Every day is a day for stories.

No, I don’t mean movies, or television, or that novel you’re reading, or that game you’re playing.

I mean you, me, and the falafel vendor on the corner, we all are the givers and receivers of stories. We tell stories, and they are told to us in return. This is a primitive, critical need inside us hairless monkeys: it’s why we painted stories on cave walls about punching antelope, it’s why we sat (and still sit) around campfires and tell stories about how the gods created microwave ovens or how Betty Sue McGooligan was cut apart by the serial killer with the hook for a head. It’s why when we get together with our wives or our friends or even our children our first impulse is to tell stories. “Oh, today at work, Ronnie, from the warehouse? He ran over Tony’s boombox with the forklift. No, no, on purpose! I know!” “Dude, that reminds me, did I ever tell you how my Uncle Tim was raped by a forklift? Seriously, it was on the news. Check this out, so he was sitting on the banks of the Seine…”

Seriously. It’s what we do. It is practically our default state. Hanging out over dinner? “Oh, honey, that Chinese food reminds me, tell them how you found that leprechaun skeleton under the house.” At the conclusion of that tale, someone else adds, “Man, speaking of leprechauns, did you see that triple rainbow today?” And from there it’s another story about rainbows or buried treasure or pirates or parrots or ostriches or sandwiches or whatever.

Story after story. Endlessly tumbling. Each chained to the last. Like a human caterpillar.

We’ve all been privy to great stories — and, by proxy, the great storytellers who tell those great stories. And, sadly, we’ve also been sucked into the whirling vortex that represents the opposite end of the spectrum: shitty storytellers telling their shitty stories. We’ve all been there. You feel trapped, as if in a phone booth, unable to pull away from a story that just goes on and on and on and seems to have no point and no value and no rhythm, no peaks, no valleys, no nothing but an awful narrative unfolding like a bleak black curtain that threatens to smother you and all the goodness within your heart.

Hence, it’s important to look and say, “What makes for a good story?” This isn’t just for writers or filmmakers or other creative types. This is for everybody. We all tell stories. Stories are deeply fundamental and wholly elemental to our very being.

So, to reiterate: what are the essential ingredients to good storytelling?

Oh, no, don’t get up. You stay duct-taped to that recliner. I got it covered.

Number One: A Reason To Give A Fuck

The first and worst reason that a storyteller traps you in the telling of a bad story is by guaranteeing that you just don’t give a rat’s right foot about the story he’s telling. It has no purpose. It has no connection, no relevancy, no emotional core. The story — and its teller — fails to conjure any reason to care.

Stories are part of our call and response behavior — we see something or think of something, so we share a story about it. And that often triggers something in the listener, and then that person shares her story. And back and forth it goes, a ricocheting game of narrative ping pong.

But see, that’s the thing: a story must either call us to it or must act as a response. If it fails to do either of those things — if it fails to call our attention or if it fails to respond to something in our lives — then what’s the goddamn point? A story at its core must must must endeavor to make the audience give a fuck. The reason for the aforementioned fuck-giving can be multifarious — my Dad died of cancer, so maybe you want to tell me a story about cancer. You have a dog, I have a dog, now we’re talking about dogs. Maybe you just know a guy, and his story is the saddest you’ve heard — or the happiest, or the weirdest, or the bat-shit-nuttiest — and you want to convey that, you want to transmit that emotion to me.

A story has to make us care. It has to make us feel something — anything! — to be a story that matters.

For the record, the reason to give a fuck is also the reason the storyteller gives a fuck — at least, most likely. Storytellers tell stories for a reason: again, it’s part of that response. Stories have a message. Or, good stories do. I don’t mean some lofty, hoity-toity thematic intent — I just mean, there’s a reason and a message implicit. It might be as simple as, “I think this is funny,” or as complex as, “The ennui of old age is forever at war with the diabolical impetuousness of youth.”

Number Two: Characters To Care About

Stories are told by people. And so they must be about people. Or, at least, characters — a character could be a grumpy wombat, a robot toaster, a vampire unicorn. But even then they are representative of people — ultimately, we anthropomorphize so that they are relatable to us — so that, in essence, we’re all speaking the same narrative tongue.

You do not have a story without characters. Defy me. Go ahead, I dare you. Even the most oblique, abstract tale — “This is the story of Sirius, the Dog Star!” — ultimately makes characters out of its subject matter. It must! Because characters are the vehicles that carry the story forward.

Further, we must care about the characters. Somehow. Someway. It goes back to number one: if we can’t give a fuck about the characters, what does the story even matter?

What makes characters compelling and give-a-fuck-able remains somewhat elusive: complexity isn’t the key. Children’s stories do not feature complex characters. Nor do urban legends or campfire tales. But somehow we relate: they are within, not outside, our sphere of understanding. If characters are too far outside the firelight, we can no longer understand them.

Once we understand them, we care.

Number Three: A Problem

A story hinges on a problem. Specifically, a problem for those characters we care about.

Characters alone do not make a story. Timmy wakes up, eats eggs, goes to school, gets an A+, plays baseball with Dad, has Captain Crunch before dinner, then goes to bed ultimately fulfilled… that’s not a story. I mean, okay, it’s technically a story, but it’s a story that sucks a bag of dicks. The only conflict in that story is the question blooming in the listener’s mind: “How will I beat a murder rap if I bludgeon this storyteller to death with this talking robot toaster I found?”

As creatures we are not programmed to be compelled by unconflicted narratives. That actually speaks volumes of us as a species and just how goofy we are: we love to love our characters, but the only way we truly love them is if we first make them suffer. We can’t be happy if John McClane meets his estranged wife in the Nakatomi building and then they make out and have sex in her office and he goes home to play with their kids. We can only be happy if he has to run across broken glass and get blown up first. We’re fucked up, but hey, it is what it is. You want to tell good stories, you have to tap into that.

The problem serves as the anchor of a story.

Said it before, will say it again: in life, we avoid conflict. In fiction, we strive for it.

Number Four: Acceleration And Deceleration

Or, peaks and valleys, waxing and waning, ebb and flow.

A flatlining story is as dull as a geometry lesson. A story should never start at point A, then end at point A. We listen and want the story to shift, to change, to become faster at times and slower at others… and even those slow points — “the valleys” — seem almost designed to keep us salivating for the high and fast points, “the peaks.” It’s as if we slow down just to further anticipate the coming acceleration.

A good story has escalation. It has rises and falls. It gives the story context. It lends it suspense, and texture, and rhythm. The patterns can be different across separate stories: some rise, rise, riiiiise until they crest the climax and fall — while others are more bumpy, more iterative, more up-and-down-and-left-and-right. There’s no one pattern that dominates the narrative design — but the pattern must have that sense of speeding up and slowing down.

It’s not all that different from a long car ride. A car ride down a long stretch of gray highway is about as soul-crushing as one can imagine. But a trip through the mountains, or in and out of small towns, is compelling: the stop and go, the new sights, the shifts in the wind and the change in direction. Those things keep us interested. They keep us awake and aware.

Good stories do that.

Bad stories are a long stretch of dead interstate.

Number Five: A Conclusion Appropriate To The Story

And, stories (like overlong rambling blog posts) must end.

But not just end in the sense that, “Well, that happened, and now it’s over,” but rather end in the way that actually means  conclude. We say stories have endings, but really, the good ones have conclusions. They tie up. They complete the tale. They take our characters to their final destinations (narratively speaking).

The worst thing is when a great story dies with a bad ending. Or barely an ending at all — the story just stops. Ever have that happen? You’re listening to someone and it’s all like, “So, Jim is left alone in the hotel room with this drunken hooker, and she’s pried her peg leg off, and she’s busting up lamps and she smashes the TV — and Jim thinks, Jesus, the syphilis has really driven this prostitute batty.”

“So what happened then?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Wh…? What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I guess he’s okay. I saw him in the break room eating a donut.”

“That’s it? That’s the end? Then he was in the break room just eating a fucking donut?”

“Shrug, I guess.”

It’s like storytelling blue balls. Nothing sucks more than an unfinished — or worse, an ill-finished — tale.

Number Six: Your Turn

I know I asked this before, but keep on noodling it. What else is essential to a good story? I don’t mean preferable — I mean, what elements will kill a story when absent from the narrative?

Swish it around in your mouth. Spit it out in the comments below.

Ptoo.

Caveat: I am no self-publishing expert. I am not claiming to be any manner of self-publishing guru, Sherpa, wizard, shaman, or swami. I am just a guy with a self-published book asking you to love him. Uhh. No, wait, that’s not it. I’m a guy who’s had a self-published digital short story collection out for like, three weeks.

And, I figure, why not talk about it?

I wouldn’t call any of this “insight.”

I’d instead think of it as, “Shit I happened to notice that may be accurate, or I might just be drunk.”

Let my gibbering and wailing commence.

It’s Hard Out There For A Pimp

Right now, I suspect one of the biggest challenges for the self-published author is promotion. If I go with a traditional publisher, I have a fairly wide array of options in regards to getting my Please Buy My Awesome Book It Is Not Shitty And You Might Dig It message out into the world, and a lot of those options are not options I personally have to enact. I mean, yes, the traditionally published author still has to get blisters signing books and still has to drag her ass to the far-flung corners of Fuckbucket, Indiana to do a convention or a speaking engagement or whatever. But at least those options exist.

The self-published author has…

I mean, seriously, what? The Internet? Pretty much just that. The Internet. A traditionally published author might get a review in a magazine or a newspaper. Might get an interview in the same. Might get on NPR. Will likely get her book in bookstores and maybe get herself in bookstores. Will have posters and blurbs and all that good stuff.

The self-published author has the Internet. Right? Am I missing something?

Further, it’s just me and my audience, an audience who pimps the book out of genuine interest or loyalty or pity or payola. But for the most part, it’s me thinking about how to create a message online somehow that convinces people, “Hey, you need to lay down your hard-earned three bucks for nine short stories of dubious quality. Please take a risk and throw your money at my word-spew.”

There exists the trouble of discoverability — sure, someone could be surfing around Amazon and find my book. And they might click the magic button and procure the collection. But I don’t suspect that’s likely. Amazon is home to (beware: incoming fake number) one fuzzillion books. Minimal filter exists. I went looking specifically for my book just by searching around — it wasn’t easy.

Now, again, I recognize that it’s hard for a traditionally-published dude, too. But I’m a lot likelier to stumble on a book on a shelf than I am by clicking around Amazon. Further, again those writers have other vectors of discovery: reviews, interviews, ads, what-have-you.

Thing is, if I want my book to sell, I have to sling it. I have to work that ass. I have to shake it. And I worry that it crosses over into “annoying” territory. (By the way, if you feel like I have officially crossed into that territory, then you need to tell me. Please be nice about it, but tell me. Honesty + tact = a wonderful thing.) I’m not even sure what the best way of getting the message out there happens to be.

Slow And Steady Might Just Win The Race

If I earned no more sales from this point forward, I’d be okay with that, but I also wouldn’t be rolling in dough. Hell, I couldn’t even make a living wage. To earn the low end of my freelancing rate, I’d need to make over $2,000 on this collection.

At present, I’ve gotten over $500.

And that’s only across a three-week period.

Assuming (which yes, makes an ass out of you and Ming the Merciless) that I am able to quadruple that over the remaining 49 weeks of the year, that means the collection will earn out.

Should I go beyond that, it moves slowly and steadily toward a living wage. And, for the record, it’s hard for the traditionally-published author to make a living wage on their own creative endeavors. So, it is a little heartening to see a glimmer of financial possibility here.

This isn’t even a novel we’re talking about. It’s a measly piddly poo-poo short story collection. Nobody likes those. Those are the pariahs of the reading world. I’ve seen homeless men spit on short story collections. True story! Ahem.

So, considering the possibility of earning more on a novel is, admittedly, intriguing. It means that a qualified and capable self-published author could actually not starve to death. Conceivably. No promises.

Sales Farming (How Different Fertilizer Yields Bigger Sales Crop)

One thing I do like: seeing sales. I’ve been a freelancer for a dozen years and I had my first short story published when I was 18, and for the most part, I don’t have access to any sales numbers or how well my work is “doing” out there within the wordmonkey jungle. But hey, now I know.

A remaining tricky bit: knowing where sales come from. I did this contest last week, and to be honest, it didn’t pull a lot of participants. Nobody’s fault but mine (it was likely a shitty contest, but I thought I’d try something a little different).Now, to be fair, this last week did really well overall in sales, so… again, hard to see if there’s any correlation between “contest” and “people buying my nonsense flying cat stories.”

Also not certain how well reviews contribute overall.

The one time I can see sales jump up is also the simplest:

I tweet about it.

I say, “Hey, short stories, evil vaginas, $2.99,” and bwip, my sales bump up by a couple-few. Like, within 10, 15 minutes. Yesterday, Sunday, I hadn’t earned a single sale. So I tweeted about that. My briny tears apparently soaked through the screen and into the fingertips of my Twitter followers, and within ten minutes I had four sales. Half-hour later, two more. Pretty neat.

Twitter offers the plainest glimpse of “action –> reaction” in terms of sales.

Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover, Except When It’s Supremely Shitty

I’m sorry, self-published authors, but here’s the poop.

You want respect. I want it, too. I’m a good writer. I know other DIY writers who are good, too (hell, some are even great) and damnit if they don’t deserve respect.

But the reality is, self-publishing does not command a great deal of respect.

And, frankly, the practice doesn’t deserve it. Not yet, at least. Go on. Poke around the self-pub books on Amazon, on Smashwords. Download some samples. Gaze at the covers.

You’re going to see a lot of dreck. Dross. Muck. Swill. Filth. Sewage. Crap-burgers. Stink-blossoms. Shit machines, jizz sandwiches, temples built out of garbage and other assorted nonsense.

It’s not good! You’re pumping a lot of bad juju into the ecosystem. And because it’s a big fat-mouthed pipe open to public access, anybody can contribute their own individual streams of effluence.

Okay, I get it, this is by design. But by the same token, it’s because of that utterly forgiving filter-free sewage pipe that the very practice of self-publishing gets a cruddy rap. Gatekeepers get a lot of guff, but sometimes, we don’t want everybody running through the gate, you dig? Right now, publishing could damn well stand to let some new talent through the gates. They could open the gates wider.

But that doesn’t translate to blasting them off their hinges with C4 and letting any crazy cat lady or tinfoil-helmet dude into the party. Bouncers need to keep out the riff-raff.

You want respect, self-publishing community? Then it is time to earn it.

Up your game. Learn to write a hook. Learn how to sell your book. Hire a cover designer. Hire an editor. Edit! Rewrite! Be a writer. Do all the things that being a writer entails. Don’t just vomit forth endless searing gouts of word-bile and story-puke. You’re making a mess in here.

I know that if I decide to do this again, I intend to up my game as well. Hey, my shit stinks, too.

(But, c’mon, look at that cover. My shit doesn’t stink that bad.)

I Still Want My Books In Bookstores, Goddamnit

No matter what happens, I still have that old-fashioned knee-jerk reaction of — “I really want to see my book on a bookshelf somewhere. Preferably in a bookstore. Licked by a stripper with knife scars on her midriff.” All right, fine, ignore that last part, but the lingering sentiment still stands: I want a hard copy of my book, and I want that book sold by places that aren’t Chuck Wendig, Incorporated.

I’m a practical guy. Pragmatic to a fault. I know that money is important.

But as a practical guy, I’m also a guy who likes brick-and-mortar reality. I don’t want everything to live on the magical “cloud.” I want a book in my hands, and not just in my hands, but out there, in the world, where my mother could accidentally find it in the wild and point to that and say, “Hey, that’s my son’s book.”

Self-publishing just isn’t to that point, yet. It may never be, I dunno.

All In All, Would I Rather Be Writing?

I would rather be writing.

I wish I wasn’t my own publisher. I wish I didn’t have to figure out layout and how to convert to ePub (which, far as I can tell, involves sacrificing a white stag on a pyre of burning willow-bark at just the right moment of the vernal equinox — otherwise, the output will look like a burlap sack of mashed assholes), I wish I didn’t have to think about sales numbers and pimping the work and all that.

I would rather be writing.

Now, to pull back a minute, this is a naive wish. It really is. We can spout that old platitude all we like — “Writers Write” — but the truth is, writers always do more than write. At least, they do if they don’t want to be dilettantes. Writers edit, writers market, writers talk, writers build their audiences, writers work the business. Writers don’t just sit in the dark and write brilliant words. Same way that carpenters are more than “dudes who can hammer nails.”

Writing should always be primary, however.

And being your own publisher dings that a little bit. Not a lot. But just enough where it means I’m wearing yet another hat in addition to all the ones the writer must normally wear.

It doesn’t mean that self-publishing is a no-no. Or that it’s splashing around in the gutter. But it does mean that it comes with complications that must be considered. Would I do it again? Maybe. I’m noodling it. I’d like to continue the experiment and put a novel and a non-fiction piece “out there” just to see.

But I still want my books on shelves. That may make be vain. It may mean I need to molest my quivering self-esteem. But it’s true just the same.