Tag: writing (page 6 of 33)

1. Give Yourself The Gift Of Time

Creativity does not live in a cave inside your head. That shit’s gotta come out and play. It has to splash in rain puddles. It has to climb trees. It has to build a ground-to-air star-exploding laser out of Duplo blocks and a repurposed iPhone. You need to give yourself the time every day to do the thing that you want to do. Our days and nights get crowded as life bloats and swells to fill the spaces, so you have to — have to — push all that aside with a barbaric yawp and give yourself the time to be creative.This is both in the day-to-day and in the “scope of your entire life” sense — in the day to day, you need time with your creativity. And in the long term, your creativity needs that time to get bigger, get weirder, get more awesome. Plants need water. Alpacas need food. Creativity needs time. We’re all dying. Fuck stagnation. High-five creation.

2. Work Shit Jobs…

You will survive by working shit jobs. That’s the nature of the beast. You don’t start out a fruitful creative person sitting on a throne made of fat stacks of greenbacks earned from your artistic endeavors. Unlikely to happen. You’re going to push a broom, sling some coffee, type eye-blistering numbers into a mind-numbing, soul-melting spreadsheet. This is how you eat in the beginning. This is how you pay rent.

3. …But Always Keep Your Eye On The Prize

That shit job is also how you get the motivation to think, You know, I don’t want to be doing this when I’m 50, and so I’d better learn how my creativity starts earning out. It’s a necessary part of the equation. Always look forward. Always have that end game, that exit strategy. Know where you’ve hidden the seat ejector button. Work a shit job long enough, it’ll start to feel like second nature. It starts wearing the mask of a career instead of a temporary pit-stop where you do something shitty so as not to die hungry in your parents’ basement. You’ve gotta keep your eye of the tiger on… well, on the tiger, probably? Because the other tiger will eat you? So you have to be the bigger tiger? I don’t know. Shut up.

4. Make Your “Oh-Face” And Reach Project Climax

Creativity demands creation and creation is more than just a few blobs of clay smacked together into something resembling half-a-dick. (Or, for the ladies, a partial vagina.) You gotta go whole-dick. You gotta go full-vagina. Creation means completing that which you begin. Even if you don’t finish it as strongly as you hoped, completing a project has untold, unexpected rewards — both in terms of massaging the prostate of your soul and in terms of offering real concrete benefits (for instance, you will not make any money off an unfinished project). Start small. Easier in the beginning to bring smaller entities to fruition. But don’t stay small. Always go bigger. Always change the game. And always finish.

5. Pay Even One Bill With Creative Work

The true revelation of your creative career is paying even a single bill with the money earned from an artistic endeavor. Buy yourself a cup of coffee. A meal. A cell phone bill. Holy shit, a mortgage. That’s when it all starts to feel real. That’s when it feels like more than just a couple of ghosts fucking each other way up in the clouds, out of sight. Make it tangible, even in a tiny way. It’ll give you a bonafide Mind Boner.

6. A Little For You, A Little For Them

Not all creative work is a Fred Astaire dance routine with an umbrella. It isn’t all smiles and satisfaction. It can feel just as heart-destroying as that spreadsheet (and creative work can still involve spreadsheets). Here’s how you get through it: first, recognize that it’s better than cleaning up some kid’s puke at Wal-Mart, or waiting tables at Applebee’s, or harvesting centaur ovaries for your evil pharmaceutical masters. Second, for every one project you do for someone else, give yourself one. One just for you.

7. Understand The Nature Of Satisfaction

It’s critical to have a realistic picture of creative happiness, because an unrealistic one will skin you like an eel. Know this: every day is not a child-like romp through a twilit park with sparklers and giggles and a puppy running at your feet. Some days are you, punching yourself in the face. Some days are the equivalent of hot crotch-coffee. Some days are the opposite of an epiphany — they’re like giant creative nadirs, where everything runs downhill into the diseased mouth of a mangy raccoon. But the overall scope of one’s creative life should be one of satisfaction. If you can see yourself doing something other than the creative thing you’re doing: hey, fuck it, do that instead. Life ain’t getting longer, hoss.

8. Enjoy The Process And The Product

You hear once in awhile that some artists love the finished product but hate the process. Or love the process but hate the finished product. To which I say, fuck that right in its briny blowhole. To really survive — and, ideally, to thrive — it pays to enjoy both. Again, that doesn’t mean every day and every creation is an A++ jizzplosion of delight. It just means that both should overall be rewarding in some way.

9. Embrace Healthy Emotions

Learn to work through all the emotions. Some days you’ll be sad. Some days you’ll be so frustrated you want to headbutt a hole in the universe and let it all drain out. Some days are lazy, others are muddy. Headachey! Bemusement! Amusement! Giddiness! You can’t rely on feeling good to work. You have to learn to work under all the emotional conditions your body and mind and soul provide. (Note: this applies to healthy emotions. Sometimes creative people are beholden to unhealthy emotions. You need to deal with those on your own terms. Otherwise, your artistic faucet won’t offer anything but a quivering, syphilitic drip.)

10. The Many-Headed Hydra Of Creative Possibility

Explore multiple creative outlets. Your mind isn’t just one muscle — even the tongue appreciates many tastes upon its bumpy surface. Creativity doesn’t just want to make words, or paint canvases, or perform interpretive dances about the slash-fic love affair between Alf from Melmac and Worf from ST:TNG (oh, Alf-Worfers, your romantic due diligence never fails to impress). Creativity has many heads. Do other things. Cook. Write poetry. Take photos. Give yourself a paint enema and squat over a giant canvas.

11. But Pick A Goddamn Direction, Already

Exploring other creative outlets doesn’t mean you can do all of those at the same time. Organs and orifices tend to possess one primary purpose — we can’t eat with our assholes and ejaculate from our earholes (and thank the Dark Lord we don’t, because, ew). You can’t walk north, south, east, west all at the same. Pick a direction — a path — and walk. Words. Images. Songs. Whatever. That’s not to say you can’t change it up.  You can walk north for a while. Then east. You can train your asshole to chew bubblegum if you’re so inclined. (At least, I can. What, you can’t?) Creative people can become scatter-brained and distracted, like an upended box of crack-addicted cats. So choose a fucking direction, mmkay?

12. Behold Other Creative Meatbags

Creative people who spend no time at all with other creative people will start to feel profoundly alone. Connect with like-minded weirdos. Online. In-person. You are not a sad friendless little tugboat.

13. Ensure A Robust Support System

We can surround ourselves with people who support us, or people who vacuum out our hopes and dreams through our bungholes. Friends and family should not want to see you fail. Ah, but here’s a trick about a robust support system — it doesn’t mean you need endless, unqualified support. You need some realistic voices in there, too — people who don’t just encourage you to sit in your gestational creative omphalos without consequence or ramification but rather, people who want you to get off your ass, who want you to set realistic goals, who want to help you achieve something instead of spinning your tires in a delusional rut. We all need cheerleaders. But we also need coaches.

14. ABL

Always. Be. Learning. Our creativity is beholden to technical skills, talents, and crafts. There comes a point when you have to actually know what you’re doing. Writing isn’t just smashing words together. You have to understand how they work in the same way a plumber needs to know how pipes fit together. Painters have to know how to use their paints, their brushes. Photographers have to know what an F-Stop is, and how best to capture the golden sunset light off a naked, oil-slick buttock. You always have more to learn. Improve yourself in a training montage. Up your game. Cultivate new pseudopods of ultimate power.

15. Test Your Limits, Take Those Risks

Man, that sounds like part of the chorus of a bad 80s song from a bad 80s movie. (Probably featuring the aforementioned training montage.) Whatever. Point is, sometimes upping your game isn’t just about increasing technical aptitude. It’s about throwing caution into a woodchipper and taking some risks. It’s about writing something everyone says is unpublishable, about building something that defies logic, about pushing your talents into places you never thought they could go. Set challenges that are the artistic equivalent of climbing Kilimanjaro, or taming the Mighty Humbaba, or forcing Karl Rove and Lady Gaga to breed and then turning their resultant hell-child into a crisp and refreshing soft drink.

16. A Room Of One’s Own

You need a place to work. A desk. A studio. A place to dance. A porta-potty (aka “honey bucket”) where you quietly masturbate. Maybe it won’t be big, maybe it won’t be top-shelf space, but every artist needs a room of his own. Preferably a place with a door. A Fortress of Solitude doesn’t work if everybody can come shuffling in and out, traipsing mud on your icy crystal Kryptonian carpets.

17. Live A Creative Life. . .

God, that sounds cheesy. But fuck it, there it is. Life a creative life. The hell does that even mean? It means: be open. Exist in a way where there’s no shame over being creative. It means walk around seeing everything as a potential component of your artistic existence. Material for a story, or a song, or a poem. Or maybe it’s physical material to be incorporated into a work — pine-cones and monkey blood and a hair-weave stolen off the head of that lady at the bank. Your antennae must be set to receive, and then to transmit. Living a creative life means just being who you are, and not giving one curly little hamster pube what anybody else thinks about it. (I bet hamster pubes are like, really cute. There’s probably a whole Japanese cartoon about them. Animated hamster pubes having adventures in a forest made of kitchen appliances!)

18. Uh, But Know When To Shut It Off

I know, didn’t I just say how important it was to live a creative life and now I’m saying to turn it off like it’s a goddamn desk lamp? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Suck it up, Squigglenuts. Sometimes you have to just… watch TV. Or pull weeds. Or sit on the beach staring at the ocean in a deep state of beer-drinking no-mind. Here’s the secret, though: our brains are slow-cookers. Sometimes you can set it and forget it. You turn off your creative brain, it’s still bubbling and broiling there in the background. The soup is still developing complex flavors while you watch squirrels fuck on your front lawn in a state of Zen-lacquered bliss.

19. Get Organized

We like to think that creativity is the product of chaos. And sometimes, it really is. Sometimes it’s about stepping on a butterfly or setting your hair on fire to see what will happen. But a lot of creativity comes out of the pragmatic. You can foster creativity and survive the rigors of a creative life by getting organized. Files. Bills. Desk drawers. Paint palette. Wine cellar. Whatever.

20. Learn To Love Failure

Failure. Never before has a thing gotten such a bad rap as failure. And why wouldn’t it? It’s failure. In a video game, failure means to fucking die, to drop into a pit of lava while the princess remains unsaved (oh, sexist video games, when will the lady plumber save the prince instead of the other way around?). You fail a class and it’s like — *poop noise* — you failed, you’re held back, time is wasted, money is lost, you suck, you stupid person. Hell with that. Failure is brilliant. Failure is how we learn. Every great success and every kick-ass creator is the product of a hundred failures, a thousand, some epic-big, some micro-tiny. We learn the right moves by taking the wrong turns. Failure should not drag you into the pits of personal despair but rather leave you empowered. Failure is an instructional manual written in scar tissue.

21. Murder Self-Doubt In Its Bed While It Sleeps

Self-doubt is unproductive. It’s heavy mud on your boots. Knock the soles against the curb, shake the mud free, and get running. Whenever you find self-doubt crawling up your pant leg and sinking its tick-like mandibles into the milky flesh of your inner thigh, don’t address it, don’t negotiate with it, don’t give it any more power than it’s worth. Just flick that little dickhead into the toilet, piss on it, then flush.

22. Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em

Just the same, you have to know when to quit. Not the whole enchilada — I don’t mean, stop being a creative human. I mean, you have to develop the intuition to know when a project just isn’t ready to be born. This isn’t about self-doubt; it’s about the merciless, icy resolve necessary to say, “I’ve taken a long look at this one thing I’m doing and, right now, the fucker ain’t ready to fly, yet.” This doesn’t come easy. This doesn’t come early. If you’ve only been doing this for a year, you probably don’t know your ass from a muddy hole — but as you work harder and longer, you start to know when to set some projects aside so that you can return to them when they make more sense.

23. Quit Fuckin’ Around

Obliterate distractions. Our creation is one thing in a sea of other options, and most of those other options are fucking bullshit. That’s not to say you can’t spend time reading a book or playing a game or sorting your wampum collection. But it means that when the rubber hits the road, you have to make a choice: fuck around some more, or dive head-first into the primal waters of creation. I know my choice. Do you?

24. Art Harder, Motherfucker

The work is itself purifying. And work gets you to a lot of the other things on this list. The work solves so many of work’s own ills — it’s like a self-repairing machine. So: work hard. Then work harder. Make your fingers bleed. Make your brain explode. Develop an exoskeleton calluses. ART HARDER.

25. Middle Finger To All The Bastards With Boots On Your Neck

Final note: don’t let the bastards get you down. The world is chockablock with bastards. They’re like jungle vines, these bastards. Go at ’em with a machete. A rusted one, at that, so maybe they can get tetanus. You’ll encounter bastards who say you can’t do this. Who want you to do something else. Who failed at it themselves and cannot abide the success of others. Who want to tear you apart, drag you down, make you feel like what you do isn’t yours, isn’t special, doesn’t matter. Mmmnope. Don’t let ’em in your house or your head. At the end of the day it’s you and your creations and the audience outside. Just hammer up a sign that says: NO NAYSAYING RUBBERNECKING FUCKSTICKS ALLOWED. Then get back to work.

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250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

1. Real People With People Problems

Antagonists are just people. Er, unless they’re insane sex-bots, sentient washing machines, serial killer dinosaurs, or hyper-intelligent window treatments. But even then, we need to treat them like people. People with wants, needs, fears, motivations. People with families and friends and their own enemies. They’re full-blooded, full-bodied characters. They’re not single-minded villains twirling greasy mustaches.

2. Meaning, They’re Not Just Fuel For The Plot Engine

Character is the driver. Plot is the getaway car. Character drives plot; plot does not drive character. The antagonist isn’t just here as a rock in the stream diverting the plot-churned waters — he does not exist in service to a sequence of events but rather, he exists to change them, sway them, turn them to a sequence he wants — a sequence that stands in opposition to the protagonist. For opposition is key.

3. Like I Just Said, Opposition Is Key

Jeez, weren’t you paying attention? EYES ON ME, SOLDIER. Anyway. The antagonist opposes the protagonist. Theirs are clashing motivations. They possess needs and wants that exist in defiance of one another. The protagonist wants to free the slaves; the antagonist wants to keep them and the power they provide. The protagonist wants to rescue the hostages; the antagonist wants to keep the hostages, or worse, kill ’em. The protagonist wants a chalupa; the antagonist has stolen ALL THE CHALUPAS. The antagonist can oppose the main character directly, seeking to undo her efforts; or the antagonist can oppose her indirectly, coming at the story at an oblique angle (but still clashing with our protagonist character). But the point is the same no matter how you slice it: the antagonist stands in the way of the protagonist’s goals.

4. I Like Kittens, You Punch Kittens, Now We Fight!

The antagonist is the foil of the protagonist in the very fabric of his character, too — theirs are contrasting personas. At the simplest level, this is heroism versus villainy, but can (and should) go deeper than that. The protagonist is a drunk; the antagonist is a proponent of clean living. The protagonist is a rational woman; the antagonist is a religious zealot. The protagonist likes Batman, PBS, and whiskey. The antagonist likes Spider-Man, telenovelas, and Zima. Character traits existing in disharmony. Thesis, antithesis.

5. Like Krishna, Except A Total Jerkoff

The antagonist is the avatar of conflict. He causes it. His character embodies it. The antagonist is there to push and pull the sequence of events into an arrangement that pleases him. He makes trouble for the protagonist. He is the one upping the stakes. He is the one changing the game and making it harder.

6. Antagonists Think They’re The Protagonists

The antagonist is the hero in his own story. In fact, your story’s protagonist is the antagonist’s antagonist. BOOM DID I BLOW YOUR MIND? People who do bad things often justify their own actions as being somehow positive — Hitler wasn’t just a troll on an international scale. He thought he was the savior of mankind and that his deeply shitty agenda was justified. This isn’t to say that the antagonist’s desires must be noble (“I had to kill all those people to save the orphanage!”), only that he will have convinced himself of his own nobility. The antagonist thinks he’s right. And doing the right thing. Even when it’s awful.

7. Evil For The Sake Of Evil Is Yawntastic, Snoretacular

Antagonists who do evil just to do evil are basically big fucking cartoons. They’re Snidely Whiplash. They’re Cobra Commander. They’re Pageant Moms, Nancy Grace, Rush Limbaugh. In other words: boring, unbelievable, and totally untenable. Give them motivations beyond “being the biggest dick I can be.” Yes, you can in certain modes and stories get away with this (see: Batman’s Joker, or nearly any killer in slasher films), but it’s hard, and it puts an even greater weight on the shoulders of the protagonist.

8. The Motivations Of Awful People

Antagonists must possess believable motivations. And a motivation is the thing we tell ourselves — right? A racist doesn’t act just because he thinks people of other races should experience pain. Racism is far more deeply rooted and often glossed over with justifications — they don’t need to be good motivations or healthy ones, but we need to believe in them. Or, at least, we need to believe that the antagonist believes them. Ask yourself: what does the antagonist tell himself? How does he sleep at night?

9. Black Hats, White Hats, Can’t We All Just Get Along?

All villains are antagonists. But not all antagonists are villains. “Villain” is a perfectly suitable character type in many genre stories: the serial killer, the evil wizard, the twinkly-dick vampire, whatever. But real life doesn’t always offer up “bad guys” (though we’d sure like to see it that way, ahemcoughcough DICKCHENEY hackwheeze). Antagonists can (and often should) fall into that gray zone instead of the bullshit black-and-white dichotomy. Want an example? In First Blood, John Rambo is the protagonist and Sheriff Teasle is the antagonist — but Teasle’s not a “bad guy.” Wrong in a lot of ways, but not villainous.

10. Nemeses And Arch-Enemies

Earlier I referenced antagonists that oppose the protagonist directly — as in, the antagonist has a real firm boner when it comes to fucking with the protagonist (“I peed on your bed, kicked over your houseplants, and skunked all your beer! Ha ha ha, eat a dick, Dave! Again I am triumphant!”). An antagonist of this nature is, of course, a nemesis or arch-enemy of the protagonist.

11. Vivisect Your Favorite Antagonists In Pop Culture

You want to know what goes into a good antagonist, look no further than the stories and pop culture properties you love dearly. Why is Hannibal Lecter a great antagonist? Is he? What about Darth Vader, Voldemort, Khan, Gollum, Norman Bates, Hans Gruber, Annie Wilkes, Prince Zuko, Marlo Stanfield, the Cobra Kai Sensei John Kreese, the monkey from Monkey Shines, or Rob Schneider?

12. Now Look To Your Own Life

Turn now from pop culture and instead look to your own life. Identify your own personal antagonists. Then realize that these are infinitely more complex and sympathetic than you find in a lot of fiction. Our parents are often our antagonists through our teenage years; but they don’t start that way and they often don’t end that way. And oh what a powerful and valuable lesson that is. Now, take it one step further: try to see if you’ve ever been somebody’s antagonist. Surely you have? Your parents probably saw you as one. A teacher, maybe. A forgotten friend. A bullied kid. A sibling. Bring what you discover there into your storytelling. Find the complexity within the antagonist; we don’t need sympathy for the antagonists necessarily, but we demand empathy. If we cannot understand them, then we will not believe in them. More on that soon.

13. Write From Within The Enemy Camp

Write from the antagonist’s point-of-view. Maybe this is something that goes into the story itself, or maybe it’s just an exercise betwixt you and yourownself. But you gotta get all up in them guts, son. You have to wear the antagonist’s skin and use his mind like a helmet. Unpleasant, perhaps, but necessary.

14. Holding Hands With Monsters

We need to sit with the antagonist, too — as the audience, we may not need to, erm, “get all up in them guts,” but we do need time spent with the antagonist for them to bloom as a fully-formed figure in our mind. Give us time with the antagonist away from the main character so that we can see who they are, what they want, why they do what they do. Force us to babysit the monster.

15. Over-Powered Is Under-Interesting

God-like uber-antagonists who never lose and who know everything there is to know and who are forever one step ahead of the game are just as dull as a protagonist who features the same over-powered qualities. (Worse, an antagonist of this particular caliber must often be trumped on a technicality.) It’s called “a game of cat-and-mouse,” not “a game where the mouse goes up against an orbital laser built by Jesus.” Though, now that I say that out loud, I’m pretty sure my next book will prominently feature a Jesus-built orbital laser. Dibs! DIBS. I called dibs. Get away from that idea or I’ll stab you with a barbecue fork.

16. (But We Won’t Buy “Under-Powered,” Either)

The antagonist has to be a real challenge, just the same. Weak-kneed noodle-spined dumb-fuck antagonists need not apply. Give the protagonist something to do. A believable foe goes a long way, especially one that has some advantage over our main character — we want to worry that the antagonist can’t be beaten. Not because he’s a hyper-powered god-like genius, but because he’s just that much smarter, stronger, and more capable than our hero. Lack of antagonistic power means a lack of tension. So, uhh, don’t do that.

17. Still Abide By The Rules And Laws Of The Storyworld

The protagonist must work within the storyworld — the antagonist must, too. All the characters are chained to the world you create. The antagonist may exploit the storyworld, may circumvent the rules in some fashion, but it is not in ignorance of those rules as much as a character-driven contravention of them.

18. Chatty Cathy Clip Your Strings

“Ahh, Mister James Q. Clark Kent Bondwalker, Jr. — now that I have you dangling over a pit of a starveling toddlers covered in the bloody marrow-jam of the bones of their gummed-to-death opponents, let me bore you with the the entire breadth and depth of my plan! I will share for you my motivations, my weaknesses, and give for you a glimpse of my end-game. Do I expect you to talk, Mister Bondwalker? No. I expect you to die. And, failing that, I expect you to use my confession against me at a later date because that’s what the Villain Manual suggests is most likely to happen.” Get done with chatty tell-don’t-show antagonists. No more villains who over-share expository details. Ugh.

19. Freak Me Out By Forcing Me To Emotionally Connect

Once, just once, put me on the same page as the antagonist. He can be vile as fuck — a kitten-kicker, a baby-puncher, a drives-too-slow-in-the-left-lane, ejaculates-in-coin-return-slots kind of dude. But then, make me connect with him: something he does, something he believes, should be something I would do, something I believe. Or connect me to his past — help me understand why he jizzes on public phones and karate-chops puppies. Empathy is powerful stuff. Connect me to the protagonist and I identify with his struggle. Connect me with the antagonist and I identify — even if in a fleeting way — with his villainy.

20. Antagapalooza

Worth noting: just as you can have multiple main characters, you can have multiple antagonists. An ensemble of opponents works — it just requires balance to make sure they all get enough story-time.

21. Arctagonist

The antagonist can have an arc. Should have an arc, actually. An antagonist doesn’t start at Point A and end at Point A. He changes and grows (or sometimes shrinks), same as the protagonist. Don’t assume the antagonist needs to be a static, unswerving face of conflict — have his character shift with changing conditions, have his madness deepen, his hatred or pain worsen, his zealotry catch like a grease-fire.

21. Ideas And Institutions And Other Non-Charactery Antagonists

An antagonist needn’t actually be a character — an antagonist can be an idea (“racism”), an institution (“the CIA”), a natural force (“Another Paul Blart movie”). Zombies probably count as this sort of antagonist — they’re relatively faceless and on par with a hurricane or disease. Just the same, antagonism always deserves the face of some character — a character championing an idea (dragon-wizard poo-bah of the KKK!), working for the institution (callous field agent!), or complicating the natural force (Kevin James!).

23. The “Kick The Cat” Moment

In Blake Snyder’s books, he speaks of giving the hero a “Save the Cat” moment — meaning, we get to rally behind the protagonist early on as we get to see just what he’s capable of because, y’know, he rescues the cat from the tree (metaphorically). Antagonists need the reverse: one requires a “Kick the Cat” moment (see also: “Detonate the Puppy,” “Machine Gun the Dolphin,” or “Force the Baby Seal to Watch a Marathon of the Real Houswives of Fucking Anywhere Ever” moment). We need to see just why the antagonist is the antagonist — show us an act that reveals for us the depths of his trouble-making, his hatred, his perversion of the ethical laws and social mores of man.

24. Let The Antagonist Win

Let the antagonist win. Maybe not at the end, but periodically, throughout. Let him break Batman’s back, or kill a hostage, or take all the toilet paper off the roll and *crash of thunder* fail to replace it.

25. Love To Hate, Hate To Love

If you ignore everything else I wrote here (and for all I know, you will, you sonofabitch) then at least absorb this with your squirming storytelling cilia: the biggest and best test of an antagonist is that I want to a) love to hate them and/or b) hate to love them. Do either or both and it’s a major win. If you make me love them and I feel uncomfortable about that? You win. If you make me despise them and I love despising them the way a dog loves to roll around in roadkill? You win again. I hate that I love Hans Gruber. I love that I hate every Nazi in every Indiana Jones movie. For fuck’s sake, make me feel something.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Lately, I’ve seen some writers acting like no writer should. And it occurs to me that there’s an unholy host of behaviors that writers sometimes manifest — myself included! — that we need to watch. So, here’s a whole list of said “bad behaviors.” These are not all equal and they’re not all going to bury your career or anything, but you should stand vigil against them just the same.

1. Being An Unprofessional Fucking Asshole

Most of the items on the list fall into this category, but it feels like this needs to be said just to act as a net to catch all the naughty writerly behaviors that will slip through — don’t let your “brand” become, “That unprofessional flaming shit-bird who did that really unprofessional shitbird thing and now it’s a stain on his career like a permanent skidmark that bled through his tighty-whities and onto his khaki shorts.” If ever you’re about to perform a questionable action in person or online, ask yourself: “Is this how a professional acts? Or is this how a rampant jabber-jawed cock-waffling jerk-monster acts?” Choose wisely!

2. Responding To Negative Reviews (With More Negativity)

Fact: some people are not going to like your writing. Some people will not like your writing for reasons that are incomprehensible to you or for reasons that may cause you to sit and simmer and twitch and pee a little. Some will write negative reviews that are insightful. Some will write negative reviews that have all the wit and wisdom of a moldy stump. Do not engage. Or, at least, do not engage with negativity. Sometimes, I like to kill them with kindness. Crushing them in an eerie robotic embrace where I politely thank them and recommend for them another work of mine or perhaps the work of another author I respect. But they’re due their opinion, even if their opinion is, “I read the first five-and-a-half pages and it made me so mad I had to write this cranky one-star-review on Goodreads.” Such is the Internet. Leave it alone.

3. Fighting With Other Authors

You know who wins when authors battle authors online? Time-traveling Nazi grizzly bears. Because they win whenever anything bad happens. Authors: don’t get in a scuffle with other authors. Or, frankly, with anybody. Disagreements are one thing. Discussions, fine. Arguments are even okay, long as everyone stays polite. But don’t let it become a scuffle. Don’t be prickly. Don’t call anybody names. Because even if you’re right, you’re wrong. Wrestle with pigs, you’re gonna get muddy. Not worth it.

4. Not Reading Submission Guidelines

Submission guidelines — be they for a literary magazine, a blog, an agent or a publisher — exist for a reason. They’re not arbitrary. A bunch of editors didn’t just get high one night and giggle-snort their way through a bunch of absurd guidelines (“I’m supposed to include an SASE, a hamster, and a naked photo of my mother?”). They’re not pulling the wings off a fly; these guidelines exist for a reason. It’s making somebody’s difficult job (a job that entails fishing through dumpsters of sludge to find a rare gem) just a wee bit easier. Guidelines aren’t suggestions. Follow them.

5. Querying An Unfinished Manuscript

“Here, I half-cooked a chicken. White on the outside, pink and gooey on the inside. I call the raw parts ‘cluck butter.’ It’s like salmonella sashimi. It’s so good.” You don’t hand someone half-cooked food. You don’t half-paint a room then trumpet your proud accomplishment. So don’t query your half-a-dick manuscript (or, for the ladies, a half-a-vagina manuscript) to the world. Finish. Finish strong. Then send.

6. Annoying Editors And Agents

Editors and agents have it tough. They get a lot of shit for being gatekeepers, but here’s what happens at the gate: they stand there, arms and mouths open while a garbage truck backs up (beep beep beep) and unloads a mountain of submissions upon them daily. And, spoiler warning, ninety percent of those submissions won’t cut it. Hell, a not unreasonable percentage are toxic enough that I’m surprised Homeland Security doesn’t show up with hazmat suits and flamethrowers. So, when you annoy them with constant emails, unedited manuscripts, work that’s already been self-published or with crazily presumptive tweets, well, it just puts them one step closer to a water tower with a rifle. I’m not saying every editor and agent is a shining example, but they don’t deserve you acting like a grit of sand in the elastic of one’s underoos.

7. Responding To Rejection With Rageface

I’ve gotten some really strong rejections that taught me about the work. I’ve received rejections that were as tepid and nutritional as a cup of warm salt water. I’ve gotten rejections that were mean — mean the way a yellowjacket is mean, mean the way an unsexed Internet troll is mean. Your response should be to learn something, then move on. Your response should not be to kick a hole in your drywall and then formulate the perfect scathing response (“I REJECT YOU, SCUM-SLATHERED GUARDIAN OF THE ELITIST PUBLISHING GATES”). Calm down. Drink some chamomile.

8. Rageface, Part II: Revision Time

Your work is an ugly rock that, when thrown into the rock tumbler, comes out a polished stone. The rock tumbler is, in this clumsy metaphor, the process of revisions and that often involves getting notes from others aimed at improving the story. Such critical notes are by no means automatically helpful, but what you should never do is dig your heels in and act like a petulant whiny-head who feels threatened by the editorial process. Editors and note-givers are trying to help. Be nice, even if you disagree.

9. Drunkenly Tweeting Awful Things To People

Yeah, don’t do that.

10. Spamming Anybody With Anything Ever

There exists a not-so-fine line between self-promotion and spamming-the-shit-out-of-people. The line is, in fact, thick as a brick. Self-promo becomes spam promo soon as you become annoying with it. Soon as you stop pushing anything but your ME ME ME solipsistic fap-wank and gain equivalence to some out-of-control spam-bot. Yes, you can promote your work. I don’t follow a writer hoping he’ll keep shut about his new book, film, comic, or pornographic memoir. I just want him to talk about other stuff too. Your self-promo needs to be a pair of pom-poms, not a pair of claw hammers. Oh! And if you Auto-DM me anything ever I will find you and throw you out of one helicopter and into the spinning blades of another. Your blood-mist will rain down on an unsuspecting populace and they will cheer me.

11. Acting Racist, Sexist, Misogynist, Any Of The Hateful -Ists

I don’t even need to tell you this and, if I do, you’re probably not going to listen anyway. But don’t be a prejudiced, hate-fueled fuck-muffin. Okay? Not on purpose. Not accidentally. Not at all. As they say on the tough streets of America: “You best inspect thyself beforest thou misdirect thyself.” Or something. I’VE GOT STREET CRED SHUT UP. *gesticulates made-up gang signs then weeps quietly under desk*

12. The Authorial Meltdown

Ahh, the writer. Greased up in his own fluids, sloppily slamming himself against the walls of his Plexiglas enclosure. Melting down in public (and trust me, “on the Internet” soooo counts as being “in public”). Something-something gatekeepers. Something-something some publisher did. Something-something Amazon. Or maybe just inchoate wails of gibberish. Button that up. No meltdowns. I know that’s easier said than done — it’s not like we control our meltdowns, exactly, but forewarned is forearmed.

13. Plagiarizing Somebody Else’s Hard Work

That’s a dick move, dude. And also so obvious I shouldn’t need to tell you that writers live and die by the things that come pouring out of their headbuckets and when you repurpose their creative brain-juice as your own, Zombie Ernest Hemingway rises from the grave with a double-barrel shotgun with one barrel for your face, and the other for your crotch. We are what we write. You be you. I’ll be me.

14. Blowing Out Your Deadlines

Somebody didn’t just draw your deadline out of a deck of cards. It’s a date that somebody needs you to hit so that things can happen as they’re supposed to happen — editing and design and whatever. You miss it, you just made someone else’s life harder. Now, if you’re a writer who assumes himself the center of the creative universe, well, hey, fuck it. But if you’re a writer who realizes his impact on others: maybe hit your deadlines so that somebody isn’t scrambling to cut the slack in your rope.

15. Ignoring Your Assignment

If you’re a freelance writer, you are likely to receive instruction — “I need 2,000 words on bear-sexing by Tuesday.” What you should not do is come back on Tuesday and say, “I’ve written 5,000 words on how Ukranian falconry created the secular celibacy boom of the late 1980s.” Do the work that is assigned to you. When developing games I saw this with some frequency, and man, it always irritated my peehole into a ragged, flaming crater. Though that might’ve also been, uhh, something else.

16. Making A Butt-Ton Of Excuses

I see you, writers. And I judge. Because I’m a judgey-faced judge-hole from Planet Motherfucking Sizing-You-Up whose sole hobby is analyzing the cut of your jib. I see you on the Twitters. On the Faceyspaces. In your bloggery cottages. I see your excuses. Time. Children. Work. Sick. Writer’s block. Sleepy muse. Elk attack. Ennui. And all I think is, “It’s awfully easy for us to dig a hole with a shovel made of our own excuses.” What you think are reasons, mmm, well, probably aren’t.

17. Writing Without Editing

Writing without editing is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Or dressing yourself with your eyes closed. Or trying to have sex with a bear without ever having read a manual on bear-sexing and also without wearing chainmail, which is a critical part of the “bear sex” equation, I’ve found. Haven’t you?

18. Self-Publishing Your Worst Instead Of Your Best

“I invented this thing when I was drunk last night. It, like, chops onions really fast. I guess. So, I’m going to slap my name on it and stick it on the shelf at Target. I wouldn’t let any children touch it because I’m pretty sure it’ll cut their fingers off. It’s also dog-fuck ugly, like, I mean, it looks like mannequin poop. But my name’s on it! It’s all me! Tell your friends!” Nobody does this anywhere but publishing, I suspect — and yet, that’s basically what too many “indie” authors do, they shove a blob of Play-Dough onto a dirty paper plate and call it a meal. Stop that. You earn a special place in Author Hell for that.

19. Fighting In The Trenches Of The Any Imaginary War

Indie punches traditional, Amazon karate-chops B&N, print pees in the eyes of digital, whatever. The only side you should fight on is the side of your audience. With weapons forged from the steel of Good Story.

20. Flinging Sour Grapes At Authors More Successful Than You

Your envy is not productive. Not when you keep it inside and, when you let it out, it actually runs the risk of being counter-productive. Eat a fistful of sour grapes, you’ll get that “looks-like-smells-shit” face. And nobody wants to be around anybody making that face. Jealousy is unattractive. And frankly, boring.

21. Bludgeoning Folks With Your Ego

Guy rides by on a super-noisy motorcycle or whips by in some psycho-fast sports car, I like to smile and wave and loudly compliment that dude on his very tiny penis. The louder and more ego-fed you are, the less you usually have to back it up. It’s like a butterfly trying to look like an owl. Fuck that. Be the owl. The owl doesn’t need to advertise because he’s a motherfucking owl, son. Cool the ego. Nobody wants to see it.

22. Acting Like A Bully

Taking the ego up a notch is when authors act like bullies. They have an opinion or a story or some measure of success and they use it to shove everybody around. It’s gross. You should be ashamed.

23. “Hey, Will You Read My Manuscript?”

First, this: “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script.” Second, consider aspects not mentioned there: like, say, the fact that there exist legal concerns for an author reading another author’s unpublished work — I read your book about Hot Mummy Erotica and then decide one day I want to write my own Completely Different Hot Mummy Erotica tome (50 Shades of Mum-MAY? I’m so sorry), then you’re going to get all litigious on me. As a sidenote, this is very much one of those laws I broke early on. I asked Christopher Moore to read something of mine and he was very nice and very polite in putting me in my place.

24. Failing To Appreciate Your Audience

Don’t be rude to your audience. Don’t dismiss them. Don’t treat them like idiots or like they owe you something. They’re the reason you’re here. They’re the reason you get to do what you do.

25. Talking About Writing Without Actually Writing

I distrust writing advice from writers who appear to never write anything. So too do I see too many writers talking about writing without actually committing pen to paper (or fingers to keys or, I dunno, ink-dipped genitals to linoleum floor), and that’s a super-huge-mega-no-no. Now, I’m not averse to talking about writing. I talk about writing a lot. What do you think I just did for the last 2200 words? But I also wrote 2000 words today not in the blog, 2000 words today of “I’m walking the walk, talking the talk, slinging the ink, punching the panda.” Talking about writing is just another way to waste time, in public, except here the clever ruse is how very productive it feels. It ain’t. Writing means writing. Writing doesn’t mean talking. So get off the soapbox. Set aside the microphone. Pick up that pen before I stab you with it.

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1. Fifty Shades Of Splayed-Out Sex-Play

Sex is big again. Or it’s “okay” again. Or something. With 50 Shades of Grey out and appeasing desperate housewives the world around with its pseudo-kinky faux-S&M vibe, sex is suddenly a seller again. It’s like a switch got flipped — “We’re tired of repressed teenage lust with glittery vampire-types, bring on the penetrations.” Is it back to stay awhile? Not sure. But right now: sex sells.

2. But Also, We’re A Nation Of Puritanical Shitbirds

To write sex in America, you have to understand America’s problem with sex. Which is to say, we’re a nation of Puritanical douche-swabs who feign shock and horror any time we see something resembling a nipple, yet can giddly chomp on a bucket of Fiddle Faddle as we watch dudes blow other dudes (wait for it) apart with their chattering machine guns. We love violence, and fear sex. And yet we don’t really fear sex at all, we just pretend we do because — well, I don’t know why. Because we don’t want the neighbor to know we own a flavored lubricant? Because we’re afraid our bosses will find out we like to dress up as ponies with requisite pony-tail butt-plug? Utah is perhaps the best example of this conundrum: they’re constantly making laws against sex and perversion and yet they remain the biggest purveyor of Internet porn in the nation.

3. We’re All Riding The Sexual Train

And yet, sex links us all. We all do it — it’s human nature. And everybody got here somehow, which is to say, our parents slapped their genitals together until sexual fluids commingled together and resulted in — oops — us. (Sorry if that insults any of you secret clones out there. You’re just going to have to cope. YOU MONSTERS.) Sex is part of the common experience along with birth and death. We have to write about it. Most people will never shoot or stab another human, but most of us will insert Tab-A into Slot-B (or mash Slot-B against Slot-B or swordfight with both Tab-As). This is in part why we need to write about sex. This is our urge. This is our collective human experience. Being a prude doesn’t change who we are, how we got here, or how we want to swim in one another’s love-puddles all day long.

4. The Smashing-Two-Action-Figures-Together Approach

One approach to writing sex is to spell it all out. It’s action like any other and so you take the two characters and put them together — on a bed, on a train, in a treehouse, rolling around in the warm doughy colon of an ancient beast — and you show the act of these two people rubbing nubbins. Squish-squish-squish. It’s an act of clarity, of definition, of writing sex-as-action.

5. The Drop-Acid-And-Feel-The-Soul-of-Sex Approach

Or, you instead embrace what sex feels like –half of our sexual experience is the feeling of the act in addition to the act of the act. There we are, in the dark (literal or figurative), all our pleasure pistons firing at once — everything is probing fingers and tickled nerve endings. It’s sweat and little moans and then big moans and somewhere, a donkey brays? Sex written in this way can be disorienting, as this approach ignores the physical beat-by-beat action in favor of the physical abstractions and emotional impact.

6. Hybridize That Mofo

Personal opinion: good sex writing does both. It tells me what’s going on and who’s got their index finger where, but it also lets me feel the experience from the perspective of our POV character. I’m not just a little boat bobbing on a sea of sensation, nor am I watching two stick figures jab their dark marker lines into one another. So: do both! (Sidenote: “Hybridize That Mofo” is the command I’ll give on the bridge of my own starship when I want that motherfucker to enter warp speed. Please update your records.)

7. The Danger Of Throbbing, Purple Prose

Sex seems to lend itself to clumsy writing. It seems very easy to fall into the pattern of overdescribing or using words that would require Magnum-sized condoms to fit over them — “His turgid tumescence pressed into the dewy folds of her efflorescent humectation.” Part of this, I assume, springs again from our Puritanical origins: we’re squicky about sex, so we hide it under the robes of our own overwrought language. This “poetry” (not really poetry) seems to give us distance but what it also does is sound fucking awful. Cardinal rule of writing sex: put down that thesaurus.

8. The Danger Of Overly-Clinical, Gynecological Prose

Swinging too far the other way, you’ll end up with a Dick-And-Jane-sian VCR manual of sex: “Tony puts his penis inside Maria’s vagina. Maria massages Tony’s perineum. Tony ejaculates. Maria yawns.” This is probably better than the throbbing purple prose, but not by much. The big takeaway here is, just as you should never use “tumescent,” don’t call it a “penis,” either. If you were sexting to somebody, would you refer them to your penis? OMG MY PENIS IS HUNGRY FOR YOUR CLITORIS. LOL. Probably (er, hopefully) not. Find that balance: a poetic touch with clear descriptions. (Good writing advice in general.)

9. Take A Boat Trip On The Sex Ark!

That sounds like some kind of boat where Noah brings two of every race and nation and then they get aboard and bang like rabid lemurs while the world drowns. Then they repopulate the world with their beautiful little mocha babies but that’s not at all what I mean — rather, what I mean is, sex is itself a story. And, the general arc of a story matches the sexual arc — the way two people meet and flirt and tension builds, then the gravity becomes irresistible and then it’s foreplay and conflict and will she will I ow my hamstring ooh that feels good and — climax! It’s called climax in both modes, both in sex and in story. Then there’s the denouement of laying there in a mussed-up bed-tangle and one person falls asleep while the other feels shame or dissatisfaction or bliss. Sex is a story. And stories are like sex. Cool.

10. Implicit Instead Of Explicit

You can write sex without writing sex. Use negative space to create shape. You can write about all the elements surrounding sex, like the looks beforehand, the dizzy post-coital haze afterward, the puddles of clothes on the floor, the awkward looks from the cat — all of this showing the fact sex happened without having to devote word count toward the actual act itself.

11. Writing Fucking Is Like Writing Fighting

Learn how to write a fight scene, you gain clues as to how to write a sex scene. Two characters crash together in a very big physical and emotional way. One is violent. The other is (likely) not. But they share space just the same, and one can help inform the other.

12. Do Not Watch Porn, I Repeat, Do Not Watch Porn

Er, rather, do not watch it for inspiration. You can watch as much porn as you like. But mining it for your fiction is a grade-A dog-fuck of an idea because porn is to sex what McDonald’s is to food. Porn — rather, most porn — captures nothing of actual sex and everything about some overblown false fantasy of sex. Boobs that look like over-inflated kickballs. Dicks that look like leprechaun shillelaghs. Botox faces and needless zitty closeups of genitals cramming into orifices. No character, no emotion, no story. Just human inflatable dolls pawing at each other and performing acrobatic sex acts that are a surefire way to slip a disc.

13. Sexual Archaeology, Ooooh Yeah

Don’t look to porn for inspiration: look to (gasp) actual human contact. You’ve had sex, right? Use that. You can turn the dial up on the sexiness or aspire instead to capture the overall goofiness of the act, but look to your own sex-life — feelings, sensations, something someone did, the way the Hello Kitty dildo tasted (“It tasted like burnt plastic. Like cat milk and bourbon. It tasted like love”).

14. The Sex Isn’t Just The Sex

Sex isn’t just about the act. It’s about the ramp up. The before. The foreplay. The after. The snack. The nap. The toweling off. It’s all these little weird details — setting and mood and time and event. The Roma character in Glengarry Glen Ross has a great speech that keys into this: “I don’t know. For me, I’m saying, what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broad’s forearm on your neck, something her eyes did. There was a sound she made…or, me, lying, in the, I’ll tell you: me lying in bed; the next day she brought me café au lait. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete.” I love that line.

15. “I Think I Maybe Just Jizzed On Your Alarm Clock”

Sex can be really awkward. Fiction doesn’t usually show this approach (bonus points to HBO’s Girls for showing exactly that), but sex in storytelling is usually, well, sexy. And it doesn’t have to be, not at all — sex can be goofy and funny and awkward as all hell, limbs flailing and heads cracking headboards. Wrestling with condoms and cats on the bed. Hell, it can even be boring (though, be aware: the sex can be boring but the scene shouldn’t ever be). Sex can in fact be so many things besides and beyond sexy — why not go there?

16. The Definition Of “Gratuitous”

Sex for the sake of sex — and in spite of story — is gratuitous. (To mention HBO again, the sex in Game of Thrones tends to fall into the “gratuitous” column — it feels like the scripts often have AND NOW BOOBS AND FUCKERY BUT NO DICKS NO SIR inked hastily between scenes.) This doesn’t make it bad, per se, but it does disconnect it from character and story and is just as gratuitous as inserting a scene of violence for the sake of showing violence. Better perhaps to let it be organic and natural in the storytelling.

17. Exposing Character

Not “exposing” as in, WOO HERE’S MY JUNK but rather, as in how a character exposes her very characterness — persona, psyche, wants, fears — in bed. Sex doesn’t stop a character being who that character is. It reveals it. Selfish. Selfless. Nervous. Anxious. Afraid. Angry. Griefstruck. How characters, erm, “do the sex” says a helluva lot about them. They’re not automatons. Sex is raw, abrasive, illustrative. Sex tears away our barriers, our armor. Show that!

18. Fucking Is Never Just Fucking (AKA, The Sweet Subtext Of Fuckery)

(AKA, “Sub-Fuckery?” I dunno. Shut up, you.) Subtext is the distance between what we say and what we mean — and here, the subtext is between what happens in the bedroom and who we really are. What motivates the act? What lurks not just beneath the sheets but beneath the skin? Is the sexual act an act of revenge? Of distraction? Mutual commiseration and a refutation of shared sadness? Between two people (or, hell, whole orgy of motherfuckers) lurks all these invisible threads in the relationship — it’s not just about who the characters are but also who they are to one another. Sex exposes all that.

19. Ass To Ass — Er, I Mean, Tone To Tone

Any sex scene in your story should carry the tone of that story. If your story is one of melancholia, a porny happy goofy sex scene may feel entirely out of sorts.

20. Sexy Tension, Lusty Conflict, Libidinous Mystery

Sexual tension is just another version of narrative tension — there exists a question of will they won’t they — who will come, who won’t, what’s really going on, what does this scene say, what does it reveal, who put the goat in the corner, what’s that smell? Conflict lives in two characters furiously trying to reach a sense of fruition (which is how I refer to orgasms now: “Dearest, my plans are presently poised to achieve fruition — NNGH”). Whether the sex is frenzied and violent or slow and sad, it presents mysteries and conflict.

21. One Conflict: Sex Changes Everything

In real life — and thus, in most fiction — sex is a bunker buster bomb dropped on a relationship. People do the rumpy-pumpy and think it won’t change anything and ha ha ha you stupid fools, it most certainly will. Fiction thrives on conflict and change and the audience knows that sex is both of those things. It changes the game. It ups the stakes. Sex offers your story a lusty sex-slick pivot: use it to turn your story heel-to-toe.

22. Your Squicky Seat-Shifting Discomfort Shows

If sex makes you uncomfortable, don’t write it. We’ll know. It’ll rise off your words like a hot, funky miasma from a jock-strap left in the sun for days. Back away slowly from the sex scene. Or we’ll mock you.

23. Genre Can Dictate Sex

This is an “it is what it is” kinda thing, but some genres will demand sex in certain fashion — romance, for instance, has rules and sub-laws about what works and what doesn’t. I don’t write like that and I’m not sure that’s great for storytelling, but certain genres demand certain things and it’s a muddy uphill marathon to change that. Maybe a worthy battle to fight? That’s on you.

24. A Sad But Necessary Digression On The Subject Of Rape

Rape is a tough, troubling issue that fiction can explore; it should not be a cheap plot device an author exploits. Exploration over exploitation. Handle it with aplomb; don’t bash at it with a hammer.

25. Treat Sex Like It Isn’t Sex?

That’s weird advice, innit? But a sex scene is just a scene — it has a rise and a fall, it shares the same tone and tension of the story, it’s about character and not plot, and yet something must also happen (the best scenes do double-duty and operate as multi-taskers, after all). The sex part is — well, not incidental, it’s not merely a throwaway, but in the deeper treatment of the thing a scene is a scene is a scene. Maybe that’s the best way to look at a sex scene — not as a preening peacock operating under its own laws but rather, a scene like any other. Except, this scene involves, y’know, sweaty genitals. Which is the worst ice cream flavor ever.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

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CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF