, for learning how to quickly get characters across, and for learning how to set a scene. They hone instincts.

The downside is that I sometimes get decision paralysis while writing straight-up prose fiction now. Without players, as living agents and audience, making decisions in the moment, I sometimes find it difficult to decide just which way a story should unfold. As a game writer, I’m usually writing options and consequences for exploring various options. As a story writer, I’m writing one option, one outcome. What if the better story lies through the door not taken? What if I force a character into an uncharacteristic decision? What if, what if, what if?

So, while I think story games are great practice for a lot of skills, they’re no substitute for hours logged making mistakes and correcting them at the keyboard, writing actual fiction or actual script pages. These two skill sets overlap, and that part of the Venn diagram is where I’m strongest, but the rest of those circles are their own things. Got to log hours doing both if you want to be good at both.

You’re a big fan of soundtracks — both as inspiration for writing and just for good old-fashioned ear massage. Recommend a soundtrack that most people wouldn’t think to seek out.

Hmm. Tricky. I’m often surprised by the soundtracks and film scores that people actually have heard of or sought out. Bear McCreary’s had rollicking concerts for his BATTLESTAR GALACTICA musical scores, for example, so I’d say people have thought to seek them out. I used to recommend Michael Giacchino’s early scores for the MEDAL OF HONOR games, but he’s got an Oscar now and is pretty well established, so I imagine that you’ve sought those out if you wanted to. I often tell people that the John Powell scores for the BOURNE films are excellent writing music—you’ll feel like you’re accomplishing something even when you’re not—and the BOURNE ULTIMATUM score is an easy recommendation, but maybe that’s too obvious, too? David Holmes’ score for OCEAN’S TWELVE is the best in that series, in my opinion, and has a great energy and style to it, too. It really depends what mood you’re trying to get in.

What are you working on now? Can you give us a hint? Whet our appetites?

Right now, I’m wrapping up development on the MISTBORN ADVENTURE GAME for Crafty Games, based on the novels by Brandon Sanderson. I’m editing Jeremy Keller’s hard-boiled cyberpunk game, TECHNOIR. I’m also developing a couple of original RPGs for outfits like Pelgrane Press and, don’t tell anyone, Evil Hat Productions. The first of them, for Pelgrane, is called RAZED, and it’s an apocalyptic investigative survival RPG with a highly malleable setting. The other is so new that I don’t think I can really talk about it, but it’s grim and exciting and finally lets me play with a subject I’ve been wanting to tackle for years. I also have a couple of independent games in development, including a stealth-action title called DARK, which I’m hoping to launch on Kickstarter in the coming months.

All of that doesn’t include a collection of short stories that I’ll be publishing later this year, I hope, or the progress by agonizing inches that I make on my novel. I have to keep busy to keep the checks coming in and I frequently get distracted off of my own projects by projects for other people, ’cause I need to eat and my own projects are all gambles on future monies, rather than contract-driven certainties (well, “certainties”). You know how it is.

July 6, 2011 / 33 Comments

What Separates Man From Penmonkey

I’ve kicked your ass so many times, it’s a wonder you can poop with all those shoes of mine crammed up into your colonic cubby-hole. If anything, you’re probably shitting shoelaces by now. I feel like I come back here and I say the same thing over and over. It’s the same hard-ass, hard-nose advice. Endlessly reiterative. I froth. I spit. I kick sand. I make the face that my son makes when he’s trying to figure out how to belch or fill his diaper. I have an aneurism. I collapse in a puddle of my own blood and saliva. I lay there and wait until someone picks me back up and I forget I ranted and raved and then here I am, doing it all again.

Froth, spit, sand, diaper, aneurism, rant, rave, again, again, again.

You must be tired of me by now. Lord knows I’m tired of me.

And yet, I persevere. As I must. For you. For you.

…

HA HA HA HA! Who am I kidding? I love to froth! I’m happy to lose the occasional shoe to your grasping sphincter. I am addicted to punching you in the face meat with my dubious truth-making nonsense.

Even still, consider this my last official ass-kicking for a while, at least as an ass-kicking that comprises these core conceits. Let this be my final gospel to you, faithful readers. Let this be an exploration of the line that separates the common man — the guy who “has a book in him” but never manages to puke it up — from the hard-working, trench-crawling penmonkey.

We are separated by a line of shattered excuses and incomplete narrative.

On this side, action.

On that side, passivity.

Time to pound the lectern.

Penmonkeys Don’t Have Time, They Make Time

I have 24 hours in my day.

You have 24 hours in your day.

That guy? Twenty-four hours. That lady? She has 25 hours, but she sucked the Devil’s hell-wang and cut herself a deal. You don’t want that deal. It involves Justin Bieber.

Life fills idle time. It’s like water moving to empty spaces. It’s why the phrase “free time” is a fucking joke. Adults don’t have free time. Because when you’re an adult, shit gets real. It’s all mortgages and diapers and spreadsheets and shopping lists and cake recipes and suburban methamphetamine dealers just so you can have the energy to vacuum one more room, just one, just one.

Nobody “has” time. We don’t bank it like cell phone minutes. You can’t buy a gift card from Target. Writers are ever under the assumption that the rest of their lives comes first. Which it will, if you let it. And that’s true of anything. If you wait for the time to magically free itself, then you’ll be 80 and will have forgotten what you wanted to do anyway. Time must be managed. Time must be carved off, separated, crafted and shaped. You don’t have time. You make it. You pull a little bit from here and a little bit from there and you lump them together until you have a glorious hour of writing time.

You don’t wait for it to happen. Because if you do, you’re going to be waiting a long time. Because here’s the other secret? Time? It flows like a river, friend. Unless you dam it up, it moves on into the ocean.

And there you are raped and eaten by sharks.

True story.

Penmonkeys Have Heads Like Concrete Drain Boxes

Writing is a career that is endlessly reiterative. Talent matters, but it matters only in equal proportion to how much patience and perseverance you possess. You gotta be stubborn as a brain-damaged mule. Said for the many-th time: writing is about putting a bucket on your head and trying to knock down a brick wall. It’s either you or the wall. You’re either stubborn and pissed off enough to break on through, or eventually, the wall puts you on your ass. Up to you to conjure the fortitude.

The successful writers, the ones who work day in and day out, are usually ones who can tell you about beating down the brick wall. And the long road to get to that brick wall. It won’t happen overnight. It won’t happen over the course of a single year. Took me over 12 years to get where I am, and I’m not even anywhere all that special, yet. A penmonkey career is a long con, not a short swindle.

You’re either in for the long haul or you’ll be hauled out before long.

Penmonkeys Are Not Stopped By Your Earthly “Writer’s Block”

“Writer’s Block.”

“The Muse.”

Two sides of the same coin. A coin made of lies. And sadness. And babies.

Yes, yes, writers get blocked. And writers can be inspired. The first: a sad state. The second: a glorious boon. But neither have power beyond what you give them. You don’t need inspiration to work. Same as you don’t need to give in to whatever’s blocking you. Neither are made of anything real. They’re just imaginary. Hallucinatory. Best of all: transitory.

What, you’re sad? Of course you’re sad. You’re a writer. Bad day at the day job? Painful bunion? Kid won’t stop crying? Besieged by ninjas? Mind a gray gruel-like mush?

You have to move past it. You have to shut that out. Even just writing down a string of pages-long nonsense may help jar loose the scree and debris. If you can’t get shut of it, can’t tune out the nega-frequency, then I’m truly sorry. But know that the working penmonkeys out there hammering away in the word mines don’t want to hear about your writer’s block. They’ve got shit to do. And if you’re a tough cookie, you’ll join ’em.

Your mental state cannot stop you. If it does, know that it has a better name than “writer’s block.”

You might want to call it “self-sabotage.”

Penmonkeys, Like Honey Badgers, Don’t Give A Shit

Three words. Practice them with me now: “I don’t care.”

Or, even better: “It’s all good.”

Bad review? Hard rejection? Someone tells you your “dream” of being a writer is bullshit? Mean person on the Internet? Self-doubt? Plague of uncertainty nibbling at your brain-stem like a passel of vampire hamsters? Fear of failure? Fear of success? Is your idea original? Will your book get published? What will the cover look like? Will anybody read it? Are you just a fraud? When will they discover you? When will they see that you’re just wearing the costume of a writer?

Fuck it! Fuck all of it. Fuck it all right in the galactic dickhole.

No, I don’t know what a galactic dickhole is. I’ve been drinking. Just, shhh. Shhhh.

Find clarity in what you do. Remove noise and zero in on pure signal. All that matters is what you do. Put differently: don’t care so much. I know that runs counter to what you think, which is to care deeply, care strongly, care without reservation or reason. Note that I’m not saying to lose your passion, but eventually you need to throw up your hands (er, not puke them up because, ew — why did you eat your hands?) and say, “Fuck it.” You should care only about the thing that you’re doing, which is writing the perfect novel, script, manifesto, whatever. Any outside noise? Shut it out. At least until you finish.

Penmonkeys Do Not Find Better Things To Do

You always have the option to do something other than write. Clean your office. Run some errands. Walk the dog. See a movie. Hang out on Twitter. Digest porn. Sacrifice albino mammals to dark gods.

Life presents you with an endless menu of options. Writing is merely one choice amongst an infinity.

And penmonkeys make that choice every time.

Penmonkeys Know Their Craft

Being a writer actually features two primary tiers of craft (with lots of niggling little sub-tiers and micro-strata): writing, and storytelling. Storytelling is the larger scope, the idea of conveying a narrative and making it count. Writing is the smaller, more technical craft: you must find a way to convey the story you hope to tell. You need both of these skills.

My father was a great storyteller. And yet, I have a strong feeling he wasn’t a capable writer. Now, to be clear, he didn’t need to be: he was an engineer, a plant facilities manager, a gunsmith, at no point did he need to sit down and be a writer. Meaning, he didn’t want to be a penmonkey.

You do. So learn how to write. And learn how to tell stories.

And keep learning, too. You don’t stop just because you’ve written one thing. This isn’t a simple discipline. It doesn’t have easy margins. Penmonkeys always have more they can learn.

But Also, Penmonkeys Have Permission To Suck

You are not born a writer. Penmonkeys are made. Challenged by and forged within the fires of their own self-doubt, and pickled in a brine of gin, vinegar, salt, bourbon, and straight-up word sauce.

(For the record, word sauce is actually just steak sauce. Don’t tell anybody.)

Sometimes, what you do isn’t going to be great. Don’t get mopey. Don’t succumb to the Penmonkey Blues. You need to leave yourself that margin-of-error, that force field of occasional suckitude. Not everything you do is going to have that new car, new baby smell. Some of what you do is going to smell like the ruptured bile-sac of a sick possum. Penmonkeys don’t let this get them down. They move on. They fix what they fucked up or they write something new, something better, something that takes the lessons learned and puts them fast into play. Learn this phrase: “That’s okay, I can fix it in post.”

Penmonkeys Write Till It’s Right

You don’t write till it’s “Ehh, shrug, pbbt, poop noise,” you write till it’s right. Too many authors go off half-cocked. They jump in and jump out too fast — “Here’s my completed work!” — and then they submit a “final product” that has the shape and definition of a quivering blob of Ambrosia Salad.

With raisins in it.

With raisins.

Once, while in a bathroom in college, I saw that someone had written on the wall in black marker:

WORK THE CLIT.

Not bad advice in general, and for penmonkeys, this is good as metaphor. You gotta work the clit till the cookies pop. Work the story until it’s right. Not until it’s done. It’s easy to finish something. It’s hard to finish something and do it well. You need to bring that story to climax. Until it explodes its juices all over your chin, over your cordoruys, over that weird apparatus you’re wearing. Work the clit. Write till it’s right.

Penmonkeys Love To Write, Not To Get Published

This is easy enough: the writer’s goal should be to get published, but the writer’s love should be of writing. Too many writers are in love with the idea of writing-to-be-published and too few are in love with the act of writing. But tried-and-true penmonkeys love the craft, the act, the actual telling-of-stories.

They care about publishing. But they love to be writing.

Penmonkeys Do Work — And Don’t Quit

Penmonkeys work. Penmonkeys don’t fuck around.

Write every day. And finish what you started. And with each day of writing, learn something new about who you are and what you do. Penmonkeys don’t merely talk about writing (though, plainly, they do that quite a lot — I can’t tell you how many times I see writers pooh-pooh on writing advice and then lo and behold they leap to their own blogs to do what now? Offer writing advice). They actually also do the writing.

They aren’t hamstrung by fear. They don’t find better things to do. They don’t watch day in and day out as time fritters away. They don’t let others dissuade them from this path.

They write. Endlessly anon.

They don’t write because they “have to” — that’s an endearing writer’s myth, but a myth just the same. Penmonkeys write because they want to. They write because if they don’t, drum roll please, then nothing gets written. Writing is a difficult act of mountain climbing or cave spelunking: it’s work, hombre. But climb to the top or crawl down into the deepest dark and you’d be amazed at what you find there: rolling clouds, glowing bacteria, the cleanest air, the cleanest water, the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, cave crickets with human faces, gods and monsters and goblins and unicorns and Lady Gaga.

On the worst day of writing, the work is instructive. On the best day, the act is transcendent.

The work is purifying and perfect even when it’s not.

This is a beautiful, if you let it be beautiful.

Above all else: writers write.

* * *

If you dig on the apeshit crazy-face no-holds-barred profanity-soaked writing advice found here at terribleminds, then you may want to take a wee bitty gander-peek at: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY, which is available now! Buy for Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF. Don’t forget to work the clit.

July 5, 2011 / 110 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Dialogue

Time for another iteration of the 25 Things series. This, I suspect, may be my last one here on the blog for awhile, but I’m contemplating putting together a small e-book of these lists with some new ones thrown in for good measure (already written part of 25 Things You Should Know About Publishing and Writing A Fucking Sentence). In the meantime, enjoy this one, and don’t hesitate to add your own in the comments.

Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series:

25 Things Every Writer Should Know

25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling

25 Things You Should Know About Character

25 Things You Should Know About Plot

25 Things You Should Know About Writing A Novel

25 Things You Should Know About Revisions

1. Dialogue Is Easy Like Sunday Morning

Our eyes flow over dialogue like butter on the hood of a hot car. This is true when reading fiction. This is true when reading scripts. What does this tell you? It tells you: you should be using a lot of dialogue.

2. Easy Isn’t The Same As Uncomplicated

We like to read dialogue because it’s easy, not because it’s stupid. Dialogue has a fast flow. We respond to it as humans because, duh, humans make talky-talky. Easy does not translate to uncomplicated or unchallenging. Dialogue isn’t, “I like hot dogs,” “I think hot dogs are stupid,” “I think you’re stupid,” “I think your Mom’s stupid,” “I think your Mom’s vagina is stupid.” Dialogue is a carrier for all aspects of the narrative experience. Put differently: it’s the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. I think I’m supposed to add “motherfucker” to that. I’ll let you do it. I trust you.

3. Sweet Minimalism

Let’s get this out of the way: don’t hang a bunch of gaudy ornaments upon your dialogue. In fiction, use the dialogue tags “said” and “asked” 90% of the time. Edge cases you might use “hissed,” “called,” “stammered,” etc. These are strong spices; use minimally. Also, adverbs nuzzled up against dialogue tags are an affront to all things and make Baby Jesus pee out the side of his diaper, and when he does that, people die. In scripts, you don’t have this problem but you can still clog the pipes with crap if you overuse stage directions. Oh, heavy dialect and slang? Just more ornamentation that’ll break the back of your dialogue.

4. Uh, You Do Know The Rules, Right?

Learn the structure of dialogue. If a screenplay, know the format. Capitalized name, centered above parenthetical stage direction and the line of dialogue. VO, OC, OS, contd:

SCOOTER (VO)

(shouting)

I always said that life was like a box of marmots. You

never know which one’s gonna nibble off your privates.

In fiction, know when to use a comma, when to use a period, know where the punctuation goes in relation to quotation marks, know that a physical gesture (nodded, f’rex) is not a dialogue tag.

“Fuck that monkey,” John said.

“But,” Betty said, “I love that dumb chimp.”

John nodded. “I know, Betty. But he’s a bad news bonobo, baby. A bad news bonobo.”

5. Use It To Set Pace

You want a pig to run faster, you grease him up with Astroglide and stick a NASA rocket booster up his ass. You want your story to read faster, you use dialogue to move it along. Like I said: dialogue reads easy. Dialogue’s like a waterslide: a reader gets to it, they zip forth fast, fancy and free. Want to slow things down? Pull away from the dialogue. Speed things up? More dialogue. Throttle. Brake. Throttle. Brake.

6. Shape Determines Speed

Short, sharp dialogue is a prison shiv: moves fast ’cause it’s gotta, because T-Bone only has three seconds in the lunch line with Johnny the Fish to stitch a shank all up in Johnny’s kidneys. Longer dialogue moves more slowly. Wanting to create tension? Fast, short dialogue. Want to create mystery? Longer, slightly more ponderous dialogue. Want to bog your audience in word treacle? Let one character take a lecturing info-dump all over their heads.

7. Expository Dialogue Is A Pair Of Cement Shoes

One of dialogue’s functions is to convey information within the story (to other characters) and outside the story (to the audience). An info-dump is the clumsiest way to make this happen. Might as well bludgeon your audience with a piece of rebar. And yet, you still gotta convey info. You have ways to pull this off without dropping an expository turd in the word-bowl. Don’t let one character lecture; let it be a conversation. Question. Answer. Limit the information learned; pull puzzle pieces out and take them away to create mystery. Let characters be reluctant to give any info, much less dump it over someone’s head.

8. Showing Through Telling

And yet, you have to do it. Dialogue is a better way of conveying information than you, the storyteller, just straight up telling the audience. The curious nature of dialogue, however, is that it would seem to rectally violate that most sacred of writing chestnuts — show, don’t tell. I don’t open my mouth and project fucking holograms. I tell you shit. And yet, the trick with dialogue is to show through telling. You reveal things through dialogue without a character saying them. This means it’s paramount to avoid…

9. The Wart On The End Of The Nose

“On-the-nose” dialogue is dialogue where a character says exactly what he feels and what he wants for purposes of telling the audience what they need to know. When a villain spoils his own sinister plan, that’s on-the-nose. When a protagonist says, “I cannot love you, elf-lady, because an elf once touched me in my no-no hole,” that’s on-the-nose. Trust me, we’d live in a better, happier world if real world dialogue was all on-the-nose. On the other side, we’d experience duller, shittier fiction. Characters — and, frankly, real people — reveal things without saying them.

10. The Words Beneath The Words

Text versus sub-text. On-the-nose dialogue versus dialogue that is deliciously sub rosa. Meaning exists beneath what’s said. The best real world example of this is the dreaded phrase spoken by men and women the world around: “I’m fine.” Said with jaw tight. Said with averted eyes. Said in sharp, clipped tongue. Never before have two words so clearly meant something entirely different: “I’m fine” is code. It’s code for, “Yes, something is fucking wrong, but I don’t want to talk about it, but actually, I do want to talk about it but I want you to already know what’s wrong, and what’s wrong is that you had sex with my mother in a New Jersey rest-stop and put it on Youtube you giant unmerciful cock-waffle.”

11. Pay No Attention To The Dead Man Behind The Curtain

Put differently: pretend that dialogue is more about hiding than it is about revealing. The things we the audience want to know most — who killed his wife, why did he rob that bank, did he really have a romantic dalliance with that insane dancing robot — are the things the character doesn’t want to discuss. Dialogue is negotiating that revelation, and it’s a revelation that should come as easy as pulling the teeth out of a coked-up Doberman. Meaning, not easy at all.

12. Where Tension, Suspense And Mystery Have A Big Crazy Gang-Bang

The fact that characters lie, cheat, conceal, mislead and betray all in dialogue tells you that dialogue is a critical way of building tension and suspense and conveying mystery. Characters are always prime movers.

13. Quid Pro Quo, Clarice

Hannibal Lecter susses out the truth through dialogue. (Oh, and he also eats people.) But he’s also performing meta-work for the audience by sussing out character through dialogue. Clarice Starling is painted in part by Lecter’s own strokes. A character’s blood, sweat, tears, ball-hair and breast-milk lives inside their dialogue. How they speak and what they say reveals who they are, though only obliquely. After writing a conversation, ask yourself, “What does this say about the characters? Is this true to who they are?”

14. Let The Character Sign Their Own Work

Each line of dialogue from a character is that character’s signature. It contains their voice and personality. One speaks in gruff, clipped phrasing. The other goes on at length. One character is ponderous and poetic, another is meaner than two rattlesnakes fucking in a dirty boot. Don’t let a character’s voice be defined by dialect, slang, or other trickery. It’s not just how they speak. It’s also what they say when they do.

15. Dialogue Is A Theme Park

Theme is one of those things you as the author don’t really speak out loud — but sometimes characters do. They might orbit the theme. They might challenge it. They might speak it outright. Not often, and never out of nowhere. But it’s okay once in awhile to let a character be a momentary avatar of theme. It’s doubly okay if that character is played by Morgan Freeman. God, that guy’s voice. He could say anything — “Beans are a musical fruit” — and I’m like, “There it is! Such gravitas! Such power. It’s the theme. It’s the theme!”

16. Dialogue Is Action

We expect that dialogue and action are separate, but they are not. Speak is a verb. So’s talk. So’s discuss, talk, argue, yell, banter, rant, rave. Verb means action. That means, duh, dialogue is action, not separate from it. Further, dialogue works best when treated this way. Don’t stand two characters across from one another and have them talk at each other like it’s a ping-pong game. Characters act while speaking. They walk. Kick stones. Clean dishes. Load rifles. Pleasure themselves. Build thermonuclear penile implants. Eat messy sandwiches. This creates a sense of dynamism. Of an authentic world. Adds variety and interest.

17. The Real World Is Not Your Friend

I’m not talking about the MTV reality show, though one supposes there the lesson is the same (so not your friend). What I mean is, if you want to ruin good dialogue, the fastest path to that is by mimicking dialogue you hear in the real world. Dialogue in the real world is dull. It’s herky-jerky. Lots of um, mmm, hmm, uhhh, like, y’know. If you listen really hard to how people speak to one another, it’s amazing anybody communicates anything at all.

18. For The Record, You’re Not David Mamet

Yes, yes, I know. David Mamet writes “realistic” dialogue. Everyone interrupts everyone. They say inexplicable shit. They barely manage to communicate. Subtextapalooza. It’s great. It works. You’re also not David Mamet. I mean, unless you are, in which case, thanks for stopping by. Would you sign my copy of Glengarry Glen Ross? All that being said…

19. Again: Not A Ping-Pong Match

Characters don’t stand nose to nose and take turns speaking. People are selfish. So too are characters. Characters want to talk. They want to be heard. They don’t wait their turn like polite automatons. They can interrupt each other. Finish one another’s sentences. Derail conversations. Pursue agendas. Dialogue is a little bit jazz, a little bit hand-to-hand combat. It’s a battle of energy, wits, and dominance.

20. Conversation Is Conflict

Dialogue can represent a pure and potent form of conflict. Two or more characters want something, and they’re using words to get it. Before you write conversation, ask: what does each participant want? Set a goal. One character wants money. Another wants affirmation to justify her self-righteousness. A third just needs a fucking hug. Find motive. Purpose. Conscious or not. Let the conversation reflect this battle.

21. Authenticity Trumps Reality

“But it really happened,” is never an excuse for something to exist in fiction. Weird shit happens all the time in reality. Ever have something happen where you say, “Gosh, that was really convenient?” You put that in your story, the audience is going to kick you in the gut and spit in your cereal. Dialogue suffers from similar pitfalls. Just because you hear it in reality doesn’t mean it works in the context of story. Story has its own secret laws. You can make dialogue sound real without mimicking reality. One might term this “natural” dialogue; authenticity is about feeling real, not about being real.

22. Sometimes, You Just Gotta Babble That Shit Out

Writing dialogue sometimes means you just let two characters babble for awhile. Small talk, big talk, crazy talk. Let ’em circumvent the real topic. Give them voices. Open the floodgates to your sub-conscious mind. And let the conversation flow. Write big, write messy, write long. Cut later in comfort.

23. Nothing Wrong With Banter

You might write two characters just sitting down and shooting the shit and think, “I’ll cut this down later.” But don’t be so sure. Sometimes characters just need to chat, babble, mouth off. Who they are can be revealed in two people just fucking around, seeing what comes out of their heads. That can work if it’s interesting, if it puts the character on the map in terms of the audience’s mental picture, and if it eventually focuses up to be something bigger than how it began. Oh, and did I mention it has to be interesting?

24. The Greatest Crime Against Humanity Is Writing Boring Dialogue

Like I said, dialogue is easy to read. Or, it’s supposed to be. Anybody who writes dialogue that’s dull, that doesn’t flow like water and pop like popcorn, needs to be taken out back and shaken like a baby. Find the boring parts. The unnecessary stuff. The junk. Anything that doesn’t feel a) necessary and b) interesting. Stick it in a bag and set it on fire. Want to read great dialogue? Sharp, fast, entertaining, witty-as-fuck, with a lot going on? Go watch the TV show GILMORE GIRLS. No, I’m not kidding. Stop making that face.

25. Double-Duty Dialogueing

Heh, “duty.” Heh, “log.” Shut up. If you take one thing away from these 25 ~~nonsense nuggets~~ gems of wisdom, it’s this: let dialogue do the heavy lifting and perform double- or even triple-duty. Dialogue isn’t just dialogue. It’s a vehicle for character, theme, mood, plot, conflict, mystery, tension, horror. Dialogue does a lot of work in very short space: it’s the goddamn Swiss Army knife of storytelling. Or Macgyver. Or Trojan Horse. Or Macgyver hiding in a Trojan Horse carrying a Swiss Army knife. Didn’t I tell you to shut up already? Where’s Morgan Freeman when you need him? He’ll tell you to shut up and you’ll listen.

Corollary: “Everything Is Dialogue”

Part of why dialogue reads so easy is because it’s conversational, and conversation is how we interact with other humans and, in our heads, with the world. We talk to inanimate objects, for fuck’s sake. (What, you’ve never yelled at a stubborn jar of jelly? SHUT UP HAVE TOO.) There’s a secret, here, and that is to treat all your writing like it’s dialogue. Write things conversationally. Like you’re talking to the audience. Like you and the audience? Real BFFs. You can abuse this, of course, but the point is that in conversation you’ll use straightforward, uncomplicated language to convey your point — no value in being stodgy and academic when you’re just talking. So too is it with writing, whether it’s description in a screenplay or in fiction, you’ll find value in straightforward, uncomplicated, even talky language. Talk with the audience, don’t lecture at them. Everything is dialogue. Some of it’s just one-sided, is all.

So. How about you?

What are your rules of writing dialogue?

* * *

Did you enjoy this post? Guess what? Chuck has a book chock full of the same kind of booze-soaked, profanity-laden writing advice you found here. Look for CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY. Buy for Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF.

July 4, 2011 / 28 Comments

The Penmonkey Incitement

Wow. THE PENMONKEY INCITEMENT sounds like a lost Robert Ludlum novel.

Never mind.

I would like to sell more copies of CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY.

I have, at this exact moment, sold 328 copies over the last six weeks.

For the record, I’m not unhappy with that number. It actually makes me giddy. I see that number, I do a little dance. In my pants. Hah, just kidding, I don’t wear your oppressive Earth pants. PENMONKEY is actually poised to out-earn IRREGULAR CREATURES despite the latter being on sale since January and having sold twice as many copies. So, hey: thumbs up.

Even still, I want more copies of PENMONKEY in the world.

I seek nothing short of total dominance of the “writing advice” market, where me and my hunter-killer robots storm across the barren wasteland of the publishing industry, eradicating bad writing left and right with our laser beams and pinching claws. I want a throne built of slushy manuscripts and lined with the teeth of those writers who had sense knocked into them (and molars knocked out of them) by my book.

I also want a Lamborghini. I mean, c’mon. I had the poster as a kid. Lamborghini. Hot bikini chick. Maybe a python or some shit. And I suspect that my little bloggery-book on writing advice is the way toward such fame and fortune. And toward a chick with a constrictor snake inside a hot late 80’s sports car.

Okay, I kid. But I would still like to get more PENMONKEY out there, regardless of my lack of Lamborghinis or doom-bots. Right? Right.

To do so, I thought, okay, maybe an incentive program. Maybe, if I don’t sell 100 copies every week, I would do something horrible. “You don’t buy my book, I’ll shoot this unicorn.”

Except then I figured, ohh, ohhh, nobody’s going to buy the book because everybody’s going to want to see the unicorn shooting. And they’re going to wanna see how I dispose of all those unicorn carcasses.

So, I went back to the wise words of my Kung Fu mentor, Wily Cheung Dragon, who said:

“Be a fountain, not a drain.”

Which, it turns out, was just advice on how to pee, but hell with him, he was old and smelled like wet dog.

Point is, incentives should be positive.

So, here then, are the incentives for CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY. Ready?

Every 50 Copies Sold: Did Somebody Say “Postcard?”

I sell 50 copies, I will mail you a postcard. In the real mail. In the corporeal world. This postcard will be — well, I don’t know what the hell it’ll be. Maybe a PENMONKEY postcard, I dunno. But I do know what the postcard will say, and that’s a postcard-sized piece of single-serving writing advice. I will not duplicate this advice across any postcards. It will be handwritten, which means you get to gaze upon my calligraphy, which is about as legible as if you cut off a chicken’s head and stuck a fountain pen in the stump and then let him flop around on a piece of paper. Still: free postcard.

Every 100 Copies Sold: Free Motherfucking T-Shirt

Folks have been clamoring for a PENMONKEY t-shirt. Well, I’m not selling one. What am I, a t-shirt shop?

No.

I am, however, giving one away.

That shirt will probably be this shirt:

Since I’m only giving away these shirts, that means it will be rare and worth millions of dollars. Okay, maybe not that last part. But rare! Definitely rare. Yeah.

That said, I reserve the right to change the t-shirt at any time. I probably won’t, because I’m lazy, but I’m also unpredictable. Like a homeless guy with a knife and a drinking problem.

I only promise that the t-shirt will contain the word: PENMONKEY.

(That shirt also says terribleminds on the back, by the way. I did it with Zazzle.)

Every 200 Copies Sold: I Edit Your Shit

For every 200 copies, I will pick someone at random and offer them the chance to get a single editing pass on 5000 words of their content or 50 script pages of a screenplay from yours truly. I will give it a robust single pass of copy, content and context, and further, I will always be tactful but make no aims to be nice. Know that going in (then again, if you read this blog, you know I’m a tough-love type — I love you, sure, but my love comes stapled to the end of a Louisville slugger).

You may say, what are my qualifications beyond being just some fuckface with an author’s blog and a book containing dubious NSFW writing advice? I’ve been writing professionally now for over 13 years, and further, I’ve done quite a bit of editing and developing work. For example, I hired writers, developed content, and edited the writing across the entire Hunter: The Vigil game-line. Those writers I hired will likely tell you that they hated me and envisioned my death, but I also believe they’ll tell you that I improved their work. (If any of those writers are here now, feel free to pop in and say so. Or, tell me you still hate me.)

Every 500 Copies Sold: Some Awesome Fucker Gets A Kindle

Yep. For every half-a-thousand sold, I’ll pick someone at random and give them a Kindle. I’m not made of wampum over here, so it’ll be the “regular” Kindle that comes bundled with special offers (THIS GUY right here). If you already have a Kindle, then feel free to either say, “Send it to [insert person’s name here]” or “No, thank you, please pick the next person on the list, as I am one magnanimous muhfucka.”

The Deets

Here, then, is the 411, the deets, the down-low.

This, er, “incentive program” is only open to those in the United States of America. I can’t pay international shipping, and further, may not be able to give international work a good proper edit. [EDIT: That said, if you’re international and you want me to edit your work, so be it, I will.]

I will run this for the next 1000 sales of PENMONKEY (starting with sale #329) or for the next year, whichever comes first. After that, I may continue, discontinue, or change the parameters and have my doom-bots add new “incitement protocols.”

I will keep a running tally somewhere on this site, soon as I figure out where that goes best. Sidebar? Maybe.

Any “incentives” will be received within 60 days of notification, though I have little doubt it’ll get to you a lot sooner. (The only tricky one is the edit, which may take time, so I want that 60-day cushion.)

This program is open to those who have already procured PENMONKEY (i.e. those first 328 purchasers) provided they live in the United States.

If you bought a PDF, I already have your email address and you don’t need to do anything at all.

If you bought a copy via Amazon or B&N, I need proof of sale and and e-mail address. Proof of sale can be a screen cap of a receipt or a photo of the book on your e-reader device. I reserve the right to be a jerk and test you and quiz you. Because that’s just how I roll. (Though recall: I also roll lazy. So I probably won’t.)

You can send proof of purchase to a special address I’ve got set-up for the whole shebang:

terribleminds at gmail dot com.

“Incitement Recipients” will be chosen at random via spreadsheet + random number generator.

If you have any questions, use the comment box below.

To procure PENMONKEY:

Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF.

I politely request that you spread the word on this, as it doesn’t work unless… well, people know about it.

Let the doom-bots begin their incitement.

I look forward to my hot-chick-in-a-Lamborghini.

July 1, 2011 / 40 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Fourth Of July

Check out last week’s players in the “Sub-Genre Mash-Up.”

Monday’s the Fourth of July. In this country, that means grilled meats, flag-waving, fire-crackers, humidity, parades, patriotism, picnics, baseball, families, and so on, and so forth.

It’s a day of celebration.

But fiction, well. Fiction likes a taste of the dark stuff. Fiction seeks to subvert happiness with a foul tincture of darkness. That, then, is your task for this week. Take the Fourth of July and muddy it up.

The flash fiction must be set on the Fourth of July.

This is a good challenge for horror or crime fiction, I think. Less so for fantasy and sci-fi, but if you think you can make it work, do it. Just be sure you show how long the shadows are on this hot summer holiday.

Once again: 1000 words.

Post it on your blog, and link back here, then make sure to let us know in the comments where to look for the fiction. You’ve got a week. Closing up shop Friday, July 8th, at 12 noon EST.

Load up them bottle rockets.

Jump into the pool.

Tell the grillmaster how you like your burger.

And be sure to hide the bodies.

June 30, 2011 / 12 Comments

“Decisions, Decisions,” by C.Y. Reid

Okay. Here goes, the first weekly terribleminds guest post — this one by C.Y. Reid, who would like to talk to you about his experiences writing a Choose Your Own Adventure Android app. Welcome him, and don’t hesitate to drop down into the comments section and ask the dude some questions. Please to enjoy.

Have you ever made a really difficult decision? One that’s plagued you for days on end, the resulting nervous state of emotional limbo never quite seeming to dissipate despite what you’re doing, where you are, or what’s doing its best to distract you? We’ve all been there, and it’s tough.

Now, I’m not talking about the stuff that holds a conventional sense of gravitas. One university or another. One car, one coffin, one career or another. I’m talking about the ridiculously bizarre decisions we fixate on to the point of generating our own internalised state of OCD. Which sandwich to have for lunch. Which bus to get. Which film to watch.

These decisions are what we agonise over more often than those with more serious consequences (though I’d argue that a bad sandwich is pretty serious), because they occur more often, and sometimes form part of an overall set of choices that define our lives. With choose-your-own-adventure writing, you’re not offering people constant, life-changing choices – you’re offering them the small beat-by-beat movements, occasionally punctuated by cliff-edge decisions, like how to fight a dragon, or how best to shut down your imagination while reading Chuck’s search term bingo posts.

It’s best to think of a choose-your-own-adventure novel like the roots of an old oak tree. You’re starting out from the trunk, the body of work that forms the basis for everything else – the world-fluff. Every smattering of nutrients you suck up through exploring the roots travels back up towards the surface, contributing to an ever-growing understanding of the world you’re exploring, page by page, in a far more direct and interactive way than you’re usually allowed to.

But each branching path can’t just be an obvious choice; a long, spiralling, weathered finger of wood with the resilience of aeons underground, or a short, dead stump. You have to make every single fork in the road matter just as much, and that means you can’t simply write sword-or-white-flag choices. A lot of recent videogames have featured choose-your-own-adventure elements, from Fable’s simplistic good-and-evil system to Mass Effect’s conversation wheel.

But the problem with these choices, and a lot of the choices I see in choose-your-own-adventure fiction is that they’re all based around an underlying theme of black-and-white morality. That theme is what is going to not only kill off half your pages, due to the fact that most readers will elect not to rape and pillage the townsfolk, rather than save and reassure them, but it’s also going to mean that the reader’s choices are simply a reflex.

Indecision generates fear, and I think that’s one of the reasons we get so stressed out about whether or not to dash to the duty-free just when our gate number is due at any moment. There’s that internal sensation of horror that pervades our decision, and I think by making people stop and think, you’re generating an adventure that means something to the reader.

Some storytellers think that they need an action beat every so many pages. But with this, every page in a choose-your-own-adventure tale is an action beat. Life isn’t a passenger experience, and if you’re offering someone a sense of interactivity within your fiction, you have to commit – half-arsing it just leaves them feeling like they’re playing within a sandbox, but you’re only letting them have the ambulance and the Tonka truck, rather than the Hot Wheels dream machines you’re dabbling with in the background.

If you want to write a choose-your-own-adventure novel (please do, it’s an art form that deserves more attention), I salute you, because as a writer, it’s brave of you. To hand one of the reins over to the reader and step back, knowing that they might only see less than a third of the pages you’ve written, perhaps never even reading through again to get a different ending, is bold. So be bold, and allow them to choose adventure.

C.Y. Reid is an SEO copywriter by day (boo, hiss, etc), and a passionate creative writer by night. He blogs at www.cyreid.com, tweets as @ReidFeed, and you can find Scoundrel’s Cross at this link.