Editing Out In The Open #1 - A Short Story

I'm going to start something new on the blog - Editing Out In The Open. I'm going to take a submission, post  a portion of it, and edit it.

My goal is to show you that editing isn't scary. That it's helpful. That it makes a difference.

Normally, I use Word for my edits, allowing me to use margin comments along with inline edits to put together my thoughts. Because there are no margin edits here, I'm going to use two colors:

Red for inline edits, blue for comments.

Here now is a few paragraphs of "Sway" by Tracy Barnett, who is awesome.

Some weak yellow light filtered through the trees. Gave me barely enough light to see, and that's about all. (It's easier to start off in the positive about what you do have, especially if you're trying to hook a reader and set a tone so people know what they're getting into) . Way it scarcely hit was hitting the ground almost not at all was eerie. Was almost Almost like a haze hung over the tops of the trees what kept all but the general feel of light from making it to the ground. (Are we talking about how the light was and what it was or wasn't doing, or how the scene should feel?) Wasn't no proper light, you ask me. (At the end of the first paragraph, we've established a few things - 1 the narrator is somewhere in sight of trees 2 the narrator is likely southern (if American), but otherwise unpolished and "country" in their speech pattern 3 the lack of light is spooky)

Wasn't for me to worry about much, though. (Then why did we just spend a paragraph talking about it? I'd flag these first two sentences for a re-write) The bigger part of my mind hung on to the plan of keeping one foot front of another, just moving forward. While that happened, I guess the smaller part of my mind kept on the same line it had been thinking, trying to figure how I could find her. Trying to figure what I'd do if couldn't. (Again, I'm flagging a lot of this paragraph because the "southernness" of the narrator is actually getting in my way of understanding the new information -- so it's about finding "her", whoever she is, and the narrator has been thinking about her since before the story started -- but now we're talking about how it takes a lot of mental power just to walk, so maybe "she" is less important since she's not front-and-center in the narrator's mind? What's the important part(s) of the paragraph that I should take away here?)

Seemed it hadn't been long since I'd seen her last, though I couldn't say proper exactly how long. (The southern-isms are now getting ridiculous. The flavor of them should come across not ONLY in narration, but through the setting, which aside from trees and light, has gone so far unmentioned. There's more to a southern sound than some y'alls and shuckses and tarnations, right?) The start of it all stuck out bright in the center of my head. (You just spent a whole lot of words telling me that you were devoting a lot of mental power walking and a little mental power thinking about finding her, but now there's this third reserve of mental energy to power the memory of her? Do you want me to focus on the walking, her loss or the memory?) I'd been working was in the barn, same as most days, and she'd been playing in the hayloft. Despite my telling her not to play up there, she did it anyway. She was always so hard-headed about that, and really, even with the warnings and the headshakings, I couldn't say "no" her very often. I'd tried to stop her doing that, but she was always a bit hard-headed, and I could never say "no" for long enough to keep her from what she wanted. She screamed while I was racking tools against the wall. I turned fast, saw her hit the ground, and I was running to her. Spooked the hell out of the horse. Next thing I knew, it was night and I was cleaning blood out of my eyes. So there I was, racking some tools on the far wall, when I heard her scream. It didn't last long. I turned fast and saw her hit the ground. I ran, fast as I could, and must've spooked the horse, 'cause next thing I knew, it was night and I was cleaning blood out of my eyes. (Now if you look over the course of this paragraph, there's a TON of "I" all up and through it. That's okay for conveying facts, that's alright if we're looking to sound simple or childish, but too much "I" and we're moving somewhat out of the story to focus on the construction. Big things happened in this paragraph, and we've started seeing tension build up (she screamed, hit the ground, blood in the eyes at night, etc), so the focus should be there, not on the southern-isms or the number of "I"s - by now we NEED to be into the hook and meat of the story).

I sat up (weren't you running over? when were you seated?) , tried to clear my head. (this suggests you were confused or foggy or something that you haven't mentioned yet, and likely should, since I would love to know how you felt in addition to WHAT you felt) I wiped some more blood off of my face and looked to where I'd seen Emmy land. Nothing there. I shook my head to loose some cobwebs, and fell back down with the force of it. Last thing I saw that night was a small shape out in the field, walking away, east. "Emmy..." I tried to say, but the word died in my mouth and everything went all black. (I'm flagging the whole remainder of this paragraph because I have no idea what you're intending to say. What you've actually said is that there was blood on your face, you stood in the location where Emmy - now she has a name - should have been and she wasn't there, but somehow there was a shape in a field and it was walking away. The presumption here is that it's either Emmy or some kind of body-snatcher-slash-killer, but that's way unclear. A few setting details, maybe some context on the rest of the scene as this experience was happening to you, would better clarify where you want the reader's focus to be. Also, the progression of action - A to B to C seems really unclear - is it You were racking tools -> she screamed -> she hit the ground -> you were wiping blood from your eyes -> you ran over -> she was gone -> there's a shape in the field -> you said Emmy -> things go black ? Way too many things are unanswered for us to connect to the narrator and feel that sense of Emmy being important, of the narrator being in shock and/or driven on a quest to find her. This is rewrite territory.)

After I woke up, I scrambled around, trying to find her. (Well now you're just repeating yourself, and if you're still in that pseudo-recollection flashback mode, it's unclear since things going black AND it being a new paragraph generally mean we're back to the present moment, where you're walking under difficulty) Didn't see  much but my own blood on the barn floor, and a track leading off east. So, I walked. Didn't think about it much, just gathered a few things and set out to find her. (Wait, you wanted to go find her, it's important to go find her, you didn't think much about it, BUT you had time to pack? How would you know what to pack? Are you tipping your hand to the reader, or just being convenient about why you're going to use tools later?)

***
So that's my first pass editorially on a few paragraphs. I'm cutting it off there because I don't want this post getting too long, and the focus really is on how the editorial process works, rather than on this specific story. What I'd do next is attach the completed file (or however much we agreed upon editing) with comments and edits to an email, wherein I'd detail a few big broad concepts that Tracy can keep an eye out for when he rewrites and moves the story forward. For the sake of argument, let's pretend you're over my shoulder as I write that email.

It would look like this ...

Tracy,

Attached please find the first chunk of Sway edited. There's a few inline edits for structure made, but the majority of notes are comments. Here are the highlights.

1. Your setting is sparse. Outside of naming Emmy and mentioning trees, a field, a barn, a hayloft and a rack of tools, I have no idea where you are, what is or isn't important, or how "real" the story feels. There's not a lot of ground details here.

2. I don't feel really invested in the story. I'm interested, but there's a difference. Interest comes from wordplay and concept, the demonstration of ideas and the setting up of scenes. It makes me say "Ooh, that's nice, I like that". Investment though, is about connecting to the narrator (especially in first-person) and sharing the same feeling(s) they do - so if the narrator misses Emmy, we should know why and we should miss her too. Especially critical in first-person is the sense of discovery, that we're learning new info at more or less the narrator is. Yeah, you can say that you're telling this in the past tense, so really you're recounting the story after the fact, but the narrator-within-the-story and the reader should more or less be on the same emotional footing. Invest me, make me care about Emmy's not being there.

3. How critical are what I called the "southernisms"? Are you trying to show the narrator as a yokel, a mountain man, Slingblade, a farmer or a hick who is overcoming some superior force? Why do I need to know he (I'm assuming it's a he) litters his speech and thoughts with colloquial expressions? There are other ways to show us the character, and you don't really need to keep showing us the same facet over and over.

Talk soon, looking forward to Part 2,

John

***

It's my goal in this series to make editing more accessible to people, and to answer their questions about what exactly they're getting into when becoming part of a writer-editor relationship. And I like the transparency of doing it on the blog, even though it's generally slower and without some of the trappings I'm used to.

Yes, you can totally point out things I missed, as no editor is perfect, but before you get all critical and discount the value of an edit based on the fact that I may have missed a comma, remember too that if he rewrites things based on the suggestions, the grammar will change. And right now, the story is greater and more important than the sum of the punctuation.

I've received a few more submissions for Editing In the Open, so expect more to come.

Happy writing.

86 Things I've Said on Twitter, Part 8

This is the eighth post in a series. You can read the entire series by going through the '86 Things' tag on the blog. For the curious, there's only one more part to go. I know, it's been a long read, but I appreciate you doing it.

Let's get right to it.

I swear on your choice of holy object, you really don't want to use the passive voice 8 times out of 10. (exceptions possible) 

The problem with the passive voice is that it makes the action unclear. "Had been cooking" dilutes the idea that someone was cooking, just as "was thinking" separates us from the notion that thought occurred.

Now yes, there are times when you need to frame a verb passively, because the sentence won't make sense without it:

"I was cleaning when the phone rang." 

But the focus of the sentence, the item we're looking for when we read is the action of the sentence -- what's going on in this string of words, and how can I mentally translate into images so that I may continue to enjoy this creation? So why then would you make the action unclear?

Conveying action effectively both helps paint the picture you're intending AND moves us further along the page and deeper into the story. Which is what you want. In case you weren't sure. The stronger verbs (not the word choice this time, but the conjugation of the verb) are clearer.

"I ran."
"We danced."
"They bowled."

All three are clear, strong and direct. They're feasible when you're trying to paint a declarative picture.

"My legs had carried me far when the dog stopped chasing me."
"We had danced before, but never like this."
"Bowling had been fun."

Yes, those three are accurate sentences. They're grammatically correct. Each has their place in writing. But their place is NOT THE SAME PLACE as the first three examples.

Knowing when to go passive and when to be active is critical for engaging the reader and keeping them hooked throughout all the twists, turns, ups and downs of you work. Building that push/pull relationship is part of what connects readers to a writer's style and helps generate a fan base that persists across multiple books, series or projects.

Let the story develop at the pace that works best for it. Micro-managing leads to disaster and stalled projects. Let it be. 

I worked on a disaster of a project once -- 15 writers (or was it 18), our budget was literally whatever we had in our wallets, and it was not a fun three-month process. And no, I'm not entirely proud of the work, because although it was a "learning experience" (I cannot make air-quotes big enough for that), it broke every rule I believe in: no contract, no pay, no contingency plans, shoddy equipment, no consistent schedule, etc).

It was also the first time I was ever truly micro-managed to the point of wanting to throw things. I am not a guy who deals well with that style of management: the constant hovering and checking-in, the lack of freedom to really be myself and feel like I'm a valued contributor, the lack of respect paid to who each of us are and what we bring to this project in terms of expertise and previous work. I swore off that sort of project when it was done, and I swore off ever working in that way ever again. Yeah, it was THAT bad (if you see me at a convention this summer, you'll have to ask me for details).

The problem was that managing the creation of the project so rigidly did not create the product it was supposed to. I can think of four occasions where people were told "Do it this way", even if their sensibility or their talent suggested another way worked better. This was usually said by people who had never managed something like that before, who had no real practical experience trusting themselves, or who were they themselves products of a rigid system.

Creative projects are at their heart, organic. They grow, in whatever direction you let them. This doesn't mean they should grow without boundaries or borders or limits or some sort of structure, but this does mean you shouldn't try to shoe-horn a story together when it clearly becomes something else as you create it.

Yeah, some parts of your story are going to come you more naturally or more excitedly than other parts. Some parts will be read faster than others. Placing a stranglehold on your own ideas and screaming "Work this way!" is a lot like yelling at your plant in the window for not growing like the picture on the packet of seeds (which is something I've seen happen).

Trust yourself to be able to let the story go in whatever direction it needs to go in order to be told. Don't force it down some path, don't break it in order to fit that vision you had way back on Day 1. Stories change and grow just as authors do. Let them.

Queries should get to the damned point. Breezy queries lead to thick slush. 

I am wordy. I am long-winded. This is both because I love the sound of my own voice (not even close to true) and because I love talking (totally true). And when I write, I tend to over-write, mixing a blend of casual we're-just-hanging-out with this-is-how-you-do-things. I mean, really, have you seen my blog posts? Some of them go on for days.

But that's all because I have the luxury of time and space. I can afford to say what I want for as long as I want, because I'm given wide open space here on the blog and because I run my own workshops.

Query letters though do not have such luxury. You get a page. ONE page. At absolute most 250 words, and every word counts. Each word works with the words to the left and right, above and below for the purpose of making the manuscript they're attached to appealing to the reader.

If your query doesn't entice the would-be reader to pick up the manuscript, then your path to publication (in one model of publishing) ends there. And even if you aren't pursuing that route to publication, the skill of writing a tight, seductive query letter is a good one, like for when you have to write business proposals or letters explaining why you can't attend boring family functions.

One page. Seriously. You can do it. It can be taught. You can learn how to do it. (Note: I also teach how to do it, you know, if you're interested.)

No, don't send them your first draft. Send them the best polished draft. Do it right if you're going to do it at all. 

If you want to get published, and you're taking a route that puts your work into the hands of an agent and a big publisher, the work you send them has to be in the best possible and most complete shape. That means the story has to be completely written, shouldn't have spelling and grammatical mistakes and should have all the parts in it that it needs to in order to make sense.

Just like you wouldn't play a full-contact sport against pros without training or preparation, so too can you ill-afford to just dive into publication by sending off incomplete, error-laden work.

How can you ensure that your best work goes out? GET AN EDITOR. Don't know any? Here's one. And another. And another. And another. And another.

It's our job to help you take your work and get it into the best shape possible so that you can do whatever you want with it and so that it may be enjoyed by readers.

Yeah, I know, you've been told that once you sign that contract, there will be an editor assigned to your work. Or that your agent is your editor. Or that editing is something that comes AFTER you say yes to the deal. And yeah, sometimes, that's all true.

But if the goal is to get your work published, and you want someone to say yes to your work, wouldn't you want it in the best shape possible, so that it's easier for them to say yes?

Make the job easier, not harder. Put your best foot/work forward. Ask an editor for help. (The ones I mentioned are the best I've ever worked with.)

When sending out queries, do your homework. Make sure the query receiver actually TAKES what you're submitting (check their site!) 

Okay, not every agent or publisher publishes everything. Just because they're called a "publisher" doesn't mean that anytime someone sends them a manuscript they run off to the press in their basement and churn out page upon page with gleams of satisfaction in their eyes.

Publishers are allowed to publish whatever they want, even if that means saying "No." to one type of manuscript. Just like authors, who may prefer to write in one style or genre over another. See how that works outs?

So when you've written a particular story, find a publisher who publishes that kind of story.

It's not hard. It does take some digging. Either in the Writer's Market, or more accurately, by doing some investigative Google searches for submission guidelines. Yes, you can find a publisher for nearly every genre and type of story, if you look hard enough. (And if you're going to email me and say you can't find a publisher, then either you need to broaden your search or improve your story so that it can be more easily classified).

Make the job of publication easier on everyone involved. It makes a huge difference.

Not all your ideas are unpolished gemstones. Sometimes they're just ideas that you can tweak/cut/hack to make other gems shinier.

I'm sitting in my office right now, and if you look to the left of the chair, on a small re-purposed nightstand, you'll see a whole stack of legal pads and steno pads. These are my idea books. You may also have seen me carry a smaller version in my back pocket when at conventions.

When some idea explodes in my brain, I write it down. Sometimes those ideas are really clear -- "a mechanical system that divides an eight-sided die into the 8 types of affirmative action" or they're vague -- "spy apparat". All the same, they get written down.

Most of those ideas won't go anywhere. But sometimes, when someone calls me or emails me and we start talking about doing a project together, I can say to them, "Oh yeah, I think I have a mechanic or a plot or an idea that can help us out here." It's an immense time saver, but also a huge boost to the future creativity because I already have a jumping-off point.

Because I keep a stack of ideas around, I'm able to draw on them when I need to. (I should point out that behind me I have a filing cabinet labeled "Things to do to characters" and another labeled "Feelings"). A lot of the folders in those cabinets have one or two articles in them, or a page or two of notes that I might never go through until I have to empty the cabinet out. But having that resource on hand helps me to feel more creative and feel more successful about being creative. (And yes, I do have giant binders labeled "Poison" "Gunshot" "Fire" "Stabbing", because information is a good thing to collect, right? Like Pokemon?)

Hey people who want "realistic" characters in your writing: Are they eating regularly? How about the last time they brushed their teeth?

I love realism in my films, where the world the characters inhabit, and what happens to them feels like my world, so that I can leave the theater or walk out my door and maybe have the possibility of running into them on the street. Or something. You know, like if the Doctor showed up for lunch, I'd totally be down for that.

There's a downside to realism though, at least when it's misinterpreted. Don't confuse realism (obeying practical constraints and limitations, physics, science, technology and social climate) for over-saturation of facts.

An action thriller about people unraveling a conspiracy in the post office is going to be slightly marred and slowed down by the half-page you wrote telling the audience about how someone flosses. The love story that takes place only during summers over the course of ten years can get bogged down when you detail the tuna salad someone eats on page eight.

Details do not make realism. Realism comes from the context and application of those details -- what you do about the details makes things real or not.

The blending of details (small or large) with their application is what makes the scene feel more lived in, and the world more natural.

Building your own world is great. Want to make that world feel real? Give the sandbox some borders. What can't it do?

On the flip side of the realism coin, there's nothing wrong with making your own world. The downside here is in the freedom. You can make anything from a city in the clouds, to an ice planet with caves, to I don't know, a planet made entirely of string cheese and crackers.

But while you're showing the reader all about what the world can do, to give some context and make the reader (and presumably the main character, who may be a fish out of water) feel like they can handle the scope of the creation, show the limitations of the world. Yeah your created world might be a technocracy or an oligarchy of fish people, but how does it fit into the greater picture? Is it one fiefdom in a country, one state in a union, one continent on a planet, one planet in a solar system, one galaxy in all of existence?

Showing the borders is not showing weakness, it's showing strength. By defining how big the sandbox is, we can instead focus on all the detail within the borders. It draws our attention back to what's important and lets the real work shine.

Thriller writers - Tweaking word choice + sentence length will do wonders for your pacing.

Here's how you build tension: you vary your sentence length. Pick strong words. Fragment. Hype. Explore the power of words. Push the scene with longer sentences. Speed up with shorter ones. Push. Pull.

(see what I did there?)

Romance writers - No, there really aren't that many world-weary young women. For serious.

I don't normally dive into romance novels. They're not aimed at me, I don't normally encounter them in the development process, and in general, I don't walk past those aisles at the bookstore. But I am aware of the tropes, in particular the one about your female protagonist who's young but somehow already weary and an old soul.

I get it, writers, that's you. You're that character, only transplanted into a younger body, but still possessing your mature mind. This gives you a chance to escape a little, indulge some fantasy and play "what-if", which is central to the genre.

But how many times are we going to tread this ground?

There's nothing wrong with writing a not-world-weary character. It might be a little more work, it might be hard to resist the temptation to make her snark and spurn the advances and situations she find herself in, but it is possible - and you do have the talent to pull it off.

Tell your best story, and no you don't have to cover the same ground as everyone else. Honest.

The final part of this series will go up Monday. Happy writing. Enjoy your weekend. 

86 Things I've Said on Twitter, Part 5

We continue the series of things I've said on Twitter. Part 4 is here.

Note: 86 things is a lot, isn't it? Hope you're enjoying the series.

Fancy pieces of paper on your wall will not come sit behind your desk and do your writing for you.

I talk to a lot of people about how they got their start, how they do what they do and how they finish what they create. People come from all walks of life, all different places in their lives and all with their own unique stories. Some go to big universities and earn big fancy degrees. Some don't. And some of the people with degrees look down on the people without degrees, as if it's the degree's job to validate who or what the earner is.

The degree doesn't make you anything. Maybe in debt. Maybe better networked. But the degree is just a thing on the wall, and a benchmark of something you've done. Like the patch I got in my billiards league when I played my first game. Or the little trophy my brother won for winning the science award.

What matters is the work. The writing. The performance of your task and craft. You don't need a big fancy degree to do that. You just need the ability to get your ideas across to others. That's all.

Does the degree make you a professional? If you judge professionalism by the pieces of paper on your wall, then yes. (And by that measure, there are far more unprofessionals than professionals on the planet).

Does the degree make your work better? Not definitively. I've read material from degree-awarded, long-time 'professionals' and hated it. I've read drafts from college dropouts that made me want more.

If you want the degree, go get the degree. If you've been bullied into the degree (as I was), then get it if you want it. But understand that what matters is the work you do, not the papers on your wall or the title after your name.

It's totally okay for writing to be a hobby and not your career. But understand that if you want the career, you gotta do the work.

Writing isn't for everyone. I don't say that to dissuade you, I'm just saying that writing isn't for everyone, the same way that not everyone loves gardening or brewing or watching reality TV shows.

Sometimes that's because you don't have the time, you keep busying yourself (intentionally or otherwise) or because you need more practice and training but don't have the time, money or inclination to get better. So then writing is a hobby. I have hobbies. I play games. I read. I used to collect stamps as a boy.

But my job is editing. Or creating games. Or helping other people create the thing they want to make.

Nothing wrong with having hobbies. But understand that it's hard to transition a hobby into a job. It takes work. It takes discipline. You have to be willing to fail, work harder and get better. You have to be willing to endure really rough times so that you can discover the good times. Hobbies are all good times, because they're on your schedule, at your pace and at your leisure.

Jobs are...work. They're not always on your schedule or at your pace or leisure. Sometimes there's a real jerk standing over your cubicle telling you to come in on Saturday. Sometimes there's a person hundreds of miles away writing you emails about how things are due in HOURS, not weeks. It's out of your control. But this is your job, and ideally, you're getting paid for that job, so you do the work.

The amount of work and your dedication to the work is what distinguishes a hobby from a job. Nothing wrong with either, other than a perception that a career is going to take more of your time than a hobby will.

Game Designers - FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE CANDY - Don't deem your ideas crappy while the book is still being written.

When you're making something, especially something that other people are supposed to enjoy, you should be happy about making it. You should be excited. Maybe some parts of it excite you more than others, but on the whole, there's a baseline of excitement as the foundation of your efforts.

And then doubt shows up. And doubt is a bastard. Doubt fabricates all these reasons (some of them really wacky) why what you're doing should be more scary than exciting. That you're not good enough. That your idea isn't good enough. That no one will be interested. That you're wasting your time. Whatever.

What you're forgetting in this exchange is that so long as you're still writing and creating the thing, ANY AND EVERY part of it can be changed, can be made more exciting. Sure, that may require you asking for help, or looking at examples and coming up with new ideas, but nothing is set in stone until you hand the created thing off to the publisher or distributor or whoever makes those final certifications.

When a thing is still being made it isn't crappy and it isn't genius. It's only "in development". And the act of developing a thing is what should excite you.

Don't pass judgment on a thing in development. Here's an example -- you're making a loaf of bread. You mix the dough, you get it in the pan, you put the pan in the oven. It starts baking. Is it a bad loaf of bread? No, it's just dough. It's not bread yet. You won't know if it's bad until you get it out of the oven.

The same is true for your idea. Don't deem the dough bad. Let it get out of the oven first.

Want to do a dream sequence in a book? Keep it organized and preferably short. Dreams aren't where the plot advances.

Unless you're writing Inception or the third Nightmare on Elm Street or that weird Stephen King movie about aliens and the army, dreams aren't the spot for plot advancement. Why? Because dreams are supposed to happen when the character is asleep. And when a character is asleep, the outside world (where the problem is supposed to be affecting things) isn't being dealt with. (Okay, yes, if the whole book takes place in a dreamscape, why do I need to know people are asleep?)

Too often, dreams are where characters have "A-ha!" moments where they figure out who the killer is or figure out how to solve the riddle of the tomb or defuse the bomb. Next time, please give me some wine with that cheese.

Dreams work best when they're lateral moves - when they show us more depth and develop what we already know. Just like our dreams give us insight into who and what we are (last night's dream involved screaming children being loaded into the Ghostbusters vehicle and lobotomized, what does that say about me?), so too should they give the reader more connection to the character.

Keep them short. If that means you need to have more dreams to describe your idea, that's okay. But a dream that goes on and on doesn't accomplish what you think it does, other than confuse or bore the reader.

Keep them organized. Just because your dream involves floating opera singers, sex acts, your fourth grade teacher yelling at you for clapping wrong (seriously, that's a thing that happened to me) and a purple sky doesn't mean you need to convey that information in a weird way to demonstrate how "trippy" things are.

Seriously.

If your whole story is a flashback, maybe you should just tell me the story without the bookended present scenes.

Flashbacks are a good way to give us more information without moving time forward. They're a cheat, but a helpful cheat. Like the money code in the Sims.

The problem is that if most of your story is told in a flashback, you can chop off the parts where the flashback starts (I remember...) and where the flash back ends (And that's the story of...) and just tell the story in the past tense.

I love The Young Indiana Jones Adventures. When I first saw them on TV, they had these bookends, scenes where old Indy would talk to people about a time he remembered, then it would segue into the episode. And at the end of the hour, old Indy would come back and say "That's the story". It made for a nice TV episode.

Years later when I watched them a second time, I watched without the bookends. They're still great TV, because the focus wasn't on the bookends, but rather on the story within the flashback.

And without the bookends, it's not a flashback, it's just a story. Which is still awesome.

Chapters/sections in a book are supposed to handle two tasks - add one thing to what you already know and move you forward.

Everything in a story has a role to play. Characters are the do-ers of action. The plot is the problem they face. And chapters are how the action is divided up, both for narrative construction purposes, and for pacing. Chapters also have a job to do, to move you to the next chapter and give you more information to take with you once you get there.

A chapter that doesn't give you new information, of some kind, is a chapter that can be cut out of a manuscript. Why? Because without new information, nothing's changed since the last chapter.

Now maybe the chapter gives you new information but doesn't encourage you to go forward, that can happen. That means the chapter is boring (or it's the end of the book). If it's the end of the book, good job, hope it was satisfying. If it's not the end however, then you have to make the reader want to keep reading. Keep them hungry for what happens next, so that they turn the page all the way until the end.

The key to that is making decisions. Decide what the character is going to do. Decide how big the bang is going to be. Decide if this is the scene where someone gets shot. Make decisions, take action. Tell good stories.

Your job as a writer is to write, not edit-every-sentence-ten-seconds-after-you-write-it. That's an editor's job. LET THEM DO THEIR JOB.

I am an editor. My job, what I receive money to do, is make things better. Fix errors, explain mistakes, break bad habits. Presumably someone (a writer) hires me to help them.

The writer's job in this relationship is to write (or have written) something I can help them with. If you, writer, change every sentence moments after you write it (I don't mean that you don't fix spelling, I mean that you write a good sentence, start doubting it, then erase it to write a new replacement sentence), when do I get to do my job? You know, the one you're paying me for?

If this writer-editor relationship is going to work the way it should for best results, we need a division of labor. You write whatever you write, I edit it to make it the best it can be, together we produce awesome things.

But you have to let me do my job. I know what I'm doing. Really. Trust me to help you. Trust my skills to help your work.

In talking directly to your audience, you shouldn't have to say "Take note" or "Pay attention - unless you think you suck at focusing.

Sometimes the writer creates something where they talk to the audience. Maybe it's an aside. Maybe it's an intro. Maybe it's just the way the narrative works. And if the audience knows that they're being spoken to (using "you" is a pretty good indicator), then there isn't really a need to say "Take note" or "Pay attention" to whatever you're talking about...because they're already paying attention. Because they're reading.

Don't assume they're not paying attention. That's kind of rude and says more about you than it does them (that you make assumptions about who reads your work and how well those people pay attention to things that allegedly interest them, for starters).

Also, if you're using language that gives attention-paying directions, are you saying that as much for yourself as you are for them?

Don't hate your audience. Trust them to be paying attention. Trim out those instructions. Just tell the story.

The "traditional" method of publishing hinges on two questions - 1) Can you follow directions? 2) How patient are you?

My friend Chuck Wendig wrote this awesome article this week (hang on, I'll pick up that name I dropped) about self-publishing versus traditional publishing. It's good, you should read it.

So there are many ways to skin the "I'm going to get published" cat. Traditional publishing is one way to go, but it's not without its pitfalls and things-to-be-aware-of.

Part of the process for traditional publication involves query letters and draft submission. And the method by which you deliver the manuscript and query varies from recipient to recipient. But everyone has guidelines that dictate how they want to get your material. When you don't follow those guidelines, your work doesn't get read, no matter how great it may be. Not following directions dooms your work to the scrap heap.

Likewise, traditional publishing is not a race car. My other friend Cheri Laser (I miss her) and I spoke of this often - that there was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, with weeks and months going by between progress made on a book.

I'm not saying that self-publishing is naturally faster, I'm just saying that traditional publishing can sometimes take a while. Maybe weeks. Maybe months. Maybe longer. Every situation is different, so I can't flat out give you specifics. Be patient, you'll get the results you want.

Or not, then you'll just have to find another route to get published.

Seriously you don't always need a prologue. Just get to the good bits of the story.

I see this a lot in fantasy. People love prologues. Sometimes they're scenes that didn't have a place in the book, but the author really loved writing it. Sometimes it's this big setup section, that explains what happened bajillions of years prior to when the story is going to happen.

Prologues can be great. They can condense information down and paint a timeline and a context for the story we're about to be a part of. But they can also be nightmarishly plodding, ill-conceived and be more masturbatory than productive.

They work sparingly. Sort of like that weird wrench you keep in the toolbox. You use it maybe once a season or only when you buy a new grill.

When they work, they're awesome. When they don't, I'd sooner scrub my eyes with broken glass, lime juice and sandpaper.

What I came to this book for is the story. Give it to me. Not because I'm in a rush or because I'm busy, but because that's what I sat down and want to read. If it really helps my enjoyment of the story to know that three millennia ago a sandstorm ravaged the city of Ab-al-kuz'zad, then great, I expect to see the ruined city in the book somewhere. If you're just writing things to write them, I'm going to either skip it, feel pissed off that I read it, or editorially cut it.

Books can only take you so far. Seminars can only take you so far. A lot of this journey is you writing. Regularly. 

I love the people who come to my seminars. I get people who come exclusively to conferences just to hear me speak, which is incredibly flattering. I get people from all over the place to sit and take notes and ask questions, and that makes me feel great.

I love the people who read my blog (well, most of you anyway), and hopefully, you read these posts and get something out of it and go forth into your writing better armed for success. (Or maybe you're just keeping tabs on me, whatever).

But the point of all this information, the point of all the lists on twitter, all the blog posts, all the seminars and workshops and Q&As I give is so that you, whoever you are, wherever you are on your path to whatever writing creation you're on, actually go write the thing.

See, the point isn't just to hear me talk, or hear my voice when you read my words, or just read my words while other tabs load in your browser. The goal is to have you write a thing, have you make something awesome that wasn't there before you started and be excited about it. If I played a hand in that process, fantastic, I'd love to hear all about it, but I'm totally not just doing this so that people tell me how great I am.

Be the awesome writer you're going to be, whether that's a hobby or a career, or just this thing you tried once after that relationship ended and you didn't feel like getting back into dating or because your kids encouraged you or because you wanted to show your ex that you can accomplish what you set out to do and you'll be damned if you let their bullshit words echo in your head for a minute longer (I may have said too much there).

Write and write regularly. Get on a schedule. Give yourself some structure. Train yourself. Discover that discipline in you to do a thing, make a thing and see it through until the end.

Happy writing.

Part 6 (!!) of this series will be out on Monday.

86 Things I've Said On Twitter, Part 1

If you've been following me on Twitter over the last two days, I've just been bombarding social media with punchy little lists of writing tips and advice. I hope I didn't upset or offend anyone in blasting a stream of thoughts, it wasn't my intention.

In part this is because I have a Workshop (I've recently found the phrase "creativity workshop" which is pretty great) coming up Tuesday night (details here) and in part because these thoughts constantly rocket through my brain and I usually just bite my tongue because some other editor or a respected writer says these things at a much slower pace. And frankly, it's felt pretty good to just throw all these things out there, and see how they help people.

So, rather than just drop all 86 without explanation, I'm breaking them into chunks. Here are the first six.


1. Don't think about writing in terms of "getting published", think about it in terms of "I want readers to read stuff". Aim for audience. 

It's really tempting, and a lot of books reinforce this idea that publishing is some be-all, end-all that once you get published, it's all sunshine and roses and puppies. But, talk to published authors, and a lot of them are working harder now than before they were first published -- almost as if publishing isn't the end of the marathon, but the start of a new one. To that end, I caution you not to go so far down the "must get published to be legit" road, and think instead of what publishing translates to, which means readers get their hands on your creations. The goal is to get readers (as that assumes they've spent money to purchase your things, right?). Think of all the books that sit unread on a shelf. Sure, they're published, but are they being read?

2. How long should a book be? Long enough to show me a plot arc, some interesting character growth and some insight about you as a writer.

One of my favorite amusing things to Google, aside from "the A-Team theme song", is "how long should a book be" because the answers are so varied, yet so certain of themselves. Novels have this many words. Novellas have that many words. Oh you have some other number that's just a hair over? Well then you fall into this third category.

See, these categories are imposed on authors by publishers for a lot reasons (read: costs to print, edit and produce) and aren't really indicators of quality or requirement. A novella is a short novel, but a short novel is also a short novel. A book of poems might just be ten words, but a children's book might also be ten words. The labels and connotations of those labels don't always translate well to the people writing whatever they're writing - because if you get it into your head that you have only a certain number of words to say what you have to say, then you're going to panic as that number approaches.

Take a different tack. Let the story be however long it's going to be, so that over the course of the story, the reader can see the plot get introduced, developed and solved as well as the character(s) involved get some expansion and maturation as well. How you do this, however you choose to accomplish those goals will share some insights about who and what you are as a writer. (Because you'll favor certain terms, build sentences in a certain way, shy away from some details while promoting others, etc)

3. If you're writing for young adults, the keyword is "adults" - treat them smartly, accept them. Don't lecture or talk down to them.

I have a lot of cousins. And while they're older now, for many years family gatherings were packed with children, running around, making noise and generally being children. Universally though, across age ranges and gender, every single one of them would roll their eyes, sigh and take a tone with an adult who got it in their head that as an adult there was a great deal more superiority than there actually was.

As an author, you're the adult. But, don't be THAT adult. You're not doing these kids a favor by coming down from on high to grant them a little morsel of word-ambrosia. You're SHARING a story with them, you're SHARING this experience of "I made a thing, I hope you enjoy it".

Children aren't miniature adults, you can't expect them to express the full depth of maturity and understanding that adult readers do - but not because they lack the understanding, merely because they lack the experience. Let your book be something that gives them an experience they can take forward.

4. Not every kiss is fiery. Not every embrace is passionate. Not everything a character does is at 100% efficiency. Let them be wrong

I've talked about this here and elsewhere - that a character who never fails and always super-succeeds is kind of a let-down. It's the risk in a character's actions, the chance that they'll fail, that makes us care about the character.

And while that talks about big potentially bad things that the character faces, we can also apply it to the not-dangerous behaviors as well. What's interesting about a character who always kisses the best kisses on the planet? Or who always makes the best omelets? Hyperbole aside, if everything is special, nothing is special. Also, the more perfect the character becomes, the less connection to them we (the imperfect audience) feel. Because our kisses aren't always earth-shattering. Because we burn breakfast. Because we get really nervous talking to one another. It's our mistakes AND our successes that define us, so why isn't that true for characters?

5. If you're setting the story in a kingdom and we're not learning about politics or social class, why do we need to know it's a kingdom?

This is about focusing and distributing details. As readers we assume that what you're giving us is important, because you're, well, giving it to us. Telling us about something, tossing some adjectives about down on paper draws our focus to it. And if you spend even more than an adjective on it, we conclude that it has to be even more important than that, so when you talk about it and then move on without ever coming back, we feel deprived and a little misled. (I'm looking at you numerous unfinished plots in TV dramas)

If the scale (how big the set pieces within the story are) doesn't include or involve the big landscape details you're giving them, why are you giving them? (Hang on a second, we'll talk more about this)

6. When figuring out which details to keep and which to cut, ask "Does this detail show me a new thing or explain an old thing?" Stay new.

Just like we talked about above, it's important to know WHY you're giving detail X at the moment you are. If I'm describing...the room I'm writing this in, I may talk about the way to the desk is worn and aged. I may talk about the view out the window to my left. I may talk about the mess of papers to my right. Those details help you paint the mental picture about what the desk looks like and tells you a little about how I keep my office space. But...do you need to know the color of my shirt? Sure, you can find out about it later (purple t-shirt), but how does knowing the shirt's color tell you more about the desk or the office? It's a stretch to say "oh he's wearing a t-shirt, that explains a lot about how organized he is" -- that's you imposing your conception of how an office should run onto my story. And that's not fair to you or to the story.

When it comes time to edit and trim, one of the things I look for is why details are in the places they're in. That question above asks "what's the purpose of this detail?" which is key for knowing what has to stay in a draft and what has to come out. Likewise it helps pare down the number of different ways I express the same detail. How many various ways can I call my desk "full" or "active"? Breaking out the thesaurus doesn't further the story, it just moves things laterally, heaping similar repeated statements atop one another in a slowly stalling strata of story.

Part 2 (the next ten) will be out on Monday. Have a great weekend. Hope to see you on Tuesday night.

My Dreamation schedule

One of my favorite conventions is next weekend. Dreamation, to me, marks the beginning of a long stretch of conventions and good times that stretches from now until November at Metatopia. I've been attending Dreamation now for a few years, and never had a bad experience, felt unwelcomed or generally thought it sucked.

So, I urge you to attend. Come to panels, come play games, spend four days embracing your inner nerd/geek and make yourself happy. Although my stuff is only on the weekend, I WILL be there all four days.

Let's cover the big one first:
D814: "The DREAMATION 2013 Writer's Workshop" presented by John Adamus. A discussion and workshop of what's needed to take your ideas and make them practical - turning your imagination into a real game or book. Join John Adamus in this discussion of what you can do to make your creation come to life, while avoiding typical pitfalls, stumbling points and roadblocks along the way. 
Sunday, 12:00PM - 3:00PM;

Okay, this is huge. THREE HOURS?! It's going to be awesome. This year's topic is

"How to use Fate Core, Cortex-Plus, GUMSHOE and D20 To Write Your Story/Novel/Game/Whatever"

Go sign up! You WILL NOT regret it.

This year I'm being more ambitious than usual - in addition to the Writing Workshop, I'm running two games. Here are all the details:

Game I: R248: Night's Black Agents; "The Paris Sanction" presented by John Adamus. A deadly strain of the flu is up for auction, and plenty of terrorists have converged on Paris to bid. A week ago, a team of agents was dispatched to impersonate Basque separatists, but they haven't been heard from. Now it's time a replacement team to find out what happened, and hopefully stop the bio-terrorist weapon from getting into the wrong hands. Saturday, 9:00AM - 1:00PM

Why should you play in this game? How about PASSENGER JET CAR CHASE? It's early, I know, but it's going to be worth it.

Game II: R330: Night's Black Agents; "The Budapest Disaster" presented by John Adamus.  There was a terrible accident in Budapest. Two trains collided, a tragedy of epic proportions, killing hundreds. Lost in the twisted wreckage though were some precious cargo - a suitcase full of diamonds en route to the Queen of England, and the launch codes for a portable nuclear device. A team of agents has been dispatched to recover at least one, and it's up to the team to prioritize. Will it be the diamonds or the nuke? 
Sunday, 10:00AM - 11:59AM

Okay, I know the schedule on the website says until 2pm, but since I have not yet mastered quantum physics (Note that I go from Night's Black Agents to the Writing Workshop, back-to-back), I can't be in two places at once, I'm shortening this game. Also, this is more a playtest of some new mechanics I'm checking out, but I'll explain all that on Sunday.

Other places I'll be this weekend:
L040: The Dresden Files; "Dog Days" by Phoenix Outlaw Productions. The New York supernatural scene has been rocked by territory disputes, wars, and battles in the last few years. A great warlord, Raoul Ortega, has fallen and now his people are trying to put the pieces back together. Rising in the ranks? The werewolf and wereform population. Years ago there was nearly a were-form revolution and some believe it might be time yet again for people to be afraid of the tooth and claw. When the sun comes up, who will rule the streets? "Dog Days" is a live-action roleplay event set in the Dresden Files universe run by Phoenix Outlaw Productions. This event will also be the playtest of a brand new adaptation of a LARP adaptation of the popular FATE system. New players encouraged; previous players of the New York Dresdenverse games most welcome! 
Saturday, 8:00PM - 12:00AM

Shameless confession - I co-wrote the plot and mechanics. I'll be on hand to make sure things work, and/or fix them on the fly.

I'll be popping in on my other friends/clients/projects too (Project Ninja Panda Taco, Revelations, the Fate Core games, etc).

Also, I'll be tweeting the hell out of things. You are following me on Twitter, right?

Hope to see you there, would love to meet you and say hello.

Audio Blog Post #3 Carpe Minuten! Seizing Your Minutes!

TEN MINUTES OF AUDIO GOODNESS.

I can't believe it.

In today's audio post, I set up some ground rules for how I'll audio-blog and then dove into one of my favorite writing/life theories - Carpe Minuten!

And then I explain my strategy to take advantage of your time and be its master not its puppet.

Listen! Enjoy!

http://soundcloud.com/john-adamus/episode-3-seize-your-minutes

AND....now you can download it! There should be a link on the bottom of the track.

Happy listening (and writing and dream achieving).

Audio Blog #2 - Answering Jeremy

Today in Audio blog goodness, I answer Jeremy Morgan's question about hacking a game any why it isn't always a 1:1 component ratio.

Give it a listen and leave a comment, won't you?

http://soundcloud.com/john-adamus/episode-2-answering-jeremy

Enjoy your day.

Happy writing.

Some Words About POV

It's Memorial Day Weekend and for most people it's the kick-off to summer. It occurred to me Wednesday that in my job (thankfully) it's almost always summer. I'm not saying this to brag, I'm just saying this because I caught sight of the passage of time. And from thoughts of what I was doing last Memorial Day, or that time I was in high school and had to play baritone saxophone in a parade, it got me thinking about point of view in storytelling.

Also, on Wednesday night at my workshop there were a few questions about POV, and I got kind of amazed that people still had questions about it, even though I thought this topic has been aggressively beaten to death. So let's talk POV. We'll start with a definition and then deal with some common pitfalls.

What is it?
Point of View is the lens through which the reader receives the story. That's it. It is NOT the lens through which the character interacts and lives the story and it is most certainly not a "gimmick" that writers do in order to get Pavlovian praise from agents and book reviewers.

I make a distinction between how the reader receives the story and how a character goes through the story, because every character goes through the story in the first-person. (Just like all of us, we're all only ever in first person). What the POV does is take those character-first-person experiences and organize them in a particular way as the story needs.

Organize them how, you mean like shuffle them around from chapter to chapter?
Oh no. No no. Super double no. Don't do that. Don't hop, skip, and jump through POVs because you 'want to put us [the readers] in different characters' heads. That's...well, that's sort of like announcing you're an amateur while waving flares and a big banner shoots up behind you saying "I don't know any better." Don't do that.

But George RR Martin does it!
First, you are not George RR Martin. (I mean you could be, but really, if actual-GRRM is reading this blog, then I'm oblivious to my audience). Second, no he doesn't. He changes the focus between characters, but never the POV. He doesn't randomly jump from third-person Tyrion to first-person Brienne to second-person guy-next-to-a-guy-with-an-axe.

When you establish a POV, you're creating a little center to the particular universe of your story. Now maybe this universe exists for the duration of a whole book, or maybe it's just a chapter, but this POV is throughout the whole created-universe, not the character. POV is not a character.

Huh?
Let's say you're writing a version of......Romeo and Juliet. And you want to make your version to what Romeo sees, his experiences, the reader follows on Romeo's shoulder, that sort of thing. So you make Romeo the narrator and tell this story in the first-person.

So anything Romeo does or thinks is going to be with an "I" involved (I did this, I think that, etc). And anytime another character does something, it's in the third-person, because this is Romeo's story, he's telling it, and we're (Romeo + reader) seeing this through Romeo's eyes.

Just because a new character comes into the scene doesn't mean we need to be in their head while Romeo's telling the story. This is the narrator's story, we see what they see, we discover what they do when they do...it's sort of the beauty of first person.

But I'm not writing first-person.
Okay, so you're overseeing a whole load of people. Then your POV is as if you're looking down from the skies onto this whole diorama of your story, and the narrator, although not a character directly in the story is relating to us what's going on. You don't have to crack open the minds of every character for the reader to understand the story.

Yes I do. How else will they know what's going on?
If you write well enough AND trust your readers, they'll figure out what's going on. Here's an example:


John sits in his office. While writing his blog post, the rain falls outside and a truck pulls up across the street. From the truck emerges a man, who brings with him from the truck a clipboard. He then checks notes and walks to the blue house. The dog barks. More rain falls. John goes back to writing. 

Okay, that's not very well written, and I didn't have any character actively thinking anything, or did I? I implied that John is thinking (because he's writing a blog post) and implied the dog must be thinking (it's barking) and even the guy from the truck has to be thinking (he's checking notes on a clipboard)...but in order to tell you that story, did I have to sit down, hold your hand and explain to you what everyone was thinking? Or was there enough detail there to somewhat picture the scene?

So, the POV depends on the narrator?
Yes. If the narrator is an active participant in the story they're telling, then the reader is going to be limited in the scope of what they read -- If I'm telling you the story of what I did over the weekend, I'm only telling you about what I did. There's no mention of what happened half the world away in Guam or what somebody in Moscow was going to do.

If the narrator is playing puppetmaster and we get to watch them pull the strings and make characters dance, there may still be a limit on what information we get at a certain time. Because the author of the story can only describe so much at a given time. (Because, in part, the author is human and even though they control the whole entirety of their story, you can't compress EVERY thought into the same sentence.)

What can I do?
Okay, let's set some rules.

1. When you set up a POV, you're tied to it. Not quite as bad as a cell phone contract, but it's not a decision of whimsy. Pick a lens, and stick with it.

2. Avoid as best you can the desire or need to switch characters (yet stay in the same POV) because it does NOT tell the story more effectively. It's does two things instead:
a) weakens your story's pace, construction and cohesiveness
Why? Because if you're locked into first-person, but the "I" character constantly changes, the reader can't follow the story easily. Let the narrator dictate how the story is parsed to readers, and if Narrator X isn't good enough, rather than adding Narrator Y and Narrator Z to the mix, make X better.
b) demonstrates that you're a weak/poor/cowardly (yeah, I said it) writer.
Why? Because switching POV is a crutch. Sure it "tells the story most completely" but does it actual make you a better writer for doing it? Sure it's hard and scary to stick with one narrative voice all the way through a story, but (in case you've forgotten) storytelling is an art and a craft, and it's not supposed to be cakewalk simple. If that frightens you, maybe you shouldn't be writing. Throw away the crutches and walk on your own legs.

3. "Bleed on a drip." That means rather than just spew forth a litany of narrative elements (clues, story development, emotions, ideas) in some great wrist-slit pool and hold out hope that the reader can navigate it all and somehow share your vision (by the way, if you call your story a 'vision' it makes you sound like a knob) at the end, you control the pace. (Note: this takes talent and practice and edits and practice and talent.) Meter out when the reader gets certain details, and use the POV as the valve for that.

4. Want to know how to fix your POV issues? Talk to an editor! If you sequester yourself away (either intentionally or worse, you cry poor and say you can't afford to talk to outside people, or out of fear that people won't waah waah like you --- sorry, that argument really bugs me. Cowards. You want to get better, ask for help) then you're never going to fix your mistakes. Sure you might bury them deep in subtext or only make them once or twice...but that's one or two times too many and certainly visible to a reader, subtext or not.

And with that, I'm hopping off my soapbox and getting ready to enjoy my Memorial Day Weekend with a stack of books at the beach house. There will be NO blogpost Monday, because I won't be near a PC until Tuesday at the earliest.

Happy writing, have a great weekend. Rock on.

The 'Aspiring' Writer Syndrome / The Crazies

Good morning everyone.

I'm assuming I'm the only one of us who woke up this morning from a horrendous nightmare where I had to exorcise Satan out of Jerry Springer? Yeah, that'll teach me to eat an eighth of a chicken breast at 11:30 at night.

Today, continuing the new blog policy of speaking honestly with you, I want to take a look at one of the big sentences that I hear a lot of writers say, and then we'll look at something that happened over the weekend. (though not to me, my weekend was pretty awesome, I washed dishes by hand, fought with an air conditioner (it won), and ultimately stressed myself out over something incredibly stupid that I misheard.)

First up, let's look at this sentence. Now while I can't possibly know how YOU say it, I'm going to go with the version I hear a lot.


"Aspiring" Syndrome

"I'm an aspiring writer."

Now I hear / read this in the comments of blogs (usually of other writers) or hear it at workshops, I immediately follow it up with "How's the writing coming?" because what they really mean is this:

"I'm not published yet."

Sometimes I point this out and whoever I'm talking to makes a face at me, this sort of "why are you talking about X, when I'm talking about Y" face. But, to avoid that face, I usually nod and the conversation moves along.

There are two problems with this train of thought.

i. That getting published is proof that you're a writer.
ii. That "aspiring" means something that it doesn't actually mean.

Saying that getting published is the proof you require to be a writer is like saying that you're only a gardener when you're chopping homegrown tomatoes for the salad. What about the time you spent in the dirt, the times you watered the plants and did whatever you had to so as to prevent deer and fungus from taking over? That stuff doesn't count?

Coming back to the writing, are you saying that the act of writing doesn't make you a writer? The hours spent hitting keys or scribbling in notebooks doesn't count? Getting up an hour earlier than everyone else was what, a waste of time?

Here's what makes you a writer - putting your ass in a chair and putting your brain and fingers to work in telling a story.

Publishing doesn't make you a writer. It makes you published. You were a writer before you got published, and you'll be a writer after you get published (assuming you write more). It's not the peak of a mountain, leading to some downward return to the flat land of boring hobbies; it's the start of a journey across many peaks and valleys. (Insert other statement about journeys not destinations here).

Likewise, "aspiring" means "desiring or striving for recognition or advancement". Desiring and striving are not really very active. Desiring is a mental process (right now I'm desiring it not be raining, and yet the water still falls from the sky) and striving is a vague word that sort of implies something's going on, and it's trying to succeed, but without a clearer verb, I have no idea what is actually happening.

Calling yourself an aspiring writer is basically telling me "One day I'm going to write something, in the future, not now, not in the relative present, but you know later, like when it's not so scary and/or when I'm not feeling overwhelmed by my own doubts, insecurities and expectations that it has to be perfect or else people will drive me from my home via fire and sharp sticks."

You know what I am? I'm an aspiring husband. I want one day in the future to be married. I'm not married now, but it's something I want to be later.

I'm also an aspiring hug recipient. I've not yet been hugged today, but I'd like to be in the near future.

Don't aspire. Go be it. Write, and be a writer....I was going to say "Go crazy", but that leads me to the next part of today's post....

Don't Be A Crazy
So over the weekend, this happened. Here's the short version:

1. A guy went on a message board angry that his posts on said message board kept getting moved from one place to another.
2. The guy pointed out that his books (the subject of his posts) are published by himself, but he is in no way a self-publisher.
3. He points out that he's got 92k Twitter followers.
4. He draws the connection that self-publishing equals "small", and that's a bad thing.

Of course many people got involved here, with the usual finger-pointing, laughing and jeering at "that guy". They talked about his arrogance, they talked about his books being poorly written (I have no idea if they are or not, I've never heard of him, never read his stuff or even knew what he wrote until I read that article) and they also brought along the Perennial Internet Argument.

The PIA (if you don't know) is this: "That guy's a dick, I'm way better/cooler/smarter/more attractive because of A B C D reasons."

There is a huge problem with the PIA. It makes whatever situation where it's invoked about YOU, not the 'other guy'. Is the above mentioned guy putting out a really clear example of what-not-to-do? Absolutely. Is that a sign that you need to justify what you're doing? Nope.

The problem with crazies (and crazy knows no race, gender, preference or field...crazy don't discriminate) is that they're loud. And while on the internet it may seem like a brief blip on the radar, that same internet is housing that outburst for however-long-data-is-stored, so it can be brought right back up for later -- like a hairball or those photos of you from the summer you thought it would be awesome to have a mullet.

Loud crazies get heard. And sometimes other people's volume can throw doubts into your head. Somebody starts screaming that Company X is bad, and you start to wonder if it's worth your time to deal with Company X. Someone tells you that a popular video game experiences occasional server issues in its first week out, you may decide to never buy anything from that game company again.

To combat this, I first hand you one of these because it's dangerous to go alone. Then I will direct you to a mirror and tell you that you're YOU. Not me, not that other guy. Not that lady on Facebook. Not even the same YOU you were last year when you thought it would be a great idea to drink vinegar twice a day.

All you can do is be the best you possible. You make the best art possible.You do everything you can to be a better writer. Then you work even harder. And then you find a good community of people that will support you and encourage you and help you.

Don't let the crazies speak for everyone, especially not yourself. Don't let the crazies cause you any doubt about what you want to do.

Unless of course, you're the crazy in this instance, at which point I'll state this. And this. And lastly this.

Happy writing.

Ask An Editor: Plot, Similarity and Length

In the last two weeks, this blog has really taken off. Part of me wants to say this is because all the seeds I planted about it are finally bearing fruit, but more than likely, people are responding better to the more honest tone I've been taking.

One of the new experiences I have to acclimate to is this idea that I'm now getting a lot more mail. Now while some of this mail isn't great (really, people still send trolling hate e-mails in 2012?), a lot of these messages ask the same things, which has led me to start this new post on the blog, "Ask An Editor".

Now, some disclaimers:

1. The answers I'm giving ARE NOT to be etched in stone, and they're not the be-all or end-all of information. They are a combination of many years experience and my opinion, melded together to help you.
2. My answers are not sugar-coated. I...don't really like to sugar-coat things, and quite frankly, it doesn't do you a whole lot of good to get a pat on the head when you may sometimes need a kick in the rear.
3. You don't have to believe what I'm telling you, you're very welcome to think I'm full of shit, but please consider at least reading what I have to say and then filing it away for later - you may surprise yourself.

Onto the questions (note: If you said it was okay to use your names, I'm using them. Otherwise, they'll get  reduced to initials.)

Plot

C asks:  I've been working on this novel for three years now. I've written and revised this plot so many times because a lot of the rejections I'm getting say my plot is too complicated or "too much". But I read published books all the time where the plots are WAY more complicated...what gives?

C, I have no idea what your specific plot is about, and please, don't go send me an email explaining it. It's not important to the answer I'm giving you here. No, really, I'm sure you've put a lot of detail and love into it, but in explaining it to me, you're not going impress me with it. We have to start with some basics:

i. "Too much" is shorthand for either "boring" or "too complicated". Suppose you're writing a multi-generational romance saga with three eras of family members grow up, find love and experience life. And now suppose you add some quirks into this story like time travel, maybe some lasers and magical tap-dancing fairies. You know, to spice it up. The plot hasn't changed really -- it's still going to be the story of character 1 going through plot points A to B to C and then character 2 going through their version and so on. But all those bells and whistles? Well, that's not plot detail.

Here's how you find your plot -- strip out all the names for people, places and things. Boil down all the verbs to their most simple and active. Using really simple nouns and active verbs, spell out what happens in the story. That's it. No rocket science required.

Here's an example of a complicated, congested "too much" plot:
Sally Heaven is a hard working college student who graduates from school and moves into her ancestral home, only to find that because she is the fifth daughter of a fifth daughter born under a full moon, she is also the sole heiress to a vast fortune of pirate treasure, assuming she can figure out the map before sunrise on her next birthday.

Here's the same plot concentrated:
A young woman learns she can inherit a treasure, assuming she can find it before her birthday.

But, I hear you say, you've taken all the "spice" out of my story! It sounds boring that way, story-ruiner! And before you come to my door bearing fire and pitchforks, I want you to learn something -- SPICE IS NOT PLOT. Plot is just an expression of the problem(s) the characters are challenged by over the course of the story.

ii. You don't have to 'give it all away' in the query. No, seriously, please don't. The query, as I've said before, is just an opportunity to lead the reader into the manuscript. It acts as bridge, seductress, chat up line and movie trailer...not Cliffs Notes version. We should want to / have to read the manuscript to find out more details than those offered in the query. If you tell us how it begins and ends in the query, why should anyone bother with the manuscript?

Similarity

Next, we have a message from Thomas who writes: "I've been following a lot of agent blogs and re-tweeting a lot of agent tweets lately, but none of them are really talking about what I need them to. My problem is that I've written a story and well, it sounds a lot like three other books that just got published. How big a deal is that?"

Thomas, we need to first figure out what "sounds a lot like" means. Are you saying you and these other authors wrote exactly the same story? Or are you speaking more generally, because if we look at all stories from a wide enough scope, we'll see similarities. If I zoom out far enough, all stories share the same set of traits and genealogy, all we're ever doing is putting new skins and spins to them.

Yes, it's very tempting to concern yourself with the ideas of originality, that whatever you're created be the only one of its kind...but we've been telling stories for millenia, and while the foundations are universal, look to use that originality on whatever springs up beyond the foundations.

Great, it's a story about woman overcoming Nature, (I know your specific book isn't Thomas, I'm just giving an example), but what element of Nature is she overcoming? How is she overcoming it? What's trying to stop her? What is she risking? These are the sorts of questions that sit on the foundation of "woman overcoming Nature", and this level is where you start to define your story against the backdrop of all these other stories.

To distinguish your story, we come back to the very commonly discussed idea of voice and craft - what do you do, author (Thomas), that other people do differently? What makes you stand out from the rest so that were I to pick your story out a hat (or crowded inbox) I'd know it had your fingerprints all over it. That's the sort of "deal" readers/agents/publishers/your grandmother is looking for.

I say again: No one wants you to or expects you to re-invent the wheel. And if you feel that you have to do that in order to get published, please leave all pursuits of writing behind and go take a knitting class or learn all about cat food or something, because you've entirely missed the point of writing and you'll continue to miss it every time you charge up these batteries of "scarcity" "pressure" and "publication equals success".

The reason why people say things like, "Just tell your story." or "Just write the f#$king thing." or "When in doubt, write." is not to get you thinking about all that crap that publishers and agents and publication want you to swallow in copious amounts. Yes, writing's hard. Yes, writing's scary. But it's a thousand times harder and scarier when you're writing your guts out AND worrying that you sound too much like other people.

Believe you have the story in you to tell. That's step 1. Transfer the story from your brain to some format. That's step 2. Step 3 involves getting your story read, your craft honed and your first taste of feedback and revision. You're going to repeat Step 3 for a while, until the story is complete and told to the best of your ability. Publication and an agent don't even factor into most of step 3 so long as you're still working out the story that you're trying to tell. Also, you don't always need one (the agent) to get the other (published), and I'd seriously look twice at anyone who stills holds so doggedly to that maxim.

And while we're at it, what do you think the point of Twitter is? Retweets are not yours. You're just passing on someone else's thoughts to your audience. Now while I'm all for shouting to as many people as possible, every once in a while I like to have my own thoughts mixed in there, not just a grocery list or an update about what I did in the last two hours. When I say thoughts, I mean YOUR thoughts on publishing. Your fears. Your anxieties. Put it right out there in 140 character sandwiches for us to nibble on. It's yet another way to tell YOUR story.

Length

And lastly we come to a quick note from M, whose message I'm paraphrasing because they've written it with a lot of emoticons and acronyms and I'm not sure I've got the patience to figure out why M is laughing at the end of every second line.

M writes: "I'm writing a novel. Can you believe it? (see, this is where there was a LOL, mind the gap) But I'm stuck. How come there are so many different listings for how long a novel should be? (also a LOL here)"

Okay, I'm going to let you behind the curtain and give you some special writing secrets. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Here's your answer M.

Your story will be as long as your story needs to be in order to be complete and told to the best of your ability.

Now before you get snippy and say I didn't answer the question because I didn't mention that there's about 250 words to a printed page, or that the average book is 300 pages in paperback, remember that you're in charge of this story. If it's coming up short, that's not some random publisher's fault. That's on you, dear author. (Yes, I will further argue that you can't really have an idea of "short" because it's grossly subjective.)

The reason people can't agree on what's "right" for a novel is because thanks to the wonders of publishing, there can be more than one "right", and they're all acceptable. You may talk to Agent X who says a book should be a certain length, while Publisher Q says it should have twice that, and maybe Editor H says you have eight times too much, cut it back.

Who's right? They all are. But that doesn't mean you have to agree with them. They're not the boss of your work. Yes, you may hold onto the notion that they're "gatekeepers" and they're opposition for you on some kind of publication-chessboard, and you may also think that editors want nothing more than the cackle gleefully over the charred remains of your life's work.

Your story (novel, novella, piece, manuscript, baby, whatever) is however long it needs to be. Rather than worry about some label when people ask about it (or what you're doing) tell them ABOUT what you're doing. It's way more interesting to hear that you're writing a story about a man who wants to build a golem out of cereal than to hear you're writing a novella.

Find those opportunities to talk about your love, so that you can grow your love and make new opportunities.

I hope people found the answers to these questions useful. I'd really like to make this a regular blog feature.

Happy writing.

The Nine-Step Checklist

We start today with a story from my youth.

I was about ten or maybe eleven and my family was heading down to our shore house for the month of July, which meant that my dad got use "The Checklist". As if he was prepping an Apollo moon launch, he made sure all the bags (I have a feeling we always overpacked, a trait I've inherited from him) were first staged in the living room the night before, and then loaded into the car just after breakfast while my mom packed the huge Igloo cooler with food  (I don't remember if we yet realized there was a grocery store ten minutes from the house, or maybe it wasn't built yet or something). The cooler would go in last, and we'd be all set to go. And then we'd be in the car, all buckled in, me with my books, dad behind the wheel, mom in the backseat with my brother and some cross-stitch. But we wouldn't leave.

My dad began the next stage of his checklist. He'd check his wallet, to make sure he had money. He'd check the front door (3 stiff pulls, practically slams) to make sure it was locked. He'd look in every first-floor window to make sure the lights were out. And then he'd start the questions, aimed mostly at my mother.

"Is the oven off?" (It wouldn't matter that this was late June/early July, and my mom hadn't likely baked anything since mid-May.)
"Did you lock the back door?" (No matter how she answered, he'd go check, meaning he'd open the front door, check the back door and then re-check the front on his way out.)
"Is the TV unplugged?" (This later became my responsibility when I was twelve. I remember getting this job because my wrists were narrow enough to slide behind the monster set and pull the plug out.)
"Is the freezer closed?" (In filling the cooler, my mom emptied the giant basement freezer, and would go so far as to defrost it if she got up early enough. Years later she started stacking things in front of the empty freezer in case it 'just popped open', but I think it was more to fuck with the old man.)

The answer to all these questions was, "Yes John." (A sentence to this day that makes my skin crawl.) And I was impatient - the beach was waiting! While this checking took maybe five minutes, it felt like it took hours, and I remember being incredibly frustrated with every slam-slam-slam of the front door and the sound of my father riffing through the stack of bills in his wallet. I don't know what he was expecting to find or not find, but I just wanted him to get the car moving.

I asked my dad once, "What's with all the checking?" And his answer was, "It's just what you have to do, to make sure you get everything together before you move forward." Now, the chances are great that I rolled my eyes while he answered my question, in fact I'm sure I even threw in a sigh for emphasis.

The sigh was my sign that I'd never be like that, that I'd be able to leave the house without the almost superstitious dance of pocket and door checks.

That sigh was way wrong. I might not check the door three times, but I've definitely caught myself a little freaked that maybe I didn't put my wallet in my pocket, or maybe I didn't put my credit card back in my wallet after dinner, or maybe I didn't shut the freezer door all the way six hours ago when I put that bag of ice in there. There's a little wrestling match in my head about whether or not I did or didn't do something, and usually it's resolved either by me going and checking or by whoever I'm with at the time reminding me I did.

Checklists are good tools, and you don't have to take them into Super-OCD land for them to be effective. Here now is my not-so-OCD checklist for your story or script or game, so that you can make sure everything's together before you move forward.

Act 1

Have you set the table? "Setting the table" means have you rolled out the three P's (Protagonist(s), Place(s), Plot), so that your readers (or players, if we're talking games) know who's doing what where and why.

What's the palette like? By the time we're well invested into the first Act of your creation, we should have a pretty firm grasp on the tone, feel, vibe and scale of the story. If you're writing about a save-the-universe sort of sci fi adventure, then I'd sort of expect the story to be a certain size and scope. Your word choice will tell me the "color" of the story: if your protagonists are fighting an uphill battle, if the world is "gritty", if the badguys are more intense, etc.

Is it clear what the next action will be? If you can't get an idea of what's next based on what just happened, (it doesn't have to be a directly linear idea, it can be somewhat inferred or logical) then what just happened wasn't enough. Or it's not done cooking. Or you need to spice it up a little. Insert your favorite food metaphor here.

Act 2

Are we seeing skills (gamers: the opportunity for skills)? By this point in the story, we should be seeing the protagonist doing what they do (and hopefully that means doing things different or better than how we do them) and how the results (successes AND failures) drive the plot forward (don't confuse "forward" for "success", failure IS an option that can transform and evolve characters).

Do the options you've created have purpose? "Options" is a broad term meaning the off-shoots of the main plot. This could be the suspects in a crime story, the different avenues or routes to take in a travelogue, the number of topics in your book of essays or anything that demonstrates that you just don't have a really simple plot that can be wrapped up in like six pages and you're just filling space and killing time.

How high is your climax? While you're still in the bulk of the book, and while you're still laying out the dominoes so they can topple later, it's a good time to start seeing how high this stack builds up so you know how far (and how fast) it will come tumbling down. The climax is the highest point in a story. The greatest moment of tension, the most intense scene(s), the most knockdown fight. If your story ratchets up the tension, emotion, action or stakes AFTER that, then that new scene is the climax. Map out your scenes, climb that ladder (I guess in a future post I'll have to talk about the climax ladder) and adjust accordingly.

Act 3

How are your loose ends? I know, a lot of writers want to be "edgy" or "creative" or "smart" and they lay out these intricate plots where you have to super-focus on some detail because it's the lynch pin of the whole book. And there's nothing worse than realizing that the detail that clinches the story is something you (or gamers, your players) overlooked because it didn't seem important at the time. Likewise, those characters you drop into a scene, just for the sake of the scene, they're only momentarily memorable. You're not breaking new ground in having that three-line-delivering guy from Chapter Six show back up in the end and play a bigger role. You don't need to tie EVERYTHING up in a nice (read: convenient) bow anymore than than you need to trim the number of loose ends down to the barest essentials. Just keep track of them. If you've got a few that don't go anywhere and sort of disappear, maybe they don't need to be there in the first place.

What's the resolution look like? So the climax happened. And now the story's emotional and action roller-coaster coasts back down to a normal range of possibilities. Here we can start to see things end both internally (the plot) and externally (the book is running out of pages), so what happens AFTER climax? You don't need to spend an equivalent amount of time bringing us back down to earth as you spent getting us into the heavens, but you do have to spend a little time so that we can catch our breath and start to organize ourselves to end the story. Again, mapping it out is CRUCIAL.

Is the door open or closed? The "door" here is whether or not you've explicitly or not created the possibility to revisit this world and these characters again. NOTE - I am not saying that all stories need to be serialized, I'm just asking you if this particular one is built for it. If the door is open, then we as readers are free to continue these adventures in our imagination, essentially taking the storytelling reins from you. If the door is closed, then we better be satisfied by how things wrapped up, else we'll just take the reins from you and pretend it didn't go down like that (I'm looking at you Sopranos, third Hunger Games book, Lost and the Mary Russell series).

That checklist will help you take your stories wherever they are, in whatever shape they're in, and help them go forward, so that you can too can go to your vacations (metaphoric and literal) fully confident that everything is awesome.

Happy writing. Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo.

See you Monday (now if there's no blog post on Monday, it's not because I partied too hard this weekend, it's because I know Monday is PACKED with work, some of which I can't yet talk about it.)