Author: peterclines

A few weeks back a friend asked me to look at their new manuscript, and something about it gnawed at me. It was doubly gnawsome because it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about here on the ranty blog but could never quite find the right words for. We ended up talking and it suddenly hit me how to explain it. In fact, I asked them if we could pause for a few seconds so I could scribble some notes down for myself.

And now you get to benefit from these thoughts.

I’m guessing most of you have probably heard of Chekhov’s rifle. Basic idea is that if we see a rifle in act one, it should go off in act three. Because if it doesn’t go off… what’s the point of it? Why am I cluttering up my manuscript with rifles that don’t so anything.

Another way to look at this is a setup and a payoff. I make a point of bringing up X now, and later X becomes important for this particular scene, plot thread, or maybe the entire book. For some reason Dad gives Wakko his old pager and fifteen chapters later we realize the last number it received was actually the combination for the hidden vault in the basement. We learn Phoebe used to shoot hoops with her older brothers and then saving the Surf Shack comes down to who can make the most baskets in five minutes. Setup. Payoff.

Now, let’s discuss.

First off, the setup/payoff relationship isn’t quite its own thing. It’s more of a structure element than a literary device. Reveals use setups and payoffs. So do twists. It’s always going to be an aspect of something else, so I don’t want to be thinking of it as some separate, distinct thing.

Second is the big one, and it’s what I wanted to blather on about the most. I’m a big believer that time is a very large aspect of a good setup-payoff relationship. The more time elapses for my reader (or whatever audience I’m dealing with) between the setup and the payoff, the more powerful the payoff will be. My characters will look smarter. My threats will look bigger. My unspeakable horrors will look SO much worse

Or should be, if I’ve got everything else working right.

I’ve talked about this a little bit before. A twist, for example, doesn’t carry a lot of weight on page three. If I want this to just be a cool beat, it doesn’t need the extra time that an OH HOLY CRAP level payoff needs. That time lets my readers absorb the setup, settle into the story, and the more comfortable they are the more impact it’ll have when my payoff hits. So I want to make sure I’ve worked out the right amount of time between the setup and the payoff for the weight I want that reveal to have.

Actually, I just thought of a great metaphor. Imagine you’re leaning out a window with a fairly heavy-duty water balloon. If I just open a first floor window and drop it, there’s a decent chance that balloon’s just going to bounce on the sidewalk and maybe roll away. But from a fourth story window, that water balloon’s definitely going to burst. And if I’m dropping it from a tenth story window… I mean, that thing’s going to explode. It’s the same balloon, but the different distances change how much impact it has. Make sense?

Now, a few things to watch out for…

If I have shorter times between my setups and payoffs, they start to look different. More like I’m just throwing out solutions and then presenting a problem for them. Remember my example up above? It’s one thing if Wakko gets the pager on page nine and he figures out it’s got the vault combination on page seventy, but it’s got a very different feel to it if he gets it on page sixty-six and then figures out the combination four pages later. Especially if I have this sort of structure two or three times throughout my book. This is the kind of thing that makes my writing feel episodic as it happens, well, again and again. Again, dropping from the water balloon from the first story window. Even if it’s a really big water balloon, it might not burst as much as… fall apart? It just won’t be as dramatic.

Also, side issue, if I’m doing this later and later in my story, it can feel a bit fake. I’ve set up the world and my characters, but when I start introducing new elements in the back half just so I can solve problems… that’s probably going to feel a little cheaty. Especially in genre stories. What’s that? I never mentioned the SV-7 androids only have one weak point and it’s at the top of their head? Well, I’m mentioning it now that I’m up here on the catwalk above this one. Again, solution and problem vs setup and payoff.

And I’m not going to lie. Finding this time-reveal ratio can take a little work. It’s one of those things that’s going to be a little different for every situation and every story. And the only one who’s going to know what’s right is.. well, you. The writer. Because you’re the only one who knows how all these reveals and twists and other payoffs are supposed to land.

Y’see, Timmy, at the end of the day it’s really not about the water balloon—it’s about the size of the splash it makes.

Next time, I figured I’d get into the holiday spirit and talk about why it’s good to be the Invisible Man. Or Invisible Woman. Really, any Invisible Person.

Until then, go write.

Running a little late with this one, sorry. This fall/ early winter’s going to be very chaotic for me.

Last month when I was guest-hosting the Coffeehouse, we talked a bit about word count. Not in the sense of making your word count, but what publishers are generally expecting from books in different genres. Should we be aiming for those points as we write? Or do we just write with the acknowledgment we may need to cut some later?

Since this is something I have some experience with—some very recent, in fact—I thought it was worth talking about a bit more. It’s one of those things where we’re going to dance a little bit between writing and publishing, going back and forth between the art and business sides of the line.

First off, let me be clear up front– you should always write the story you want to tell. Always. Don’t try to chase a trend or guess what some agent or editor might want to see. The thing they want to see is your story, as you wanted to tell it. That’s what gets attention—the story with all that passion and energy and excitement.

For example, let me talk about two of my books. One of them—the one you know—is -14-. It was a wild, crazy story that had been bubbling in my mind for a while. I wrote it out, tightened it up, polished it and sent off the to the small press publisher I was working with at the time. He absolutely loved it. Told me it was one of the best things that’d he’d ever received as a submission and offered me a contract pretty much right then and there.

The other book is the one we just sold last month. If you’re subscribed to the newsletter, it’s the one I’ve been calling TOS. Three different publishers wanted it. And they all loved it. All of them talked about how much the loved the story, the characters, the writing, how it was equally playful and fun and terrifying.

So, let’s be clear. In both cases, the editors/ publishers loved the book I wrote. These book sold because I wrote the book I wanted to write and people could see that passion and excitement in it.

Then… the business aspect of this sets in.

In the case of -14- the small press used print on demand, and that meant there were very solid costs that came come down to specific page counts. One line past this page and the book goes up by X. Go past this page and it goes up by 3X. And the publisher either has to absorb those costs (not great) or pass them on to the customer (also not great). So the publisher loved it, but we had to make some serious cuts just to make the book affordable. No way around it.

And with TOS… well, it’s a book that definitely leans into horror, and most horror books tend to lean on, well, the lean side. Yeah, there’s some big, beefy horror books out there, but two editors—the final two, in fact, who wanted it the most—both made it clear the book was going to have to lose some weight. One thought 20K. The other thought closer to 35K.

Yeah. Scary thought, isn’t it? Happy October!

As a slight aside, I think this is one of those things that makes people say “Big publishers will make you change everything about your book!” And on one hand, yeah, they’re absolutely asking me to change things. Kind of insisting on it, in fact. But they’re not just doing it at random. Remember, they bought my book because they like my book. Why else would they have bought it? But this is definitely a business vs. art thing.

Also please keep in mind—none of this is me saying we can ignore actual submission guidelines. If anything, this is kind of making that case. If somebody doesn’t want to see anything over 100K words and my manuscript’s currently at 135K… well, I’ve got some cutting to do if I want to submit to them.

Anyway…

All this brings me to an exercise I wanted to bounce off you, especially for those folk working on an early draft of a first novel (but it works for everyone, so don’t feel shy). I want you to imagine, right now, you open up your email and you’ve got an acceptance letter. That publisher you sent your book to likes it They love it! They want it, they want to sign you, it’s a done deal. There’s only one catch…

You need to cut 20,000 words out of the book. It has to be shorter. Maybe it’s a marketing thing, a financial thing, a random decision from someone higher up the food chain. But you must lose 20,000 words. They’re willing to sign that big contract with you today, but there’s no negotiation on that point. 20K gone before it can see print.

So, let’s open up our latest draft and take a long, hard look at it.

What can go?

No, come on. What can go? Do we really need all that description? Every one of of those funny dialogue exchange? All that banter? Does Phoebe need that little soliloquy about rediscovering the sanctity of life?

What really happens in that driving chapter? Yeah, Phoebe gets Dot caught up on everything, sure, but the reader already knows all of it. I’m just repeating information, having her re-tell it to Dot. And wouldn’t we probably assume she told her if they just got out of the car an hour and fifty miles later and Dot said “So that’s all of it?”

Do we need Wakko at all? No, seriously. What does Wakko do in this story? He makes some random comments, carries some stuff at one point, has a few funny lines, but does he actually affect the plot or Phoebe’s story in any way? Would anything at all change if we just cut him out altogether?

Be honest– would it? Think hard, because we have to cut 20K words.

I’ve already cut two full chapters out of TOS. Big, full chapters. One was near the end, and it was sort of a fun, pushing-the-conceit-of-the-book bit that also helped show how horribly wrong things had gone. One was closer to the beginning, and it played with another conceit while also… damn, it had one of my favorite passages in the book. One of those bits that was simple but also kind of deeply, under-your-skin creepy. And that might just be gone for good. It’s so situation-specific I’m not sure I could ever use it for anything else. But ultimately, that three-quarters of a page is the only reason this whole chapter exists. Everything else in it is kind of redundant.

So right there… almost 5000 words cut out of the 20K my editor’s asking for.

One more time, I’m not saying we should plan on this—again, write the book you want to write. But it’s worth thinking about. Because no matter who we’re writing for, we’re going to have to edit and tighten cut. That’s a basic part of the process.

And if I’m finding it really easy to cut something out… well, maybe that’s a sign it wasn’t needed in the first place.

Next time, I’d like to talk about that phaser rifle Chekov left on the bridge

Until then, go write.

Sorry there was no post last week. Wednesday-Thursday turned into this blur of flight cancellations, rescheduling, re-re-scheduling, re-re-re-scheduling, and all the while coordinating with Blackstone’s marketing and publicity folks about the event I was supposed to be going to and hopefully still would end up at…?

I made it. Barely.

And yes, somewhere in there I forgot to write up a ranty blog post.

So, a few weeks back I mentioned how one of the cool things about following a bunch of writers is getting lots of tips and advice. And there is tons of it out there. Actual digital tons. Some of it ends up being stuff I enthusiastically agree with. Some of it… isn’t. Sometimes it’s things that don’t work for me, but may for other people. Sometimes they’re things that only apply to a certain point or stage in our writing careers. Being able to sift through writing advice is, in my opinion, one of the best skills an aspiring writer can develop.

And—pretty much inevitably—someone decides to make a list. It’s how the internet works. If there’s more than one thing, we have to have an order. A priority list. A number-one-thing-to-do! This is the most important rule when it comes to writing! Ravens hate this one trick that will save you years!

Anyway…

For your enjoyment and possible education—and with the Golden Rule firmly in mind—here are my top ten tips for writers. I made up an earlier version of this seven or eight years back but I figured what the heck—it’s the internet. There’s always space for an updated list.

1 – Write Every Day
The controversial one, right up front. Allow me explain. Or defend myself, depending on your personal feelings on the matter.

I’ve said more than a few times that my intended audience here at the ranty writing blog, since the very beginning, is the folks hoping to write professionally. Maybe as a side gig, maybe the stars line up and they get to do this full time as a career. If that’s not you—no worries at all. There’s value to your writing no matter why you want to do it, and I think a lot of the things I talk about here are usable no matter what your end goal is.

With that in mind… if you follow any pro writers on social media, a very common thing you’ll see is that all of them are writing every day. Yes, even the ones saying you don’t have to write every day. I post about toys a lot, but guess what? I’m writing every day, five or six days a week.

If I want to do this for a living, I have to think of writing as a job. Yeah, sure, we’re not all there yet. We were just saying that. But the whole reason I got here was because I stopped treating my writing like a hobby and started treating it like something that had to happen every day.

Yes, lots of things count as writing. We’re going to get to that, don’t worry.

2) Read
It’s three weeks into September as I write this and I’m picking up my 24th book of the year. I think that works out to a book every… eleven days? My final count for the year is probably going to be in the 30s. And that’s not counting research material, news articles, and things like that. Or stories I get in other formats– movies, tv, podcasts. As I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, I’m a big believer that you can’t have output without input. People who think they can write without reading, well… they’re going to have some problems. A variety of them, really.

So read. Read everything you can. Read things in the genres you know and love, but also try to read books by people you’ve never heard of in genres you’re not a fan of. Push yourself to grow and learn and experience more.

3) Learn to Spell
I’ve talked about this many, many, many times. Learn words. Learn how to spell them. Learn what they mean. Words are the bare-bones foundation of writing. Wanting to be a writer when I can’t spell is like wanting to be a chef when I don’t know the difference between salt and flour.

Never be scared to grab a dictionary or type something into Google. I do it all the time, even just to confirm I’m right about exactly what a word means. Nobody’ll judge you for it. But they’ll absolutely judge you if you get it wrong.

4) Exercise your mind
This is kind of related to Tip #2. I think our minds work just like a muscle. We can’t just do one thing with them all the time. Spend a little time doing something else. Build a bookshelf. Build a model. Cook a meal. Sketch something. Paint something. Sing something. Hell, balance your checkbook. Do your taxes. Give your brain a chance to flex in different ways and it’ll work better overall.

5 ) Exercise your body
Another sad truth about writing. It generally involves sitting on our butt and, well, that’s kind of it, physically. Sadder truth—our brains needs oxygen to work. Oxygen comes from blood, and blood flow increases with exercise and decreases when we… well, sit on out butts.

So exercise actually makes it easier to write. This doesn’t mean go get a gym membership or run a 5k every morning. If you can do that, great, but just stand up from your desk or kitchen table and move around a bit. Go for a walk. Play with your cats. Do some jumping jacks. Stretch! Just get that blood flowing.

6) Learn the Rules
Nobody likes to hear this part but… there are rules to writing. Like spelling (see #3 up above). They exist and they exist for a reason. Rules are the common ground we share as authors and readers. If I don’t know the basic rules of a language, I can’t be surprised if I can’t communicate with people who speak that language.

Likewise, there are rules to storytelling. Again, not unbreakable ones, but they’re real and–on one level or another–we’re all aware of them. Certain universal expectations, and also some that are more tailored for different genres or styles. I need to have a good sense of how these rules work if I want to tweak or openly subvert them.

7) Enjoy it
Whatever reason I have for writing, I should be having fun with it. Yeah, even with all the rules and spelling and exercise. Writing should be enjoyable. Why would I want to spend all my time doing something I inherently don’t like? Write about stuff you love and ideas that fascinate you. Let writing be the high point of your day, and let that enthusiasm carry through onto the page.

And please ignore those weirdos who talk about starving artists or suffering for their art or any of that nonsense. All that approach does is make you… well, not like writing. Why would I approach this in a way that makes me not like doing it? Believe it or not, you can be a real writer without ever once feel tortured, traumatized, or misunderstood. Like so many things, if writing makes me feel miserable and frustrated… maybe I’m doing it wrong.

8 – Actually write it
I 100% believe that a lot of things count as writing. The planning and outlining. The twenty minutes kind of staring into space, or maybe the long walk where I quietly murmur dialogue to myself as two characters talk in my head.

But at the end of the day, the only real yardstick we have for progress is making words appear on the screen, the legal pad, the expensive little notebook, or those parchment scrolls you make yourself at your secluded cabin out by the lake. I can attend all the conferences and seminars, read every instructional book, or skim every random blog post with a list of rules, but if I never actually write anything… does any of it matter?

I was that guy for a while. I could tell you a lot about writing, what it meant to be a writer, what I planned to write, what real writers needed to do… but I never wrote anything.

The only way to move forward is… writing.

9 – Don’t be Scared to Break the Rules
So there are rules. No question, no discussion. Rules exist. We were just talking about that a few paragraphs up. But I don’t need to be trapped by them. I shouldn’t feel like rules are the end-all, be-all of writing. Just because someone can quote a rule that my story breaks doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean I’m doing anything right, either, just to be clear, but it doesn’t mean automatic failure.

Y’see, Timmy, the rules are there as sort of a baseline starting point. Learn to do X and then we can talk about Y. They’re trying to get you past all those mistakes we see again and again and again in submission piles and sophomore writing classes. As Django Wexler pointed out a while back on Bluesky, all these rules have the silent, unwritten coda of “…until you know what you’re doing.”

Writing is an art. Even if I’m writing for commercial purposes, it’s still an art. And art is unique to every artist. I can use creative misspellings and odd story structures and characters who don’t fit perfectly in that heroic mold. Or the heroic tights. Or the heroic top… which seems to have shrunk a little in the mid-section since I became a full-time writer. We learn the rules so we can learn how to break them for maximum effect.

For example, you could tell everyone you’re doing a top ten list and just stop at nine. That’s okay. It’ll give people a chuckle and they’ll be more likely to remember the other things you said.

And that’s that.

Oh, if you’re in the Southern California area, this Saturday I’m going to be at Artifact Books in Encinitas signing copies of the Dread Coast anthology with a bunch of other authors. You should stop by and hang out, maybe pick up a copy. It’s for a good cause.

Next time… well, it’s getting near the wonderfully gruesome time of year, so let’s talking about cutting out that pound of flesh.

Until then, go write.

I’m planning out this massive book tour for God’s Junk Drawer at the end of the year and it’s kind of freaking me out in a few ways. Once or thrice now I’ve sort of stopped and quietly shifted my attention to… something else. Anything else. Because then I don’t have to think about how I’m doing all this traveling and signing and talking in just ha ha ha ha like two months. Holy crap, it’s seriously only two months away now.

So let’s talk about something else.

Well, no, hang on. Let’s talk about that. About being a little scared and freaked out. And how it can effect us.

I think a lot of time when people say they have writer’s block, what they really mean is they’re worried that the thing they want to write just isn’t good enough. That their take on it isn’t good enough. Heck, maybe they’re not even the person who should be writing it. It’s not worth doing, especially not with everything going on in the world! Is this page, that paragraph, this sentence as good as it could be? Is this the best way to describe this? Will my writing sell, win awards, or get me mocked on TikTok?

Most of us go through this at one point or another. We start over-analyzing our work and second-guessing everything we put down. And eventually… we don’t so anything. I’ve mentioned the term paralysis by analysis before, which sums this up perfectly. We get so scared at the thought of doing the wrong thing—something that isn’t perfect—that we don’t do anything.

And it’s kind of understandable, right? None of us want to waste time writing the wrong stuff. Putting down a lot of words that we know aren’t the right ones. That’s not how real artists do it.

We’ve talked about this before, though. Not getting it perfect the first time is pretty normal for writing. I need to get past this idea my work should be flawless out of the gate and just admit my first draft isn’t going to be perfect. Maybe not the second draft, either. It’s going to need editing. Maybe lots of editing. Possibly even major rewrites. That’s just the way this whole writing goes.

Once I can admit this to myself, I can get past that block—that fear—and my productivity will go through the roof.

Another cause of writer’s block is a voice issue, or possibly an empathy issue. A lot of us tend to write the way we speak, especially when we’re just starting out. Maybe a little cleaner or clearer, but it’s not unusual for our narrative voice and character voices to use all the same words and phrases and metaphors that we do in our day to day life. It’s normal because it comes naturally. It’s us telling stories about characters who also talk like us.

But at some point—maybe early on, after a few months, maybe a few years in some cases… things stop matching up. We realize that high elf ladies of court and interdimensional aliens probably shouldn’t talk like stagehands from San Diego. They’re not going to see the world the same way a retail clerks from Amherst would. They’re going to have different vocabularies and cadences. They’re not going to sound like me.

And suddenly I’m not writing “naturally” anymore. It’s not that easy gush of words. I need to put myself in a different headspace and look at the world—even this made-up fictional world—in different ways. It takes effort! It’s work.

For some folks this becomes writers block. It’s not that they can’t write, they just can’t understand why it’s become an effort. Because writing should be glorious and effortless, yes? And if it isn’t… well, I should probably wait for the muse to return and the words to flow.

There’s one other big thing that I think can cause writer’s block. And it’s a painful one.

Sometimes people have writer’s block because they don’t have anything to write.

There’s a lot of reasons people sit down and try to write. Could be I have a clever idea, but no real story. Perhaps I just think it’ll be an easy side-hustle to make some money. Maybe I want the adoration for a finished work more than I want to… well, write something.

I know this sounds harsh, but I also know most of us—one way or another—are acquainted with someone like this. Someone who likes the idea of being a writer more than the reality of being a writer. And these folks will talk about being blocked when the truth is they just have no real interest in the act of writing. But I mean if they’re blocked… I mean, that can’t be helped, right?

You may notice one thing I haven’t mentioned is “all this crap going on in my life.” And these days… yeah, there can be a lot of it. It can feel overwhelming and exhausting and oh sweet jebus how do some people find time to write? How is he getting so much done?!?

But that’s not being blocked. That’s just being tired. It’s a self care issue. A scheduling problem. It’s reality, and we’re all living in it (well, most of us). Sometimes, we all have to put the writing aside for a while and deal with, well, life. That’s just the way it goes.

Y’see, Timmy, I don’t really believe in writer’s block. I think it’s just a big, catch-all name we throw over other problems. Fear. Inexperience. Lack of interest. It’s intimidating when it’s a vague concept, but once we break it down and actually identify it, we can address it. And deal with it.

And beat it.

<insert Rocky music here>

Oh, minor segue– if you’re in the San Diego area this Sunday, I’m filling in for Jonathan Maberry and hosting the Writers Coffeehouse at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, noon to three. It’s absolutely free, no requirements, no sign-ups, no minimums, no secret password needed. Just show up and talk about writing, publishing, and some of the weird spots where they overlap (or don’t talk and just lurk). Bring your questions and I’ll try to bring some answers. And if I don’t have them, someone else there probably will.

Next time… okay, I know people are still reading this thing, but I feel like I’m just throwing stuff out there. Much like the Coffeehouse, is there anything in particular anyone would like me to talk about or address? Just drop a comment down below. Otherwise I’ll… I don’t know, give you a top ten list or something.

Until then… go write.