NaNoWriMo: A Significant Wordcount Event Is Imminent

(for unofficial use only)

Open Memo from the Department of Literary Security

To: All Departments & Interested Parties
RE: Literary Alert Level Tango

We have been monitoring internet traffic on sites frequented by wordsmiths, and literary agents provacateurs from the Office of Letters & Light and are reporting an uptick in chatter related to writing nonstop for a month and the hoarding of items related to same.

We can only conclude that a Significant Word-Count Event (SWCE) is imminent. All writers are advised to shelter in place or seek out the nearest library or coffee shop. During the last SWCE, over 3 billion words erupted from the nation's writers and worldwide shortages of coffee, pastries, and adjectives were reported.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

During moments of extreme literary unrest, the department advises that it can take up to thirty (30) days for emergency supplies to reach affected areas. All writers are advised to stock up on necessary supplies and foodstuffs sufficient to sustain life and word counts unaided for thirty (30) days without resupply. 

Our experts have prepared the following list of suggested supplies for all writers:

1. A comfy place to sit or stand in a place conducive to surviving 30 unbroken days of writing.
2. Coffee, tea, hot cocoa, or coffee.
3. Sustainable levels of baked goods.
4. Vegetables for when you are feeling guilty for trying to survive entirely on items 2 and 3.
5. Writing implements to fit your age, milieu, or chosen level of pretense.
6. Ink for pens, printers, copiers, goose quills (see item #5).
7. Phone numbers of out-of-area contacts willing to take late-night phone calls when you are stuck, overwhelmed, or procrastinating.
8. A padlock to secure the off-switch for the internet for most of the duration of the emergency.
9. A supportive and/or tolerant spouse, family member, roommate, significant other, good friend, complete stranger you thought you knew but turned out you didn't but who gives surprisingly good advice on dialogue.
10. A sense of humor.
11. Additional items, medications, &c. may be added as needed for the individual. Good luck and may the spirit of those who came before guide you in this time of trial.

The department will monitor the situation and report developments via the usual channels as events warrant.

See you in December.

Regards, etc.

Scott W. Perkins
Unofficial Secretary of Literary Security

Attachment: Scanned poster of this memo for sharing.

6 Tips for Avoiding Sociopathic Storytelling

We are not always in the story we think we are and we are not always playing the role we think we are playing. Just as we are not always fully aware of the endings, the beginnings, or who the heroes and villains around us truly are. Stories are going on all around us all the time, and though we may fancy ourselves the hero of our own tale, we are mostly bit players in someone else's.

I think that's important to keep in mind when telling a story. It's so very easy to fall into a mindset that the only thing going on in the universe is the story you're telling. Every character springs into existence when they walk into your scene and ceases to exist the second they exit the page.

Even though there are moments when the most important thing going on in your world are happening in your story, that doesn't mean it's the only thing happening or the only thing that's ever happened in the lives of the people involved. When you get the feeling that it is, the world becomes smaller, shrinking until I stop caring about the outcome because the world you're trying to save is paper-thin.

Because I'm in the habit of naming things, I think of it as Sociopathic Storytelling Syndrome.

For the sake of keeping it all in my head, I created the acronym S.L.O.W.L.Y. to keep in mind the six things I want to know about every character that has more than a passing mention in my stories: Secrets, Loves, Origins, Wits, Learning, and Yearning.

If you know these six things about a character -- even if they never come up -- just having it in your head will bleed into their dialogue and their actions and breathe a larger life into your story. Because when that waitress leaves the scene, she's going somewhere, doing something, loving someone, or yearning for them.

And that's the kind of thing that brings a world to life.

1. Secrets:  Often what's unsaid forms us more than anything else. You should know at least a few things about the character that have nothing to do with the story: What are they passionate about? If you walked into their home, what would stand out about them? Are they shifty or a straight-shooter? Know the character's secrets and you'll know the character too.
   
2. Loves:  A character's gender preferences and relationship status would and should tie directly to how they interact with other characters. What or who does the character love? Are they in a relationship or are they looking?
   
3. Origins:  We are where we come from. Where was the character born? How were they brought up? What kind of family circumstances did they grow up in? Are they lonely or a loner?
   
4. Wits:  How smart is this character? This isn't the same as education and often more interesting if their smarts comes from a place of experience rather than academia, so you can tie 'Wisdom' in here too if you like.
   
5. Learning:  The demeanor of even the most incidental character will at the very least display how educated they are? Did they go to college? Drop out of high school? Home schooled? Hold advanced degrees?
   
6. Yearning:  Everyone has a goal, something they yearn for. What does the character want? What drives them? What are they willing to risk anything in order to obtain or defend?

Make stuff up and write it down :: NaNoWriMo Pep Talk

For unofficial use only.

An Open Memo from the Department of Literary Security

To: All Departments & Interested Parties
RE: National Novel Writing Month

Once again, I have not been asked to write a pep talk for National Novel Writing Month. I'm sure the post office lost my invitation or accidentally re-routed it to the prime minister of Burundi.

Sorry about that, your excellency; I'll get that change of address form sent in at once.

Some of my advisers have told me that since writing something that no one asked you to write is the whole point of National Novel Writing Month, it is possible that the lack of invitation is the invitation.

So as the unappointed cruise director of NaNoWriMo, I (un)officially welcome you to November 1st: Congratulations on your decision to write a novel!  

May God have mercy on your soul. 

Across the world, ink and electrons are flowing as millions of writers begin their month of literary excess.  If you are on-track, as of this writing you should still be in the "first crush" stage of your relationship with that novel. The first blush of love is upon you and you are swept up in the throes of love.  

All is right with the world.

Next week, you will discover that much like any relationship, this new love will require work in order to succeed.  As you discover that you have more words behind you than ahead of you, the daily rituals will make things easier and the work will shift to keeping yourself from getting into a rut, taking the flow of words for granted.  Never assume that the next page will come on its own; strive for it.

Whatever their length, all stories have a natural beginning, middle, and end. The length of your tale may surprise you and the ending may come earlier than you expected. This is the nature of the beast. This is why you must enjoy every step of the journey. Whether you end up with a story the length of Old Man & the Sea*, Great Gatsby**, or Storm of Swords *** is a matter of recognizing the natural conclusion of your tale and taking your hands off the keyboard.  

Whether you end up with a pile of short stories, two middle-length novels, or an epic that makes your hard drive groan from its bulk, you have accomplished something. You can look back with pride on the journey you've undertaken.

Celebrate that.

There is no "Right Way" to write a story of any length, but there four things you are about to learn:  

1. This is about making stuff up and writing it down.  
Try all you like to make it more complicated, it really just boils down to this. Just tell us a story.

2. A period of steady progress, even in small increments, will get you where you are going. 
Even if you write only one page each day for a year, by December you've written a 365 page novel.

3. Writing doesn't make you a novelist, finishing does.
An unfinished novel is worth its weight in paper. 

4. If you're not finished on November 30th, hit the "Extend Deadline" button.
The deadline is imaginary, keep writing until you are done. 50,000 words isn't novel length anyway.

If you are reading this in December, I am sorry you missed it. It was/will be great. There's something to be said for writing while the whole world feels like it's cheering you on, pulling for you to succeed. 

There aren't many times when a writer can say that.

I recommend that everyone try it at the earliest opportunity, but you should remember that there's nothing keeping you from writing your novel in... wait for it... March.  Or taking more than a month to do so.

I know. Astonishing, isn't it?

Good luck and literary wishes from all of us here are the Department of Literary Security.

Regards, etc.
Scott W. Perkins
Secretary of Literary Security
(Presidential appointment and congressional confirmation pending)





------

*  About 25,000 words
** A little over 50,000 words (your official NaNoWriMo goal).
*** A bit over 400,000 words.  Aspiring George RR Martins might want to edit that down or cut it into a trilogy until they too have the kind of following he has in order to convince a publisher to print it.

10 Tips to Get from Idea to Finished Novel (updated): NaNoWriMo

For all those who are warming up to run the NaNoWriMo marathon, here's my annual list of 10 things that I personally try to keep in mind as I turn the idea I scribbled on a napkin into that thing we call a book.

There are ten of them, which makes a handy size for a list.

Ten Tips to Get From Idea to Finished Novel
1. Be interested in your story. 

Writing a novel is a relationship between you and a story. Before you spend hundreds of hours sitting in a chair stringing words together to tell that story, you'd better darn well be sure it's worth the commitment or it will all end in tears.

2. Feed your brain. 

Your brain generates stories from the stuff you cram in there. Give it the fodder it needs to make new and interesting stories and well fleshed-out characters. Ask questions. Pay attention to the world around you. Everything is research. Pay attention. Take notes and snapshots. You never know when you'll need that story about the kid who accidentally ordered a Harrier fighter jet on eBay, or the chap that put lasers on sharks just to prove he could.

3. Ideas are not sacred. 

Don't get so attached to an idea that you're unwilling to allow it to evolve. A story idea is less like the directions from a GPS and more like finding your way through a new city with written directions scrawled on the back of a coffee-stained napkin.

4. Write now; edit later. 

On the first draft, it's your job to put your butt in the chair and put the story on the page. The chair is the only part that's optional. Editing is inevitable, but it is a stage of its own that can wait until later. Your initial goal is to get the story out of your head; everything else follows that.

5. Take small bites. 

A big idea can choke you if you try to eat it all at once. A big idea can choke you if you try to eat it all at once. Writing anything that's as large and complex as the average novel is a lot like the old adage about eating an elephant: Start at one end and take it one bite at a time.

6. Make stuff up. 

Research can be an addictive drug. It's easy to get so wrapped up in the intriguing minutiae of your subject matter that you forget to write a book about it. If it ever gets shelved in a library or bookstore, your novel will be in the fiction section, this gives you license to fake it... within reason, of course.

7. Be a story hoarder.

Never throw anything away. Not everything you create while writing will fit the story you're working on. Hang on to those tidbits and trimmings for later use in this or another story. Some of my favorite odd moments become short stories, the rest go back in the hopper for the next go-round.

8. Step away from the television and/or the Internet.

That might sound odd coming from me, but these mediums are specifically designed to catch your attention and hold it. I've recently begun doing my writing on a computer that is isolated from the internet to combat this. My writing output tripled when we got rid of TV and as a bonus we saved a lot of money each month.

9. Use your own words.

Write with the vocabulary you have. Put away the thesaurus, it's just slowing you down and making you feel self-conscious. Finding your authorial "voice" is about telling the story the way you tell it, not the way Roget would tell it. Let your vocabulary grow organically on its own and in a way that is unique to you as you research and read. Language is a fragile thing and it will break if you try to force it.

10. Finish. 

Writing may make you a writer, but only finishing will make you a novelist. You have to finish the story, even if you have to keep writing into December and January. The inability to write a complete novel in a month doesn't make you a bad writer. Quite the contrary, in fact. 50,000 words isn't a complete novel anyway. An unfinished novel is worth its weight in paper. Keep going until you get to type "The End".  

It pains me somewhat that I can't finish that list with the words "And it's as simple as that".  It's not simple. It's work, this thing that we do. And if you learn nothing else from participating in NaNoWriMo, it should be that.

Writing is hard. Breathing life into the inanimate is supposed to be hard. Don't beat yourself up when you find that it isn't easy.  

However you choose to proceed and whether you reach November 30th with 50,000 words in the kitty or not, you will have learned something, maybe even accomplished something. I will be here on the sidelines, waving a banner and cheering you on. Revel in the words you are putting on the page. Try something that scares you. Read the things being shared by your compatriots if you can find the time. Celebrate the writing. Have fun.

Just remember, the deadline is imaginary, the prizes are fake, but the book you are trying to write can be real.

Best of luck to you all!

-Scott

Advice About Advice: Mind the expiration dates.

Yes, I'm giving advice about advice again. The thunder of approaching typewriters heralds the word avalanche known as NaNoWriMo and the explosion of writing advice posts on every site that even pretends to cater to writers.

I've been fighting a particularly nasty chest cold  recently, so about all I've been up for is reading and sorting through the books on my shelves. The unfortunate fact is that my library has as many books stacked on the floors as it does on the shelves. Which means (gulp) culling the herd.*

I'm sorry, but some of you will just have to go. Don't worry, we'll find new homes for you in the country where you can gambol and play...

In case it hasn't become clear in the past, there are a lot of books on my shelves about the craft of writing and what purport to be maps showing shortcuts through the labyrinth of publishing. Some of them are timeless. Tomes of inspiration that will never die. However, many, if not most of them are well past their expiration date.

Some of them expired before they hit the shelf. It's just that kind of industry these days.

It seems that almost every author of note from Norman Mailer to Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, eventually writes a memoir of the craft, which tracks their rise from being 'That weird kid**' to a giant in a world of words. Nearly all of these books are split about evenly between memoir and advice for new writers.

We like to think that if we follow in the footsteps of the great and the good, that we too can apply their formula and achieve success. That's certainly the conceit of most writing guides. The problem is that the industry that spat out most of the greats either no longer exists or is teetering on the brink of extinction.

As I face the decision on which of these many books to keep and which to discard, in the end it will come down -- as it always does -- to the writing. Unless you have a time machine handy, business and publishing advice from even as late as the 1990's and early 00's is essentially useless. Only the writing advice is timeless.

This is a theme I return to time and again. Just the other day, I talked about how much I liked Neil Gaiman's list of writing rules because it focused almost entirely on the writing. In order to be a writer, Gaiman tells us, you have to write something, and you have to keep writing it until it's finished. This is important because that's the only advice that will outlast the expiration date of all other advice.

Unless it's also a compelling memoir and worth keeping for that fact alone, any writing guide that doesn't boil down to this very simple concept goes in the Goodwill pile.

----

* I would like to apologize in advance to anyone in the Puget Sound region who is startled by the whoop of joy originating from my wife's location wherever she happens to be when she reads that sentence.

** As much as I try to keep away from the idea that there's some sort of universal "writer lifestyle" that we all should aspire to, there's a nearly insurmountable pile of evidence that writers tend to arise from the ranks of "that weird kid".

This is not a drill: A Nano-Memo from the Secretary

For unofficial use only.

Open Memo from the Department of Literary Security

To: All Departments & Interested Parties

RE: Literary Alert Level Tango

We have been monitoring internet traffic on sites frequented by wordsmiths, and literary agents provacateurs from the Office of Letters & Light and are reporting an uptick in chatter related to writing nonstop for a month and the hoarding of items related to same. 

We can only conclude that a Significant Word-Count Event (SWCE) is imminent.

Pending a presidential declaration of a state of emergency (The White House and FEMA is not returning our calls as of this writing) all writers are advised to shelter in place or seek out the nearest library or coffee shop.

During the last SWCE, over 3 billion words erupted from the nation's writers and worldwide shortages of coffee, pastries, and adjectives were reported.

This is not a drill.

During moments of extreme literary unrest, the department advises that it can take up to thirty (30) days for emergency supplies to reach affected areas. All writers are advised to stock up on necessary supplies and foodstuffs sufficient to sustain life and word counts unaided for thirty (30) days without resupply. 

Our experts have prepared the following list of suggested supplies for all writers:

1. A comfy place to sit or stand in a place conducive to surviving 30 unbroken days of writing.
2. Coffee, tea, hot cocoa, or coffee.
3. Sustainable levels of baked goods.
4. Vegetables for when you are feeling guilty for trying to survive entirely on items 2 and 3.
5. Writing implements to fit your age, milieu, or chosen level of pretense.
6. Ink for pens, printers, copiers, goose quills (see item #5).
7. Phone numbers of out-of-area contacts willing to take late-night phone calls when you are stuck, overwhelmed, or procrastinating.
8. A padlock to secure the off-switch for the internet for most of the duration of the emergency.
9. A supportive and/or tolerant spouse, family member, roommate, significant other, good friend, complete stranger you thought you knew but turned out you didn't but who gives surprisingly good advice on dialogue.
10. A sense of humor.

Additional items, medications, &c. may be added as needed for the individual. Good luck and may the spirit of those who came before guide you in this time of trial.

The department will monitor the situation and report developments via the usual channels as events warrant.

See you in December.

Regards, etc.

Scott W. Perkins

Secretary of Literary Security 

(Presidential appointment and congressional confirmation pending)

Drinking from the font of ideas (Also Laser Sharks!)

This morning, I found out that some brilliant and/or daft people mounted a laser on a shark just to prove that they could. I rushed over here with every intention of telling you all about how I was right and we really are living in the future. I mean, flying cars are all well and good, but after laser sharks, everything else is just gravy, right?

And then my inner geek became my outer geek and I said: "Heh. Dude... Laser Shark!"

Talk about a gift that just keeps on giving; you could do almost anything with a premise like that. Almost any story can be grafted on. Science fiction? Of course; c'mon, that writes itself. How about something hard...
Military Fiction: The brave men and women in uniform who labor shoulder-to-should to bring together the ultimate weapon, lasers and sharks!
Techno-thriller: Terrorists (there are always terrorists) hijack the laser sharks and threaten to loose them upon an unsuspecting world.
Mystery: A body washes up on a desolate stretch of the Australian coast, burned and bitten beyond recognition. Was it murder? What could possibly have committed such a heinous act?
Spy Thriller: A foreign power is developing a secret weapon at their base beneath a volcanic island.
Romance: A handsome marine biologist meets a winsome laser engineer with a dreadful secret.
Steampunk: Aetheric amplification of Sol's brilliant light reaps unexpected rewards in the submarine base of the nefarious Doctor Villainous Deeds!

The list goes on and on and on. Ideas tumbling over ideas in a rush to get their hands on a real-live laser shark. And it occurred to me that this week, of all weeks, was the perfect opportunity to talk about where ideas come from.

Are they delivered to me by Laser Sharks?

Sadly, no.

I started thinking about this when thriller writer Joseph Finder said this:

Then, he said this:

And got me thinking about just how fertile is the daily news crawl that crosses my screen. Not just for things like digital organ thieves and shark-mounted lasers. Take that same Facebook-borne logic leap that Joe was talking about and graft on a story about an MI-6 codebreaker found locked in a bag in his locked apartment and you have the material for quite a thrill ride.

How about a conservator in the rare book room at Brown University that found an engraving signed by Paul Revere stuck in a medical book? How did it get there? Who put it there? Were they hiding it from someone? Historical fiction, thriller, romance, the world's your oyster with a core story like that. And how about a 400 year old map that was found to have a fortress marked in invisible ink that could lead to a lost city in West Virginia? Really! Where can't you go with a lead like that?

Historical fiction and thrillers aren't your thing? Want something that's sweet, but just a little creepy? How about this story from NPR about how a baby's cells lurk in mom's tummy long after the baby is born.  If you're not interested in sweet and want to focus on the creept, there are cannibal shrimp are invading the gulf coast, Iceland is sending tourists into the heart of dormant volcanoes,  and scientists are getting blood samples and DNA from 5,300 year old Alpine mummy.  

That reminds me, there's a GIANT statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of tombs, being carted around Seattle like a parade float.  That's either a horror story, the next Indiana Jones movie, or a lawsuit waiting to happen. Maybe all three.

Speaking of lawsuits, I found out this week that space lawyers are apparently a real thing. My high school career councilor really dropped the ball on that one. But you want a comedic legal thriller? Fine. A bear fell out of a tree and led to a lawsuit that could literally change the face of copyright law in America. yes, really.

Mysteries? A guy carrying a big bag of money had a heart attack on a train platform at Penn Station and no one knows where the money came from. And how about those thieves that staged an elaborate movie-worthy heist in Connecticut to steal a few truckloads of pharmaceuticals? Heck, just today I found out about a robot petting zoo and a hexapodal walking car that will, oh yes, it will be my next ride.

But I write Children's books you say? This week provided me with a harmonica-playing pachyderm, a kidnapped penguin, and an escaped Tokyo parakeet made it home because it could tell the cops its address. No excuses.

So where do I get my ideas? I pay attention. Because in the end, it's not coffee, or my favorite pen, or a special table at the coffee shop, or mystical muse that brings me my stories. It's not even the friends and news sites that dropped those leads into my inbox. I bring me my stories. I get them by paying attention, by collecting all the various bits of the history that came before me and the world around me right now. And I find the bits that fit together but don't fit with anything else.  And the glory of this weird enterprise of writing is that anyone else can take in the same elements from the same news items and they will create entirely different stories from the same ingredients.

So that's it. And the next person who asks me where I get my ideas gets poked in the eye. Seriously. Safety glasses are advised.  Don't worry, you can get a new bionic eye to replace it. Because this is the future we're living in. 

Oh, and I'd stay out of the water until the batteries on that laser run dry. 

Just a thought.

The truth about writing advice. . .

From: Lovely Dark & Deep: A Tumblr blog for those with pages to type before they sleep. . .

Watching the Clock: Keeping track of the third 'W' in your writing.

I was recently re-reading an old manuscript when I stumbled across the following passage...

    "Jordan paused before turning the corner, wondering what she was going to say to the old man that would make any difference. She toyed with her lighter, but couldn’t bring herself to light it. MacLeod had done nothing to earn her disrespect; his house, his rules.

     She could smell the old man’s cigar smoke on the late-afternoon breeze and wondered what she’d have to do to earn the latitude Pastor Kipfer seemed to enjoy. Maybe he'd share his stogie, turn it into an ersatz peace pipe. 

     The rattle of gravel echoed off the garage wall as a car pulled up out front and she hesitated. She didn’t want to do this in front of an audience. She stalled for time, stowing the lighter back in her pocket and hoping it was just a deliveryman.

     A gruff male voice yelled “You Ashleigh MacLeod?"

   “Maybe, who’s asking?” growled the voice of the pastor. 

     A sound like twin thunderclaps shattered the afternoon silence. Light flared, casting harsh shadows against the garage wall, freezing the moment like a camera's flash. The moment of inrushing horror seemed to stretch to infinity the moments before Jordan screamed..."

Did you catch it?  

The muzzle flashes of the shooting we're witnessing through the main character's eyes are bright enough that she sees them from around the corner. Moments after noting that it was mid-afternoon.  

If you've ever been around guns much, you know that's just silly -- it's a gunshot, not a lightning flash.

I know exactly what happened. The first time I wrote the scene, the two characters (Jordan and Pastor Kipfer) had just risen from the supper table and dusk had fallen.  During a rewrite, I removed a bunch of material and shifted the preceding scene from dinner to lunch.

End result: The sun was still in the sky, but the way I was describing the scene still assumed it was dark.

Who, What, When, Why, Where, and How?  Sometimes the third W seems obvious, and sometimes it bites you in the butt.


Incidentally, I checked my notes from the beta readers and one of them even mentions that this scene has timing issues. I remember going through looking for things like this and still I missed this one. More than once.


It goes to show the value of close-reading during revisions.

There are many ways to keep track of this. I've known some authors to keep an account of every scene with a minute-by-minute timestamp. I'm convinced that the trend in thriller novels to include a timestamp at the top of each chapter started with an author's attempt to keep track of what was happening when and then forgetting to erase it.

Instead of military-style timestamps, I've started using an Afterthought Outline (patent pending).

It's not a new idea. In high school and college, instructors would require me to turn in an outline for a paper. Because I didn't see the value in them then and still don't, I would write the paper and then generate a fake outline after the fact. They're fine for those they help, but an unnecessary chore for those they do not.

Good thing I'm not teaching high school English, I suppose.

These days (since long after I wrote the passage above) I've started using the afterthought outline as an editing tool.

Instead of writing from an outline, I have a short precis of the story and some notes about how the main characters will interact. Sometimes I have character sheets for the characters detailing their descriptions and mannerisms, sometimes I don't. Sometimes, I just pin all of my cocktail napkins and bits of paper to a cork board in approximately the order in which they will unfold. Then I start writing and let things happen organically. It's not until the second or third draft that I start seriously jot noting how the story finally settled down and start flagging pages with Post-it notes to indicate where certain events begin and end.  This helps me sort out the flow of events and ideally, notice discrepancies like the one I mentioned above.

To avoid the kind of mistake I detailed above, I often note the date and time at the top of each scene either in the manuscript or in the attached outline: This happens and then this happens. And it's ___ o'clock. And in that location at that time and date, the sun would be ____.

So it goes that even an organic writer (so-called) finds it necessary to outline at least a little. Because if they don't watch the clock, at the very least they're going to have lighting issues.

Kinetic Text: Ira Glass on the Creative Process

I meant to post this video when I first found it and then I forgot about it a few times. This is excellent advice from Ira Glass of This American Life fame. It's aimed at the beginner, but just as important for the middler, or or even those of us who've made a living at this and are still assailed by the occasional (or more than occasional) doubt.

Dr. Villainous Deeds: An Online Approach to Character Creation

Hidden somewhere in every narrative is the author that created it.  As Oscar Wilde observed "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

Which should probably alarm me, because one of characters that people best know me for is a mad scientist and self-professed evil genius.

Some people have an inner child, I have an inner mad scientist.

For those of you who have read Howard Carter Saves the World, you know Dr Villainous Deeds as Howard's mad science teacher (in every sense). But he's much older than that. Before he became comedy relief for that novel, he was 'tried on' for size in several ways to make sure I could embody that sort of silly/evil character in a believable fashion.

Before I could commit to writing a novel about him, I needed to get inside his scary, freaky, head and see how he ticked.

Under normal circumstances, I 'try on' new characters in a series of short stories or vignettes.  Each time the character appears in these short pieces, there are subtle changes as I learn how they move through their worlds and interact with the people they meet.  I find my way into their skin and fill it out until they become as real as ink on a page can be.  Only then do I commit them to a longer, more complex storyline.

I did this with Howard Carter and his friends, I did this with Ashleigh MacLeod, and I did it with a host of other characters that never grew into actual novels because what the short stories taught me was that I didn't want to live with them through 90,000 words.

Doctor Deeds called for an entirely new approach.

The 5 Most Useful P2T Posts for NaNoWriMo

At the request of several friends who are too busy trying to hit 50,000 words to paw through the archives for inspiration, I've assembled my personal top five most useful posts for the NaNoWriMos. I hope it helps you!  (Each heading is a clickable link.)

1. Last Year's NaNoWriMo Pep Talk
   I wasn't asked to write a pep talk for National Novel Writing Month.  But writing something no one asked you to write is really the point of NaNoWriMo, isn't it?  So in the spirit of the month, I did it anyway.
   
2. Where do you get your ideas?
   Where do Ideas come from?  It's the question every writer dreads and emphatically answers with "I don't know".  Honestly, I suspect that for most writers that's a bit of a fib -- we may not know where ideas come from in the cosmic sense any more than we can tell you the meaning of life, but we generally know where a specific idea came from, or at least what prompted it.
   
3. What if I get stuck?
   Especially during the month of November (cough-NaNoWriMo-cough), I get people asking me how to deal with writer's block. I admit that used to be a real problem for me until I developed methods of dealing with it when it happens, writing around it and generally stripping it of its power to hurt my productivity. In April, 2009, I compiled my 7 favorite tips for breaking out of a literary cul de sac.
   
4. What if I'm still stuck?
   Personally, I think that a big part of writer's block is the fear of it happening much more than the actuality of the thing.  It's the bugbear under the bed, the monster in the anxiety closet of too many writer's offices.  So what do you do to disarm a bogey man?  We mock them, of course. So, in the interest of a bit of fun and making fun of the bugbears, I've generated a list of some of my favorite and most oddball advice on writer's block. If my advice doesn't help you, maybe someone else's will...
   
5. Why should I listen to you?Listen to me only if what I say helps you. There's no such thing as "One Size Fits All" in either hats or advice. Only take what helps you; discard what that doesn't.

From all of us on the sidelines this year, cheering you on: Best of luck to you all! And we'll try to keep the vuvuzela blowing to a minimum.

10 Tips to Get You From Idea to Finished Novel

For all those who are on the NaNoWriMo marathon, here are 10 things that I keep in mind as I progress from the idea I scribbled on a napkin to the moment I sit down to turn it into a book.

Ten Tips to Get From Idea to Finished Novel

1. Be interested in your story. Writing is hard work and before you commit to spending long hours sitting in a chair stringing tens of thousands of words together to tell your story, you'd better darn well be sure it's a story that interests you enough to make that worthwhile.
   
   
2. Feed your brain. Your brain generates stories from the stuff you cram in there. Give it the fodder it needs to make new and interesting stories and well fleshed-out characters. Interview everyone you meet, explore every place you go, try new things.
   
   
3. Everything is research. Accept it. Pay attention. Take notes and snapshots. You never know when you'll need the story about the kid who accidentally ordered a Harrier fighter jet on eBay.
   
   
4. Ideas are not sacred. Don't get so attached to an idea that you're unwilling to allow it to evolve. A story idea is less like the directions from a GPS and more like finding your way through a new city with written directions scrawled on the back of a coffee-stained napkin.
   
   
5. Write now, edit later. Just sit you butt in the chair and put the story on the page. Editing is inevitable, but it is a stage of its own that can wait until later. Your initial goal is to get the story out of your head, everything else follows that.
   
   
6. Take little bites. A big idea can choke you if you try to eat it all at once. Writing anything long form is a lot like the old adage about eating an elephant: Start at one end and take it one bite at a time.
   
   
7. Make stuff up. Research can be a very addictive drug. It's easy to get so wrapped up in the intriguing minutiae of your subject matter that you forget to write a book about it. If it ever gets shelved in a library or bookstore, your novel will be in the fiction section, this gives you license to fake it... within reason, of course.
   
   
8. Keep everything. Create a file on your computer (or in your filing cabinet if you're a luddite like me) of the random ideas or characters that occur to you as you're writing. Not everything you create while writing will fit the story you're working on. Hang on to those tidbits for later use in this or another story.
   
   
9. Step away from the Television and/or the Internet. That might sound odd coming from me, but these mediums are specifically designed to catch your attention and hold it. I've recently begun doing my writing on a computer that is isolated from the internet to combat this. My writing output tripled when we got rid of TV and as a bonus we saved a lot of money each month.
   
   
10. Write with the vocabulary you have. Put away the thesaurus, it's just slowing you down and making self-conscious. Finding your authorial "voice" is about telling the story the way you tell it, not the way Roget would tell it if he were writing it. Your vocabulary will grow organically on its own and in a way that is unique to you as you research and read. Language is a fragile thing and it will break if you try to force it.

It's easy to end a list with the words "And it's as easy as that!" but it really isn't all that easy or everyone would do it.

It's not as easy as that and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind at every stage.  Writing is hard.  It's supposed to be hard.  So don't beat yourself up when you find that it isn't easy.  This is job, a task like any other -- a task that must be performed before you can enjoy the results.  

Because at the end of the day (or the end of November) it's the person who puts their butt in the chair and puts the words on the page who will win the race.

Best of luck to you all!
-Scott

Filling the void

It's the one thing that all of us have in common.

Every writer uses a different path to get from the start to the finish, but in the beginning, the page is blank.

Okay, it's not entirely blank; there may be some blue lines on it.  Faint ones, arranged in a parallel fashion.  If you are the conventional sort, they are perpendicular, and there's usually a red line along the left side of the page.  If you are like me, it takes about five minutes of staring at it before that margin is crowded with wee caricatures of the people around you, running in fear from an army of cats, robots and gnomes wielding large mallets in a fashion that used to cause my teachers no end of sleepless nights.*

Even if you are a margin doodler, you're still a writer, not an illustrator; until there are words, all the doodles in the world won't make the page any less blank. The page still waits, the words are dormant, the ideas wait in the antechambers of your mind like paratroopers watching for the green light that will send them hurtling down into the white void to come back with a story or not at all.

No matter how you write -- with a cursor or a Cross pen -- in the beginning, the page is blank.

Map stars' homes, map Topeka, but map your story? :: Mindmapping & the Writer

I've never been a big fan of brainstorming in general. As everyone knows, brainstorming leads to flow charts, flow charts lead to outlining, and outlining leads to the dark side of the force.


I kid.  I know some people who love to do these things and I've seen writers cover walls with flowcharts and elaborate graphs and detailed outlines that are almost a novel in their own right. It's not for me, though, thanks. But I get brainstorming. I even understand all the geneology charts and whatnot if your story is complicated enough to warrant them.

To brainstorm is human; to really screw things up (or over-complicate them, which is the same thing in my book) requires a computer. Cue the rise of "mind mappping"  software.

The cherished myths of writing :: "One Size Fits All"

How do I put this delicately? I have an outsized cranium. Seriously. My hats are built in a shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia by skilled craftsmen imported from a murky parallel universe where humanity has evolved into a horde of massive levitating craniums.

Would I lie to you?

This is the root of my contempt for the words "One size fits all." Those words have mocked me my entire life, whispered from the hatband of almost every hat I've ever encountered "...except you."

The truth of the matter is that there's no such thing as a one size fits all hat. At best, a third of the people who try it on will be satisfied, while the rest either look like they're trying to wear a church bell with a brim or suffer an instant compression head ache followed by cerebral edema and death.  You can no more make a hat that will fit everyone than you can make a pair of pants that will.

The same might be said of writing advice.

Don't "Breathe" a Word :: The Perils of Lazy Dialogue

There are a half-hundred words that you can use when you're writing dialogue to describe how words were said.  Lines of dialogue can be shouted, screamed, whispered, thundered, blurted, whined, exulted, cried, clarified, called, uttered, ejaculated, exclaimed, declared, denied, crowed, and breathed.

Don't ever use any of them.  They're lazy and, more importantly,  they sound like writing.

To explain, I'll refer you back to this post about Elmore Leonard's iconic list of 10 rules for effective fiction writing.  I'd summarize the Leonard's list (and my own feelings on the subject) by saying "Don't be a lazy writer or assume you have a lazy reader."  

Leonard sums them up by saying "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Which amounts to the same thing, really.

Rule number three on Leonard's list is "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue".  Personally, I double the lexicon of acceptability by including "asked".  Just don't "breathe" a word. Say it.  Just say it... and then don't use an adverb to modify it (which is rule #4).

Why all the hate?

Because the word "said" is descriptive.  All the rest are prescriptive.

A descriptive word "said" or "asked" tells us what happened.  A prescriptive word like "breathed" or "exulted" or any of the rest tells us how to read the sentence that we just finished.  That's important: prescriptive words come at the end of sentences.  So if your reader obeys you, they have to go back and reread.  Talk about breaking the flow of the story.

Put another way, they're stage directions, and if you want to write stage directions, write a play.

The laziest thing a writer can do is tell the reader everything. The real work of writing is to decide what to leave out, and the real work of writing dialogue is crafting sentences that carry themselves, free of the need for phrases like "he responded snarkily" or "she shouted angrily". If you want a snarky, or shouty tone, use snarky, shouty sentences.
 
First of all, unless you overuse them., the exclamation point should tell your reader the character is shouting and the word choice and simple, short declarative sentence carries across the anger.  "Shouted angrily" is made redundant by writing the sentence correctly in the first place.

Does this mean you should never use "shouted" or anything else?  No. Like any rule, this is one that is meant to be broken carefully, wisely, and with malice aforethought.  But know that you're doing it and why.  In certain situations "whispered" might be necessary.  At times, I suppose "shouted" might even be necessary.  But I'll go out on a limb and say that the rest of that list isn't.  Not ever.

If you've read Howard Carter, you know that on some level I'm a stone thrower living in a glass house. Keep in mind that it was a first draft, but at least in that book, I seemed to be particularly fond of "whispered".

One of the first things I will do when going from that first draft you read to the second is remove those instances when I got lazy and gave too much stage direction.

The later it is at night and the more tired I am as I write, the more likely it is that these things are going to happen.  Which is why we have rough drafts that we don't show to anyone.  Because at some point we have to come back in the cold, clear light of day and find all the parts that sound like writing and rewrite them. 

Implementation :: The Tools Are Not the Trade

Flashback Friday - This post first appeared 23 January 2010, revisiting a long-running discussion I've been having with myself on how ritualized my writing experience has become.  What if I had to give up coffee tomorrow?  The mind boggles. . .

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Acknowledging that I'm at risk of painting with too broad a brush here I feel that I can say with assurance that on the whole, writers love rituals. Every writer's book and blog I've read talks about their ritual at some point, the ingrained habits that get them "into the zone". My writing certainly gains some sort of psychological homefield advantage when I'm writing in my "nest" or at a table in my favorite cafe.

I don't want to make it sound more metaphysical than it is, but there does seem to be some energy in those two places that agrees with me. At the very least, the effort seems greater if I write anywhere else. 


A lot is made of the implements that a writer uses and I'm no saint in this respect. I chortle periodically over some bit of trivia (like Wallace Stegner's typewriter) because it reinforces some portion of my own writing ritual. It's certainly easy to see how this can go from force of habit to becoming as superstitious about our rituals as any NHL Goalie, and slip from harmless habits into the realm of compulsive need. But I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant. 


There's a tendency to get too precious about the creative act and obsess overmuch about the tools at the expense of the creation. Writer's blogs (like this one) abound with lengthy introspection on the mystique of writing, obsessing about the meditative stroke of the golden nib across a page or the percussive "ka-CHUNK" of the typewriter hammer striking the page. 


Ultimately, it's all baloney. At least insomuch as it's purely psychological, the writerly equivalent of Dumbo's feather. And I've found that as much as this psychological trick helps, it also it sets us up for writer's block. Ask yourself what happens when you lose the feather? Misplace your nice fountain pen or run out of ink for your funky old typewriter? Or (paying it back) if you can't get to your favorite writing spot? How do you keep writing on the road if your cafe table or easy chair or desk are a thousand miles away?

The only way to create and sustain a writing output is to make your writing a movable feast. Revel in your materials and your environment all you want, but always keep in mind that the pen isn't doing the writing, you are. Because in the end, writing is about sitting your butt in a chair in front of a computer, day after day and week after week, putting words on a page. 

No matter what we want to believe, it remains work, not a mystical act. I mentioned handing out Moleskine notebooks and pens at Christmas to those in my immediate vicinity who had mentioned to me the desire to write without actually writing anything. But with all due respect to my friends at Chronicle Books (the moleskine makers), a Mead spiral notebook would do just as well -- my current novel began on the back of a coffeestained napkin for heaven's sake. 


If the ideal tool or writerly setting frees your creativity in some fashion, go for it, but I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant to the process and to get too wrapped up in them is to invite writers block at a crucial moment sometime in the future. 


Whether you're using a quill pen or a laptop, it's about getting from the first word to the last as effectively as possible. When the obsession with writing in a particularly "writerly" fashion becomes an obstacle to writing. Get used to writing in different places, at different times, with different instruments. The ideal time to write is when the ideas are fresh, with whatever comes to hand, whether it's a typewriter, a laptop or the pen you stole from the waitress.

But don't steal a pen from your waitress, it's not nice.

Story Prompt :: Writing through the Monday doldrums

No matter what you've heard, not every picture is worth a thousand words.  Just cruise through Flickr if you don't believe me.  Among the many thousands that are worth many thousands of words, there are all too many that simply are not.


Many of my stories were inspired by a photo.  The main character in my next book was inspired by a photo I saw at my wife's grandfather's funeral.  He was in training during WWII and rolled a tank.  The photo was of this young (and by all accounts quite wild) guy standing atop the belly of this upside down tank, grinning like a hunter who'd just killed the biggest bear in the land with a toothbrush.

Some photos beg the imagination to run wild. 

One of the things I do if I get stuck is go looking for a photograph to tell a story about.  Beyond describing the photo, these tales can be the story of someone else finding it in an unexpected place, or a story of the people just outside of frame. Sometimes it's just a setting, but a photo can anchor a thousand daydreams.

Today I invite you to join me in a writing exercise to shake off the Midwinter Monday doldrums.  Take a photo, any photo that fires your imagination, and tell a story about it.  It can be your photo or you can use the one below.  If you want to insert an element of gambling to exercise, >>click here<< and choose one of the random Flikr photos that appears.  Your story has no limits except that it must in some way deal with or spring from the photograph -- it can range from a one-liner to a thousand words or more if the mood strikes you.


I'll post my story here on Wednesday and I encourage you to post yours somewhere along with the photo that inspired it if you can.  See you then!

Cursive Writing :: Choose your words carefully

Welcome to Flashback Friday.  This post first appeared 6 August 2009 and came to mind recently as I searched for my 'voice' with a new character who is not quite a choirboy...
 
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Sometimes my characters cuss and generally act in a disreputable manner.

Actually, I try not to use epithets or cursing when I write. This is partly stylistic, but mostly this is because I feel that the curse word has lost its power in the world. In the microcosm of the novel, I feel that is certainly true, as evidenced by the fact that once I'm a few chapters into an Elmore Leonard novel I stop noticing the words and start really grooving to what he's talking about. This is cool because it means his writing is working, but it also means that a character saying shit no longer has an impact. It's just how (many if not most of) his characters speak, how they express every thought, not just the extraordinarily passionate ones.

No one uses vernacular cursing better than Elmore Leonard. It lends authenticity to his streetwise characters. It's part of his 'voice', that ineffable part of us that differentiates writers and allows us to tell stories in our own way. It's part of why two writers could write the same book and you might never realize it because as long as those two writers know their voice they won't tell the same story the same way.

It's not right or wrong, it's just an observation. In both writing and life, I come down on the side of the equation that says "do more with less". I don't eschew cursing entirely, but I want it to be an expression of passionate feeling. The fewer times a word appears, the greater its impact. And I want any word I use to be evocative of the feeling it's expressing. "Oh crap" takes you immediately back to a time when dropping the top scoop from your ice cream cone is the worst event you can imagine. "Oh shit" doesn't do that -- at least not for me. It doesn't have the power of it's adolescent substitute.

There's a famous comedy routine by the late George Carlin that discusses the seven words you cannot say on television. The most famous portion of the routine is where he rattles off all seven in rapidfire succession, but I find that in the focus on the profanity, his thesis gets lost. Here's the part of the lead-in that gets lost in the discussion...

"I love words. I thank you for hearing my words, I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words."

-George Carlin "Class Clown EP"

As with anything, there's a right way and a wrong way to curse in fiction. The right way is epitomized by Elmore Leonard. The heavy use of slang and earthy expression adds depth, pathos, and reality. Robert Parker's Spenser novels are another good example of how to do it right. The wrong way to do it... well, I won't single anyone out, but like Potter Stewart said about pornography it's difficult to define but you'll know it when you see it.

My feelings about profanity are mixed. All too often, it's not a Leonard or Parker quality of characterization but an overused device that thinly veils bad writing just as all too often it's a beard for unfunny comedy. Shock value will only get you so far before someone wants you to back it up with content. In this as all things, content and context share the throne.

Carlin said "Be careful with words". Every writer should write that on the wall above their writing space. In real life and fictional, words have power and should be used with caution. Used properly, the right words - even curse words - can help your story, but the wrong ones at the wrong time will kill it.