Tag: writing (page 18 of 33)

Stuff About Writing

September 27, 2011 / 80 Comments

Writers Must Kill Self-Doubt Before Self-Doubt Kills Them

It’s insidious, this thing called doubt.

You’re sitting there, chugging along, doing your little penmonkey dance with the squiggly shapes and silly stories and then, before you know it, a shadow falls over your shoulder. You turn around.

But it’s too late. There’s doubt. A gaunt and sallow thing. It’s starved itself. It’s all howling mouths and empty eyes. The only sustenance it receives is from a novelty beer hat placed upon its fragile eggshell head — except, instead of holding beer, the hat holds the blood-milked hearts of other writers, writers who have fallen to self-doubt’s enervating wails, writers who fell torpid, sung to sleep by sickening lullabies.

Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.

You’re not good enough.

You’ll never make it, you know.

Everyone’s disappointed in you.

Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.

You really thought you could do it, didn’t you? Silly, silly penmonkey.

And you crumple like an empty Chinese food container beneath a crushing tank tread.

Self-doubt is the enemy of the writer. It is one of many: laziness, fear, ego, porn, Doritos. But it is most certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, in the writer’s rogue gallery of nemeses.

You let self-doubt get a hold of you, it’ll kill your work dead. You’ll stop in the middle of a project, then print the manuscript out for the sole purpose of urinating on its pages before glumly eating them.

You mustn’t be seduced by the callous whispers of the doubting monster at your back. To survive as a writer you must wheel on the beast, your sharpened pen at hand. Then you must spear him to the earth.

Here, then, are some revelations that will help the everyday inkslinger slay the dread creature.

We’re All Part Of The Self-Hatred Quilt

Everybody suffers under the yoke of self-doubt. Everybody. Creatives especially. You really think that Neil Gaiman doesn’t find the gnomes of doubt nattering at his back? Or Stephen King? Or Steven Spielberg? Or Snooki? Self-doubt has the singular power to make you feel very alone indeed, as if you’re the only sad motherfucker in the universe feeling like he’s not worth a damn. It’s bullshit. A ruse.

Admiral Ackbar knows what it is: that shit’s a trap.

You’re not alone. We all get it. The difference is that some writers pull their boots out of the hungry mire and others sink deeper and deeper until they’re caught in an inescapable nest of old Druid bones.

You Get Multiple Go-Rounds On This Carousel

Writers are afforded a gift few others have: the wondertastic, majestariffic, splendiferous do-over.

Self-doubt is handily eradicated when you give yourself permission to write badly. I mean, okay, this isn’t a permanent permission slip: it’s just a day-trip to the Shit Museum, a hall-pass to the Turd Closet, but you have to let yourself karate chop doubt in the neck and step over his twitching body as you step boldly into the breach to write some occasionally awful awfulness.

Because you are also afforded the chance to go back. And fix it. And rewrite it. And fix it some more.

It’s like the writer gets one giant infinite roll of duct tape.

Dude, Seriously, You’re Not Curing Cancer Over Here

Put differently, you’re not exactly saving lives. You’re not pulling children out of burning buildings or shooting Osama bin Laden or curing a global pandemic. You’re a writer. Self-doubt for those other guys is life-threatening. They fuck up, people die. You fuck up, the the ink on your manuscript bleeds from your blubbering tears and you put on a couple pounds from wolfing down three boxes of strawberry Pop-Tarts. (*chew chew chew* ARE YOU THERE GOD ITS ME DIABETES)

Doubt evaporates when you realize that what you’re doing isn’t some epic quest. I’m not saying storytelling isn’t important. It is. Real important. But lives don’t hang in the balance.

Calm down. Take the pressure off.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Put down the Pop-Tarts.

Failure Is The Snake That Bites His Own Tail (And His Tail Tastes Like Shit)

There’s that whole Yoda saying: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to George Lucas endlessly tinkering with Star Wars where he makes Luke step in a squishy pile of Wampa waste, inserts a series of Darth Vader dance scenes, and ensures that the Tauntaun shoots first.”

I have my own version of that, which says:

“Self-doubt leads to failure, and failure in turns leads to self-doubt, and the two tango together, punching you in the butthole again and again until you can no longer defecate productively.”

That’s the horrible thing about self-doubt: it convinces us that our own failure is inevitable, an unavoidable recourse based on our own screaming lack of talent. But failure isn’t inevitable, and in fact failure is created by a fear of failure and by our certain uncertainty we possess about our own ability to succeed. Writers engineer their own failure with such grace and elegance it’s almost impressive.

Remember: failure is not a foregone conclusion.

Piss in the face of that sentiment.

Time And Practice Are Two Of Doubt’s Mightiest Foes

Sometimes self-doubt comes from a real place, a revelation that you’re just not ready. The problem isn’t this revelation but rather how writers react to it. The reaction is: OMG NOT GOOD ENOUGH MUST EJECT OR DIE. What a terribly unproductive reaction. Or, more accurately, over-reaction.

Can you imagine if that was our response to all the things in life? “I tried to bake my first cake and it turned out gluey and unpleasant, so I set fire to my kitchen and walked away as it exploded behind me.”

You can’t do that. That’s insane. You’re not going to be perfect right out of the gate. Time and practice will improve your mojo, and an improved sense of one’s mojo will go a long way toward mitigating doubt.

I mean, this doesn’t happen overnight. “I practiced for a week. WHERE IS MY CONFIDENCE COOKIE?” is not a useful question to ask. We’re talking years upon years of this: but the good news is, it’s not like a switch gets flipped. This is gradual: over time, the light of your increased abilities beats back the shadows of your own doubt. Time and practice are the medicine that heal the anal fistula of your raging insecurity.

I went too far with “anal fistula,” didn’t I?

Clear Your Head Of All Those Boggy Tampons

Sometimes you just need a short term solution. Take a walk. Have some tea. Read a book. Talk to a friend. Go jerk off. Eat a cookie. Run on the elliptical. Pet a dog. Go to the park. Give a sandwich to a homeless guy.

Get perspective. Sometimes doubt is just a tangle of vines and cobwebs and you need to chop through them and go to clear your head. Easy Peasy, George and Weezy.

Turn That Frown Upside Down Until It’s A Curved Blade With Which To Cut Doubt’s Throat, Then Watch That Doubting Asshole Bleed Out On Your Carpets

Turn self-doubt against itself. Don’t let it be a weapon against you: let it be a weapon against itself. Self-doubt can occasionally be clarifying: it might be a red flag that says, “Okay, you know what? Something just ain’t right. Is this the best character arc? Do I need to rejigger these scenes? Am I sure that a rock opera about Anton van Leeuwnhoek, the Father of Microbiology, is really the best move here?”

The key is to let doubt be clarifying rather than muddying. It’s important to know that the doubt isn’t yours to carry. It’s not about you. You needn’t doubt your own abilities but rather some aspect of your current work that feels like it’s not coming together. Here your self-doubt serves as the standard-bearer for those instincts rising up from your gutty-works. Follow your heart.

Thus, self-doubt helps you improve, which in turn helps you defeat self-doubt.

That’s some ninja shit. That’s like, reversing the energy of the attack. You are a goddamn self-doubt killing machine. You take self-doubt and evaginate that sumbitch.

And yes, “evaginate” means to “turn something inside out.” To turn it tubular.

In other words, to turn it into a vagina.

Be honest: it’s shit like this that keeps you coming back to terribleminds.

Validation Comes From Within

In the end, here may be the most important factor: don’t go looking for validation elsewhere. Don’t look for it from friends, loved ones, publishers, editors, agents, mailmen, or cats.

External validation isn’t a bad thing. It just isn’t what you need. Because it matters little that they believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. Confidence must blossom from within, a corpse-flower redolent with your delightful stink, a stink you find captivating, enlightening, empowering. The confidence you find elsewhere is hollow, a ladder made of brittle twigs. At the end of the day you’ll never be sure if those around you are just wrong — or maybe they’re lying! — or maybe they’re suffering under the depredations of some wretched brain parasite that tricks them into liking mediocre things! — and that just means you’re opening yourself to other forms of doubt.

And doubt needs to go suck a pipe. Doubt needs to take a dirt-nap.

And the way you do that is by finding your own way. By fostering your own confidence.

Because just as doubt is one of the writer’s greatest enemies…

…confidence is one of the writer’s most powerful friends.

Your turn, word-nerds.

How do you defeat the doubt within?

* * *

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

September 26, 2011 / 65 Comments

25 Things Writers Should Know About Theme

1. Every Story Is An Argument

Every story’s trying to say something. It’s trying to beam an idea, a message, into the minds of the readers. In this way, every story is an argument. It’s the writer making a case. It’s the writer saying, “All of life is suffering.” Or, “Man will be undone by his prideful reach.” Or “Love blows.” Or, “If you dance with the Devil Wombat, you get cornholed by the Devil Wombat.” This argument is the story’s theme.

2. The Elements Of Story Support That Argument

If the theme, then, is the writer’s thesis statement, then all elements of the story — character, plot, word choice, scene development, inclusion of the Devil Wombat — go toward proving that thesis.

3. Unearthed Or Engineered

The theme needn’t be something the writer is explicitly aware of — it may be an unconscious argument, a message that has crept into the work like a virus capable of overwriting narrative DNA, like a freaky dwarven stalker hiding in your panty drawers and getting his greasy Norseman stink all over your undergarments. A writer can engineer the theme — building it into the work. Or a writer can unearth it — discovering its tendrils after the work is written.

4. Theme: A Lens That Levels The Laser

Knowing your theme can give your story focus. If you know the theme before you write, it helps you make your argument. If you discover the theme before a rewrite, it helps you go back through and filter the story, discovering which elements speak to your argument and which elements are either vestigial (your story’s stubby, grubby tail) or which elements go against your core argument (“so far, nobody is getting cornholed by the Devil Wombat”).

5. Do I Really Need This Happy Horseshit?

Yes and no. Yes, your story needs a theme. It’s what elevates that motherfucker to something beyond forgettable entertainment. You can be assured, for instance, that 90% of movies starring Dolph Lundgren have no theme present. A story with a theme is a story with a point. No, you don’t always need to identify the theme. Sometimes a story will leap out of your head with a theme cradled to its bosom (along with the shattered pottery remains of your skull) regardless of whether or not you intended it. Of course, identifying the theme at some point in your storytelling will ensure that it exists and that your story isn’t just a hollow scarecrow bereft of his stuffing. Awww. Sad scarecrow. Crying corn syrup tears.

6. Slippery Business

I make it sound easy. Like you can just state a theme or find it tucked away in your story like a mint on a pillow. It isn’t. Theme is slippery, uncertain. It’s like a lubed-up sex gimp: every time you think you get your hands around him the greasy latex-enveloped sonofabitch is out of the cage and free from your grip and running into traffic where he’s trying desperately to unzipper his mouth and scream for help. Be advised: theme is tricky. Chameleonic. Which isn’t a word. But it should be. It jolly well fucking should be.

7. For Instance: You Can Get It Wrong

You might think going in, “What I’m trying to say with this story is that man’s inhumanity to man is what keeps civilization going.” But then you get done the story and you’re like, “Oh, shit. I wasn’t saying that at all, was I? I was saying that man’s inhumanity to cake is what keeps civilization going.” And then you’re like, “Fuck yeah, cake.” And you eat some cake.

8. Mmm, Speaking Of Cake

In cake, every piece is a microcosm of the whole. A slice contains frosting, cake, filling. Okay, that’s not entirely true — sometimes you get a piece of cake where you get something other pieces don’t get, like a fondant rose, but really, let’s be honest, fondant tastes like sugary butthole. Nasty stuff. So, let’s disregard that and go back to the original notion: all pieces of cake contain the essence of that cake. So it is with your story: all pieces of the story contain the essence of that story, and the essence of that story is the theme. The theme is cake, frosting, filling. In every slice you cut. Man, now I really want a piece of cake.

9. Grand Unification Theory

Another way to look at theme: it unifies story and bridges disparate elements. In this way theme is like The Force. Or like fiber. Or like bondage at an orgy. It ties the whole thing together. Different characters, tangled plotlines, curious notions: all of them come together with the magic motherfucking superglue of theme.

10. Put Down That Baseball Bat, Pick Up That Phial Of Poison

Theme can do a story harm. It isn’t a bludgeoning device. A story is more than just a conveyance for your message: the message is just one component of your story. Overwrought themes become belligerent within the text, like a guy yelling in your ear, smacking you between the shoulder blades with his Bible. Theme is a drop of poison: subtle, unseen, but carried in the bloodstream to the heart and brain just the same. Repeat after me, penmonkeys: Your story is not a sermon.

11. No Good If Nobody Knows It

The poison is only valuable if the victim feels the effects. Your big dick or magical vagina only matter if people can see ’em, touch ’em, play with ’em, erect heretical idols to their glory (mine is cast in lapis lazuli and a nice sharp cheddar cheese). So it is with theme: a theme so subtle it’s imperceptible does your story zero good. It’d be like having a character that just never shows up.

12. Triangulating Theme

Ask three questions to zero in on your theme: “What is this story about?” “Why do I want to tell this story?” “Why will anyone care?” Three answers. Three beams of light. Illuminating dark spaces. Revealing theme.

13. As Much An Obsession As A Decision

The auteur theory suggests that, throughout an author’s body of work one can find consistent themes — and, studying a number of authors, you’ll find this to be true. (Look no further than James Joyce in this respect, where he courts themes exploring the everyday heroism of the common man competing against the paralysis of the same.) In this way theme is sometimes an obsession, the author compelled to explore certain aspects and arguments without ever really meaning to — theme then needn’t be decided upon, nor must it be constrained to a single narrative. Theme is bigger, bolder, madder than all that. Sometimes theme is who we really are as writers.

14. Theme Is Not Motif

I’ll sometimes read that theme can be expressed as a single word. “Love.” “Death.” “Plastics.” Let me offer my own one word to that: bullshit. Those are motifs. Elements and symbols that show up again and again in the story. Motif is not synonymous with theme. “Death” is not a theme. “Man can learn from death” is a theme. “Life is stupid because we all die” is a theme. “Sex and death are uncomfortable neighbors” is a theme. Death is just a word. An inconclusive and unassertive word. Theme says something, goddamnit.

15. Mmm, Speaking Of Cake, I Mean, Motif

That said, motif can be a carrier for theme: theme is the disease and motif is the little outbreak monkey spreading it. If your theme’s making a statement about death, then symbols of death would not be unexpected. Or maybe you’d use symbols of time or decay. I mean, it has to make sense, of course. A theme about what man can learn from death is not well-embodied by, say, a series of microwave ovens.

16. Theme Is Also Not A Logline

A logline is plot-based. It depicts a sequence of events in brief, almost vignetted, form. Plot embodies breadth. Theme embodies depth. Theme is about story, and story is the weirder, hairier brother to “plot.”

17. Piranhasaur Versus Mechatarantula

In English class, I was often told that theme could best be described as X versus Y. Man versus Nature. Man Versus Man. Man Versus Woman. Fat Guy Versus Hammock. Of course, English class was frequently fucking stupid. Once more I’m forced to call bullshit. Theme isn’t just you, the writer, identifying a struggle. That’s not enough. Theme picks a goddamn side. Theme asserts predictive outcome. It says, “In this struggle, nature always gets the best of man.” It predicts, “That hammock is going to fuck that fat guy up, for realsies.” Theme does more than merely showcase conflict. Theme puts its money on the table.

18. Take That Question Mark And Shove It Up Your Boothole

So too it is that theme is never a question. “How far will man go for love?” is a question, not a theme. Theme isn’t a big blank spot. Theme is the fucking answer, right or wrong, good or bad.

19. It Is The Question, However, That Drives Us

Plot can carry theme by asking the question — like the aforementioned, “How far will man go for love?” — but then it’s theme’s job to stick the landing and, by the end of the story, answer the question posed. Theme comes back around and demonstrates, “This is how far man will go for love.” It shows if man will go into the whale’s mouth and out the whale’s keister, or it shows it man has limitations, or if man’s love can be defeated by other elements (greed, lust, fear, microwave ovens, wombats).

20. Of Turtleheads And Passing Comets

Theme might end up like Halley’s Comet — once or twice in a story, it emerges from hiding and shows itself. The blood test reveals it and The Thing springs forth from flesh. In this way, it’s okay if the theme is plainly stated (often by a character) once or twice in the story. Forrest Gump tells us that life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. (And the film is like a box of chocolates, too — all the shitty ones filled with suntan lotion and zit cream.) The opening line to Reservoir Dogs could be argued to give away the whole point to the movie: it is, after all, a metaphor for big dicks.

21. Do Your Due Diligence

Read books. Watch movies. Play games. Find the theme in each. This isn’t like math. You may not find one pure answer to the equation. But it’s a valuable exercise just the same. It’ll teach you that theme works.

22. Your Audience Might Not Give A Shit (But That’s Okay)

Theme may not be something the audience sees or even cares about. Further, the audience may find stuff in your work you never intended. Like that old joke goes, the reader sees the blue curtains as some expression of grief, futility and the author’s repressed bestiality but, in reality, the author just meant, “The curtains are fuckin’ blue.” It’s all good. This is the squirmy slippery nature of story. That’s the many-headed hydra of art.

23. Not Just For Literary Noses Held High In The Air

Just the same, theme isn’t a jungle gym found on a playground meant only for literary snobs. Theme speaks to common experience and thus is for the common reader and the common writer. Theme isn’t better than you and you’re not better than theme. Like in Close Encounters, this is you mounding your mashed potatoes into an unexpected shape. “This means something.” Fuck yeah, it does. That’s a beautiful thing.

24. A Weapon In Your Word Warrior Arsenal

How important is theme at the end of the day? It’s one more weapon in your cabinet, one more tool in your box. It is neither the most nor the least most important device in there — you determine its value. My only advice is, it helps to get floor-time with every weapon just so you know how best to slay every opponent. Play with theme. Learn its power. I mean, why the hell not?

25. For Fuck’s Sake, Say Something

You want theme distilled down? You want it reduced like a tasty sauce? Theme is you saying something with your fiction. Why wouldn’t you want to say something? Big or small, simple or complex, as profound as you care to make it, fiction has the power to do more than just be a recitation of plot events. Your work becomes your own — fingerprinted in blood — when you capitalize on the power of storytelling to speak your heart and soul. Take a stand. Put your big dick and magic vagina on the line (figuratively speaking) and let theme be a bold pronouncement of confidence, a message encoded in the DNA of an already-great story.

* * *

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

September 21, 2011 / 33 Comments

“Get A Real Job”

As you may know, REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY is on sale (a mere $2.99) — it’s been selling well and I’m up over 200 copies, which is just fine by me. The book features an autobiographical open which talks about my life and all the crazy shit that adds up to the writer’s existence — van crashes and strap-on-dildoes and lessons in profanity with my father and my father’s death and all that. It aims to be equal parts funny, sad, and enlightening all in one fell swoop. Anyway, I thought it might be best to give a taste of that intro (which is around a 10,000 word piece) as I think it’s one of the things that plagues most writers — this persistence that they should get a “real” job. I assume many artists and creative-types go through it. Regardless, here then, is a snippet of text from ROTPM. Please to enjoy, and please remember that procuring any of my e-books is what helps this blog stay in existence. And it’s what keeps me drunk and eating cheeseburgers on my office floor.

* * *

Writers will hear this a lot: “You need a real job.”

As if writing is a job on par with “unicorn tamer,” or “goblin wrestler on the Narnia circuit.”

Even still, you hear it often enough, you start to believe it. I got kinda beaten down after college. I’d written two crap-tastic novels. I’d been hired for a bunch of bullshit writing work that was as pleasant as a dildo violation or a van crash. I was starting a lot of work that I just wasn’t finishing.

I felt like I had tires spinning in greasy mud. Couldn’t get traction. Spraying shit everywhere. The dream of being a writer was fading—a wraith in the fog I could not grab and could barely see.

My father was one of the voices in the “real job” chorus. He got me a “real job” at the plant where he worked. Want to know what that job was? I stood in an abandoned wing of a dirty factory all day attending to a giant 20-foot-tall pyramid of file boxes. I would pull down a file box. I would take the thick-as-my-thumb files from within. Then I would run the whole file through a giant industrial shredder I named:

THE BITCH.

The Bitch chewed through these files like she was a wood chipper in a former life. GGRRNNNGH. GRRRAAWWW. VBBBBBBBNNNGGGGT.

All day long. Eight hours. That noise. Destroying documents that may or may not have been documents people did not want the EPA to see.

After one day of doing this work, I came home filthy and smelling like weird chemicals.

I knew I had to quit. But quitting meant telling the boss. And the boss was my father.

Desperate, I drove around that night, looking for something, anything, literally hoping that a job would magically fall into my lap. And lo and behold, it did.

I found a discount bookstore setting up shop about 10 minutes from my house. They were just opening and needed workers to unload and shelve books. Books. Books. Fuck, I thought, I love books!

I went in that night. Met the manager, old Greek guy from Philly named Pete.

He said he liked me. Hired me there on the spot.

He hired me as the assistant manager.

Now, here’s the thing. The bookstore was only going to be there for summer and fall and then close up shop. It was always meant to be a temporary thing, but fuck it, a job was a job.

And it was the best job I have ever had.

It’s not just that I was surrounded by books. I’ve worked other bookstore jobs and they bounced between “ehh” and “fuck this noise.” But this job was different.

This job had Pete.

Pete was, like I said, Old Greek. Built like a sagging brick wall, head like a melting lump of Play-Dough, Pete was not what you would think of as a reader. But he did read, and he read a lot: lot of crime, lot of thrillers. (Lisa Scottoline, I recall, was one of his favorites.)

This was not Pete’s first bookstore rodeo. In fact, this one was rather cushy because a lot of the discount bookstores he opened were in the city—often in shitty parts of the city. He in fact was once shot while setting up just such a bookstore, taking a bullet as the place was robbed—prematurely, as it turns out, because they didn’t have any cash on hand yet. Pete he was proud enough to lift his shirt in the store and show off the pair of bullet wounds on the front and back of his egregious trunk (the entry and exit wounds, respectively).

He took a bullet for books.

Because, he said, books matter. And he liked his job. Worth the bullet. Proud of it.

Fuck yeah.

It started to get me riled up about writing books again. Here’s a guy who took a bullet for books. Here’s a guy who was not dismissive of me being a writer but was in fact excited by it. To top it all off, every once in a while if Pete and I were on shift together he’d tell me to go around the store, pile up a single box with books I wanted, and then quietly go out to my car and ease it into my trunk. “I’m the manager,” he said. “You’re the assistant manager. It’s fine.” He let me essentially steal boxes of books from the store. Just wander away with them and take them home. Like so many lost puppies.

That summer I read a epic fuck-ton of books. It was glorious.

But Pete, man. Giving me all those books. All that storytelling energy, and there I was at its nexus. I bought all the Gaiman Sandman run. I read lots of obscure horror. I bought scads of weird reference materials, all of which I still own and still use (Dictionary of Phrase and Fable? Lawd’s yes). Pete took a bullet for books.

Because stories matter.

Holy shit.

Suddenly, I started writing again.

It was good to emerge from that low place. Once again another lesson lurks in the weeds: writers will often have these moments of doubt, and you need to find your way out of that. You need to march your doubt out into a field and put a .357 round in the back of its head. Let its death soak into the earth, grow the wheat, make bread from its blood. Because, for real, fuck doubt. Fuck doubt right in its wax-clogged ear.

September 20, 2011 / 39 Comments

25 Virtues Writers Should Possess

1. A Wild And Unfettered Imagination

This one goes up front: the bubbling turbid stew that comprises your brain-mind combo must possess an endless array of unexpected ideas. Your head should be an antenna receiving frequencies from the furthest-flung reaches of Known Creative Space. You want to survive, you’ve got to have an imagination that won’t lay down and die. That fucker’s like a North Korean 9-year-old: up all night, smoking cigarettes, working his fingers to the bone. He never cries. He only works to make the pretty baubles.

2. Discipline

Given that we’re creative types prone to art-o-leptic fits of imagination, if we’re given no leash we’ll just wander off into the woods to create our masterpiece. Where we are promptly eaten by bears. Imagination is the fuel, but it’s a fickle and volatile fuel. It needs a channel. It needs a furnace. It needs discipline. Discipline to wake up, to weld your shit-can to the chair, to squeeze out word-babies, to do the work.

3. Optimism

The only way you’re going to stay on target is if you believe this thing you want to do can actually happen. It can. It really can. But like with elves and Jesus, you gotta believe. Otherwise, the magic dies.

4. Realism

By the same token, realistic expectations are the order of the day. You think you’re going to walk out the door with a script and the mailman is going to buy the rights-in-perpetuity for a million bucks, you’re off your meds. A good reality check now and again keeps your optimism from messing your pants with endless squirts of premature wheejaculations.

5. Pessimism

Here’s where you say, “Wait, wuzza? Wooza? I’m supposed to be an optimist… and a realist… and a pessimist, too?” Yes. Yes! Yes. Writers without a healthy dose of pessimism will find themselves bent over an end table with a bad publishing contract rolled up and shoved deep into their colonic grotto. A little dollop of distrust in humanity will serve you well. I’m not saying to be selfish. But do protect yourself.

6. Sticktoitiveness

I’ve always said that no matter the flavor of your writing career, it’s basically you putting a bucket on your head and running full force into a brick wall. Again and again. And in the end it’s either you or the wall. Any success is going to be in part due to dangerous levels of persistence and stubbornness.

7. Honesty

Writers are liars who use those lies to tell truths. Let that boil your noodle.

8. Confidence

Put your work out there and find pride and power in what you do. Be assertive in your language, sure-footed in your prose. Why would anyone want to read anything if it has all the backbone of a cup of sun-warmed pudding? Go forth. Kick ass wearing oiled leather boots made from the rent pages of your own super-fantastic manuscript, a manuscript written on the flesh of your adversaries. It doesn’t need to be ego-fed to be confident. Though I’d rather read the work of an ego-bloated megalomaniacal Narcissist than a weak-in-the-knees ehhh-mehhh-pbbbt insecure writer-whelp. Insecurity is no pleasure to read.

9. Thick Skin

Your body shall be a road atlas of misery by the time you’re ten years into a writing career. The slings and arrows of rejections. The bullets and flying glass of editorial notes. I’m still picking metaphorical gravel out of my elbows and knees. Want to survive in this gig? Your skin better be tough as a Brooklyn phone book.

10. Humor

If you can’t laugh in this business, you’ll cry. And then you’ll evacuate fluids from all orifices. Then you’ll be kicked in the South Crotchal Region by an itinerant donkey before dying. Humor’s also good to put in your work. People like a laugh now and again. It can’t all be turbulence and pathos and frowny faces.

11. Responsibility

You will have deadlines. Someone might ask you to turn in a synopsis. Or an outline. Or an edit. Do these things. Do as they ask. Do them on time and according to parameter. Your readers, too, will want things. They will want your attention. They will ask that you provide them with quality. Give them what they ask (within reason). Know your responsibility. Fulfill that responsibility. Do not be a stinky dickwipe.

12. Appreciation

A wee touch of humility and appreciation will go a long away. Appreciate your audience. Appreciate that you can do this thing that you do without getting your hands cut off by an oppressive fundamentalist government. Appreciate the words your forebears have flung into the firmament. Appreciate the work, the opportunity, the general aura of overall pantslessness. Because seriously, pants are for jerkholes.

13. Coffee

Fuck you, coffee IS TOO a virtue. Do not deny me this. Do not dare!

14. Business Sense

Writers have all the business sense of a gin-drunk wildebeest. But it pays to know something about something when it comes to business. Know enough not to get fucked. Know enough not to fuck yourself.

15. A Critical Eye

You can’t be all wide-eyed and dopey-smiled. Your gaze must be razor-honed. Your mouth ever in an uncertain sneer. To know how to write well you know how to write poorly, which means you have to identify poor writing in yourself and in others. It’s no longer your pleasure to be entertained; it is your job to be suspicious, dubious, and ever-critical. Turn your brain off? Not likely. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage. Rage. Against the dying of quality plots, compelling characters, and magical stories.

16. A Willingness To Do Evil

Okay, settle down, sermonizers. I don’t mean in real life. But your job is one of mighty evil. Evil splashed across the page in great heaving buckets of torment and blood. You’re not a nice monkey. Not to the fictional people that gambol and preen upon your manuscript pages. It’s your job to fuck those people over and up. Your evil shall know no bounds. Your cruelty is the engine of conflict. Yes. Yessss.

17. Patience

In the time it takes for the light from a supernova star 10,000 light years away to reach our eyes here on earth, you still might not have a project pass through all the proper channels and put a paycheck in your hand. This industry often moves slower than a legless caterpillar rolling up a rocky knoll. Be ready for that. Exercise patience. Find other acts of wordsmithy to fill those gaps. Breathe in. Breathe out.

18. Tact

You’re going to deal with publishers, writers, readers, fans, and it isn’t all going to be newborn puppies and pina coladas. Tact goes a long, long way. This is shorthand for, “Don’t be a fuckweasel.”

19. Discomfort

Discomfort is good. Discomfort is that stinging nettle at the cusp of your butthole telling you that sometimes you need to get up out of that chair, kick down the walls of that box you’re in, try something new. Discomfort drives you forward. A little taste of dissatisfaction makes you crave bigger and better. Comfort is nice. But comfort is overrated. Flee that zone now and again. Truth lurks in conflict.

20. Courage

Have the courage to go forth and do not what everybody else is doing but what you want to do. Have the courage to put yourself out there. To give a big neon middle finger to those who will inevitably disrespect and misunderstand your choice to be a storyteller. Invoking your craft and creating art (in a perfect world) is an act of bravery. Of putting all your sensitive bits on the cutting board.

21. Liquor

GODDAMNIT IT IS TOO A VIRTUE. I will break this vodka bottle over your head if you try to take this away from me. Or if you try to take my vodka away from me. Daddy needs his potato juice.

22. Tranquility

Sometimes you need that Zen place. Find the blank chalkboard, the tabula rasa, the motherfucking no-mind. Mow the lawn. Listen to the rain. Thousand-yard stare. The story sometimes lives in this place.

23. Loyalty

A good writer finds his loyalty to be a raft on which he can float in even the most turbulent storm-tossed seas. A raft with a beer cooler. And a snack machine filled with bacon. You’ve got to be loyal to your own work: no taking another manuscript out for a little rumpy-pumpy behind the shed when you’re supposed to be working on another. And be loyal to your own ideas, too. Stick to them. Stand by them. Finally, other writers. We’re a tribe of individuals but a tribe just the same, and that means this whole thing we do is made of people. Loyalty matters to them, to you, to the whole lot of us farking moonbats.

24. Ten Pounds Of Crazy In A Five Pound Bucket

Speaking of farking moonbats: we’re moonbats because we need to be moonbats. I mean, really. To want to do this thing? To want to have this life? You gotta be a little bit — and by “little bit” I mean “project a massive crackling force field of” — crazy. Crazy is defense. Crazy is enlightenment. Crazy is the act of doing differently. For the record, I don’t mean “crazy” to be, “please go masturbate at the salad bar” or “to stop the voices you will first have to kill every third member of British Parliament.” I mean crazy as in, to have that electric vibe pushing you to put the words on the page and to create stories unbidden from the empty ether.

25. Love

The most important thing. You gotta love what you do. It’s the only way you’ll make it through. This is not a safe nor sane journey. It’s not a career choice for most normals. It’s also not a road that offers a whole lot of initial reward: you step into the breach on the whiff of a promise, on the potential for success, and so it is that the only prize you’ll find early on is the love and passion and satisfaction for what you do. Without all that, what’s the fucking point? You don’t love it, then being a writer is no different than pushing a broom or making a corporate nest surrounded by four fuzzy gray cubicle walls. And by the way, why are cubicle walls fuzzy? Are they draped in the pelt of some dull, listless monster? Some bleak hell-cow wandering the world’s uncharted swamps? Whatever. Fuck it. The point is: love this thing you do and you’ll have all the reward you need. Except vodka. Because despite my many letters to Congress that shit still costs money.

* * *

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

September 14, 2011 / 168 Comments

25 Ways To Plot, Plan and Prep Your Story

I’m a panster at heart, plotter by necessity — and I always advocate learning how to plot and plan because inevitably someone on the business side of things is going to poke you with a pointy stick and say, “I want this.” Thus you will demonstrate your talent. Even so, in choosing to plot on your own, you aren’t limited to a single path. And so it is that we take a look at the myriad plotting techniques (“plotniques?”) you might use as Storyteller Extraordinaire to get the motherfucking job done. Let us begin.

The Basic Vanilla Tried-And-True Outline

The basic and essential outline. Numbers, Roman numerals, letters. Items in order. Separated out by section if need be (say, Act I, Act II, Act III). Easy-peazy Lyme-diseasey.

The Reverse Outline

Start at the end, instead. Write it down. “Sir Pimdrip Chicory of Bath slays the dragon-badger, but not before the dragon-badger bites the head off Chicory’s one true love, Lady Miss Wermathette Kildare of the Manchester Kildares.” Rewind the clock. Reverse the gears. Find out how you build to that.

Tentpole Moments

A story in your head may require certain keystone events to be part of the plot. “Betty-Sue must get sucked into the time portal outside Schenectady, because that’s why her ex-boyfriend Booboo begins to build a time machine in earnest which will accidentally unravel space-and-time.” You might have five, maybe ten of these. Write them down. These are the elements that, were they not included, the plot would fall down (like a tent without its poles). The narrative space between the tentpoles is uncharted territory.

Beginning, Middle, End

Write three paragraphs, each detailing the rough three acts found in every story: the inciting incident and outcome of the beginning (Act I), the escalation and conflict in the middle (Act II), the climactic culmination of events and the ease-down denoument of the end (Act III). You can, if you want, choose the elemental changes-in-state you might find at the end of each act, too — the pivot point on which the story shifts. This document probably isn’t more than a page’s worth of wordsmithy. Simple and elegant.

A Series Of Sequences

The saying goes that an average screenplay usually offers up eight or nine sequences (a sequence being a series of scenes that add together to form common narrative purpose, like, say, the Attack On The Death Star sequence from Star Wars or the Kevin James Makes Love To All The Animals In Order To Make The Audience Feel Shame sequence from Paul Blart, Zoo Abortion). So, chart the sequences that will go into your screenplay. If you’re writing prose, I don’t know how many sequences a novel should have — more than a film, probably (or alternately, each sequence is granted a greater conglomeration of scenes).

Chapter-By-Chapter

For novel writers, you can chart your story by its chapters. A standard outline is more about dictating plot and story without marrying oneself to narrative structure. This, however, puts the ring on that finger and locks it down tight. A chapter-by-chapter outline is visualizing the reader’s way through the novel.

Beat Sheet

This one’s for you real granular-types, the ones who want to count each grain of sand on your story’s beach (or, for a more terribleminds-esque metaphor, “count each pube on your story’s scrotum”). Chart each beat of the story in every scene. This is you writing the entire story’s plot out, but you’re writing it without much dialogue or narrative flair. It’s you laying out all the pieces. The order-of-operations made plain.

Mind-Maps

Happy blocks and bubbles connected to winding bendy spokes connected to a central topical hub. Behold: example. You can use a mind-map to chart… well, anything your mind so desires. It is, after all, a map of said mind. Sequence of events? Character arcs? Exploration of theme? Story-world ideas? Family trees? The crazy hats worn by your villains? Catchphrases? Your inchoate rage and shame made manifest? Your call.

Zero Draft

AKA, “The Vomit Draft.” Puke up the story. Just yarf it up — bleaaarrghsputter. A big ol’ Technicolor yawn. You aren’t aiming for structure. Aren’t aiming for art or even craft. This is just you getting everything onto the page so that it’s out there and can now be cleaned up. You’ve puked up the story, now it’s time to form it into little idols and totems — the heretic statuaries of your story.

In The Document, As You Go

AKA, “The Bring Your Flashlight” technique. You outline only as you go. Write a scene or chapter. Roughly sketch the next. Then write it. Onward and upward until you’ve got a proper story.

Write A Script

For those of you writing scripts, this sounds absurd. “He wants me to outline my script by writing a script? Has this guy been licking colorful toads?” Sorry, screenwriters — this one ain’t for you. Novelists, however, will find use in writing a script to get them through the plotting. Scripts are lean and mean: description, dialogue, description, dialogue. It’ll get you through the story fast — then you translate into prose.

Dialogue Pass

Let the characters talk, and nothing else. Put those squirrely fuckers in a room, lock the door, and let the story unfold. It won’t stay that way, of course. You’ll need to add… well, all the meat to the bones. But it’s a good way to put the characters forward and find their voice and discover their stories. Remember: dialogue reads fast and so it tends to write fast, too. Dialogue is like Astroglide: it lubricates the tale.

Character Arcs

Characters often have arcs — they start at A, go to B, end at C (with added steps if you’re feeling particularly saucy). Commander Jim Nipplesplitter, Jr. starts at “gruff and loyal soldier boy in the war against the Ant People” (A) and heads to “is crippled and betrayed by his country, left to die in the distant hills of the Ant Planet” (B) and ends up at “falls in love with a young Ant Squaw and he must fight to protect his ant-man larvae” (C). A character arc can track plotty bits, emotional shifts, outfit changes, whatever.

Synopsis First

You might think to write your query letter, treatment or synopsis last. Bzzt. Wrong move, donkeyface. Write it up front. It’s not etched in stone, but it’ll give you a good idea of how to stay on target with this story.

Index Cards

Index cards are a kick-ass organization tool. You can use them to do anything — list characters, track scenes, list chapters, identify emotional shifts, make little Origami throwing stars that will give your neighbors wicked-ass paper-cuts. Lay them on a table or pin ’em to a corkboard. Might I recommend John August’s “10 Hints For Index Cards?” I might, rabbit. I might. See also: the Index Card app for iOS.

Whiteboard

A whiteboard represents a great thinking space. Notes, mind-maps, character sketches, drawings of weird alien penises. Get some different color pens, chart your story in whatever way feels most appropriate.

The Crazy Person’s Notebook

Once in a while a story of mine demands a hyper-psycho notebook experience. My handwriting is messier than a garbage disposal choked with hair, but even still, sometimes I just like to put pen to paper and scribble. And I sometimes print stuff out, chop it up, and tape it into the notebook. (Example!)

Collage

You’re like, “What’s next? A shoebox diorama of the Lincoln assassination?” That’s a different blog post. Seriously, on my YA-cornpunk novel POPCORN, I took a whole corkboard and covered it in images and quotes that were relevant to the work. Then I’d just wander over there from time to time, stare at it, get my head around the story I’m telling and the feel of the world the story portrays. Surprisingly helpful.

Spreadsheets

Stare too long into the grid of a spreadsheet and you will feel your soul entangled there — a dolphin caught in a tuna net. Even still, you may find a spreadsheet very helpful. Track plots and beats to your heart’s delight. Seen JK Rowling’s spreadsheet for Harry Potter? High-res version right here.

Story Bible

Everything and anything goes into the story bible. Worldbuilding. Character descriptions. The “rules” of the story. Plot. Theme. Mood. An IKEA furniture manual. (Goddamn Allen wrenches.) The BIOSHOCK story bible was reputedly a 400+ page beast, which means that yes, your story bible may be bigger than your actual novel. The key is not to let this — or any planning technique — become an exercise in procrastination. You plan. Then you do. That’s the only way this works.

The Power Of Templates

Film and TV scripts already follow a fairly rigorous template, but you can go further afield. Look to Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT beats. Or Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. Go weirder with the Proppian morphology of fairy tales. You may think it non-imaginative but the power of art and story lives easily within such borders as it does outside of them.

Stream Of Consciousness Story Babble

Slap on a diving bell and jump deep into the waters of the stream of consciousness. Order, you see, is sometimes born first from chaos, wriggling free from a uterus made from fractal swirls and Kamikaze squirrels. Open yourself to All The Frequencies: get into your word processor or find a blank notebook page and just scribble wantonly without regard to sense or quality. You may find your story lives in the noise and madness and that on that snowy screen you will find structure. Like a Magic Eye painting that reveals the image of a dolphin riding a motorbike and shooting Japanese whalers with twin chattering Uzis.

Visual Storyboards

Sometimes the words only come when given the bolstered boost of a visual hook. Sketch it out yourself. Get an artist friend. Find images from the Internet. Ingest some kind of dew-slick jungle mushroom and paint your story on the wall in an array of bodily fluids. Sometimes you really need to visualize the story.

The Test Drive

Take your characters, storyworld and ideas, and run them through a totally separate story. Let’s call it apocryphal, or “non-canonical.” It’s not a story you intend to keep. Not a story you want to publish. You’re just taking your story elements through their paces. Run them around a test drive. “This is where Detective Shirtless McGoggins solves the murder of the goblin seamstress.” Sure, your Detective lives in the real world, a world not populated by goblins. Fuck it, it’s just an exercise. A test run to find his voice and yours.

Pants The Shit Out Of It

All this plotting and scheming just isn’t working for you, so go ahead and pants the hell out of it. (Me? I don’t wear pants. Pants are the first tool of your oppressors.) Sometimes trying to wrestle your story into even the biggest box is just an exercise in frustration, so do what works for you and what doesn’t. Once again, however, I’ll exhort you to at least learn the skill of outlining — because eventually, someone’s going to ask for a demonstration of your ability.

* * *

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

September 13, 2011 / 94 Comments

Twenty-Sided Troubadours: Why Writers Should Play Roleplaying Games

Time to speak out with my geek out.

Writer-types, here’s your homework: go forth and play a roleplaying game.

No, no, put down that Xbox controller.

Here. Take these.

*hands you a pile of glittery multi-colored polyhedral dice*

They’re not pills. Don’t swallow them. They’re dice. You’ll choke. Stop that. Take them out of your mouth. Here, you’re also going to need some other stuff, too: a pencil, a character sheet, maybe some index cards, a bag of Cheetos, a 64 oz “Thirst Aborter” full of Mountain Dew, a 6-pack of beer, a pizza coupon, a can of spray deodorant, and a big overflowing bucket of your caffeine-churned imagination.

Playing a pen-and-paper table-top RPG is not going to make you a better writer.

It goes deeper than that.

It’s going to make you a better storyteller. And here’s how.

The Essential Ingredient: Characters In Conflict

Given the geeky composition of my audience, I assume that you grok the core experience of the average tabletop roleplaying game: a game-master orchestrates adventures for a group of players, all of whom control imaginary characters whose skills and abilities are laid out on a character sheet. A player says, “I want my character to see if he can use his Wombat Magic to steal the pocketwatch heart of the Toymaker’s Daughter,” and then he rolls dice in accordance with the rules to see if his Wombat Magic is a spell that can survive its own casting. Simple enough, yeah?

That’s really not the truth of the story, though. That’s just the nature of the rules.

The truth of the story — its essential element, its elemental essence — is that of characters put in conflict. And you see laid bare the nature of all our stories, right there: character-driven conflict. Even more awesome is what happens when you let the players just fuck around at the game-table without even trying to steer them. Eventually, they’ll start creating conflict. Tavern fights, dead cops, stolen items. While this may not always be true to the character it is true to the story: conflict must fill the vacuum and that conflict must be driven by the characters present in the narrative.

What’s more interesting to the players at the table is when their characters are at the center of the conflict. Not conflict driven externally by the world, but characters who are knee-deep in the thick shit.

This is their world, and their problems matter.

The Labor Contractions Of Birthing Good Story

Pacing is a really hard trick for storytellers. It’s ultimately too simple to say that escalation is the only order of pacing, because it’s not — you can’t just drop a cinder block on the accelerator pedal and let the story take off like a rocket. Eventually the engine burns out. The audience grows weary. Constant action is naught but the electric cacophony of a single guitar chord blasted over and over again.

This becomes abundantly clear at the game table. You know you have to ease off the gas from time to time. Let the players breathe a little. Let the characters talk to one another. Even the tried-and-true “our characters walk into a tavern” schtick reveals this, to some degree: they don’t kick open the door and start throwing punches. A tavern fight starts simple. Drinks. Laughs. A goblin says some shit. A paladin encourages restraint. A warrior gets all up in the goblin’s business. Someone throws a bottle. And then — explode. Spells and swords and shotguns and goblin venom.

And then you have the come down. The denouement as the fight ends. Wounds licked.

Session to session you can see the pace change, too — one session might be heavy on action, another session heavy on politics. Or introspection. Or melodrama.

You not only start to see exactly how important it is to keep the pace staggered but also how important it is to let this narrative chameleon show all his colors. A story is not one thing and it does not take off like a horse with a rattlesnake shoved up his ass — sometimes that horse needs to stop, drink some water, slow down the pace unless that old nag fancies dropping dead in the dust.

Writer’s Block Does Not Live At The Game Table

You can’t get writer’s block at the game table. Not as a game master, not as a player. You can’t be all like, “Yeah, I’m just not feeling my character’s actions today, let’s try again tomorrow.” It’s shit or get off the pot time, Vampire Cleric from Minneapolis. You gotta do something. Anything. Stab! Throw a Molotov! Hide under a car! Manifest your Vampire Cleric batwings and take flight above the city!

Same thing goes for writing. Shit or get off the pot. Do something. Throw a narrative grenade. If anything will remind you of this, it’s the act of rolling the bones with a couple-few like-minded gamer-types.

The Audience Is Waiting And Their Knives Are Sharp

They’re listening. And watching. And waiting.

Them. They. The audience. The other players.

This is a group activity. This isn’t something you do in isolation. You don’t sit over there in the corner fiddling with your dice and surreptitiously rubbing the crotch of your khaki shorts. You’re in the thick of it. Your words — whether as a player or, more importantly, as the game master — are the central focus. You can tell when you’ve hooked them, and can tell when you’re losing them. You shuck and jive and duck and weave and do any kind of narrative chicanery to keep the momentum going, to ensure that the table doesn’t spiral off into restless side-conversations (“Do you think an Alchemical Exalted would be able to beat Jesus, if Jesus were wearing like, Mecha Armor given to him by the Three Wise Men?”). You’re on stage. They’re on the hook. It is, as David Mamet writes, fuck or walk.

Your story is the story of the moment, and it reminds you just how important it is to keep the audience in mind — not just your intent as storyteller but their interests, their needs, their attention.

It also reinforces the cardinal rule:

Never be boring.

Because if you’re boring, they’re going to start talking about Dr. Who.

Unintended Emotional Resonance (Or, “I Like To Move It, Move It”)

Every once in a while, you’ll have a moment during a game session where it’s like, “Oh, holy shit. These other people are actually worked up over this story. I’ve inadvertently affected them.”

They’ll get mad at a villain. Pissed at one another for botching a plan. Sad at the death of a character. They’ll hoot and gibber, victorious over the death of the Necro-Accountant who’s been making their lives hell session after session. Their emotions worn plainly upon their faces, the masks worn away.

And then it hits you: this is part of your arsenal of storytelling weapons. To make people give a shit. Enough so that their heads aren’t in this alone; their hearts hop in the car, too, riding shotgun until the story’s told.

You learn how to do it there so you can do it on the page.

At The Table As On The Page: Anything Is Possible

You sit down at the game table and you start to realize: whatever I say is made manifest. Okay, sure, sure, maybe your skill check doesn’t let you automatically drive the car up the ramp formed by the crushed school buses and straight into the Kraken’s unblinking eye — but by god, you have a shot. And as a game master, this is multiplied infinitely upon itself, this god-like power to create realities from words in whatever direction you choose.

No constraints. Speak the word, and let it be so.

That, my friends, is the power of fiction. It’s the power of books, comics, film, and — duh — games. But it’s not just the obvious non-revelation that what you say at the game table is made into a fictional reality. It’s also the notion that you can say whatever you want. You aren’t contained by comfortable boxes of genre. You aren’t stopped by expectations and tropes. In fact, you’re often rewarded by jumping right just when everybody thinks you’re going to jump left. You begin to realize that the enemy to good fiction is doing the same thing over and over again. The enemy is fear, where you’re afraid of sitting there in front of an audience and telling the story as it lives and breathes. You don’t have to worry about the story as it lays dying in a cage shacked by rules of genre, trope, template or format. You have it all right there in your hand — a few dice in your palm, maybe a pencil, nothing more — all the elements of creation laid bare.

It’s an awesome — in the truest definition of that word — feeling.

One that will serve you well when you bring it to the written page.

Writer-Gamer Hybrid Types, Chime In

I know a good number of you came here originally from some of my game work or are yourselves gamers still — moreover, I know that the Venn Diagram of GAMER and WRITER has some big crossover in this audience. So add your two cents. Why should writers and storytellers play tabletop games? I know you have reasons I haven’t even considered. Spit ’em out like broken teeth!

(Oh, and again I’ll mention: if you haven’t checked out SPEAK OUT WITH YOUR GEEK OUT, well, get on it, won’t you? Go forth. Speak your geek. Own your nerdery.)