Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

Archives (page 432 of 464)

August 9, 2011 / 81 Comments

25 Ways To Kick Exposition’s Ass

Fact: when executed poorly, exposition is a boat anchor tied to the story’s balls. It drags everything down. The plot cannot move. The plot grows fat and dies. Crows eat its eyes. Possums breed in dead bowels.

Fact: exposition remains necessary to convey information in storytelling.

Fact: exposition must be handled by a deft touch for it not to bog down your narrative ball-sack.

Fact: pterodactyls are really quite cool.

Okay, that last one maybe isn’t relevant, but it remains fact just the same. All I’m trying to say is, you want to write a story, you’re going to have to deal with exposition in some form, and this list is about that. I present to you, 25 ways to twist exposition to your will, turning it into a dancing gimp that will serve you…

…and serve the audience.

1. The Meaning Of Show, Don’t Tell

Like most easily-digestible protein-nuggets of writing advice, Show-Don’t-Tell is one that ends up confusing. After all, what we do is called storytelling, and then in the next breath we’re chided for telling and not showing. And yet, the advice remains true just the same. Exposition is often the biggest customer in terms of telling-above-showing, and it reeks of amateur hour karaoke. Here’s an example: consider the difference of you telling me “John is an assassin,” and you showing me the act of John stalking and killing a dude on the job. The former is dull: a narrative name-tag, a Facebook profile. The latter is engaging: action and example. This is the key to exposition always, always, always: stop telling, start showing.

2. Get In Late, Get Out Early

Leave yourself no room for exposition. Start the story as late into the plot as you can; extract yourself at first opportunity. You can’t eat ice cream that ain’t in the freezer. And by “ice cream” I mean “dead stripper.”

3. Imagine The Audience Is Sitting There, Staring At You

Everybody tells stories, and everybody’s had that moment where they start to lose the audience sitting in front of them. “C’mon,” they’ll say, making some kind of impatient gesture because, uhh, hello, the season finale of The Bachelor is on? You greedy asshole? God forbid you don’t get your reality TV fix, you mongrels. … uhh, sorry. Point is, when that happens you gotta ramp it up. You gotta get to the point. Imagine when writing your story — script, novel, short fiction, whatever — that the audience is sitting there, making that gesture. Even better: imagine them slapping billy clubs against their open palms. In other words: cut the shit and hurry it up. A guy’s got things to do. Like bury that “ice cream” in the Mojave desert.

4. Binge And Purge

Fuck it. Write a zero draft with as much exposition as you can fit in your fool mouth. Vomit forth great globs of word sauce ’til it hardens. On subsequent drafts, chop and whittle any exposition to a toothpick point.

5. Lock Up The Backstory In Its Own Plexiglass Enclosure

Open up a separate document from script or manuscript. Lock it away in its own cage. When parts need to come out and play, let them. Gas the rest with a nerve agent. Cover it with dirt.

6. Learn To Spot Expository Fol-de-rol

You can’t cure exposition unless you know how to spot it. Learn what it is. Learn to mark its footprints, its scat-tracks. Two characters talking about shit they should already know? One character descending into a bizarre, out-of-place soliloquy? Giant cinder block paragraphs that fall from the sky and crush the audience beneath them? Identify exposition where it lives, fucks, and eats. Then prepare the orbital laser.

7. Fold Exposition Into Action, Like Ingredients Into Delicate Batter

Dramatic action is — a-duh — action infused with drama, like vodka infused with elderberries and/or the screams of my enemies. As action unfolds, it reveals data you want the audience to have. Instead of putting forth a scene where characters plan a heist, get right to the heist — the heist reveals the plan. That’s not to say you can’t make a heist-planning scene evocative and with its own dramatic action and tension, but only serves to show that action needn’t be — and perhaps shouldn’t be — separate from exposition.

8. I Would Listen To That Guy Read The Phone Book

Listen, if you have to institute exposition to convey critical information, then you at least should do it with style, putting it in a voice that is not only readable, but compelling. I would read a fucking diner menu were it written by a writer with a great voice (say, Joe Lansdale) — so, if you’re going to take time out to foist information upon a reader’s head, then at least make it snappy.

9. Talk It Out, You Nattering Chatterkitties

Chatterkitty almost sounds like an Indian curry dish, doesn’t it? “I’ll take two samosas, and one vegetable chatterkitty. Medium spice, please.” Anyway, point is, characters can reveal backstory through dialogue — but it has to be done right. Like I said, two characters sharing data they should already know is a clear sign, as are long-winded monologues. An info-dump is still a steaming pile whether it comes from your ass or the mouth of a character. Characters shouldn’t ever give up great heaps of information — they should resist it. Revelation should be done with tension; a villain doesn’t want to give up his plan but must under torture.

10. The World Reveals Its Own Backstory

A war-torn city. A shattered hill-top. A modern megalopolis. A garden protected by angels. The details of setting show the wounds and scars of history. Environment reveals exposition.

11. Artifacts As Artifice

Further, the world offers up artifacts — newspapers, blogs, e-mails, epitaphs, relics, holo-discs, etc. — that convey expository detail. Characters can find these and learn them at the same time as the audience.

12. The Audience Is On A “Need-To-Know” Basis

Whenever you encounter the urge to info-dump, pause. Take a deep breath. Then ask: what does the audience need to know? Like, what information here is so bloody critical that without it the story loses its way, like an old person in a shopping mall? Separate “need” from “want” — I don’t care what details you want the audience to have. Determine only what is required to move forward. Everything else gets the knife.

13. Out With The Info-Dump, In With The Info-Bullet

Limit exposition to between one and three sentences per page. And lean sentences, too — don’t think you can get away with an overturned bucket of commas and dependent clauses poured over your word count. I can smell your chicanery the way a shark smells baby-farts. (Isn’t that what they smell? I might be getting that wrong. Wait, it’s blood? Blood? Are you sure? I think it’s baby-farts. I’ve heard it both ways.)

14. Tantric Storytelling (Or, “Nnnggh, Think About Baseball”)

Sting taught us all about Tantric sex, wherein you contain your orgasm in some kind of lust-caked mental hell-prison until you release it eight hours later, amplifying your delight. I am afraid of doing this as I fear it will send a hardened shiv of semen into my cerebral cortex. Regardless, it’s a good lesson for using exposition in storytelling: resist it as long as you can. You think, “Ohh, the audience really needs details right here,” but stave off that inclination. Do not pop your narrative cookies. Contain the exposition and reveal it late in the game until it can be restrained no longer.

15. Writus Interruptus, (Or, “Narrative Blue-Balls”)

Another way to sex up your man(uscript): use exposition to break tension. You’re amping up the suspense, you’re ratcheting action, it’s all escalation escalation escalation, and then — wham. You pull back from the action, and give a pause with a scene of exposition. Not so much where it overwhelms and frustrates, but enough where it creates that sense of narrative blue balls where you sharpen the audience’s need.

16. Exposition As The Answer To A Question

Exposition can serve as explanation. It’s all in the arrangement. If you present a question in the reader’s mind — “How exactly did Doctor Super-Claw lose his eye? And why does Satrap Fuck-Fang the Splendid want to kill him? Shit, there’s gotta be a good story there.” Indeed. Make them want the exposition so that, when you give it, it answers questions they already possess.

17. The Character As Exposition-Hungry Detail-Junkie

If the character needs the exposition for her arc and the plot to move forward, then the audience needs it — and thereby, it becomes more rewarding. Just assume the character is like the Space Sphere from Portal 2. The character needs the tricksy backstory, precious. We needs it. It’s also good if the character risks something to get at these details, thus revealing how critical it is and how it has earned a place in the narrative. “I had to fight my way through an infinity of ninjas to get you this information, sir.”

18. Exposition As Story Within A Story

Frame exposition not merely as details, not purely as data, but as a story. A micro-story within the larger narrative that abides by all those same rules: beginning, middle, end, tension, conflict, character.

19. The Flashback Flashbang

Exposition doesn’t need to be dry and dull as a saltine cracker in a dead lizard’s vagina — turn backstory into a scene by invoking the Ancient Pagan Law of Flashback. Fuck having the character recite details as if off a menu. Force her to relive it in flashback form. Don’t talk about the moment when she was thrown out of an air-lock by her mad Space King father. Time travel to that moment. Let us all see it as it happens.

20. Time-Travel Back In Time, And Kill The Expository Hitler

Another form of time travel — go back into your own story and rip out the need for exposition. Originally it’s all like, “Way back in the year of Fourteen-Splangly-Doo, in the Year of Dog’s Butler, the Dolphin Council of Krang suffered a cataclysmic failure to rule when they couldn’t agree on blippity-bloppity-snood…” Hell with that. Gut that history. If you need it, bring it to the foreground. Have it be happening right now. That way, it’s active, it’s present, and characters are discovering it at roughly the same rate as the audience.

21. Prove Your Motherfucking Thesis

Exposition is easier to swallow when it has a declarative purpose: in effect, a thesis sentence. Opening a page of text or some dialogue with, “The city hasn’t been the same since the unicorns took over,” gives you the opportunity to describe what that means. The audience is prepared to receive that information and, thus, the exposition fulfills the promise of its premise. Bonus points: violent conquistador unicorns.

22. Crack Open The Character’s Head

Like I’ve said before, the character is the vehicle for the story. They’re our way through; we ride them as monkeys on their backs. (Or, if you’ve read ZOO CITY, like Sloth on the back of Zinzi December.) What the character knows, we can know, too — and so you as the narrator are free to crack open the character’s skull like a coconut, allowing the audience access to the fragrant water within. The character’s perspective on information is still expository, but it’s tinted and warped through the lens of their experience, which means the exposition does double-duty. It both grants us details we need and also offers us a longer look at the character.

23. Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This

A nice, trippy, totally fucked-up way of revealing backstory is through usage of dreams and visions. I did this in BLACKBIRDS and it was a fun way for me to convey creepy exposition without blurting it out like a kid high on the sugar from 14 bowls of Fruity Pebbles. Fun to write and, ideally, fun to read.

24. Exposition As Multi-Tool

Again, if you have to have to have to use exposition, make sure it sings for its supper and does more than just convey raw data. Let it communicate character, convey theme, move the plot forward (and backward), engage description, utilize compelling language, establish mood, and so on. The more work it does, the more it earns its place in your story.

25. Do Away With It Entirely

Go back through your work and find all the backstory, highlight all the info-dumps, and kill ’em. Just fucking murder it. Let stuff just hang out without any explanation — you’d be surprised how much of it will fly. Look to film in particular to see how many details are never explained and, further, how little that matters. That scene in DIE HARD where the two Aryan brothers are racing against each other to cut through… I dunno, “phone pipes?” I don’t know what they fuck they’re even doing there. Or why it’s a race. When you saw the first STAR WARS, did the film stop and explain what the hell the Clone Wars were? No! (And if only it had stayed that way.) Most of the things you think need to be explained don’t. They just don’t. So, fuck exposition right in its ear. If you go back through a subsequent draft and say, “Okay, I need a little something-something here,” fine, consult the rest of this list and see how you can make it your bitch.

Because if exposition is on the menu, then by god, you better know how to serve it right and make it tasty.

* * *

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

August 8, 2011 / 20 Comments

Transmissions From Baby-Town: “Conversations With The Dictator”

I say to the baby, “Ooooh.”

He says, “Ooooaaaaaaaooooo.”

I say to him, “Goo.”

He says “a-goo” right back. Then adds another “aaaaaooooaoooo” for good measure.

“Tell me what you want, buddy,” I’ll ask.

“Ook,” he responds.

“Ook?”

“Oak.”

“Like, an oak tree? You want an… oak tree? An acorn?”

“A-goo-awooooo-ohhhhh.”

I am impressed. “Wow, dude, that’s like, a whole sentence.”

Then he makes a pterodactyl-like shriek. Or one of his coyote yips.

And he gets this big smile.

And then no matter what I say next, he starts to cry.

* * *

I’m pretty sure that whoever made babies — like, not this baby, because I know who made this baby, but rather, all babies, the “baby prototype” — designed them with systems that really don’t function right at the outset. It’d be like buying a car whose tires are half-flat and whose radio only gets staticky transmissions, but the more you drive it, the more functional the vehicle becomes.

Because this baby just doesn’t work right. The little sphincter flap between his stomach and throat — we’ll just call it his “abdominal butthole” — has about as much muscular tension as a piece of lukewarm tuna sashimi, and that’s why he spits up. His arms flail. His legs kick.

And the wires are crossed in his brain. Whatever portion of his “baby cortex” is given over to emotion is as yet just a tangle of wires that nobody’s sorted out, yet. So, when he gets close to happiness, I think it also means he’s just next door to sadness, too. One wrong move and the frequency switches. From big gummy, drooly smile to shrieking baby hell. From glee to grief in a moment’s turn.

* * *

Then again, maybe he’s just frustrated.

Maybe he’s trying to tell us something and here we think we’re “communicating” but really, we’re just parroting his garbled baby babble back at him. Meanwhile, he has intent and desire, and we just have goofy noises to which we hope he responds. He’s trying to say, “Dad, I would like very much for you to open your mouth so that I may reach in and grab hold of your lower lip. Then I would like some time in the swing where you play the shrieking tinny jungle noises that, conveniently, sounds like the rush of blood in the womb. Finally, when my time there is complete, I demand the boob. The boob, sir. The boob.”

And meanwhile we’re just like GABBA GOOBA GOO WOO OHH DADA MAMA.

I mean, shit, I’d get sad, too.

* * *

Sometimes he doesn’t really cry.

He yells.

No pouty lip. No squinty-I-would-weep-if-I-had-functioning-tear-ducts eyes. No simpering whimper.

Only yelling.

This is especially true when we sometimes stand him up. Because, trust me, he likes to stand now. And he’s just past two months. He holds his neck out real long and tall and his eyes bug out and his mouth opens and Sweet Crispy Christ On A Crumbling Crouton he just starts yelling. “Ahhh! AHHHHHH. Ahhhhahahhhhh.” Sometimes it looks like he’s enjoying it. Standing there. Broadcasting his insane infant rage to the world.

* * *

He said “Da” the other day.

Not Daddy, not Dada, but rather, Da.

Clear as the pealing of a bell.

I know it was just an accident of the lips, a clumsy positioning of his gooey slug tongue against the roof of his mouth as he was about to say “Oooh” or “A-goo” or “AHHHHH,” or maybe he was just trying to say “yes” in Russian, as in, “Yes, my KGB handler, I will assassinate these two pink apes — but I will not kill their bodies, no, instead I will kill their souls,” but there it was.

“Da.”

To say it melted my heart like a spoonful of duck fat on a hot skillet is underselling it.

The heart is still warm, runny, goopy over that.

“Da.”

* * *

He talks to the ceiling fan. He actually finds the ceiling fan in all rooms quite fascinating. Moreso if it’s moving, but even if not, fuck it, he’s still up for the chat. He sleeps in the bed with us (a super-big “no-no” or a giant honking “oh it’s a must” depending on who you listen to), and sometimes at night we will wake up from a rare moment of sleep to find him laying on his back, eyes wide, fists pumping, legs kicking.

And talking to the ceiling fan like it’s his best buddy in the whole wide world.

If only I knew what they were talking about.

* * *

“Da.”

Sorry, I had to say it again.

“Da.”

I mean, it’s stuff like that which prevents me from gently depositing him in an unlocked car at Target with a couple of $20’s tucked in his diaper and a note that says, “PRO-TIP: He likes to talk to ceiling fans.”

* * *

The other day he was in his swing, dead asleep in a rare moment of somnolence, when suddenly he started making these weird yips and peeps — then his eyes opened halfway and I could see them rolling back in his head. And I think, holy shit, he’s choking, and I tell the wife because she’s closer and she does this fantastic “slide into homebase” move where she gets carpet-burn on her knees and she rescues the baby from…

Well, from a dream, best as we can tell. No choking. I mean, what the fuck would he be choking on? A suddenly solidified glob of oxygen? Did one of my car keys accidentally fly down his throat?

No, we just interrupted his dream.

He looked at us with his wide-eyed “What The Fuck?” face.

We’re starting to see that face a lot.

* * *

I gotta ask, though, what the hell is he dreaming about? He’s got all of two months under his belt. Is he dreaming of full diapers flying at his head? Of a boob with endless milk floating before him?

* * *

He talks to the TV, too. I am both disturbed and pleased by how easily the TV placates him. No, we don’t intend that to be a habit, nor do we plan on even letting him watch much television, but at this stage, I would do anything to extricate him from his own worst moods. If it took me placing him in the lap of a starving panda bear covered in bamboo, I just might do it.

Regardless, the other night Craig Ferguson was on the tube — not the talk show, but rather, one of his comedy specials on some channel I didn’t know we had called “Epix” — and B-Dub clearly believed he was holding some comedy palaver, some Scottish tete-a-tete, with Mister Ferguson. The child was having a lovely time, so I dared not interrupt.

He will also talk to Jon Stewart when given the chance.

I guess he likes comedians.

Which means he is truly my son.

* * *

The baby tries to laugh. Tries, but mostly fails. We’ve yet to earn a proper laugh. Which is perhaps his way of telling us we’ve yet to do anything properly funny. Someone — I believe it must have been Twitter’s own “TheRussian” — said that baby smiles and baby laughs are like crack. You’ll do anything for the next fix.

This is truer than I care to admit.

* * *

He also talks with the boob in his mouth. He stares at his mother while breasfeeding and offers an “mmmph” or an “ooopppph.” It’s not a microphone, kid. I mean, c’mon.

Shit, it’s cute, though.

* * *

We all packed up our shit and went to Target the other day. The child did pretty well — really, taking him anywhere is like a game of Russian Roulette as you never know when the cranky bullet is in the baby’s chamber — but toward the end he started getting “fussy.”

(That’s always the word, isn’t it? “Oh, he’s fussy.” No, he’s cranky. Or pissy. Or acting like King Dickhead. Fussy is someone who can’t decide on what thread to use to sew a button onto a ladies’ frock coat. What my baby does is nothing short of doom-bringing, spit-flinging apoplexy.)

At the time of said, ahem, fussiness, we had just pulled into one of Target’s baby-gear aisles.

The toy aisle, specifically.

And so we made a desperate attempt — like many failed attempts before — to appease him with a toy plucked off the shelf.

It worked.

First, an elephant who sang songs (and cricket chirps for some odd reason) when a cord is pulled.

Second, a ball composed of plastic webbing with another smaller ball inside.

Further, at home we discovered that B-Dub now has a new best friend to replace the ceiling fan: a glowworm. Er, not a real glowworm, but rather, one of those plastic-headed oddballs whose face lights up and who sings songs when you depress his shattered breastbone. B-Dub loves this creature. He is rapt. He grabs at it. He holds its hand. He talks to it.

The boy is beginning to interact with the world.

* * *

And that’s really what this is about. He’s interacting. His brain is changing. His mind is emerging.

He’s growing up, one little thing at a time. Whether it’s how he now interacts with his own feet or how he tries to chew his tongue like it’s a piece of gum, he’s starting to become more than he was, more than just the, well, weird little glowworm he’d been for these last two months. Smiling and laughing and babbling and yelling. Not just at nothing, but at the world.

Talking to us. Yammering at the ceiling fan. Reaching for the glowworm.

It’s a weird and wonderful place. I know, I know. They grow up so fast. I should hold tight to the days lest they slip away. But the old days of the early baby are limited in their excitement — he’s not really a person at that point but rather, an adorable grub of some kind with limited understanding. Can’t talk. Can’t grab. Can’t even really see you. But now he sees. Now he speaks. Now he interacts.

And he then becomes interactive. Like a game or a toy, like the elephant whose tail is pulled so that he plays music. He’s more than that, of course, I only mean that suddenly we have both stimulus and response.

You can start to see tiny synaptic flashes of the person he’s going to become.

I only hope that by the time he’s 20 he stops that “standing up and yelling at people with bugged-out-eyes” thing. Because that’s probably going to get him kicked out public places.

Of course, again that would mean he’s truly my son.

August 5, 2011 / 46 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: That Poor, Poor Protagonist

Okay, last week’s challenge — “The Flea Market” — requires you crazy kids to get over there and vote for your favorite starting today, and ending tomorrow (Saturday, we’ll say noon EST). Easy enough to pick your favorite: in the comments, just write the author’s name and the story name. Participation in the challenge is not required for voting — voting is open to anybody.

As you may have seen this week, I offered up 25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters.

And now, I want you to do exactly that.

Your task is to write a flash fiction piece wherein the protagonist of that piece is subject to some manner or method of torment, trial, and torture. It’s your job to put that character through the wringer, whether that be physical, emotional, spiritual, moral, or some combination of the bunch. I want you to fuck with and fuck up that protagonist. I want to care deeply about that character and feel every sting and barb.

Limit: 1000 words.

So, get in there, and do your worst.

You’ve got one week. Challenge ends Friday, August 12th, at noon EST.

This time, I’ll pick one random winner from the entrants. That entrant will get all three of my e-books in PDF format. Maybe that excites you. Maybe it elicits throw-up noises. Either way: them’s the deals.

You know the drill. Post the fiction at your blog. Link back here. Point us to your story in the comments.

Have fun by making sure your protagonist does not.

Go forth and torment.

August 4, 2011 / 15 Comments

Adam Christopher: The Terribleminds Interview, Part Two

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. This is the second part of that interview.

You’re a bit unique in that you were discovered — “discovered?” — as a writer on Twitter. Can you talk a little about being the first writer discovered on Twitter? How’d it happen?

Well, that’s true, I was “discovered” on Twitter, but not because I was deliberately using Twitter to find a publisher or to market a manuscript, and I certainly wasn’t tweeting Empire State line-by-line (although there are plenty of Twitter novel projects which do just that).

I joined Twitter in early 2009 because it seemed like a neat way to meet people with similar interests. I enjoy reading and writing and books, and I enjoy talking about those subjects with other readers, writers and fans. Twitter is great when you have a distinct interest like that, because there are very strong communities that grow up around them.

So when Angry Robot was launched, they started with a very strong online presence and I started following what they were doing pretty closely. Lee Harris, their editor, and I sort of bumped into each other on Twitter not just because of Angry Robot, but because we share similar interests in books, film, TV, and comics. Having got to know him online, we then met in person at a couple of events and got on well. Meanwhile, almost incidentally, Angry Robot became one of my favourite publishers because they produced some really good books – it became clear to me pretty early on that they were a very rare example of a publisher from which you could just buy anything on spec, regardless, because you could trust their judgment. I’m pleased to see they’ve now introduced the ebook subscription model, which does just that.

Anyway, all the while I was writing first Seven Wonders (my second full-length novel), and then Empire State, and was blogging my progress, as well as writing a few short stories here and there which got into places like Hub. Of course I tweeted about things like that, so everyone – Angry Robot included – knew what I was doing.

Then in mid-2010 I was going to be in Nottingham, where Angry Robot are based, and I dropped Lee and Marc a line to see if they wanted to grab lunch. We went to a pub, and over a drink and a bite to eat Lee mentioned that I had a short story in Hub that week (Lee is the publisher of Hub, although Hub is completely independent of Angry Robot). That got us talking about writing, and then Marc asked a very important question: Have you written anything longer?

I actually hadn’t gone to Nottingham with the intention of pitching Empire State, but the opportunity arose and I went for it. After confusing them for an hour, Marc said it sounded really interesting and he invited me to send the manuscript in when it was ready. I was just finishing off the final edit at that point, so it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I actually sent it in.

That meeting was really the key to it all, because Angry Robot don’t accept unagented submissions, unless they know who you are and invite it in. After sending in a synopsis, character sheet, the first five chapters and a brief document about my inspirations and intentions, it was another month or so before they said they liked what they’d seen, and would I please send in the whole manuscript.

Then time passed and Christmas came and everything sort of ground to a halt, as it does at that time of year! I had a couple of positive emails in the New Year saying they were still reading Empire State and still enjoying it, but the wait for a yes or no was pretty hard so, as any writer should, I just kept on trucking with other projects.

Finally I got word in February 2011 – on my birthday, no less, which happens to be Groundhog Day. I’m a fan of weird customs (and the Bill Murray film) so that day I was on a deadline for the day gig while keeping one eye on a live stream of Groundhog Day from Punxsutawney… while a plumber and gas engineer practically demolished the kitchen downstairs to install a new boiler. In the middle of all this, I got THE phone call from Lee.

So that was quite a birthday to remember!

To be honest, I never really thought of myself as being “discovered” on Twitter, because that implies I was doing something on Twitter like posting novel excerpts or somehow using it primarily to get Empire State sold. But really Twitter was just a place where I met the right people – Lee and Marc primarily, but also a multitude of writers and editors and publishers and agents and readers, all of whom are passionate about books and writing and who form the most amazing online community. A day or so after my Angry Robot deal was announced, Lee wrote a piece for The Bookseller’s Futurebook blog about how I had got the deal, revealing that he’d been surprised I have never pitched anything to Angry Robot for nearly two years until that lunchtime in Nottingham. I think that was interesting and important – I’d been watching them, they’d been watching me, and it was only when the time was right that it all came together.

Seems playing it cool paid off. Also, I think my whole experience does demonstrate some interesting facets of how publishing works. Publishing is partly who you know – which is why things like Twitter but also going to conventions and events are important, because you need to get out there and meet the people who might, one day, make it all happen for you. But this all has to be backed up with something – none of this would have been worth a dime if I hadn’t had a kick-ass manuscript to show and hadn’t been continuing to work on my craft.

How can authors use social media to improve their careers?

That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? Social media (Twitter and Facebook predominantly) is a great innovation and obviously I think it’s tremendously important since it has pretty much launched my career! I met my publisher on Twitter and I met other writers, one of whom *cough* then introduced me to their agent, who in turn became my agent. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But I think it’s important to do a few things well rather than try and spread yourself around too thinly. My main focus is on Twitter and my website. I find Facebook too static, not to mention a great aggregator of spam, although it’s easy to keep it linked to Twitter and my blog and keep it up to date. Whatever you might think of one particular site or service, there will be people who absolutely love it and will use nothing else – for, this is Facebook, so it’s part of my job to use as best I can.

I use social media because I like talking to people and being part of the conversation. If you use social media because you want to and you enjoy it, not because you’re trying to sell a book or a story, then I think it’ll work well for you. Be yourself, but be professional (this is going to be the public face of your career, after all), and play it cool. As I said above, if you do have that killer manuscript or great idea and are working hard on it, then everything else will flow. Social media will provide you with the contacts and networks that might make it easier, when the time is right.

A better, and weirder question — how can authors use social media to improve their *stories?*

There’s actually an obvious answer to that – in fact, two answers.

Firstly, by meeting readers, writers, editors, artists, agents, creators, etc, you’ll expose yourself to a wealth of advice and opinion and material, everything from people discussing the writing process itself to great fiction (free online fiction, book recommendations, reviews, etc) and ideas. I think I’ve bought more books and have learnt more about writing in the three years on Twitter than at any time in the past!

Secondly, social media is a source of inspiration. You’ll meet people who are in the same position as you and people who have taken those next few steps that you hope to follow. The success of others should always be an inspiration and, in part, a motivator – everybody who gets a deal or creates something awesome is helping everybody else, and that’s always worth celebrating.

Social media is a terrific gathering point for weird and wonderful links and news. One of the primary functions of social media is the sharing of information. From information comes ideas, and ideas are the foundation of creative writing.

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:

Finish what you start. That’s the key – in fact, that pretty much sums up novel writing (my particular chosen field) rather well. If you write a novel and you finish and it’s great, then you’ll have had an adventure and learnt a lot. If you write a novel and it’s horrible, then you’ll have had an adventure and learnt a lot. The dreams of millions of would-be novelists come to nothing simply because they give up. You have to keep going when times are good. You have to get going when times are bad. And over the course of a novel, there will be plenty of both. You can’t wait for your muse to appear and you can’t wait for inspiration to strike. You have to sit down and type the words and write the book. And when it sucks and it all goes wrong – and it will, believe me – you have to keep going. There’s no such thing as writer’s block and there’s no such thing as a dead end.

Sounds simple. I suspect a lot of people don’t get it though. And actually from this comes a piece of secondary advice – don’t edit as you go, finish the book first. Because what’s the point of spending three months polishing chapters 1-15 until they shine like mithril when (as mentioned above) your heroine goes and changes everything in chapter 16 in ways which were totally unforeseen and which (and here’s the kicker) require you to go back and adjust things in those first fifteen chapters. Which you’ve just wasted your time editing. You can’t see the whole thing – including what needs to be fixed and edited and changed – until you’ve reached the end.

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

Cavalcade. It’s a word that you really can’t use ever, because when the hell is there an opportunity? And if you ever did use it, people would start backing away slowly. Cavalcade? Cavalcade.

My favourite curse word is comparative mild: sonovabitch. It’s important that you string it all together. It’s great because it can be serious and it can be funny. I’m not such a fan of dropping anything much stronger than that in a story – but then again, if my characters swear, they swear. Ain’t nothing to do with me!

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

I have to go with non-alcoholic and say: tea. But I mean real, English tea. Not green tea, or Chinese tea, or herbal tea, or any variation. Tea tea. Cold milk. I’m going to be a heathen and say teabag tea is preferable to leaf tea as it produces a cleaner brew.

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

Ed Brubaker’s run on Catwoman from DC Comics. From 2001 to 2005 he wrote 37 out of 82 issues of this volume, and it’s basically the best damn comic book ever written, ever. I’d even go so far as to say issue 17 is the best single comic book issue I’ve ever read.

And I like me my comics.

Ed is one of those writers where you if you see his name on anything – comic or not – just buy it and read it. Satisfaction guaranteed.

That volume of Catwoman as a whole – all 82 issues of it – still stands as the best series DC ever ran. It was cancelled due to lack of sales… which is usually a good sign that there is something special going on. People often don’t get ‘special’.

Grab the trades or grab them digitally off Comixology (they look hot on an iPad – way better than on paper, dare I say). Start with issue 1. Keep reading. You’ll thank me.

Where are my pants?

Dude, we’ve been through this already. I didn’t know she had a thing for beards and how was I supposed to know it was against the law in Pennsylvania? Hell, I haven’t even BEEN to Fiji!

Got anything to pimp? Now’s the time!

My first novel is coming out from Angry Robot at the end of this year! It’s called Empire State, and it’s a science fiction noir, with detectives and trench coats and fedoras and gas masks and a dude in a white hood and rocket-powered superheroes. There’s robots, airships, speakeasies, mysterious butlers, dead bodies, and action.

It’s also one of those books that is hard to describe without giving it all away. But, essentially, it’s the story of Rad Bradley, a shabby private detective in the foggy, rainy city called the Empire State. He gets followed by a couple of strange, masked agents, and then rescued by a deceased superhero. To top it off, he’s then hired to find a missing person and quickly finds the body instead, which draws him into a conspiracy which crosses dimensions… because there’s another place, another city which bears a strange resemblance to the Empire State called New York, and Rad uncovers a threat to the existence of both.

Empire State is out in the US on December 27th, and in the UK on January 5th, and will also be available on the Kindle and from Angry Robot’s own ebook store as a DRM-free, region-free epub file. At the moment you can pre-order the US edition at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com – or just take a look at your favourite retailer. The UK and Kindle pre-orders will go online shortly.

Later in 2012 I’ve got another book coming from Angry Robot, Seven Wonders, which is out-and-out superheroes – it’s all spandex and primary colours and people shooting laser beams out of their eyes. I love comics, but more specifically I love superhero comics. Although I’ve tried and read an awful lot of comics and graphic novels across a whole range of genres, superheroes and crime are the only categories that have ever really worked for me in comics. There’s something primal about superheroes that strikes a chord within me – superheroes are, broadly speaking, about boundless optimism and limitless potential. So I wrote Seven Wonders as a big honking superhero adventure which tries to explore those themes. I’m still editing the manuscript, but it’s actually turned into the longest book I’ve written yet. It should be a lot of fun once I hammer it into shape!

What’s next after Seven Wonders? What are you working on now?

I’m lucky in a way in that when I got the deal with Angry Robot – and indeed when I found my agent – I already had a miniature back catalogue of completed novels. Angry Robot have an option on a third book, and my agent is working through another completed manuscript (science fiction) and a proposal (post-apocalyptic horror). But right now, after I’m done with the Seven Wonders edit, I’m starting a new novel called Night Pictures, which is about a woman coming back to her home town after the death of her mother and the disappearance of her sister. The town is a nice place in the country but there are some mighty odd things going on, including spooky sightings at a nearby ghost town and a mysterious pirate television station that comes and goes. Night Pictures is about nostalgia and memory and street light interference phenomena and parallel universes at the bottom of swimming pools. And people wearing Max Headroom masks.

I’m also one of those writers who has like a zillion ideas for stuff – I have a corkboard on my office wall with little index cards pinned to it, each one representing a future novel. There’s enough on the board for the next five years’ of writing! Plus, being on display like that means I see the board constantly, and am always reminded of titles, ideas, characters, etc. I think that’s a pretty good way to do it rather than just making a list which can be very easily forgotten about.

August 3, 2011 / 163 Comments

The Big Five Triple-Oh

Somehow, I ended up with 5,000 Twitter followers.

Frankly, if you were to ask me, I’d say that following me is a sign of dubious moral standing and, most likely, an indicator of a brain parasite. You might wanna have that checked out by a priest and/or doctor.

Whatever the case, it is what it is and there you all are and I’m thankful to have you turning an ear toward my lunatic broadcasting. I appreciate you dialing into my penmonkey frequency.

This feels like a good time to give some shit away.

So, here’s what’s on the table:

(1) copy of Irregular Creatures in PDF or Kindle.

(1) copy of Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey in PDF or Kindle.

(1) copy of 250 Things You Should Know About Writing in PDF or Kindle.

(1) Penmonkey postcard sent to you via Jolly Olde Snail Mail, and on this postcard I will ink a random thought about writing all for you. I might also pass out on the postcard and smear it with drool.

Here, then, is how you get that.

Drop down into the comments.

Write a story using three sentences.

My favorite gets the package.

You have one day — I’ll check back here at 2pm EST tomorrow (24 hours from now) and will pick.

And thank you again, awesome humans. You tickle this little inkslinger’s pink parts.

Go forth and write boldly.

[EDIT: See comments for results!]

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.”

« Older posts Newer posts »

Join 9,849 other subscribers

Flickr Photos

TSITW_soon1TSITW_soon2WENDIG_CHUCK_TheStaircaseInTheWoods_HC_QuoteCard(2)_VFNick Cutter_VFWENDIG_CHUCK_TheStaircaseInTheWoods_HC_QuoteCard(3)_VFGwendolyn Kiste_VF
More Photos