Tag: 25things (page 8 of 12)

Some writers have all the business sense of an oar-whacked snapping turtle — we become so focused on words and pages and the imaginary voodoo of made-up storyworlds that we forget that there’s a whole other side to it, a side where if we’re not careful we’ll end up writing our next bestseller out of the back of a rust-bucket conversion van tucked beneath some god-fucked overpass. It’s easy in the chase for story and the race for readers to accidentally sell our own best interests up the river.

Screw that, cats and kittens.

It’s time to trepan some business sense, meager as it may be, into your brainpans.

Please stare into the whirring drill-bit.

Welcome to the month of no mercy.

1. Deadlines? What Deadlines?

Deadlines are invisible and intangible but no less real than a brick wall — if you’re not paying attention you’ll crash into one lickety-split. How is this a financial fuck-up? Well, beyond the fact that dicking up a deadline is just bad business, it’s also problematic because some contracts stipulate lost revenue if you overshoot your timeline. “Hi, I’m turning in my work a year late.” “Thanks! Here’s your payment.” “This is a jar of buttons.” “Dirty buttons. You’d have a jar of clean buttons if you turned in the work weeks ago.”

2. No Contract Can Contain The Power Of My Art!

The contract is the thing that says, “I give you work, you give me money.” It is the paper-thin bulwark separating the lawful writer from the broke and broken anarchist — yes, a contract pins down a writer but it also pins down the entity to whom that writer is contracted. Without a contract, you’ve no recourse if things go south. Get a contract. Always get a contract. Just ask Ryan Macklin.

3. Hire A Sherpa To Guide You Up The Contractual Mountain

Seriously, I open up most new contracts and I zone out. My eyes cross, I pee a little, and I start dreaming of swaying meadow-grasses and frolicking ponies. Contracts are full of language the average human being cannot parse, cobbled together of Lovecraftian legalese that would drive most men mad. But you need to understand it. I’ve seen some squirrely contracts and heard tell of worse — contracts that if you sign them you’ll catch a whiff of brimstone before you realize your advance for that 15-novel fantasy series is a burlap sack of venomous cottonmouth snakes. Get an agent. Or hire a lawyer. Figure out what you’re signing.

4. Signing That Vicious Throat-Kick Of A Contract

Some writers are so eager to be read they’ll sign a bad contract even after they know how bad it is. “Check out these royalties! For every book I sell, I get one stick of that powdery shit-ass bubble gum you used to get in packs of baseball cards! If I sell 10,000 books, then for every book I sell they send a donkey to my house to cave in my chest with his crap-caked hooves! OH MY GOD I’M A WRITER SQUEE.” Stop bending over the nightstand, spreading your cheeks and asking someone to brandish a bramble-wound broomstick and jam it deep up your boot-hole. Don’t sign your work over to the Devil just for a taste of publication.

5. Repeat After Me: “People Die From Exposure”

If you don’t care about getting paid for your writing, ignore this. (And, in fact, ignore this whole list.) But if you do care about having a go at this writing thing as a proper career, do not write for exposure. Exposure cannot be measured, and you might as well write for any number of invisible things: the dreams of sleeping kittens, perhaps, or mystical unicorn turds. You should always be getting something measurable for your writing. Ideally, that “something” is money, but other rewards — tangible rewards! — do exist.

6. Cheap As Chips Of Lead Paint

“Cheap” isn’t a good thing. “Cheap” is toys made in China that exude radon. “Cheap” is a hot dog whose primary component is rat testicles. “Cheap” is a baggy of black tar heroin that’s been cut with pulverized possum bones and drain cleaner. Don’t value you work as “cheap.” You price yourself too low, you do harm to your future contracts and the contracts of other writers. You don’t have to paint yourself as a Lexus, but for fuck’s sake, you’re not a 1991 Geo Tracker with 100,000 miles and a dead hooker in the boot, either.

7. Didn’t I Just Say You Weren’t A Lexus?

Pricing yourself too high from the outset damages your credibility, too. It’s one thing if you’ve a proven track record and you’ve earned your pay rate, but if you slide an obscene number across the table, that person’s going to politely decline, quietly laugh at you, and never call you again. As Gandalf once said to a young William Shatner: “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

8. Writer: Beware

Scams wait like landmines and pit traps everywhere the writer turns, many seeking to exploit a writer’s desperate desire to be published. The Internet is a treasure trove of warning signs and signal flares, but you have to know where to look. (One place to start: Writer Beware.) If something smells like week-old cod in a dead man’s jockstrap, backpedal and turn to Google or social media. A little suspicion is a lot healthy.

9. Vanity Is A Sin, After All

Vanity publishing is not a scam — but it’s also not in a writer’s financial best interests. First, on a practical level, it’s largely outmoded and tends to be needlessly expensive. The Internet has democritized distribution and has opened many new channels for a writer to get material out there if that’s the way the writer wants to go. Second, it reeks of desperation and violates a core tenet of a professional writing career…

10. Failing To Remember “Money In, Not Money Out”

The writer does not pay but, rather, gets paid. Now, I recognize that self-publishing has changed this old nugget of wisdom a bit — you might, say, pay for an editor or a cover designer. Beyond that, however, the flow of money is always to the writer and never away from the writer. You don’t pay to get published. You don’t let someone else capitalize on your hard work and walk away with a paycheck while you still lick dust from ramen noodle flavor packets in a storm drain.

11. Not Following The Trail Of Financial Breadcrumbs

You need to track income and expenses as robustly as your creative writer’s brain can manage. I know, I know, every time you open up a spreadsheet it’s like someone is shooting holes in your brain with a pellet rifle — OW NUMBERS NOT WORDS WRITER NEED ICE CREAM. I’m just saying, you’re going to be a lot happier knowing where your money is coming in and going out.

12. Floating Lazily Along The Timestream

Track your time. Track your time. Let me say it again, in all caps: TRACK YOUR TIME. Knowing your time — and how much you earn for that time spent — helps a professional writer gain a clearer picture of his abilities as a writer and how those abilities can pay off in terms of hourly, monthly, and annual performance. After all, time is money. And money helps you buy liquor and e-books.

13. Spending Too Much On Liquor And E-Books

Hey, I get it. E-books are so light! So airy! So cheap! And liquor is so — well. It’s liquor. Let’s just go with so necessary and leave it at that? Prudent expenditure of penmonkey funds is essential!

14. Failing To Take Advantage Of Tax Deductions

As a paid writer, you can deduct a wealth of useful things — pens, software, computers. I deducted a goddamn coffee maker because, hey, it’s an office expense. Money you spend in pursuit of your career is not only something to track, but something that should be seen through the “potential tax deduction” lens. For the record, that also means you may want to hire an accountant or tax prep person.

15. You Do Know You Have To Pay Taxes Quarterly, Right?

You do. You really do. Otherwise, you’ll get nut-kicked and teat-slapped by penalties. True story.

16. Ditching The Day Job Before It’s Time

There comes a point when many pro writers think that it’s time to transition from “part-time penmonkey” to “full-time inkslinger,” but do not be hasty. Have savings built up. Rock a budget. Get a cushion going. Stock up the liquor cabinet. Know when the air is clear and it’s safe to step out of your rocketship into this brand new atmosphere. If you do start the ball rolling where you plan to ditch the day-job, consider segueing into a part time job first. Offers an adjustment period.

17. Staying In The Day Job Well Past Its Due

Staying too long at your day job can be just as toxic. Writers are surfers and must know how to take advantage of the right wave — miss it, and the wave passes you by and cascades toward shore. Working a dead-end day-job takes crucial time away from the writing life. You know it’s time because you reach the conclusion, “If I didn’t have this 40-hour-a-week job hanging like a colostomy bag around my hip, I could be earning out with my wordsmithy. And I’d also not have poop in a bag, which is pretty gross.”

18. Self-Publishing When You Should’ve Gone Traditional

Self-publishing is not a magical panacea, nor is it a treasure chest of gold doubloons automagically dumped over your head. Self-publishing strategically and intelligently can provide a significant portion of your writerly gold hoard, yes. To DIY smartly, you need to understand more than just how to upload your book to the Lords of Kindle and have those robots distribute it to the Kindlemaschine masses. Self-publish poorly or choose that path when a better path is available and you give up opportunity. And by “opportunity” I mean, “hard cash, motherfucker.” Kapow, kaching, coo-coo-ka-choo. I dunno. Shut up.

19. Going Traditional When You Should’ve Self-Published

A pro-writer’s life is a tightrope walk and on that side are lions and on that side are bears and you tippy-toe your way between them best as you can. So here the opposite is true of that last thing I just said: choosing to traditionally publish when you’ve got a great possibility for a successful self-published book may indeed be throwing your time and energy into a dank, dark hole — like, say, a golem’s vagina. Yes, all golems have vaginas. And yes, my next self-published book will be either a Dan Brown homage or an epic fantasy novel, but either way, that sonofabitch will be titled, THE GOLEM’S VAGINA. Get on board or get out of the way, because that train is leaving the station. What were we talking about? Ah. Right. Some books suit the self-publishing realm — they fit like a hand in a soft glove. Which books? That’s a post for another time.

20. Negotiation Tactics Of A Sleepy Koala

Sometimes, you have to negotiate. Royalties, advances, rock star riders (“I need seven Junior Mints in a porcelain dish and those Junior Mints must first be suckled gently by Nicholas Sparks and — and — if the chocolate is in any way melted, I get to Taser the aforementioned Mister Sparks in his smiling, choco-smeared mouth”), whatever. And there you are, clinging to your tree, snoozing against the hard bark. If you don’t want to negotiate, once again: find an agent. This is what they do and what they’re good at.

21. Repeat After Me: “Budget. Surplus. Budget. Surplus.”

Unless you’re part of a pre-existing corporate ecosystem, writers are not paid in a steady, measured financial stream. You don’t get a check every week. Your money comes erratically, like random unexpected orgasms separated by long and listless lulls of joyless wondering. That means two things: first, you need to budget. You can’t get your money and blow it all on donkey porn and video games. You’re going to need food at some point. Second, you need to build up a surplus. Line your coffers with pillowy money just in case you need to take a fall. Life is not kind. You’ll be following along your budget with blissful ignorance, and then a jet engine will fall out of the sky onto your car. UH OH SPAGHETTIOS.

22. Do You Really Need That Helper Monkey?

You don’t need a whole lot as a writer. You need a computer (yes, as a professional writer, you do; you can wing it with a notebook and a pen all you like but there will come a time when someone will be like, “Oh, e-mail that to me, motherfucker,” and the best you can do is wad up the paper and throw it at them), you need some kind of word processing software, you need Internet access, whatever. But some writers spend into a big and needless toolbox — expensive computer, huge monitor, a costly software suite, an 8-ball of coke, a robot built around Hemingway’s brain, fingerless typing gloves lined with dodo feathers, and so forth. I’m not saying you can’t buy these things at some point; but you damn sure don’t start out your writing career by tossing yourself into a financial oubliette. Fuck debt.

23. Your Body Needn’t Be A Temple, But Don’t Treat It Like The Bathroom Floor At A New Jersey Arby’s, Am I Right?

Keep healthy, and even better, get health insurance. No, no, I know, health insurance is expensive. And many healthcare providers will work so hard to wriggle out of covering certain things you’d think they have collapsible bones and slime-slick skin that sloughs off any time you grab for them. Do your research. Budget for the cost. What’s expensive now pales in comparison to what you’ll pay without it. “Oh, I have a cold? And to procure this one bottle of Amoxycillin I have to bring you the still-screaming head of the Medusa?”

24. Letting Financial Stress Get A Choke Hold On Your Wordsmithy

Stress — and I don’t mean that good clean motivational stress, I mean the “I can smell my hair burning” stress — does not do a writer well. Sometimes, so-called “writer’s block” is just stress getting to a writer. And one of the greatest sources of stress for the average everyday penmonkey is financial stress. From this, you must insulate yourself. Sometimes protecting yourself means being smart and not fucking up — sometimes it’s just a Zen thing and it means shutting the noise out and forming a plan and realizing that as long as it’s not going to kill you then you just need to breathe and move past it. If stress stops you from writing and you need writing to get past the stress — well. You see how that’s a sticky wicket, don’t you? What the fuck is a sticky wicket, anyway? I picture some kind of giant insect exuding something that looks like strawberry jam from all its exoskeletonic joints. It hugs you and it just won’t let go. Then it injects an ovipositor into your colon and plants its larvae and a healthy dose of toxoplasmosis!

25. Writing And Publishing With Zero Strategy

You need a strategy. Not just a budget, but a full-bore plan for your penmonkey future. You know that bullshit question they ask at interviews, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” It’s not bullshit. You should have an idea, a real idea, of what you’re planning on doing year-after-year. It’ll help you do more than tread water, which is what many professional writers end up doing (or worse, they end up sinking down, their screams lost in a flurry of bubbles). Perhaps the best present a writer can get himself is a strategy for her career going forward. Well, that and a pony. Because ponies make everybody happy.

* * *

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

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 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

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

So. You wrote a book. There it sits before you, whether on the screen or printed out: a city sculpted from the face of a raw and ragged cliff. Epic, I know. Dizzying, even. It’s okay if you want to throw up. Go ahead. Nobody’s watching. HA HA HA HA WE ALL JUST SAW YOU THROW UP HA HA HA — ha, er, oh, sorry.

That was cruel.

You’ve got a book and it’s time you ask: “Now what?”

Consult this list of 25 and maybe you’ll find the answer.

1. You Have Gone Where Other “Writers” Have Failed To Go

Failed writers — “failure” being only an indication of never having finished a fucking thing — are everywhere. Kick over a log, rip off a panel of drywall, open the trunk of a long-forgotten car and there they are. Like swarming roaches or starving raccoons. Already you’ve separated yourself from them just by the dint of having completed a novel-length work. You’re not done, of course: this is just the beginning. But find comfort in the fact that you just leveled up. Ding!

2. Welcome To Novel Club

If this is your first night at novel club, you have to write. …no, wait, that’s not it. If this is your first novel, as in, you’ve never ever written a novel before, it helps to have your expectations in check. One’s first novel threatens to be a “trunk novel” — as in, a novel best kept in the dark and not dragged out into the light for all to see. Realism is unpopular, and cheerleading is easy, but trust me: not every book one writes demands a place on the stage. I say this as a guy who has six completed novels (and an infinity of unfinished ones) shelved away in some dark murky corner of my hard drive where all the creatures have gone blind and pale. I sometimes hear the sentiment that self-publishing obviates the existence of the trunk novels, that we can all barf up our half-digested literary meals into the marketplace, but that’s a level of insane I cannot quite parse. Just because I can sell any jizz-caked gym-sock on eBay doesn’t mean I should.

3. Trunk Novels Need Extra Love

That said, trunk novels don’t need to be relegated to the burn pile — but, in my experience, they need a lot of extra attention and TLC. No, not the pop trio starring T-Boz, Left-Eye, and The Other One. They cannot help you with your novel. Point is, a first novel is no different from the first time you do anything: build a chair, bake a cake, go to an orgy. Unless you’re some kind of prodigy, you’re not going to nail it the first time out of the gate — you used the wrong hammer, the wrong cake flour, the wrong industrial-grade sexual lubricant. If you really believe in a trunk novel, then just know you’re likely to pump a lot of extra work into it. Don’t worry: the next novels will be easier. Probably. Shut up.

4. It Ain’t A Batch Of Brownies, Pal

The mindset you have about your novel matters. It’s best to view every novel (or script, or any story) as a work-in-progress. This isn’t a batch of brownies: you make those brownies and they come out of the oven, you’re done. Game over. You can’t keep working on them. Best you can do is cover them in extra icing and hope that stops them from tasting like asbestos shingles. A novel, however, is always at only one stage of its evolution — you the author are as a god, helping urge forth the little trilobite to grow fins and then lungs and then legs and then learn how to use iPhones and make funny cat videos. The novel is always able to change, always able to grow new limbs and see its organs spontaneously rearrange.

5. Cool Those Heels, Flash

A writer who is impatient is a writer who probably has health issues, which explains why I’ve had seven blood-squirting aneurysms since beginning this career. Just the same, embrace patience. Novels, like wine, need time. It’s easy and understandable to finish a novel and want to see it Out There somehow — but you need to chillax. Do people still say that? Chillax? Maybe they should say “rechill” instead. Just rechill, homeslice. Anyway. Resist the urge to close the book on your book and consider it done. Don’t send it to agents, publishers, or into the marketplace. Let the bottle breathe.

6. If You Love Something, Set It Free

Also: if you hate something, set it free. You need distance from this novel. You need to remove yourself from its presence long enough to discard your love of certain part and your distaste for others until you can approach the book as if… well, as if someone else entirely wrote the damn thing. You need to reach that time when you can look at the book and say, “I forgot I even wrote this part.” That may be a week. That may be two months. For me it’s like, four hours, because I have a brain like a colander.

7. Discover Why It’s Your Book

You wrote this book. So it needs to feel like you wrote it. That’s what a lot of revision is secretly about — yes, yes, of course it’s about confirming quality and creating sense out of nonsense but it’s also about discovering why this is a book no one else but you could’ve written. This is the time where the clay is soft and your hands make deep prints. This is when you own the book. Because if someone else could’ve written it, then what’s the fucking point?

8. The Answer: “As Many As It Takes, Motherfucker”

The question: “How many rewrites do I need to do?”

9. Written By The Shaman, Adopted By The Tribe

The writer is the shaman. He’s the whackadude goofed up on funny jungle mushrooms who steps behind the curtain that separates worlds and there he does battle with ghosts and ideas and returns to our world with the story of what happened in that secret space. That’s what you’ve got now: the result of your battle with invisible entities. But now the tribe must adopt your story, and it’s the tribe that improves your work: beta-readers and buddies, agents and editors. A novel that exists all on its own is not as strong as it could be: your novel should be the product of many eyes and many thoughts. It takes a village, not a village idiot.

10. Criticism Is A Conversation

Criticism is good for your book. Tumbled rocks are polished by agitation, and so too will your tale be sharpened and shined by the rough stone and hard grit of criticism. Criticism is a necessary conversation to have. No criticism is absolute, and many pieces of criticism combat one another. But that’s why this is a conversation and not writ law: you the author must consider and respond. One thing I can say about criticism is, even when you don’t agree with the solution, often you should look for core problems. The true power of criticism is not when it gives you answers but rather when it helps you understand the questions.

11. Spare Change

Writers who are afraid of change are writers who will trip over their own ego and fall into a mud-walled pit where they are eaten by muskrats. Once again, this is a mindset issue: be ready to take what you have and smash it apart. As it runs the gauntlet, it is beaten by batons and whipped with willow branches and drubbed by double dildos. Each step the book takes a beating and with each beating its flesh and bones change. That’s a good thing. That’s a proper thing. You must be willing to embrace change from behind. You must give change a gentle and eager reacharound.

12. Novel, Thy Name Is Legion

When going into the “edit cycle” of your novel, it may be easier to view the story not as a single entity but rather a series of moving parts. A house is not just a house: it’s hinges and pipes and floorboards and water heaters and restless ghosts and sex swings and fiberglass insulation and hungry mice. You don’t edit a giant hunk of word-meat called a novel: you butcher it in pieces and parts.

13. A Tail So Long You Might Trip Over It

A novel is also not a short-lived creature — the very act of creating a novel is way more than the month or the year it took to write that first draft. Time invested now equates to, ideally, readers earned later.

14. How To Edit Your Shit

I won’t bludgeon you with the reiterated details, but I’ll just point you to this: Edit Your Shit Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Make with the clicky-clicky and whip out the hatchet and the scalpel.

15. Interface With Your Intestinal Flora

When is your book done? You’ve no test. No way to objectively say, “Ahh, here we are, this bird is fully-cooked and heated to an internal temperature of 666 degrees.” You can certainly listen to others, but at the end of the day the one voice you have to listen to is your own: check your gut. Use your instincts.

16. As A Human Person With A Book, You Have Options

It’s easy to see the doom in the publishing realm: lowered advances and no more bookstores and the fact that they now take writers out to pasture and shoot them for their meat (so I hear). But you merely need to peel back the pessimistic subdermis and see that things are changing fast. Often for the author, not against the author. Self-publishing is only one small part of that equation. What I’m saying is, that book you just finished? It has options now that did not exist for it five years ago. That is a feature, not a bug.

17. The Value Of An Agent

An agent is, ideally, a shepherd for book and writer. The agent helps the manuscript cross the deadly savage territory of our ruined earth and, at the end of its journey, helps it get the best seat on the rocketship to Mars. An agent does more than just sell the book — the agent helps identify opportunity, maximize one’s earning, and help push the book into other realms by pimping the book’s rights. Do you need an agent? No. Will an agent help? A good one will, mos def.

18. A Meh Agent Reps The Book, A Good Agent Reps The Writer

Some agents are, simply put, feculent turd-heads. They don’t respond, they jerk around authors, they mock writers and act every bit the vile gatekeeper. But that doesn’t mean agents are bad. No group is without its malefactors: whether we’re talking hotel maids or astronauts, some amongst them are shitbirds. That doesn’t mean it’s time to disavow all hotel maids or astronauts. Here’s, for me, the line between a good agent and a ennnhh-one: the *poop noise* agent wears blinders and cares only about a single book, but the good agent sees a single book as one part of a writer’s overall value. The good agent cultivates the writer.

19. The Value Of A Publisher

A publisher will do all the things for your book that will get it ready for the marketplace — and, to be clear, the marketplace puts commerce above art, for better or for worse. Somebody needs to handle cover design and marketing and all those critical book-whore duties. Don’t want to do those yourself? Don’t feel equipped for such tasks? Then your book needs a proper publisher.

20. Stop Punching Yourself In The Face For Our Entertainment

Some writers are so eager to have their book Out There that they will do anything — and that means signing raw deal contracts, contracts that might as well be rolled up into a baton and used to smack the writer across the bridge of his bad-doggy nose. I’ve heard horror stories of unscrupulous publishing entities playing havoc with a writer’s rights and even that writer’s career. Eff that in the ay, emmer-effer. Protect yourself. Don’t sign away your book without knowing what you’re getting out of the situation. Oh, and by the way: once again the value of an agent is made irrevocably clear.

21. The Value Of A Smaller Publisher

A smaller publisher does what a bigger publisher does, though often with a shorter reach — but also with a more personal and less corporate touch. Bigger publishers are cruise-ships: big behemoths that have great power but are slow to turn. Smaller publishers are smaller boats: less power, yes, but can turn on a dime and respond to changes far more swiftly.

22. Any Good Partner Helps You Cultivate Your Vision, Not Theirs

Whoever you choose to partner with, from agent to editor to publishers big and small, know that the value of that partnership is best expressed by how much they want to help bring your vision to life rather than bringing to bear some external vision. They are on your team: you are not on theirs. Also, they should give you candy. Because candy is awesome. In other news: I’m kind of hungry.

23. The Value Of Self-Publishing

Relative freedom, that’s the value. The gate is open. You’re a free range creature who has the pick of the pasture. Of course, you’re out there potentially all by your lonesome, too — a fox wants to come up and turn you into a pile of blood and feathers, that’s his right, because hey, no fences, no gates. But it’s your life, little chicken. The cover, the content, the quality — it’s all up to you and nobody can tell you otherwise.

24. Self-Publishing Is Not Your Own Personal Flea Market

Just the same, the freedom of self-publishing should not be interpreted as a wide open marketplace where you can just march into Target and start selling your crummy ill-cobbled wares next to brand name items (“I MADE AN ANTLER LAMP YOU SHOULD BUY IT”). Self-publishing is about competing and surpassing, not about confirming everybody’s worst inclinations and ensuring that self-publishing is just another word for “a very public slush pile.” Your book isn’t second-hand goods. Treat it with respect and give it the time and effort it needs no matter what form of publishing you choose to embrace.

25. For Now, Take A Moment, Bask In Your Awesomeness

Hey, fuck all this waffling white noise, forget all this badgering buzz — you just wrote a book. Holy shit. No, wait, let’s do that in all caps: HOLY SHIT. You just took a great big unformed hunk of intellectual rock and carved it into shape, into form, into the very face of story. That’s incredible. The fact you can create a whole new world and brand new people inside it — and you can create them out of, uhhh, ohh, I dunno, NOTHING — is no small ordeal. That’s epic business and you should pat yourself on the back and have a cookie and drop acid and do the Snoopy dance until you pass out. For now: celebrate. Come back to this list later. It’ll be here when you need it.

* * *

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

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 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

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

I’m a total prick when it comes to reading these days. Novels, comics, scripts, anything. Having a writing career and a six-month-old child and a burgeoning heroin er pornography er  Skyrim habit leaves me with less time to read than I’d like — so, when I hunker down over a story, my first (and admittedly worst) inclination is to actively seek reasons to put it down. Seriously. Imagine you came to my door and were selling cookies or Bibles or weird rhino-based aphrodesiacs and you open the door and there I stand with a pistol in your face and I’m all like, “Make your pitch, but say one wrong thing — if you even blink in a way I find disagreeable — then I’m going to shoot your face through your head.”

I went to a Christopher Moore signing way back when and the man said something there that stuck with me, and I’m paraphrasing the exact details but the notion remains true just the same:

If you can get someone to finish the first page, they’ll finish the second. If they finish the second page, they’ll get to page ten. If they get to page ten they’ll get to page 30, if they get to page 30 they’ll get to the halfway point of the book, and so on and so forth. The idea is that with each page of strong writing and good storytelling you’re buying time from the reader on credit. And your credit line increases the further they get and the more completely you grab the reader’s attention.

Lose their attention and they’re going to put that book down. And go do something else, since we are creatures bombarded with entertainment choices, from games to Netflix to sports to coked-up monkey fights in the back alley behind the methadone clinic.

Last week I told you the reasons you’ll keep readers hooked, but now comes the time to look at the reasons you might lose your readers. These are, at least for me, the reasons I’ll close your book and not return.

1. At Best: First Chapter, At Worst: First Page

If I’m feeling gracious, I’ll give you the first chapter to lose me. If I’m in a bad mood, you’ve got one page. Maybe less. In fact, that’s often how I determine what new books I’ll pick up: I’ll read the first couple pages of a Kindle sample or of the book in the store. I’ll know then and there if this is a book I’m going to want to read or want to drop-kick into a barrel fire. A first page or chapter that doesn’t hook me — doesn’t introduce an engaging premise or a fascinating character or fails to wow me with its seductive prose — tells me the rest of the book isn’t going to be much better. Make those first pages count. It’d be like going out on a blind date dressed in your ugliest outfit. “I know. The Spongebob cardigan and my old dirty Cherokee moccassins do not a strong impression make, but if you just get to know me…” BZZT. Wrongo, mutant. I’m not going to take the time to get to know you. Please leave, you smell like sour cabbage.

2. Typos And Errors

Pay attention, self-publishers: if your work is riddled with typos or grammatical errors, you’ve gone and ruined it. Doesn’t matter how inventive your story is if you cannot communicate it using the essential tools a writer is given. You can have the coolest idea for a house in the world but if you hand in blueprints drawn in shaky crayon I’m not going to let you build it for me. Bad craft kills good stories.

3. Introducing: Mister Snoozeworthy And Missus Snorebucket

Ugh. Nothing worse than a character duller than pre-chewed cardboard. Characters without strong motivation? Characters who are passive rather than active (meaning they experience the story rather than drive the story)? Characters who are indistinguishable from one another (or worse, indistinguishable from a room swathed in beige paint)? Blech. Blargh. Fnuh. No. This, by the way, is the danger of the Everyman protagonist: go too generic and “common man experience” and you rob from the character all the things that make him interesting and unique.

4. Prose Limp And Lifeless As Driveway Earthworms

You know when it rains, all those sad earthworms come crawling out and then when the rains pass the asphalt is littered with the lifeless gray water-logged mush of worm carcasses? Yeah, don’t let your prose be that. Don’t let your prose be as interesting as gray worms on gray macadam on a gray day. Bring life to language. Look at the shape it takes on the page. Find variety. Take risks. Most important: be confident. Wishy-washy prose that refuses to assert itself and relies on junk language and passive constructions to convey a story is prose that might choke that very story.

5. Awk! Awk! Awk!

Awkward language: when the quality and clarity of your prose fails to meet the intention of the writer. Put differently, it’s when your writing is clunky, clumsy, and the greatest sin of all, unclear. If I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, I will put a bullet in your book’s brain and bury it out by the marigolds.

6. A Web Spun By A Drunken Spider

Confusing and illogical plots stop me dead. Newsflash: I need to know what’s going on. And what’s going on needs to actually make some fucking sense. I don’t want to feel like I’m machete-chopping my way through your snarled and tangled pubic thatch just to get to the good stuff.

7. All Answers, No Questions

Certain things kill the mystery in a new relationship. It’s why on the first date you don’t leave the bathroom door open and let your potential new mate see you, erm, taking out the biological garbage. “I need to go change into something comfortable. And I also have to poop. Wanna watch?” The mystery is dead. The romance? Stabbed in the face by too much information. “TMI” applies to fiction, too — if I’m reading your book and you’re hellbound to give away all the secrets and answers right from word one, then I’m going to catch the whiff of narrative desperation and end the date early. Don’t let your book show me its poop-squat.

8. Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers

On the other hand, too much mystery spoils the soup. “What’s in this stew?” “I’m not telling.” “It tastes weird. Is this a fingernail?” “Wouldn’t you like to know.” Yes. Yes, actually, I would like to know.” Look at a TV show like Lost, which for the first several seasons introduced a freaky new mystery every episode but failed to address, um, any of the prior mysteries. There comes a point when you as the reader become pretty sure the storyteller is just fucking with you, and while that’s the storyteller’s job, it’s also the storyteller’s job to mask that role. I don’t want to feel like the storyteller is behind me spitting in my hair.

9. My Character Will Now Infodump Into Your Mouth

Expositional dialogue. Where characters explain everything that’s going on, even to those inside the story that don’t need the update. AKA AYKB: “As You Know, Bob.” Heavy exposition is like stealing all the oxygen from the room. You stole all the air for yourself and left the reader none at all. Bonafide story killer.

10. Carpet Doesn’t Match The Curtains

Internal consistency means something for writers. All the parts have to play well together — if you’ve got tone running with scissors and plot running the other way with a bucket on his head, and the dialogue doesn’t match the characters and the theme feels like it’s been hastily staplegunned to the story’s head, readers feel that. They know that the stars are out of alignment. And if they’re like me, they’ll drop your book like it’s a soup can full of cranky bees.

11. The Broken Mirror Effect

I had this problem recently with a draft of a novel: all the plot pieces made sense, they just didn’t work together to carry the overall story forward. No throughline could be felt — each was a sad little boat bobbling independently of all the other boats, no lash nor chain connecting them, each drifting in separate directions. It felt, as my agent put it, episodic: and she’s right. Put differently, a story is best when it’s like a wolf-pack rather than a herd of cats. The wolf pack features separate wolves who move together. The cat-herd has no unity and each cat scatters. Because cats can be real dicks.

12. Rolling In The Same Muddy Wheel Ruts

If I feel like I’ve seen this before — that the story doesn’t even make a go at being original and is just another vampire tween romance or Bourne Identity rip-off or sexy equine cyborg erotica — then I’m done, I’m out, game over, goodbye. Bring something new to the table, even if what’s “new” is in the arrangement.

13. Strangled All The Fun With Dirty Lampcord

Every story needn’t be a laugh riot. It’s not even humor I’m looking for. But if your story fails to have even the tiniest glimmer of fun in it, I must politely eject. Even the darkest and most nihilistic tales need that little starburst of fun or humor — not only to break up the darkness but also to serve as contrast to the darkness. The darkness is meaningless if we don’t have any light for comparison.

14. It’s A Problem-Free Colostomy: Spoon-Up-My-Bottom

(Sung to the tune of, Hakuna Matata.) Just as yeast thrives on sugar and babies thrive on the sleepless frustration of their parents, a story and its readers thrive on conflict. Conflict is essential to a story, and yet it’s far too often I read stories that feel like the conflict has all the sturm und drang of a ball-less scrotum. “John wanted a robot pony and so he went and bought a robot pony” is a story, yes, but it’s a piss-poor one. Conflict is the fuel that drives the narrative engine. If your conflict is tepid and soft, the narrative will be, too. Which means: DELETED.

15. The Tiger Changes Its Stripes

Story pivots and narrative shifts are good. Usually. A story that defies what it’s been all along and becomes something entirely different can work and can be totally rock-awesome: but it can also betray the audience. (The book did well, so this is a clear example of how subjective this stuff is, but a book that did this to me was THE PASSAGE. No spoilers but mid-way through the tale experiences a dramatic shift, so much so it felt like an entirely different and possibly unrelated book. That horse bucked me into the mud.)

16. Death, The Thief Of Conflict

A character dies without meaning or purpose in the story? I’m jarred, jostled, shaken, speechless. And not always in a sexy, erotic asphyxiation kind of way. Listen, if one of the primary reasons I’m digging your story is a particular character and then you rob me of that character without warning or meaning, you might lose me. Yes, random and senseless death can have a purpose, but not easily, and not often. If we are to assume that the character is the vehicle by which the reader travels through the story, then a sudden death of such a character is akin to us wrecking our vehicle. A bad call, Ripley. A bad call.

17. Giant Paragraphs Smashing Into Other Giant Paragraphs

RAAAAR PARAGRAPH SMASH. Your prose is not a boulder to drop on somebody’s head. I’m not saying long paragraphs are by themselves a problem — sometimes, it’s what’s for dinner. But if every page is naught but a neverending series of cement blocks comprising turgid prose, then you haven’t written a novel: you’ve written the literary equivalent to a hot Ambien toddy. (Though with fewer hallucinogenic freak-outs, sadly.) Characters don’t need to speak in lectures. Describing a rocking chair or a cab driver should not take you half-a-chapter. The shape of the prose on the page matters; it should show variety, have erratic and inconsistent shape. Beware massive text blocks. Like boat anchors they drag the story’s momentum.

18. Copypasta

If I feel like your characters are stereotypes — Hooker with a heart of gold! Tortured angsty good-guy vampire! Pantsless author who rants about booze and profanity! — then I’m out. I will wipe my hands of your trite and tepid tale and go, I dunno, drink tequila and curse at the skies. The way you elevate characters out of stereotype is to make them complex and layered. Defy convention!

19. A Hollow Emotional Core

We all need to relate to your story and the characters that populate it. We have various in-roads toward such identification but one key one is the tale’s emotional core. We’re emotional creatures and so it becomes easy to find a common thread — no, I may not understand what it’s like to be a mailman or a secret agent or a sapient moon-tree, but if those characters play off of common emotional hooks (jealousy, rage, triumph, bliss, etc.) then we’re good. The problem is when I can’t find that in a story: some tales are too guarded and refuse to let me in. They’re all action, with everything living on the surface. No, thank you.

20. All The Energy Of An Incontinent Basset Hound

If your story ambles about like an old man out on a Sunday walk (or worse, a Sunday drive), then your story has all the urgency of feeding pigeons. And feeding pigeons is not a particularly urgent activity, unless of course the pigeons are bloodthirsty and what you’re feeding them is bullets. (I’d totally read that.) Stories need to feel urgent: you’re capturing these moments for a reason.

21. Don’t Want To Shack Up With These Characters

Characters don’t need to be likable, but they must be livable — I’m hanging with them for 300 pages (or in a film, two hours) and so they must be someone I want to hang out with. Truly vile characters? Execrable fuckers? Boring dillholes? Characters who do things that completely turn me off? That’s how you lose me. My studio apartment with the clanging pipes and the tricky faucets goes from “charming and quaint” to “I’m packing my bags” soon as it’s infested with roaches. By the way, I don’t really live in a studio apartment. I live in a treehouse. With a goat-faced gentleman named Professor Hoofstomp Q. Whiskerchinny!

22. Busted-Ass Broke-Down POV

Who’s talking? Did we switch characters? Different POV? Did that just jump from first to third? Are we in someone’s head now? Wait, did Betty rescue John, or did John rescue Betty? Keep track of your goddamn POV, people. Like I said before, keeping a reader in the story is like keeping a fish on the line: you go cocking up the point-of-view and you’ll set me free. Giving me plenty of time to go gloomily play with myself.

23. A Pulled Punch Sandwich

I can feel when an author is pulling punches, when the story is the narrative equivalent of lobbing softballs. This isn’t about being edgy or hardcore, I only mean to suggest that I know when the author is treating his plot and his characters — and, by proxy, the audience — gingerly. He’s not taking any risks. No danger in plot, no conflict for the characters, no risk in the prose one writes. Go big or go the fuck home. Every book is in competition with every other book, movie, comic book, porn movie, and breakfast cereal in existence. Put your back and your heart into it, goddamnit. Stop phoning it in.

24. I’m Not Your Audience

Sometimes, the break-up is like a real life break-up: “It’s not you. It’s me.” I’m just not digging your story because it’s not mine to dig. And that’s okay. You can’t please everybody. I mean, I can. Because I have fingers like French ticklers and seven hundred tongues. You, however, are beholden to your mortal form.

25. It’s Just A Bad Book

On the other end, sometimes like a real life break-up it’s all your goddamn fault. Once again this is leveled more squarely at self-publishers, but it’s also (if with reduced frequency) true of some “traditionally” published novels — a bad book is a bad book. What I’m talking about is genuine dog-fuck writing, shit-basket characters, a spastic control of language, a fumbling numb-nutted grasp of grammar and spelling, and an overall muffin-headed window-licking approach to storytelling. Not subjectively bad, mind you, but objectively terrible. If I see a book like this, obviously, clearly, plainly I must escape it’s foul mire and put the book down. In fact, if any of you see a book like this, it should be killed with fire, and the ashes should be shoved in a hermetically-sealed tube and then launched into the heart of a volcano.

Your turn. Do me a favor: get down into the comments and tell the world what reasons you have for putting a book down. What have you encountered that’s stopped your reading enjoyment dead?

* * *

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

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 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

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

I want to be clear: what this should really be titled is, “What Keeps Chuck Reading.” Your mileage may vary, and as such, you should drop down into the comments and tell us: what is it about a book that keeps you reading? I wanna know. All writers everywhere want to know. We hang on your every word. Like spider monkeys from a banana tree.

1. Bait, Set Hook, Reel In The Reader-Fish

Every story’s got a hook. Maybe that hook is an idea or a conceit. Maybe it’s a character. Might be a driving question or a fundamental piece of the plot. Might be all of those things swaddled together and tucked away in a delicious narrative burrito. Whatever it is, it is a thing that grabs the reader by the nipple rings and refuses to let go. The hook alone is never enough to keep a reader reading, but it’s what often puts them on the path — a great hook lives in the first couple pages. Fail to hook ’em and you’ve already given them the excuse to stop reading. And I assure you, every reader unconsciously seeks a reason to ditch your story and move onto the next one. (But that’s a list for next week, innit?)

2. Why Who What Where Wuzza Wooza?

A good story should always be raising questions — not asking them directly, but instead forcing the reader to ask them. “Wait, what’s that weird symbol they keep seeing on the walls? What was that sound? Something’s up with that top hat-wearing fox that keeps following them, too. Where the crap are they going?” This is why too much exposition is a story-squasher: exposition provides answers and answers rob the reader. Answers must come, yes, but only at the right time — and, if the answers come before the end, it helps to raise further questions to replace those we lost. It’s a cruel game the storyteller players, like teasing a kitty-cat with a laser pointer. “Go here! Now here! Now back over here! Ha ha ha ha stupid cat you’re so adorable the way you chase an insubstantial red dot on the floor like it means something. Silly jerk.”

3. The Deeper Ever-Deepening Depths Of Mystery

Building on that last one, you can have small questions peppered throughout a story (and, quite seriously, they do best when they lurk on every page), but you can also keep the attention of readers by introducing a single large mystery — in this way every story is an equation with some numerals replaced with variables, and the audience hungers to fill in the variables and complete the equation. Your best example of this are the questions put forth by murder mysteries: “Ye Gods! Who killed Professor Jingleberry?” Further, the mystery there is rarely as simple as one assumes: the mystery evades answer and as it does so mutates and swells and swallows whole new questions. The mystery must evolve, you see, sure as a beast in the wild must adapt to stay alive. Memetics over genetics. An evolving persistent mystery is another way to set your hooks in the mindflesh of the reader.

4. Characters About Whom We Give Not One, But Many Shits

Give me a great character and I am like Yoda on Luke Skywalker’s back — I will cling to that character even as he does flips over fallen Dagobah logs and Jefi-kicks over R2D2 and quietly relieves his bowels in a murky well of swamp mud. That was in the deleted scenes, by the way. Shut up. What I’m saying is, a great character is one reason (and for me perhaps the best reason) I will keep reading.

5. Damaged Goods And Broken Toys

We stop and lolly-gag at train wrecks, car crashes, and any episode of Jerry Springer where spurned Baby Daddies are chucking chairs into the audience. We love damaged people. We are fascinated by them. Don Draper? Tony Soprano? The Golden Girls? (Okay, never mind that last one.) We are like the one half of a relationship that wants to fix our damaged other half: it’ll never happen, but oh do we persist…

6. Unpredictability!

Let’s say you see a guy over by the salad bar. He’s wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses inside. Hands in pockets. He keeps shifting nervously from foot to foot. He eyes up the door, the employees, the security camera. You’re not going to take your eyes off that guy. Because you don’t know what he’s going to do. Is he going to cram a mouthful of lettuce in his mouth and run for the door? Is he going to pour Thousand Island dressing down his pants? Is he going to scream, “THE BEES, THE BEES” and then fling Baco-Bits in some old lady’s eyes before stabbing her with an olive fork? You can’t take your eyes off the guy because he’s unpredictable. So too with a storyteller and his story: the less a reader trusts the story, the more the reader is inclined to keep his gaze unswerving.

7. And Also, Predictability!

And yet, some measure of predictability will keep us hooked, too. We sometimes read to experience expected outcomes — in the romance genre, the audience remains with the story to see how the couple finally hooks up. The mechanics of the romance remain unpredictable (in theory — the romance genre is often quite rigid), but the aspect of the romantic culmination is entirely known. In certain horror films, we want to see how the victims are going to die, but that they die is not a fact we question. Unpredictability leads into predictability, walking a weird tightrope between the two. And over alligators. Because fuck yeah, alligators. Am I right? I’m totally right.

8. The Shifty-Eyed Serpent-Tongued Narrator

The unreliable narrator is a combination of the aspects of mystery and unpredictability I’m talking about — if I can’t be quite sure what he’s telling me is “true” in the context of the larger narrative, I’m compelled to follow along and try to suss out the truth, to sniff out the lie like it’s a great big game of Balderdash.

9. Of Pebbles And Boots

Psychologically, we humans crave safety and stability — really, we don’t like conflict. Sweeping blanket statement, I know, but I think most folks want to make it through their day without the shit hitting the fan. That’s something you can capitalize on as a storyteller because, of course, good storytellers are dicks. Engineering constant conflict in the story keeps the readers chugging along because they want to get to that point of safety and sanity — they want to make it through the bad stuff and discover an oasis of good (palm fronds, mojitos, Tastykakes). It’s like they’ll do anything to get that pebble out of their boot. Use that! Be a dick! Put a pebble in the reader’s boot and watch how he’ll dance to shake it out.

10. A Larger (And Also Unresolved) Struggle

Just as your book may contain many small questions and one large one, so too can it contain many small conflicts and — say it with me — one large one. Big, sweeping conflict — whether it’s a family falling apart or a galactic struggle between the forces of order and chaos — has a way of pulling us all into it the way a tornado eats barns and cows.

11. Prose Like The Hum Of Angel Wings

If you write in your own voice and the prose sings — meaning, it goes beyond utilitarian language (and I’ve nothing against utilitarian language) — then that is one way you’ll keep me entrenched in your fiction.

12. Hey, Doctor Jones, No Time For Love!

I like a story that moves. A story that has ice skates and a rocket up its poopchute and it has no interest in looking back to see if I’m playing catch-up. A story that moves swiftly doesn’t have to promise to me that things are going to happen because, ta-da, things are already happening. A book like The Hunger Games doesn’t waste much time before getting us into the action — yes, it takes time to get us to the actual games, but the interim is chock-a-block with event and movement and strong motivation. Time is at a premium for most adult human beings. A story that wastes our time is a story that gets wasted.

13. The Snap Crackle Pop Of Strong Dialogue

I also like dialogue that doesn’t waste time: I don’t mean to suggest that dialogue should be quippy and filled with constant “wit,” but it also shouldn’t take up massive real estate on the page. Dialogue that’s sharp and zips along like a coke-addled jackalope is the kind of dialogue that’s so easy to digest you find yourself sliding along the prose fast as a fat guy shooting down a zip-line.

14. The Big Bad

A great antagonist — a true villain, a genuine malefactor — is “conflict” but given a face and a name. If you need proof that a great antagonist will keep people reading, I need only mention: Hannibal Lecter.

15. The Hang-In-There Kitty

Aww. Poor widdle kitty cat dangling from the twee bwanch! Will he fall? Will he manifest the magical gyroscope cats reportedly possess and land on his feet? Will a hawk swoop in and carry him up into the clouds? Tune in next week to find out! Behold, the power of the cliffhanger: one of the great motivations for a reader to tell his loved ones, “Yes, yes, just five more pages. I need to see what happens! No, I know, I know, it’s Grandpa’s funeral, but Jiminy Christmas it’s not like he’s got anywhere to be. LET ME KEEP READING OR IMMA BLUDGEON YOU WITH THIS BOOK.”

16. Tap-Shuffle-Pivot-Shift

A story that becomes something other than it seems — that pivots hard and shows you a whole new face — is a powerful thing, and compelling enough to drag me into its turbulent waters. Fight Club is a great example of this: you think it’s about one thing (the titular club for fighting which nobody talks about) but it keeps zig-zagging and not only exceeding its premise but leaving it behind entirely.

17. Unanswered Arguments

I’ve said in the past that every story is an argument, and that’s useful in terms of gluing a reader’s eyeballs to your story. By putting your argument — really, your theme — on the chopping block, you’re telling me you’re going to prove to me in the narrative that This Thing Is True. You’re saying, “Love is doomed,” or “All people are shit” or “Chickens and cats are assholes,” and then with that thesis in mind you’re going to go about the tale and answer the charge you’ve made. But, like with all aspects of the fiction — mystery, conflict, theme — you don’t want to give away the ghost too soon. Storytellers string the reader along, and so it is with theme: you want them to be sure that somewhere along the way you’re going to botch it.

18. Open Promises

Similar, but different: a writer makes promises and then we keep reading to see if you’re going to fulfill those promises. Remember Bob Ross, the PBS painter? Big Afro? Happy trees, happy clouds? At the fore of the episode he’d tell you, “I’m going to paint a beautiful little meadow here,” and then for 25 of the 30 minutes in the episode, it looks like he’s painting with dog shit. You don’t see one happy fucking tree or cloud in sight. And you think, “He’s going to dick this up. Finally, I’m watching the episode where Bob Ross crashes and burns and cries into his own Afro and whips out a Tec-9 Skorpion and shoots up the studio.” But then in the last five minutes he whips that painting into shape and suddenly: the prophecy is proven true, nary a happy shrub or stone out of place. Stories can promise things — think about heist stories, for example — that the audience will hunger to see fulfilled.

19. The Push-And-Pull Of Tension And Release

Rising tension and releasing it over and over again is like fishing — you let the fish swim with the bait, then you yank on the rod (okay, no, not that kind of rod-yanking, settle down), and then you let the fish go again, and steadily you amp up the tension until you reel in whatever it is you’ve caught. If you’re like me, it’s probably a boot. Filled with electric eels. Stupid fishing. Point is, that ebb-and-flow of suspense is a prime mover to keep readers a-readin’.

20. Fun, Fun, Fun Till Daddy Takes The Typewriter Away

I like a little fun in my reading. Doesn’t need to be a laugh-a-minute cackle-riot, and fun doesn’t even need to be outright humorous. But a little bit of fun here and there keeps reader-peepers open.

21. That Sweet Sense Of Urgency

I want to feel like the very act of me reading the story matters — like, if I don’t read further, I’m somehow holding the whole thing up. I like a story with urgency, with a ticking clock and a chain of consequence and causality. I like a story that forces me to do the pee-pee dance as I can’t put the book down for 30 seconds to go and relieve myself on the houseplants. I want that feeling that the story is the boulder and I’m Indiana Jones. This kind of urgency lives in plot and character: a television show like 24 certainly has that kind of urgency (and the aforementioned cliffhangers) down pat.

22. Confidence

A confident author with clear vision and purposeful language will keep me reading. It’s the author’s way of grabbing me by the throat and dragging me up the stairs with her. Put the “author” in “authority.”

23. The Author On The Page

I’m fascinated by auteur theory, where the author lives on the pages of all his work: I like to catch glimpses of James Joyce or even Stephen King, and that’s one reason I’ll keep reading. When I know that the author is writing from a place of honesty and personal purpose, I’m compelled to keep digging deeper into the creator’s psyche. Like a trail of clues into the cave that is the writer’s mind.

24. Readers See Their Story In Your Story

The reverse is true, too — all readers are looking for a piece of themselves in the work. They want the work to be a mirror wherein they catch glimpses of their own stories. This may seem solipsistic or Narcissistic but look at it this way: the author writes to explain his world and the reader reads for the same purpose. We don’t want to see our stories reflected back because we’re like preening peacocks: we want answers. We want truth that relates to us, that speaks directly to who we are and what we want and all the things that block us from our path.

25. That Magical Blend That Adds Up To, “It’s Just A Damn Good Story, Thanks”

Sometimes, I don’t know what keeps me reading. I just don’t. It’s some magical combination, some bizarre narrative alchemy, all of which persists beyond the known scope of human thought. It’s got all the things that the reader thinks equates to a good story: great characters, sensible plot, a story with depth, cracking dialogue, spaceships, dragon-boats, steampunk llamas, puppies, kittens, scenes of bondage and discipline, vampire mummies, botanical tips, hummus recipes, cheerleaders, and whatever else it is that adds up to a compelling read. Because that’s the goal, of course: to compel readers. To hypnotize them into staying with the book. You’ve got to pay them back for the time they’re giving you, and the way you do that is — well, by giving good story, that’s how. The best story you can write. Because at the end of the day, that’s what keeps them reading: you giving the story (and by proxy, the reader) all you’ve got to give.

* * *

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

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 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

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

It doesn’t matter what kind of story you’re writing — doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a script, a game, whatever, you’re better off learning how to implement suspense and tension into your work. It’s been on my brain lately, and so it seems a good time for another straight-up “List of 25.” Read. Digest. Comment. And above all else, go forth and write like a motherfucker.

1. True Of Every Story

We assume suspense and tension are reserved for those stories that showcase such emotions. “This is a suspense-thriller about the mad ursinologist who runs around town leaving being enraged bears and the beautiful scientist lady who seeks to undo his sinister plans.” Bzzt. Wrongo. Every story must offer suspense and tension. Will Harry get together with Sally? Will the Millennium Falcon escape the gauntlet of TIE fighters? Will Ross and Rachel finally consummate their love and give birth to the Satanic hell-child that the prophets foretold? Suspense and tension drive our narrative need to consume stories.

2. Predicated On Giving A Shit

A small disclaimer: suspense and tension only work if the story offers something for the audience to care about. If the audience neither likes nor cares to discover the truth about La Bufadora, the Assassin Baby of Madrid, then any suspense or tension you build around this infantile killer will flop against the forest floor like a deer with its insides vacuumed out its cornchute. VOOMP. Just a gutted pelt. Never ignore the Give-A-Fuck factor. And stop fucking with deer and their deer buttholes. Weirdo.

3. Ratchet And Release

Constant tension can be trouble for a story: a story where pain and fear and conflict are piled endlessly atop one another may wear down the audience. Creating suspense works by contrast: you must relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Pressure builds, then you vent the steam. Then it builds again, and again you vent. This is pacing: the constant tightness and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict. Think of Jenga: you remove a peace and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release.

4. Harder, Harder, Haaaaarderrr, Ngggghh

In winding tension tighter, escalation is everything. How could it not be? Tension is about hands closing around one’s neck: the grip must grow tighter for the fear to be there. If the grip relaxes, then the tension is lost. A roller coaster doesn’t blow the big loopty-loop on the first hill. Rather, you see it in the distant. You know it’s coming. Each hill, bigger and meaner and faster than the last. The final hill is the culmination, the climax, a roller coaster loop where you crash through plate glass windows and have jars filled with bees pitched at your head. Mounting danger. Rising fear. The hits keep coming. The Jenga tower teeters…

5. The Bear Under The Table

It’s the Hitchcockian “bomb under the table” example — you create shock by having a bomb randomly go off, but you create suspense and tension by revealing the bomb and letting the audience see what’s coming. The first day of a new school year creates tension not because it’s random (SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER IT’S 4TH GRADE) but because you know all summer long that shit is coming. Also, for the record, I think we should revise the “bomb under the table” example to a “bear under the table” example. Bombs are so overdone. But two characters sitting there with a Kodiak bear slumbering secretly at their feet? Oh, snap! Sweet tension, I seek your ursine embrace!

6. Danger A Known Quantity: The Power of Dramatic Irony

This, by the way, is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is best friend and old frat buddy to Herr Doktor Suspenseuntension. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Suspense is created whether or not the characters are aware of the problem, but if the audience is the only one in on the secret, that may go a long way toward heightening tension.

7. The Question Mark-Shaped Hole In All Of Our Dark Hearts

That’s not to say every quantity must be known: the most refined tension grows out of a balance between known and unknown elements. Yes, the boy knows that the first day of 4th grade is coming, but inherent to that are a number of unanswered questions: did his bully and elementary nemesis Brutus “Smeggy” Smegbottom get held back? What will his new teacher be like? Who will he sit next to? Will Peggy Spoonblossom finally accept his Valentine’s Day card? (Smegbottom? Spoonblossom? The fuck is wrong with me?) The first day of school is a known quantity, but what will happen on that day is not.

8. Always Tell Han Solo The Odds

Han Solo says, “Never tell me the odds.” But we need to know the odds. It’s another component of the transparency sometimes needed to create tension: we must know when the stakes are high and the odds of success are totally astronomically fucked.

9. Save The Date!

Let’s say you’re a total dickhead parent to the aforementioned soon-to-be fourth grader. If you wanted to foment tension in that child, all summer long you’d occasionally remind him: “Hey, summer’s fading fast, kiddo. School’s on its way!” Every once in a while you’d lay on him a little something extra: “Hey, I heard Brutus Smegbottom got a new pair of brass knuckles.” Or, “I think I saw Peggy Spoonblossom down at the mall eating a froyo with her new boyfriend.” You’d needle him. Remind him of his tension. That’s what the storyteller does because the storyteller is a total fucking asshole. The storyteller must occasionally — not constantly, but just enough to keep it hovering, to keep it orbiting — remind the audience that, hey, don’t you fuckers forget that something wicked this way comes.

10. Character You Love Does Something You Hate

An easy way to create tension: when a character the audience loves does something the audience hates. It’s the whole, “Oh, I’m going to go investigate the creepy noise rather than flee from it and load my shotgun and call all the cops.” John McClane jumps off the building’s edge! Harry ruins his relationship with Sally! They mysteriously elect Jar-Jar Binks to the Galactic Senate! It’s a moment when the audience winces. One’s butthole tightens up so hard it could pulverize a walnut. You say, “Oooh. That was a bad call. This is not going to end well.” That septic feeling in one’s gut — the anticipation of worse things to come — is the splendor of effective suspense.

11. Character You Hate Does Something You Hate

Of course, it’s also effective to have a character the audience hates do something bad, too — that, then, is the power of a killer antagonist, nemesis, and villain. That sense of OH GRR GOD SO MAD RIGHT NOW is a powerful one. Tug on that puppet string whenever you need to for maximum storyteller cruelty!

12. Physical Tension Is The Shallowest Of Tension

A threat against one’s life and limb is totally workable — a character in physical danger is a good way to create fast tension. But sometimes you want to go deeper. You want to stab your sharpened toothbrush shiv into the heart and the brain. Emotional tension is the most palpable and troubling to the reader (and that’s a good thing): fear of damaged love and intimate betrayals and irreversible emotional wounds creates a more vibrant and spectacular tension in the audience. It’s cruel, yes. But as noted, it is not the storyteller’s job to be kind. The storyteller should not be a safe haven. She is not to be trusted.

13. The Pain Sandwich

For maximum evil, ensure that the tension is multi-layered. The protagonist’s wife being in danger represents both physical (she might die) and emotional (he might lose her) tension. Apply with the mayonnaise of escalation and the bread-and-butter pickles of dramatic irony for one dastardly sandwich.

14. Personal Suspense Above Global Suspense

Sure. The world’s gonna end. That’s tough. Mos def. I feel it in here. *thumps heart with fist* Except, really, I don’t give that much of a fiddly fuck. I never do. The global threat is never ever (and once more for good measure: ever) as interesting as the personal threat. Yes, all the world is going to die but if that happens so too shall the protagonist’s daughter die. Boom. Personal. Connection. Meaning. Suspense and tension are best when personal in addition to (and ultimately above) the global or cosmic.

15. The Tongues Of Tension, The Speech Of Suspense

How you write matters in terms of creating suspense and tension. If you’re trying for a tension that is fast, frenetic, a tension born of collapsed moments and microscopic beats, then you wouldn’t use big ponderous paragraphs to tell that tale. Just the same, you wouldn’t hope to convey that slow creeping sour-gut dread with short sharp truncated sentences. As with all things, language matters. The architecture of your language means something — are you building a Gothic cathedral, a one-room studio apartment, or the Winchester Mansion?

16. Drug Dealers And Cliffhangers

The storyteller is a drug dealer dealing out pain and pleasure in equal measure — a hard slap to the face and then a free taste of balm and salve to soothe the sting. Once they’re hooked, you keep them hooked with cliffhangers. Not all the time, no, but whenever they might start to pull away, you surge within the audience that sense of suspense by leaving them dangling from the edge of the cliff. “My favorite character is in danger! Who just walked into the room? Is that a Kodiak bear under the table?” Mm-hmm. It is. Come on back and keep reading and keep watching. Daddy Bird will feed you, little baby.

17. Flaws And Foibles And Frailties And Other Awesome F-Words

Character flaws. Use ’em. Excellent tension creators. Knowing that a character has a drug habit or a propensity to break hearts lets us know that at any point they might fall off the wagon and lash out with the whip of their most intimate frailties, sending ruination far and wide. But we must know that the flaw is on the table, or at least have it hinted at — this does not work in a vacuum. You know what else doesn’t work in a vacuum? A vacuum. True story!

18. Agitation And Discomfort

Comfort is the enemy of tension. You want characters and readers alike to remain in a state of agitation and discomfort. Even during times where the tension is relaxing rather than ratcheting up you still want to create a sense of dread and foreboding, using language, circumstance and situation to deepen discomfort.

19. Failure Most Certainly Is An Option

The audience needs to know that things can go wrong. If they become trained by you as a storyteller that you’ll save everything and everyone at the last minute, the storyteller will no longer suspect you of being an untrustworthy malefactor. You are not the reader’s buddy. Failure must be on the table. You must be willing to let things go all pear-shaped once in a while. Tension without fear is a defanged and declawed tiger dressed as a banana. Harmless and deserving mockery over fear.

20. Speak Of Ke$ha And Ke$ha Shall Appear

Sorry. Tic-Toc joke. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. (And shut up, I actually like that song.) (I SAID SHUT UP.) Never be afraid to use a ticking clock to instill tension and suspense. Character’s only got one week to save the little girl? One day to get the random? One hour to defuse the bomb? Works in any type of story — “The girl of my dreams is about to board a plane in 30 minutes! Can I make it to the airport on time to profess my life and tell her that I got her cat pregnant? Uhh? What? Nothing! I didn’t say anything about a cat being pregnant! Let’s go back to talking about Ke$ha.”

21. Deny Your Audience The Satisfaction As Long As You Can

Storytelling is Tantric. You withhold the audience’s orgasm as long as you can. The audience wants to know that everything’s going to work out, that it’s going to be all right. They want answers. Comfort. Solace. Don’t give it to them. Not until late (if ever). The longer you can hold out on ’em, the deeper the tension digs into the meat and marrow.

22. Look To Your Life For Suspense

Seriously, that example of the first day or school? Or a new job? Or that feeling you get when you speed past a cop car? Or when your mother goes sniffing around your closet and almost finds the leather-clad gimp you keep in there? That’s suspense. Harness those feelings from your own life. Find out what makes them tick. Replicate in your fiction. And seriously: gimps are so 199os. Get a hobo butler like the rest of us.

23. The Fear-Maker’s Promise

Suspense and tension are about fear. Plain and simple. Not just fear in the characters, but fear — actual honest-to-Jeebus fear — in the audience. Find a way to invoke fear and dread and you’ve won.

24. Suspense Keeps Them Reading

This’ll be a future list — 25 Things That Keep Them Reading — but for now, be content to know that effective implementation of suspense and tension will keep them coming back and turning pages.

25. Suspense Keeps You Writing

Thing is, it’s also what keeps you going. Creating powerful suspense takes you along on a journey, too — the writer is not immune to his own magic, or shouldn’t be, at least. If you feel like you’re not engaged or that your own sense of suspense and dread just isn’t in play, then you might need to look at what the problem is. Just as readers need a reason to keep reading, writers need a reason to keep on writing. And you, as writer, are the Proto-Reader, the first line of defense. If the tension is as limp as a dead man’s no-no stick, you’ll feel it. And that means it’s high-time to find a dose of high-test narrative Viagra to tighten everything up.

* * *

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