Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

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August 3, 2011 / 36 Comments

On The Subject Of “Compromise”

Dear Mister President,

Is that what I’m supposed to call you? Mister President? That seems redundant. Why don’t I just throw in “Doctor” at the fore and “Esquire” at the rear and just call you Doctor Mister President, Esquire? We could also staple on “Detective” and “Junior” if that would be an appropriate honorific?

Perhaps we could compromise? You seem to like this word. “Compromise.” In our compromise, I could call you “Mister President” in the way that you like, and you could, ohh, I dunno, manifest a pair of testicles and then show them to us all? That’s all I’m asking for. I would like to see your balls. Because, at present, I’m left to believe that all you’ve got between your legs is a scrotum that looks like a sad, deflated balloon. Or maybe you don’t even have that. Maybe you just have a second butthole down there.

A ragged pucker the Republicans chewed open.

But I know I’m not going to get that. I’m not going to get even 10% of what I asked for.

Thus, I’m not going to call it a compromise.

I think you misunderstand the word “compromise.”

Let me paint another scenario.

Some sort of monster — for shits and giggles, let’s say it’s some kind of orange-skinned weepy homunculus named “Boner” — has taken the village children hostage. We say to the monster, “Hey, Boner, please don’t eat our village children. As Whitney Houston clearly laid out in her song, the children are our future. And so, without children we are also without a future. Please tell us what you want not to eat the children, and we will give it to you. Otherwise, we will be forced to come in there and stab you in the face with some kind of chainsaw-broadsword hybrid which is awesome and will really hurt.”

And Boner says, “RAAR I DON’T CARE I WANT TO EAT THE CHILDREN.”

And then he cries, because Boner cries a lot. I don’t know why. Probably because he’s an asshole. Or maybe he got self-tanner in his eyes and it really burns? Few can say.

We say again, “Please don’t eat the children or we’ll kill you. Tell us what you want to convince you not to eat the children. We are civilized villagers. We can compromise.”

Boner says, “RAAAR I WANT A BUS FULL OF STRIPPERS AND CHEESEBURGERS.”

We get the monster the bus full of strippers and cheeseburgers and he takes them and eats the children anyway. And then we say, “Thank the gods for such a glorious compromise.” And then we shake hands with the monster live on TV as he vomits up the bones of our young, and everybody has a good laugh.

See, I don’t think that’s a real good compromise.

Your definition may vary. In fact, it must vary. Because here it looks to me like the GOP made you swing so far right you make Ronald Reagan look like a stout Democrat. Because you ended up having to regurgitate their own plan back to them and still have them reject it. Because you ended up having to take a mouthful of Tea Party seed live on television with a big greasy goopy smile on your face.

To say the least, I’m a little disappointed.

You were full of all that Hopey-Changey stuff. And that was dangerous because what happened was, you got a lot of people high on the fumes of political possibility and then made sure to confirm that our dreams of moving forward, of attaining new progress and fresh potential in this country, were just that. Dreams. The higher you carried our hopes, the further they had to fall. That breeds cynicism of the highest order.

And hey, listen, I get it. Being the Detective Doctor El Presidente is no easy task. I get that you have to rule in ways that the common man doesn’t understand and that we’re an impatient gaggle of fuckheads. I also get that you have genuinely done a lot of good and I don’t want to be blind to that. But this latest acquiescence moves you from appearing “academic and even-handed” to appearing like Ned Beatty’s character in Deliverance. There you are, a man of the city, bent over a log and having a bunch of ignorant hillfolk plow you from behind, gobbing a stream of tobaccky spit on your back.

And that stream of spit? That’s what you’re calling a compromise. “Well, sure, we’re all getting porked up the baboon basket here, me and the whole country, but look what we got in return!”

Lubrication for an unasked-for rectal violation is not a compromise, Herr Doktor President.

Ultimately, I’m aware that something had to be done and perhaps your back was up against the wall. Then you need to tell us that. You need to be assertive and make clear that we as a nation voted in a bunch of GOP tea party fundamentalists who were willing to burn the house down to make a fucking point. You need to say to us that you’ll keep fighting the good fight. Because what you did in return was get slapped around and tell us that you liked it. That we should like it.

That we should be thankful for such a glorious compromise.

Can you even say that word with a straight face? Compromise?

I mean, hell, I like compromise. I’m all for a nation where the liberals get this, the conservatives get that. I believe that truth and justice usually live somewhere neatly in the middle.

But this? Really?

Can you really get behind a plan that fucks the poor and middle class and helps the richest of the rich? That slaps veterans and old people while giving a continued boost to oil companies?

(See also: “Wake Up, GOP: Smashing System Doesn’t Fix It.”)

Do we as a nation even really know what’s in this goddamn plan? We’re just learning that the EPA is going to get elbowed in the throat. Given that I just moved from a town that had epic levels of arsenic in the water, I’m not excited by the notion that not only will such levels be reasonable but nobody will be looking.

What else got tossed up on the altar of so-called compromise?

As a writer, I think it’s important we understand the definitions of the words we use. And, Dear Commander Lord President, sir, I suggest you find yourself a dictionary.

Anyway. What do you care? We’ll vote for you anyway because the only other choice comes out of a stable of fat-cats, dullards, and crazy people.

I hope you get a second term and use that term to reclaim the stuff you helped us to lose.

I also hope that one day you’ll just get sick of it, and you’ll get on TV and kick over the podium and speak to us like another enraged common man.

But, like I said, maybe we’re done with all that hope and change.

Maybe it’s time once again to settle into the deep mire of cynicism and accept that the plutarchy is well and duly upon us. It’s funny. I always chided my father for such cynicism. He had that attitude of “a little revolution is a good thing,” and stockpiled guns just in case we had to one day take our government back from the government, a government that had long forgotten the fear of its people. I always thought that was nuts, that anybody that held the notion of going up against F-14s with a Remington hunting rifle was not a healthy strategist. And yet, as I get older and I see the parade of puppets put before us in politics, I can see how cynicism erodes good sense and foments that feeling of, well, raging against the machine.

In those ashes, groups like the Tea Party are born. Anger and ignorance and cynicism.

Cynicism that I feel I’m giving into even with this post.

Who knows?

I sure don’t. I feel like I should sit down and apologize to my son. “Sorry, kiddo. Not sure what this place is going to be like for you when you’re an adult. Good luck, is all I’m saying.”

Maybe the Commodore Dauphin Obama will prove us wrong.

Or maybe he’ll just run us through the wringer of another “great compromise.”

August 2, 2011 / 132 Comments

25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters

As storyteller, you are god. And to be frank, you’re not a particularly nice god — at least, not if you want your story to resonate with readers. A good storyteller is a crass and callous deity who treats the characters under his watchful eye like a series of troubled butt-puppets. From this essential conflict — storyteller versus character — a story is born. (After all, that’s what a plot truly is: a character who strives to get above all the shit the storyteller dumps on his fool head.)

Put differently, as a storyteller it’s your job to be a dick.

It’s your job to fuck endlessly with the characters twisting beneath your thumb.

And here’s 25 ways for you to do just that.

1. Your Proxy: The Antagonist

Gods have avatars, mortal or semi-mortal beings that exist on earth to embody the deity’s agenda. Avatars — be it Krishna, Jesus, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man — are the quite literal hand of god within the material plane. And so it is that the antagonist is the avatar of the storyteller, at least in terms of fucking with the other characters. A well-written and fully-realized antagonist is your proxy in the storyworld who steps in and is the hand holding the garden trowel that continues to get shoved up the protagonist’s most indelicate orifice. The antagonist stands actively in the way of the protagonist’s deeds and desires.

2. The Mightiest Burden

The audience and the character must know the stakes on the table — “If you don’t win this poker game, your grandmother will lose her beloved pet orangutan, Orange Julius.” But as the storyteller, you can constantly adjust those stakes, turning up the heat, the fumes, the volume until the character’s carrying an Atlas-like burden on his shoulders. The world’s fate suddenly rests in his hands. Character fails at his task and he loses his wife, his family, and all the nuclear missiles in the world will suddenly launch. In unrelated news: Orange Julius is the best name for an orangutan ever. Go ahead. Prove me wrong. Show your work.

3. Never Tell Me The Odds

Impossible odds are a powerful way to fuck with a character. “It’s you versus that whole army of sentient spam-bots, dude. And they’ve got your girlfriend.” It certifies that the task at hand is an epic one, and is the dividing line between hero and zero. Confirming heroism means beating those odds. Confirming mortality means falling to them. Note that a character doesn’t always have to beat the odds. Failure is an option.

4. Torn Between Two Horses

Drop the character smack dab between two diametrically opposed choices. A character is torn between a love for her country and a love for her family. She’s torn between her obsessive devotion to science and her religious upbringing. She’s torn between saving the life of Orange Julius the genetically-modified super-orangutan or giving all the world’s children infinite ice cream. Okay, maybe not that last one. Point is, tie your character to two (or more!) difficult choices, and let those horses run like motherfuckers.

5. Life On The QT, The Down-Low, The No-No-Nuh-Uh

Give the character an untenable secret life: a forbidden romance, a taboo, a transgression. Confirm that the revelation of this secret life will destroy her. “As soon as they find out you’re really an android, Mary, I can no longer protect you.” The character must constantly protect her secret life, must constantly work against revelation. And you as storyteller will constantly threaten that, won’t you? Because you’re evil.

6. Deny Success With Speedbumps, Roadblocks, Snarling Tigers

This one? So easy. Whenever your character reaches for That Thing He Wants (a girl, a cookie, world peace, a leprechaun’s little hat), slap his face. Throw a tiger in his path. Chop off his hand. Thwart his every grope for the brass ring. That said, don’t let your story become torture porn. A character needs smaller iterative successes to match the longer, larger failures. “I didn’t get the leprechaun’s hat, but I got one of his little shoes. We can use it to track him.”

7. Go Down The “Do Not Want” Checklist

You frequently hear that a character is defined in part by what he wants, but you will find it useful to take the opposite tack, too. Take your character. Dangle that poor fucker by the ears. Give him a good look-over and pick, mmm, say, five things he does not want. Outcomes he fears. He doesn’t want his wife to leave him. He doesn’t want to die young. He doesn’t want to have his penis stolen by wizards. Now, your job, as Evil Mastermind Storyteller is to constantly put the character in danger of these outcomes coming true.

8. A Victory That Tastes Of Wormwood

An old classic: “We finally got the leprechaun’s hat! Ha ha, now we’ve the little basta — OH MY GOD THE HAT IS FILLED WITH BEES.” Die Hard has exquisite false victories. John McClane succeeds in calling the authorities and ultimately ends up causing a bigger shitstorm as a result.

9. Storyteller As Robber Fly

Everybody has something they love. Identify those things. Then take one away. Or more than one! “Sorry, dear character, in the fire you lost your house, your husband, and your mystical manrikigusari given to you by your immortal sensei.” You have a choice, here, of paths, a divergence of “lost now” and “lost forever.” Lost now intimates the story can continue, and in fact, the reclamation of lost things is a story unto itself. Lost forever moves the conflict inward, where a character must learn to deal with that loss.

10. Tickle Them With A Ticking Clock

If you ever wish to squeeze my heart and cause my blood pressure to build so that my brain is smothered by swollen arteries, give me a ticking clock time limit in a video game. Freaks me out. Do that to your character. Throw him, his goals, his story, between the turning gears of a ticking clock. “You have one week to save Orange Julius from the leprechaun cult. After that? He becomes one of them.”

11. Beat The Donkey Piss Out Of Them

Again we call upon John McClane, who ends up basically sticking a gun to his back in his own blood at the end of Die Hard. A simple way of dicking with your character is to hurt them. Again. And again.

12. Shot Through The Heart, And You’re To Blame

That being said, a broken jaw, shattered foot, or stapled labia has nothing on the betrayal by a loved one. Maybe it comes down to a simple, “I’m leaving you in this, the moment you need me most,” or maybe it’s, “For your own good, I’ve alerted the police. They’re on their way. I’m so sorry. Now hand me the orangutan.” However it shakes out, the treachery of a loved one is a deeply twisting knife.

13. Shattering Lives With Your Story Hammer

Think about all the pieces of the puzzle that add up to a picture of “you.” Now, do the same for your character. Imagine all those identifiers: lover, father, friend, sheriff, amateur chef, jazz fiend, leprechaun hunter. Now, break the puzzle apart. Throw away most of the pieces. Calamity and cataclysm rob the character of his fundamental identifiers. Force him to question who he even is anymore. What impels him forward? How does he rebuild? What is rebuilt?

14. Shatter Their Preconceived Notions

A deeper, more internal version of the last: take what the character thinks she knows — maybe about her family, her government, her childhood — and throw that paradigm out on its buttbone. The character’s comprehension of events and elements has been all wrong. And not in a good way. The character must respond. Must act. Can’t just go on living like everything’s the same.

15. Motherfucking Love Triangle

The love triangle. Never a more hackneyed, overwrought device — but, just the same, a device that works like a charm if invoked with skill and nuance. Becky loves Rodrigo and has since they were young. But Orange Julius vies for her attention and Rodrigo is off fighting the Spam-Bots in the Twitter War of 2015. And Orange Julius is one sexy orangutan. Who does she choose? Swoon! You needn’t stop at three participants. What about a love rhombus, aka the “lovetangle?” Point is, this is a more specific version of forcing the character into a difficult choice. Do it right and the audience will be right there with you, wearing their shirts, TEAM RODRIGO or TEAM SEXY ORANGUTAN. Gang wars in the streets.

16. The Scorpion Sting Of Deception

Lies form slippery ground, and by forcing the character to lie — or hear and believe another’s lies — you put that character on treacherous ground. We know their lies run the risk of exposure, and we know that a lie is rarely alone — they’re like cockroaches, you hear one, you know a whole wall full of them waits behind the paint. Further, if forced to believe another’s lies, the character begins to make decisions based on bad info.

17. Just A Simple Misunderstanding

Speaking of bad info, the “misunderstanding” has been the backbone of the American sitcom for decades, and it’s a trick you can use. “You said Blorp but I thought you said Glurp and now Zorg is coming to dinner! Oh noes! Hilarious awkward calamity ensues!” Note here the power of dramatic irony, which is when the audience knows the score but the character fails to possess such critical information. We know that the character is going to accidentally give her grandmother a set of small-to-large butt-plugs (for proper teaching of sphincter-stretching) when really she thinks it’s a collection of Sandra Bullock DVDs. Ha ha ha! Oh, a funny thing happened on the way to the dildo shop! Comedy gold.

18. When Two Goals Meet In The Rye With Swords Drawn

Put a character at cross-purposes. Two goals cannot easily be achieved together. The character is supposed to have a date night with his wife and save the world from the leprechaun terrorists? Egads! But how?

19. Dear Character, You Have Made A Terrible Decision

The audience feels sympathy and shame for character mistakes because our mind-wires are crossed. We see a character fuck up and some little part of our brain makes us feel like it’s us fucking up — we associate so closely with characters, we unknowingly get all up in their guts and self-identify. So, characters who make mistakes — or even better, willfully choose a bad path — can make your audience squirm in their seats.

20. Love At The End Of A Knife

Putting loved ones in danger is a powerful way to fuck with your characters. “Sorry, Bob — the Latvians have Betty, and if my intel is right, they’ve got a pit full of ravenous honey badgers to convince her to talk.” And of course, saving that loved one is never easy. Danger lurks. Hard choices await. And even after rescue, can Betty ever again trust that her life with Bob won’t be fraught with honey badger peril?

21. A Grim Game Of “I Never”

A character says, “I never want to become my mother,” but then lo and behold… begins exhibiting the traits of her mother. A cop says, “I’ll never let the job get to me,” and, drum roll please, the job starts getting to him. Everybody has negative identifiers — roles they never want to fill, but roles that have a terrible gravity, a grim inevitability to them. That’s a great way to torque a character’s emotions.

22. Poke The Character’s Weakness With A Pointy Stick

We’ve all got pits and pockmarks in our souls, and characters in fiction doubly so. Flaws and frailties ahoy, and it’s your job as storyteller to exploit those weaknesses. A character might have addictions, anger management problems, a physical debilitation, a soft spot for leprechauns — whatever it is, it’s your job to draw the poison to the surface and let it complicate the story. Because you’re a dick. A super-dick, even.

23. And At Night, The Ice Weasels Come

The environment can be a great antagonist. Sub-zero temperatures! Dangerous mountain pass! Wasp tornado! The setting can come alive to bring great misery to good characters.

24. Roosting Chickens With Razor Beaks

I don’t know why chickens “coming home to roost” is a metaphor for the past returning to haunt a character. I mean, chickens are about as non-threatening as they come. What about owls? Or falcons? Hell, forget birds. The saying should be, “Wait till those ninjas come home to roost.” But I digress. Point is, a character may be running from his past. Just as he thinks he’s escaped it, the past catches up with him — a crazy ex-girlfriend, an ex-partner looking for a last big score, a rogue Terminator. Though, I guess in the case of a Terminator, that’s more the future catching up with you. Whatever. Shut up. Don’t judge me.

25. Opportunistic Hate Crimes Against Beloved Characters

In the end what it comes down to is a willingness by you, the storyteller, to throw your characters under countless speeding buses. You may, like a parent with a child, want to be the character’s friend — you like the character, you want them to succeed, and that’s all well and good. But story is born of conflict and conflict is born of characters in trouble. That’s not to say you need to cause them ceaseless miseries — again, we’re not looking for torture porn. But you have to be willing to put the irons to their feet — a character’s success is only keenly felt and roundly celebrated when first he had to go through hell to get there.

Your Turn

How do you like to use and abuse your poor characters? When does such torment go too far?

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

July 31, 2011 / 48 Comments

The Terribleminds Disclaimer

Last week, you may have seen a little post of mine called, “Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rock Stars.” The notion behind the post was, hey, you know what will save publishing? If writers start acting like petulant rock stars, replete with destroyed motel rooms, phatty cribs, and kitten-eating.

The post went viral. The blog mentions Neil Gaiman and was in turn retweeted by Neil Gaiman, which was awesome in all senses of the word. I watched my page count spike like the heart rate of a guy who just chewed up a bag of meth crystals like they were Cheerios. I was waiting for the fabled #neilwebfail, wherein he turns his gaze toward your website and followers pour out of the woodwork and the website tries to lurch forward but instead collapses from a deep vein thrombosis and needs to take an hour-long dirt-nap just to cool off. Thankfully, this old gal held steady and stayed on course despite the battering of many Internet waves, and came out stronger for it (and, of course, I appreciate the retweet by Mister Gaiman and all others who shared the love). The post seemed to get a lot of good attention and lots of folks thought it was fun.

Because it was a joke.

Of course it was a joke.

When I said:

Rock stars get the ‘concept album.’ We should be able to have the ‘concept novel.’ “This novel’s not just a bunch of words, man. All the chapters form together into a single story. Yeah. It’s pretty revolutionary.”

…I was not actually suggesting the creation of a concept novel where the chapters form a single story. That’s what a novel already is. It’s not revolutionary. That’s the joke. Maybe not a funny joke. That’s between you and your own personal flavor of Jesus. But I would’ve thought that its status as tongue-in-cheekiness, as satire, as me-just-making-shit-up-to-attempt-to-be-funny was as clear as the pealing of a bell if the bell were ringing inside the bone cavern of your own skull.

But then I saw a whole lot of folks taking my post seriously. And arguing against it. As if I had attempted to make a serious point, as if I were really saying, “You know what we need, we don’t need good books, we need more Snooki.” *rad guitar lick*

On Metafilter, on Twitter, on Fark, I saw a surprising handful of comments that actually took my bullshit seriously. For a moment, I wondered: did humor die? Assassinated by a lone gunman? Was irony shot in the face on a hunting trip, left to bleed out in a ditch? Was I not obvious enough? Did I need to pepper my post with a dozen smiley faces? Should I have drawn a bunch of hastily-scrawled dicks across my post, the dicks jizzing little pee-pee bullets from the ink-smeared tips?

The thing is, this is not the first time this has happened. I write at least five blog posts a week, which even I consider to be marginally insane, and once in a while one of those posts really catches fire and draws attention. Inevitably, whenever this happens, I get a round of people — commenters, e-mailers, Redditors, what-have-you — that end up taking the post way too seriously.

So, it seems high-time for a disclaimer.

I am full of shit.

I’m usually just fucking around.

I just make stuff up.

I do it to be funny. I do it to yell at my 18-year-old self. I do it to yell at dilettante writers. I do it because I’m happy, sad, cranky, churlish, cantankerous, or drunk.

I often say things, then change my mind.

I contradict things I said a year ago, a month ago, ten minutes ago.

I curse like a motherfucker. My father cursed. My mother cursed. It is in me.

I often adopt the tone of a coked-up penmonkey drill sergeant.

Am I really like this? Ehhh, sometimes.

I’m certainly blowhardy and buffoonish, but here at the site I definitely crank the volume. Most people who meet me find that I’m ultimately more serious when traversing the physical plane of reality.

What I’m trying to say is —

Do not take me too seriously.

If you find value in the things I say, whether it’s as a laugh or as a snidbit of writing advice you feel like you can adopt and take to the bank, then I am aglow with pleasure, the cilia and spore-pods that comprise my beard twitching and writhing in blog-addled bliss. If you find no value in what I say, then I’m not mad at that. Don’t like that I curse? Don’t like my dubious writing advice? Can’t see past the self-deprecating tongue-in-cheek ‘tude? Feel like I’m insulting you? Then be on your merry way. And I don’t say that with anger. I don’t say that like, “Then get the fuck off my lawn, you damn dissenters! Take your disagreeable turd-cutters elsewhere!” I mean to suggest that it’s okay. Don’t hang around here if what I say bothers you. Life’s too short to let me bludgeon you over the head with my blog-hammer, my word-cudgel.

Do I sometimes try to be serious? Sure. Do I take writing seriously? You betcher sweet swirly nipples I do. I take writing and storytelling — art, craft, and business — quite seriously. And I do like serious discussion and I do enjoy real communication and conversation. But nine times out of ten, my posts shouldn’t be enough to get you riled up. I don’t want to get you riled up. It’s not worth your time or mine.

So, that’s it. That’s my disclaimer. I’m just over here squawking into the void. I’ve said this in the past but my goal here is first to enlighten. When that fails, it is to entertain. And when that fails, it’s to dazzle you with creative profanity so you at least feel like you got something out of the whole experience.

(“Cock-waffle.” “Vag-badger.” “Fucksluice.”)

(See? SEE?)

I want you to enjoy your time here and maybe learn something. I know I learn something every time I post about writing because it’s me sorting out the sticks and pebbles of my own brain.

If you’re not enjoying it, if you’re not learning it, then don’t sweat it. Relax. Take a deep breathe. Pulverize some Lorazepam in a mortar and pestle and stir it around your Tang then take a big ol’ hefty drink.

Because, really, I’m probably not as serious as you think I am.

End of disclaimer.

Have a nice day.

*insert smiley face and marker-drawn dick-and-balls*

July 29, 2011 / 85 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Flea Market

Last week’s challenge — “That’s Right, I Said ‘Unicorn’” — earned an incredible response, and you can check out those stories at the link.

So, I did a quick thing on Google+ yesterday where I had people list possible options for today’s challenge — and Brooke Johnson came up with the idea of a flea market, and the strange things you might find there. I remember once I found a photograph of the Devil. For real. I mean, okay, it was a goofy looking guy from the 1960s in a spandex Devil suit — waxed mustache, poochy pot belly, delicate calves — but hey, it counts.

And it was autographed. Seriously. It was signed, “The Devil.”

You don’t have to write about the Devil. Just write about something you might find at a flea market. Something strange. Wonderful. Or dangerous. As magical or mundane as you see fit, long as it’s got a story.

Any genre will do. This is suited toward speculative, but crime or horror or any of that will play well here.

You again have 1000 words.

Due here by Friday, August 5th at noon EST.

Once again, I’m going to give away free e-books.

Top five get a choice of one of my three DIY releases.

However, there’s a catch — I won’t be picking them.

You will.

Starting Friday the 5th at 12:01 EST, you will have 24 hours to choose your favorite of the bunch. All you have to do is comment with the name of the author and his/her story in the comments. The top five chosen favorites are the thumbs-up high-five ichiban winners. You can’t pick your own. Because that’s jerky.

Standard stuff applies. Post at your blog. Link back here. Point us to your blog in the comments on this page. Go forth and dig deep into the flea market, see what kinds of crazy shit your mind finds.

A couple quick follow-up notes, though: a suggestion to those who host stories at your blogs. It helps if those stories are a) readable and b) open to comments. Not critical, but you’ll get more mileage out of a blog whose font isn’t tiny, whose text isn’t bright white on dark black, whose comment section is open to those who want to offer kudos or insight.

Have at it, bargain shoppers.

July 28, 2011 / 9 Comments

Adam Christopher: The Terribleminds Interview, Part One

Adam Christopher is a guy I can’t help but like. He’s a great writer, a good friend, and a guy who doesn’t quit when it comes to writing. He’s a machine, which is apropos then that he’s got a couple of books coming out with Angry Robot Books (those fine cybernetic madmen who will also be publishing my first two original novels) next year. And we also share uber-agent Stacia Decker. Anyway — the fact I was able to get him to stop writing for ten minutes so I could strap him to a table and fire Query Particles into his brain is something of a small miracle. Check out his website here, and follow him on Twitter. Oh! And this is a HUGE-ASS MOFO of an interview. Thus, it’s only the first part. Second part airs next week.

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.

Ask, and thou shalt receive:

GREEN EGGS AND HANDGUNS

by Adam Christopher

“Murdersville.”

“Never been.”

“Oh, you’d like it. Full of retired cops playing detective. Trenchcoats and hats and murders, the works.”

West raised an eyebrow and raised his glass. The ice silently rocked against the side of the tumbler as he took a sip. He replaced it on the microscopic table between him and Frances and wondered why the table was so small anyway.

“Death and Taxes, Arizona.”

West snorted. “Don’t tell me, retired accountants?”

Frances laughed and studied his own tumbler. The vintage Scotch looked great, it was just a shame it had no flavour at all.

“Oh, better than that,” he said. “Retired forensic accountants.”

“You’ll have to explain to me how that’s better that regular accountants.”

West shifted a little in his chair and glanced around the bar. It looked good. Authentic, with the right level of light (low) and the right kind of barman (surly). To the left of their table was a roaring fire which was silent and put out no heat. Okay, so some things would need fixing. Above, resting on two silver studs in the wall, hung a pistol next to a signed photograph of Walter Koenig. West wondered if the picture, at least, was real.

“That picture real?”

Frances shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“The gun then. I sure hope you’re going to use that.”

Before Frances could reply, a barmaid appeared out of nowhere, balancing a large, dark tray on one shoulder. She dipped down to unload her cargo and smiled sweetly at West. West smiled back, and wondered whether the food would be food or whether it wouldn’t be, like the Scotch. He was hungry, and he told Frances this as the girl placed a silver-domed plate in front of each of them. Somehow the table seemed a little bigger than it had been.

“There’s a lot to be tested, West,” said Frances. He winked at the barmaid as she turned to leave but she didn’t seem to notice he was there at all.

West reached for the cover on his plate but Frances tutted and waved his hand away.

“Allow me.” He lifted the cover with a flourish and a grin. The fire continued to be a pleasant screensaver out of the corner of West’s eye.

Under West’s cover was a smaller tray. On the tray was a plate with two eggs, sunny side up. The sun, on this occasion, was key lime green. On the tray next to the plate was a pistol.

West glanced at the other tray, which looked the same with two eggs with green yolks, except Frances had a revolver. The metalwork was ornately engraved and the white ivory handle handsomely worn. West’s was a more or less featureless automatic, all squares and rectangles and all business and no pleasure.

“The fuck is this?” asked West. There was a knife and fork on the tray too. West used them to lift his eggs and examine the undersides, in case a typewritten explanation from the kitchen was provided below. There was nothing there, and when the egg flopped back down the yolk was still a surprising colour.

Frances seemed less interested in the eggs and was busy eying up his piece.

“This is called ‘Green Eggs and Handguns.’”

“I had a toilet seat this exact same colour when I was living in Florida.”

Frances had tucked a napkin down his shirt front and looked about ready to start surgery. He lifted the knife and fork and then paused, and then pointed at West’s plate with the knife.

“Based on a kid’s story from, oh, long time ago. Hundreds of years. Written by Doctor Who or somesuch. Guy wore a striped hat.”

“No shit.” West slumped back in his chair and wondered why his gun was a government-issued relic while Frances had got the chef’s special.

“Who was your trainer again?”

Frances sliced an egg. The key lime yolk ran to perfection.

“Decker. Four-dimensional story simulation and immersion. Her speciality.”

“Huh.” West was more impressed with that than his simulated meal. “You know who I had?”

Frances ate and shook his head and spoke with a mouthful of green egg.

“No. Tell me.”

“Wendig.”

Frances coughed. “Wendig? You heard what happened to him?”

“I might have,” said West after a sip of Scotch with no flavour, texture or temperature. The sooner he was out of here and back in his cabin, the better. The drink was better, for a start.

“Wendig got brain baked. Took his class hostage, was convinced his beard was conspiring with the Feds. Real tinfoil hat stuff.”

“Oh,” said West. “Maybe I heard something else. I heard they let him retire gracefully, shipped him out to the Motherland. Took his brain out and turned him into a robot or something.”

“Mmm.” Frances had one eye on his gun. “Enough to piss anyone off.”

West smiled. “Oh, he was angry all right.”

West sat back and left his eggs and gun untouched, and watched Frances alternately shovel green yolk into his mouth and stroke the creamy handle of his shooter. The fire in the fireplace looped back to the beginning, and West wondered if maybe the barman had bugged out. He’d been polishing the same glass a mighty long time.

Nothing happened for a while longer. Frances took a thousand years to eat his eggs and West watched the fire and thought about taking a holiday somewhere sunny.

West leaned forward and the bar door crashed open. A man strode in, one hand pushing the door back, the other waving yet another fine handgun around like he was watering the grass. The man caught sight of West and Frances and walked over, quickly. He said something that neither West nor Frances could hear, then raised the gun and fired. West counted four shots, but later on Frances would insist there had only been two. It was something they’d need to work out later.

Satisfaction attained, the man holstered his weapon and sauntered out, buttocks tight like a bad John Wayne impersonation.

West looked down at his shirt. There were two holes, black and crinkled at the edges, showing where he’d been hit but there was no blood. After a second the holes faded away. Beta-testing.

Frances laughed. The sound was wet with key lime egg yolk and flavourless Scotch. West looked up from his shirt and looked at Frances. He frowned.

“What was that?”

Frances waved at the door through which the assassin had entered.

“Golden rule of writing.”

“Never write your novel in Bleeding Cowboy?”

Frances waved again and his eyes went tight and thin with frustration. “Jackass,” he said. “Golden rule: when in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

West puffed his cheeks out. He wasn’t sure that Frances was such a good scenario programmer as he thought he was this morning. That was before he’d asked West to join him in the simulation suite and run his story with him.

West stretched, and watched the fire awhile, perhaps happy that he hadn’t tried the eggs. Frances ordered two more Scotches on the rocks. The drinks arrived and the pair drank, for effect if nothing else. The chairs were comfortable, and that was something.

“Truth and Consequences, New Mexico. Popular with retired cowboys.”

West shook his head and watched the ice move in his tumbler.

“Ridiculous. Now I know you’re making it up.”

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

That’s actually a pretty difficult question, because it’s not something I really think about. I like to write what I like to write, right? So that just means taking an idea that excites me and that I feel I have to tell the world about, and write a book about it. It could be SF, it could be horror, it could be noir, it could be a mix of all those and more besides.

So if the idea – the story – is king, and if I’m not particularly bound by genre, then I’d have to say the same rules apply to my writing style. My writing style is whatever suits the idea or story being told. It all has to come naturally – you can’t write a story that doesn’t excite you, and you can’t write in a style that isn’t yours. But that doesn’t mean it can’t change – I’ve written steampunk in baroque, Victorian first-person. I’ve written science fiction in a clean, natural style. I’ve written science fiction in a pulp, noirish style. If it works, it works. It should never be artificial – people (and yourself, as the writer) will spot it a mile off. Don’t try too hard. Don’t think, write.

Style is of course different to voice, and voice is one of those intangible X-factors of writing that only really becomes apparent with time. I think I’m still in the process of finding my voice, although there is definitely something there now having written about half a dozen full-length novels – voice is something you discover. Certainly other people say I have a strong voice, even if I find it hard to pin down myself.

What’s awesome about being a writer or storyteller?

You know how some people get excited when they go into a stationery store? All those blank notebooks and clean paper and new pens. It’s all there for the taking and there are, at that single point in time when you walk in the door, no limits. My wife is like that. Please, whatever you do, don’t ask her about stationery.

Writing is the same. There are no limits and no restrictions. When you have an idea, and that idea drives you to create something, there is nothing like it. You’re creating worlds, characters, events and situations which are brand new and which, if you’re doing it right, will start to take on a life of their own inside your head. This is the bit where non-writers start to think I’m barking, but it’s true. When your heroine makes a decision in the middle of a story that wasn’t in your outline, that wasn’t in your chapter breakdown, and that opens a whole new door in the story that you – as the writer – had no idea was there… well, that’s pure creation, and it is the reason I’m a writer.

Conversely, what sucks about it?

The flipside to this wonderful art of creation is the fact that writing is a job and publishing is a business, and this means there is stuff you have to do that isn’t your favourite thing in the whole world ever. However, that’s the same with every job in the world, and that doesn’t necessarily mean it sucks. The worst part for me is editing, but as with any writer it’s a kind of love-hate relationship. I want my story, book, whatever to be the best thing I am capable of producing. This takes a boatload of work, and often the editing is just as an intensive and time-consuming process as the writing. There are times, at 2am when you’ve read your novel so many times you have no clue whether it is good or bad or not – it’s just so many words – that you can feel like throwing it all in and applying for a job with your local parks department so you can at least get some damn sunlight.

But all writers feel like this. Even the big ones. It’s all part of it, and if you can’t accept that then perhaps you really are in the wrong job.

I guess that can be distilled down to one thing that sucks: time. Time away from friends and family, time mashing a keyboard at weekends, on holidays, at Christmas.

But with every investment, there should be a reward. That’s the way the world works, not just writing.

Okay. You say that every investment should yield a reward. That makes me want to ask: how do you reward yourself after finishing a big writing project? Do you do anything for yourself?

Every time I hit some kind of milestone – not just in terms of writing, but also the business side of publishing, like signing a contract or reaching some particular time point on a project – my wife and I go out for dinner. Hey, we like to eat… and we happen to live just a few minutes from a really awesome steakhouse! Both of us are pretty busy people so having a nice night out together is a pretty sweet reward. That seems to be a more meaningful reward than buying something… but I reserve the right to change my mind when the money gets better! And I’ve always fancied a 1978 Lincoln Continental Town Car…

Look for the next part of the interview next Thursday!

July 27, 2011 / 133 Comments

Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rock Stars

Oscar Wilde. Ernest Hemingway. Hunter S. Thompson.

Each, a rock star in his own right. Oscar Wilde was put on trial for sodomy and indecency. Hemingway killed bears, fought in wars, crashed planes, had an FBI file on him. Hunter S. Thompson consumed every drug known to man, was a certified gun nut, and started FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS as a piece for fucking Sports Illustrated. Oh! And had his ashes shot out of a cannon made to look like a fist.

Who do we have like that these days? Neil Gaiman? He’s close, but let’s be honest — he’s just too nice. Too normal. A positively lovely human being by all reports. You never hear, “Famous author Neil Gaiman caught with seven stewardesses in a Wichita bus depot.” He doesn’t throw Bibles through stained glass windows or get into drunken beefs with other speculative fiction writers. You won’t see him roving about in public with exotic swords bought at a flea market looking to cut any dude who looks at him sideways.

Who else? J.K. Rowling? C’mon, she’s like someone’s business-savvy mom.

Stephenie Meyer? Ennnh. Can “Mormon” and “Rock Star” go together? It’s like peanut butter and drywall.

We don’t really have anyone. And see, while sometimes I lament that this writing career gets — in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield — no respect, maybe what we need is to go so far down respect’s throat we come out the other side, surfing an effluent tide of flaming typewriters, LSD habits, and public badassery. We need literary rock star heroes to swoop in and save publishing.

And here’s how we get ’em.

We Need Some Literary Beefs Up In This Hizzy

Epic rock star personalities make way for epic rock star beefs. David Lee Roth versus Van Halen. Jay-Z versus Nas. Foo Fighters versus the entire TV show “Glee.”

The authorial world demands this. And we’re not talking about some little Twitter snit, some online battle oozing across a handful of Livejournal comments. It’s not enough for Stephen King to talk to Entertainment Weekly and be all like, “Well, Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling, pfft.” I’m talking, Terry Pratchett needs to go and take a shit in Dan Brown’s mailbox. James Patterson speaks publicly about Dean Koontz’s “tiny dick.” George R. R. Martin writes a 10-book epic fantasy cycle where the central antagonist is a gassy pegasus named after HUNGER GAMES author Suzanne Collins.

Rappers get rap battles. Authors need author battles. A bunch of books published lightning fast, each a fictional response to some other author’s last confrontation. You know that would boost sales. “Oh, did you see the latest pair of roman d’accusation? Jim Butcher versus Jonathan Franzen? Holy gods, somebody’s going to get hurt. Just wait till Chabon weighs in.”

Erratic Author Appearances

You put rock stars in front of people, fucked up shit starts to happen. They show up late. They break guitars. They set stuff on fire. They huff paint and throw cymbals and bite the heads off winged creatures.

Authors — c’mon. You can do this at your author appearances. Just go nuts! Fucking freak out. Kick over a book display. Throw your boot at that old lady who shows up at all the author signings and asks inane questions. For God’s sake — tell them to put down the book, it’s time to autograph some tee-tas. After you’re done inking a bunch of boobies — or dicks, who am I to judge? — take the rest of your books near to hand, douse them in lighter fluid, scream “Fuck your mother, [insert name of publishing company here]!” and then set fire to those bad-boys just before passing out on the floor in your own vomit.

Intensely Weird Drug Habits

No, no, no, I’m not saying you need to get hooked on the current spate of hardcore narcotics. Forget heroin, coke, meth, any of that. We’re writers. We need to get creative.

I want to see Neil Gaiman espousing the creative benefits of injecting himself with adrenalin harvested from a live tiger. I want to see Motherfucking Franzen smoke Oprah’s hair through a gas mask bong. Mitch Albom’s next book will be THE 7000 MACHINE ELVES YOU MEET IN PARAMUS NEW JERSEY after he goes on a DMT bender and drives his El Camino through an abandoned Borders Books and Music.

Some authors will become addicted to licking the hallucinogenic ink off their own books. Others will pulverize Kindles and cook them down into an electronic slurry and plop beads of the “Kindlejuice” onto their eyeballs with little glass droppers.

Authors need their own class of designer drugs to get the attention we so mightily deserve.

Need To Start Making Some Rock Star Demands

Oh, the tales of rock star “riders,” wherein they make demands to meet insane backstage needs. J. Lo wants red M&Ms, Iggy Pop wants broccoli, Lady Gaga demands a live goat for her paddock. You know the story.

It’s time for authors to get in on this. “I will only sign at your bookstore if I am afforded the oral comforts of four temple whores. I also demand that my signing table be perpetually orbited by two dwarves dressed as characters from my book. No one may touch my hands. I will give them their books via a catapult to the face. Finally, if I am expected to speak and share anecdotes, then I must be given one 16 oz. glass of luke warm bacon grease with which to lubricate my throat. And I must have a kitty in my lap. Not my kitty. Your kitty. And I get to eat that kitty when I’m done.”

“Sure thing, Miss Rowling.”

Insane Hobbies On Display

Writers are so polite. Their hobbies tend to match. “Oh, I collect first editions of classic American novels!” “I crochet!” “I have a sugar glider named Lord Byron!”

We’re done with that. It’s time to crank up the volume knob, break it off, and stab the shard of plastic into someone’s neck. Authors need bigger, badder, waaaaay more fucked-up hobbies.

Ostrich racing! The gunsmithy of automatic weapons! Espresso enemas! Book burning! The husbandry of predatory cats! Competitions to see who can write the longest novel! Collecting dead supermodels!

“Dude. Did you hear? Christopher Moore has this weird fight club he set up on an oil rig off-shore. He makes other writers fight coked-up mandrills with latex walrus dongs. This shit’s on Youtube.”

Jack Up Our Books With Rockstar Juice

Books are just like, pff, pshhh, meh. Boh-ring. Need to jack it up.

What about books inked in the author’s blood? Or books that, when read backwards, contain Satanic messages urging readers toward mass suicide? Or books that are empty of words until you pee on the pages?

Rock stars get the ‘concept album.’ We should be able to have the ‘concept novel.’ “This novel’s not just a bunch of words, man. All the chapters form together into a single story. Yeah. It’s pretty revolutionary.”

Groupies + Entourage = Awesome

Authors need people around them. To insulate them from the harsh rigors of the world, to help fan the flames of the fickle Muse and to help keep sweaty jam-handed fans at a halberd’s length.

We need:

a) groupies

and

b) a motherfucking entourage.

First, groupies? If I go to a bookstore, I want to head back into the break room for an after-party where a whole passel of fans await to serve my every whim. “Carry my iPad,” I’ll say to one. To another I’ll say, “You will eat olives from between my toes — but do not chew, for you will then French kiss the person next to you and spit the olives into her mouth. Then someone has to poop in a cup. Because I demand it!”

Rock star bacchanalia, baby.

And an entourage, well, come on. Let us get shut of the fallacy now that all readers are awesome. Sure, except those guys who smell like ass-sweat and who want to make unruly demands of our writing schedules. I’m just saying, when George R. R. Martin walks into a room, he should be the center of a swirling vortex of George R. R. Martin lookalikes, all of whom wear t-shirts that say, “GEORGE IS NOT YOUR BITCH.”

Pimp-Ass Writer Cribs

“Step up into my biblio-crib, son. Over here, I got a bunch of human babies crawling around a terrarium. In that room is where I keep all my beta readers — yeah, that’s them, feeding each other figs and playin’ Naked Twister and shit. Here’s all my books, gold-dipped and encrusted with amethysts. Sure that makes them unreadable. So fucking what? The whole second floor’s a library, and the library’s where I keep my jacuzzi, my jet-boat, my chainsaw collection, and the head of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you stick a key in his ear and turn that shit, ol’ F. Scott’s mouth will start to move and he’ll recite all the words to ‘Babylon Revisited.'”

One Word: Hookers

Some writers need to get caught with either some high-dollar prostitutes — like, part of a super-elite escort chain that services Popes and astronauts — or some deeply grungy amputee meth-hookers. You can be sure that if Stephen King got caught in a Canadian bathhouse with like, a bunch of Quebecois Juggalo whores, man, his book sales would double overnight. You know it to be true.

Two More Words: Public Urination

Defecation’s an order too far, but urination? Man, there’s just something bad-ass and iconoclastic about pissing in public, something that flips a big ol’ rigid middle finger to the man. For an easy way into the bad-ass rock star lifestyle, writers need to start urinating in public. The Starbucks counter inside Barnes & Noble? Pee on it. Stack of New York Times’ newspapers containing a bad review of your novel? Pee on it. Comic-Con fans waiting in line to see Nathan Fillion just stand there looking handsome? Pee on them, then pee on Nathan Fillion, then as nerds attack with foam swords, just whirl around in the circle, peeing in a golden circumference. That’s a surefire way to get in the newspapers as a rock star writer-type.

YOU ARE A GOLDEN PENMONKEY GOD.

*psssssssssss*

Now Whut?

Your turn. What rock star habits will you adopt, writer-types? Tell us, or I’ll pee on you.

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