Author: peterclines

Okay, I’ve fallen waaaaaay behind in ranty blog posts over the past two months, so let me take a few minutes and try to make it up to you

As it happens, I wanted to talk about redemption stories. You know, where our hero has done something awful in their past and is now seeking to balance the scales one way or another. Maybe by actively trying to make up for it or by punishing themselves for it.

Right up front, if I want to write about redemption a key thing is empathy. A good redemption story depends on me knowing how my readers will respond to various incidents and actions. If I don’t have a good sense how something will go over, it’ll be easy for my redemption tale to seem pointless, silly, confusing, melodramatic… or, y’know, all of the above.

And, as usual, none of this is ironclad, heavily researched and sourced literary theory that I rigorously defended for my thesis or anything like that. It’s just observations from many, many years of reading and watching stories. Your mileage may vary.

That said… a redemption tale could either be the main thrust of my story or it just part of a single character’s personal arc. Either way, I think my story has to hit a couple of key points. Not in an “introduce the first conflict by page 23,” way, but more in a general “let’s talk about the characters and the story” way. If I don’t have these points in mind, there’s a good chance that my “redemption” story may end up a little lacking

1) Does my character need to be redeemed?
This is one of those “obvious” things that I’ve seen a fair number of folks mess up. If I’m going to tell a redemption story about Wakko, he needs to have actually done something that requires redemption. It’s really cool that Wakko wants to sacrifice himself to make up for his past sins, but if he doesn’t have any past sins… well… That’s not redemption, it’s just a pointless sacrifice. Wakko needs to have something in his past (or do something very early in my story) for which some form of redemption is required. For this post, let’s call it his key event.

This is my first big empathy moment as a writer. If I can’t predict what actions (or lack of actions) my audience will see as needing redemption, my story can get silly pretty quick. There are some things—even things we’d all agree are bad things—that just don’t tip the scales into that “I need redemption for this” territory. Accidentally kicking my cat is bad, but it’s probably not worth a novel of me trying to make up for it Wakko should not be going on a ten year penitent crusade around the world as penance for putting a red sock in the wash (unless comedy is my goal). If he’s really guilt-ridden about that nickel he picked up off the sidewalk when he was six… again, I’d better be writing a comedy.

Also, please note I’ve been referring to the key event as something in the past. That’s going to come up again.

So what was Wakko’s key event? Did he knowingly write a bad check? Peek in someone’s bedroom window when he was fourteen? Sabotage a relationship? Steal a car? Blackmail someone? Maybe… kill someone?

This leads nicely into…

2) Can my character be redeemed?
Somewhat related to the first point. Much like the key event needs to cross a certain threshold to be redemption-worthy, I think we can all agree that there’s another threshold where it’s going to be a lot harder for someone to balance the scales. Maybe impossible. That’s true in pretty much any society, past, present, or future. Sometimes people do things that are beyond redemption. It’s really tough to imagine anything a serial child rapist could do to make up for what they’ve done.

I’m sure some of you immediately thought “well, they could die,” but that’s not redemption, is it? It’s just death. Possibly revenge, but that’s a whole different animal.

So when I’m writing Wakko’s redemption tale, I need to really think about what he’s done. Again, this is going to be an empathy issue. Will my readers think his key event is a redeemable act? Or is it so extreme nothing could ever make up for it.

3) Does my character want to be redeemed?
This may sound obvious, but I can’t force redemption on someone. That’s not how it works, despite everything the Inquisition tried to teach us. Wakko needs to want it.

And… maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t feel like he did anything wrong. Perhaps he paid his fine or wrote his apology letter or served his time and considers the matter closed. Or it could be he knows it was wrong and just doesn’t care. Maybe he feels he’s beyond your petty ideas of right and wrong. Some people are like that. If that’s the kind of character I’ve written Wakko as, it’s going to be tough to do a convincing redemption story about him.

4) Why hasn’t my character done it before?
Okay, for this one, I want to toss out what I personally think is a pretty solid rule of thumb… Feel free to agree or disagree down below.

In a good redemption story, a notable amount of time needs to pass between the key event and the redemption for that event.

Y’see, Timmy, in my opinion one of the main elements of redemption (from a story point of view) is guilt. If I don’t feel guilty about the key event, why would I want redemption?

With that in mind, if I’m taking care of things immediately after the key event, this isn’t so much redemption as it is… well, cleaning up. Wakko may feel awful about having to clean up the mess he made, but does he really feel guilty? If I hit someone with my car, it’s the difference between calling 911 and sitting with them until the ambulance comes… or switching my headlights off and speeding away. I may feel bad in both situations, but they’re two very different situations.

So what made Wakko run from his key event? Why didn’t he clean up his mess right then? What’s kept him from admitting it or doing anything about it until now? Denial? Fear?

And this one leads nicely to a sort of two in one, Watsonian-Doylistic point…

5A) Why is my character doing it now?
If I accept that Wakko’s tried to hide that key event for weeks or months or years… why is he looking for redemption now? What’s changed for him as a character that he’s decided to acknowledge this and make amends, starting today? What’s his (and I hate myself for saying this) inciting incident?

This is yet another empathy moment for me, the writer, because this is a big decision for any character. It’s a major change of course. They’re going against what they’ve done up until this point in their lives. If this isn’t a believable change of heart, my whole story could fall apart.

5B) Why is my character doing it now?
Looking at this as the writer, from a story point of view, why is this happening now? Odds are Wakko’s going to start thinking about redemption in this story, because I write about active characters who actually do things. So why have I included this? Am I just looking to give him some flavor and round him out a bit as a person? Is it the main plot of my whole novel? No matter why I’m doing it, this decision and the repercussions from it need to fit into the structure of my story and into Wakko’s arc as a character.

6) Does it balance the scales?
At the end of the day, every redemption story comes down to this. Has Wakko made up for what he did? Does he believe he did? Do other character think things are even now? Are my readers going to think he’s redeemed himself, or is it going to come across a little thin or forced?

I mentioned death up above—well, you thought about it, I mentioned it—so it’s probably worth talking about that. A lot of folks try to use death as the ultimate balancing agent. A life for a life, redemption achieved, and so on. I mean, sure, Wakko robbed, raped, and murdered his way across the country, leaving hundreds of people physically and/ or emotionally scarred, but in the end he died saving that little kid from getting hit by a bus And that makes it all okay, right?

No, of course it doesn’t. In fact, if not handled just right, death can come across as cowardice or a “he got off easy” situation. It can even look like laziness or a cop-out on the writer’s part. I mean, I don’t have to deal with all these complex emotions and repercussions if Wakko just gets a bus in the face. But it still counts as a strong resolution, right?

Right?

And there you have it. This is the kind of stuff I think about when I’m trying to do a redemption arc story. And if I don’t have good answers for most of these points, well, maybe I need to look again at how I’ve set up my story. Or my character.

Because there’s a decent chance they’re not on the road to redemption.

Next time I’d like to say something about said

Until then, go write.

Okay, look… tomorrow’s my birthday, and I ended up spending a lot more time than I thought I would at the DMV today. But—as I have in the past—I wanted to offer some thoughts that were less about writing-the-art and a bit more about writing-the-overall-sphere-of-community-and-career.

So at the risk of shooting myself in the foot… let’s talk a bit about writing advice.

Really, the whole reason I started scribbling out these little rants soooo many years back (my hair was still rich and full and dark back then) was because of writing advice. All I ever saw on various writing forums (novel and screenplay) was what I called “after advice.” It was all tips on how to get an agent interested, how to get your script in front of producers or actors, how to build word of mouth, and so on. Very, very little of that advice was about the big step that came before all of those.

Y’know… actually writing the damned thing.

But as social media became a thing, I noticed more and more people offering writing advice. As in, advice about the actual act of writing. Often in short, bite-sized, very catchy phrases.

And also… a lot of it very scattered.

I think we can all agree people write for a lot of different reasons. Some folks enjoy crafting stories. Some like elaborate wordplay. Some folks want to make some money, while others want to make a whole career out of it. There are people who just enjoy the act of creation. Writing can even be therapeutic in some cases, like a great purge, or maybe a way to relax, like sliding into a hot bath at the end of a long day.

And to be very clear, all of these are good, solid, completely valid reasons to write. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot. If all I want to do is write Mandalorian fan fic… cool. If it’s what you want to write, write it! Done.

People write in a lot of different formats, too. We can do first person or third person omniscient or third person limited or even the often-elusive-but-goddamn-beautiful-when-done-well second person. We can write books, short stories, comics, stage plays, narrative podcasts, screenplays for film or broadcast television or streaming television. These are all great, with their own challenges and rewards.

Again, anyone who tries to tell you television writing is all schlock or comics are stupid, just… look, don’t resort to violence, but know that they’re wrong. Very wrong.

Now… one of the big problems that happens a lot with writing advice is survivorship bias. If you’re not familiar, it’s when we only look at people who succeed at a task rather than everyone who attempted the task. Which means it’s tough to recognize how many elements of that success were skill vs inherent talent vs surrounding circumstances vs just, y’know, sheer luck. I actually talked about this a bit on a previous birthday post, although I didn’t mention it by name– just because Jennifer Lawrence moved from Kentucky and became a Hollywood megastar doesn’t mean every young woman who moves from Kentucky to Hollywood will become a megastar. Which sounds kinda silly to say out loud, right? But survivorship bias is kinda silly when you point it out.

And sometimes folks don’t recognize their own survivorship bias. They don’t recognize that outside elements were a big part of their success. So their advice is, well, a bit off. Not deliberately, mind you. They’re saying “I did this and it worked for me, I achieved my goal, therefore this is the method that works.” Which clearly isn’t wrong—they are successful after all—but it’s also not exactly right. It’s not considering other factors that maybe can’t be replicated by the people receiving said advice.

Using myself as an example… yeah, a good part of my success comes from writing and studying writing (in many different forms) for most of my life. But having an agent definitely was a big factor. And in all fairness I only have an agent because a bunch of sheer-luck things happened to line up in my favor. And sad to say, yeah, but the fact that I’m a white guy probably helped too. I couldn’t tell you exactly when or how, but I’m definitely not going to discount it. This is part of the reason I give big disclaimers on most of my writing advice. My path to success was unique. I can offer some suggestions on how to duplicate parts of it, but a lot of it was completely out of my hands.

Another thing some folks don’t grasp is that a lot of advice isn’t good for every situation. I can tell you the best dryer setting is permanent press because it’s a good balance of speed, temperature, and gentle motion that will get things done in a reasonable amount of time but also not be too rough on colors and most fabrics. But… this is lousy advice if you were asking how to dry your phone because you accidentally dropped it in the pool.

And this is true of writing advice, too. Like I mentioned up above, people can write for a lot of different reasons, and if I’m just writing for the joy of artistic expression (again, nothing wrong with that) my advice might not be that helpful if you’re trying to write as a great psychological purge at the end of a bad week. I’ve mentioned before how some people will offer advice on structure, but they’re trying to apply television script structure advice to a novel’s narrative structure. Likewise, most of my writing advice here on the ranty blog is geared around the idea of starting a fiction writing career, so it’s probably going to seem very contrary to a person who’s much more interested in writing as an art. The kind of writing we’re doing is going to affect the advice we’re giving and the advice we’re looking for. There’s some stuff that’s universal, absolutely, but there’s also stuff that

When I’m getting some writing advice, I need to think about all of this. I want to consider that another writer’s advice may have bias. I should be aware that they’re offering me advice about this kind of writing when I want to do that kind of writing.

Speaking of which, one final thing. I know this may sound obvious but… maybe don’t take writing advice from people who don’t actually write? If they can’t point to some notable level of writing output related to the advice they’re giving… I’m just saying, maybe their “advice” is coming from a different place.

And that’s all I’ve got for you on this fine pre-birthday afternoon. Sorry again for the lack of posts here, but I’m hoping to be better in the coming months.

Of course, I’m saying that but I’m probably going to miss next week. Editing.

But after that… redemption. Finally.

Until then, go write.

Holy crap, things have been a mess for me. Copyedits on two different projects and notes on two other projects. My mom visiting. Me getting sick. My partner getting really sick. My beloved Goblin needed eye surgery, with two appointments leading up to that. Oh, crap, and WonderCon was in there too.

And meanwhile, the ranty writing blog sits neglected for almost two months. Unloved. Gathering dust…

Yes. Very sad. Anyway…

I got a request on an older rant about two months back, so I’m going to skip my planned topic and answer that. Because I read all the comments. And I answer all the questions. Plus let’s face it, it’s been so long you’ve forgotten what I’d said I was going to talk about anyway, didn’t you?

Jared wanted to know–

“How do you handle a character ‘thinking’ or carrying on with an inner monologue? With my current story my main character has a good bit of that going on and I seem to be stuck on treating it like regular dialogue. Does that take your reader out of a story?”

Okay. This is going to be a bit loose on hard facts because there’s a few different ways to approach this and there’s no right way to do something in fiction. I think there’s definitely wrong ways to do thing, but they’re pretty few and far between. Usually. Some people are very creative.

To begin, how we do thoughts in fiction depends a lot on what format our story’s taking. F’r example…

In first person, the narrative is essentially already in my character’s head. In a way, everything is their thoughts. The whole story. So even when there’s no dialogue, we’re aware that it’s still the character’s voice and viewpoint. Just like this. None of this is written as dialogue, and you understand I’m not speaking, but at the same time you also immediately understand all of this is my thoughts about writing. So in first person, I don’t have to do anything special to signify my characters thoughts because… well, it’s all thoughts. Done.

Plus side, thoughts in first person are very easy. Down side, it’s a little trickier for the character to surprise us because… well, we know what they’re thinking. And it can feel a bit cheaty if they suddenly don’t think of something. I’ve read books where, in chapter thirty, we find out the character did a bunch of stuff in chapter twenty that they just… never mentioned? And never thought about.

If I was going to do something like this—and again, this is just me, it might not work for you—I’d probably do something to let my readers know the character did something while still leaving the question of, y’know, what exactly they did. Maybe something like–

I made three phone calls, sent a text message to Dot, and then I went out to meet Mendoza and get my cat back.

Also, another big thing I need to keep track of in first person (in my opinion) is if this is a present tense or past tense story. Is my character having these thoughts and observations in real time, so to speak, or are they remembering past events and the thoughts they had then (with whatever additional commentary that might involve)? This’ll require a distinction between the thoughts “at the time” and the present day thoughts. Again, maybe something like–

I remember staring at him, thinking there was no way Wakko could be this stupid. But as I was going to learn all too soon, he was way stupider that I possibly could’ve imagined.

Also, worth mentioning that if I’m not careful, this past-present view can sometimes lead to tricky situations of what my character knew when, which can also create some possibly cheaty situations (see above). But it could also lead to some very clever storytelling.

If I do it right.

Next there’s third person perspective. This tends to come in two forms—omniscient and limited. Omniscient is when we can see everything in the story, including what’s going on in people’s heads. Which means we can see in his head, but also her head, and also his head. Okay, maybe not his head. That might give too much away.

Although that brings up a good point we should address right out of the gate. Third person omniscient can sometimes lead to what my beloved calls head-hopping. It’s when the narrative gets a bit loose and goes from my thoughts to your thoughts to her thoughts over to his thoughts (no, wait, we said we weren’t showing his thoughts) and back to my thoughts. If that sentence was a little hard to follow… well, you see where I’m going with this. Once we’re jumping into the heads of multiple characters, we’ve essentially created the same situation as a multi-person conversation. Except here people could be thinking of… well, anything. I’m thinking about those new Monster Force action figures, you’re thinking about college tuition, she’s trying to figure out if someone killed the Viscountess Maria for the inheritance or for revenge, and he’s thinking about ha ha ha thought you were finally going to find out what he’s thinking about, weren’t you? Well you’re not. That’d spoil everything.

So first, you can see how confusing that would get. Second, when we start jumping around and seeing everyone’s thoughts… it kind of brings everything to a halt. Yes, thoughts happen very fast in our heads and yes I can make it clear they’re all happening at the same time, but my readers still have to work through that page (or more) waiting for the characters to start doing something again. And meanwhile that ninja cheerleader’s just hanging there in the air with her sword raised…

The other version of this is third person limited. This is what I tend to use in most of my books. Whole sections of the book are essentially done over the shoulder of one specific character and no one else. We only “see” things that happen around this character and their thoughts are the only ones we have access to. The book I finished two months ago is almost entirely limited to one character’s viewpoint except for half a dozen chapters near the end (why? You’ll find out next year, if all goes well).

(pause for deep breath)

Now, within these formats, there’s a few different things I could do if I wanted to distinguish thoughts from general narration

Which means it’s time to talk about the tilted elephant in the room. Italics.

For a long time italics were the standard format for my character is thinking this, but as of late… it feels like we’re not seeing it as much. I wouldn’t say it’s wrong, but it definitely feels like it’s going out of fashion. I know I’m not using it as much, although that might mean this whole paragraph is just my own style-bias leaking through. But I think if you skimmed through a few more recent books, you wouldn’t see a lot of italics for thoughts.

There’s nothing weird about this. Storytelling conventions fall in and out of style all the time. Something can be the standard for ages, someone comes up with a different way of doing it, and suddenly that becomes the new standard everyone uses. Like thought bubbles in comic books. Remember those?

I think there are a few reasons italics-as-thoughts have fallen a bit out of favor, but the big one is probably that… well, through the years, italics sort of became the fallback go-to for everything in printed text. Thinking? Italics. Foreign language? Italics. Book or movie title? Italics. Emphasis? Italics! Character who can transform into pure energy and speaks by energizing air molecules until they vibrate? Italics!

And all those italics on the page can get confusing as we’re trying to figure out what each one is signifying. It also creates a lot of odd situations if someone’s, say, thinking about a cool book they just read. Or speaking emphatically in a foreign language.

Also, it can look weird to have a big block of italics on the page if a character decides to have an extended inner monologue. Again, said as someone who put a lot of blocks of italics on the page for the Ex-Heroes books. It does weird things with spacing and leading, too.

All that said (italics for emphasis, not foreign language), if we’re not using italics to show thoughts we probably shouldn’t just use some other formatting. No bolds or underscores, small caps, other fonts, or anything like that. Word processors can let us do a lot of weird stuff on the page, but that doesn’t mean I need to do a lot of weird stuff on the page.

Also, please don’t use quotes (double or single) for thoughts. Remember when I said there are definitely wrong ways to do things? Well 99.98% of the time, using quotes for thoughts is the wrong way. I’ve seen a few folks try that and… wow. You wouldn’t believe how confusing it can get. Or how fast it gets there. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do but… well, I wouldn’t do it.

So what does this leave us with…?

Well, one option is what we could call direct thoughts. Treating thoughts just like dialogue, just without the quotation marks so it’s clear they’re not out loud. Essentially, just what we’d do with italics, but with no italics. Something like this…

I should grab something to eat before I head over to Phoebe’s, thought Wakko. Or maybe not. I’m not really that hungry.

If I want to do thoughts this way, a few things to maybe keep in mind. One is that I want to be clear where these thoughts are coming from, because that attribution is also going to help clarify that these are thoughts. I know in the past I’ve talked about trying to pare down dialogue tags, but in this situation… personally, I might lean into them a little harder. Just a bit. Especially if I’m using a POV where the reader could have access to a few characters thoughts.

Two would be that I’d probably set the thoughts apart from any significant amount of action. Sometimes with dialogue we’ll start with someone talking, describe an action or three they’re taking, and then finish off that paragraph with more dialogue. But since the thoughts don’t have any punctuation to set them off, it can be a bit confusing to go back to them. Me, I’d just give them their own paragraph to make sure readers don’t get knocked out of the story if they suddenly have to figure out where the action stops and the thoughts begin.

Another option is to use implied or maybe indirect thoughts. Yeah, I made that up, too. What I mean is, the narration can give us the sense of what Wakko’s thinking rather than word-for-word transcript of what’s going on inside Wakko’s head. This is what I tend to do most of the time in my books. For example…

Wakko considered grabbing something to eat before he headed over to Phoebe’s, but decided he wasn’t really that hungry.

See? Same thoughts as that example a little further up, we’re just a step back from them, so to speak. Or so to think. I feel like this method works with action a little better, too, so I don’t need to break it off in its own paragraph. And that makes for a smoother reading experience.

It’s also possible to use both of these methods. Seriously. They mesh fairly well. The same way we might use dialogue most of the time but then sometimes write something like– Yakko filled them in on the new clues he’d found. We can do that with thoughts too.

Oh, and one final idea about how to represent thoughts in a book. Maybe just… don’t. It’s a totally valid narrative decision to close off every character’s head and make the audience wonder what she’s thinking or what he’s wondering about or if they’re both thinking about the Roman Empire again or something silly like that. It might end up being a bit more challenging, but I think it can make for some really cool storytelling.

I’ll also add one more thing. Thoughts can be fun to write. That ongoing inner monologue, remembering this, figuring out that. It’s easy to fill a lot of pages with thoughts. But I want to be sure all these thoughts are advancing my plot or my story somehow. That’s it’s not just me, the author, twiddling my thumbs for three or four or ten pages. People will lose patience with that real quick, especially once they realize these little soliloquies (mental or spoken) don’t actually go anywhere.

And that’s all I’ve got for you on thoughts. Ultimately, like anything else– dialogue, action, descriptions—the important thing is I don’t want my method of telling the story to be disruptive for the audience. My readers shouldn’t be stumbling trying to figure out if a sentence was narration or inner monologue or spoken-out-loud dialogue. As long as they understand what they just read and it keeps the story going at the pace I want… it’ll be great.

I think it will, anyway.

Wow. I really babble on a lot here, didn’t I? This is what I meant when I said thinking can take up a lot of space on the page.

Well, next time, as I mentioned waaaaay back when, I was going to try to redeem myself for all these late posts (see, I said you wouldn’t remember). And I guess one way to do that is to give you another post on Friday. It’s my birthday this week, and—as I have in the past—I may use the day to offer some thoughts and advice about another aspect of this whole writing thing.

So until then… go write.

As always, some of the things in the newsletter are time-sensitive. Or at least they were when the newsletter came out and all the subscribers got it. Now they’re historical events…
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Well, the past few weeks have been… days.

Absolutely.

Me word real good.

I don’t have as much for you this month. For a few reasons.

The big one is we sort of became a plague house over the past three weeks. My partner and I are still masking when we go out into the world, but I still somehow managed to catch a nasty cold at the end of April (just in time for my mom’s visit to California). Everything got raw enough that I ended up losing my voice for a couple days and then passed it to my beloved. Which really sucks because I’ve always had a pretty robust immune system, since I was a little kid, and she.. doesn’t. So I got over it in about a week and it took her, well, until about now. She’s still fighting off the last of it as I write this.

And of course this overlapped nicely (if we can call it that) with one of my cats needing surgery. My dear, beautiful Goblin has been suffering from glaucoma for almost a year. We’ve been managing it with eye drops for most of that time, but it would still swell occasional, and it finally became undeniable that he’d lost all sight in that eye. So we made the decision to have the eye removed. It was extremely nerve-wracking for me because I have a pile of eye-issues related to a childhood trauma of my own. And it didn’t help that it was a whole process of appointments before the actual surgery.

Goblin came though it fine, don’t worry. I probably stressed about it way more than he did. He didn’t like wearing a cone for two weeks, but it’s off now and he’s happier than he’s been in a while. Plus he was dealing with diminished vision for so long that losing the eye hasn’t slowed him down at all. Really it’s just me feeling guilty I took so long to do it because of my own fears.

Fear stops us from doing a lot of things. And I’m not just excusing myself when I say… that’s understandable. It all comes down to facing our fear and doing the right thing. Taking that next step, even when it makes us really uncomfortable. Like they say, courage is when you’re afraid but you do the right thing anyway.

So it’s okay to be scared. Just don’t let it stop you from being brave.

I mean, Goblin’s got one eye now and no depth perception, but he threw himself up on top of the wardrobe this morning.

In other news…

God’s Junk Drawer is done with copyedits. Levi, the copyeditor, went through the whole manuscript with notes, grammatical corrections, some questions, and a few suggestions. And then I spent about a week and a half going over all of his notes (while also juggling a sick beloved and a depressed cat forced to wear a post-surgery cone).

Quick explainer, which I probably should’ve done a while ago. Some of you probably know this, but there’s a few different types of editing. The editing I do in early drafts, and then do again later with an editor, is usually called developmental editing. It’s when we’re actually trying to shape and form the manuscript. Tightening some parts, adding others, changing some altogether. Some books don’t need much of this. Some need a lot. It all depends on the writer’s individual style and how polished a book they tend to turn in. I’ve turned in some manuscripts that I felt were really solid, but also one or two that were, for various reasons, not solid at all. Bordering on liquid. One may have assumed a gaseous form. I think one editor would completely agree with that.

Copyediting, on the other hand, is the nuts and bolts phase. It’s when someone– a copyeditor– goes through and makes sure all the spelling and grammar’s correct. That all the dates and names and other random facts line up. It’s a meticulous, line-by-line job.

It’s also a tricky one because, on the writer side of it, a lot of us play with grammar and sentence structure and sometimes even spelling to make the story do the things we want it to do. If you’ve read any of my books (like, say, The Broken Room) you know that I like a certain pace to action. I want it to read fast, like you’re seeing it happen. Or trying to see it happen, but sometimes it’s so quick we just see the blur and put it together after the fact. It’s not unusual for me to deliberately create a run-on sentence to help sell the quick, breathless speed things are happening at. And this often means breaking a bunch of “correct” rules. A good copyeditor will see this and the reasoning behind it. I’ve shown them I know the rules and I also know how and why I’m breaking them, and what that breakage is going to accomplish.

Point is, I had a good copyeditor on God’s Junk Drawer. Levi saw what I was trying to do in a lot of places, but also caught a few spots where maaaaaaybe it should be this? Or that?

The next stop… layout! And then ARCs!

We also have a cover now and it’s… it’s pretty damned cool. I can’t show it to you yet, but I’m pushing to make sure all of you subscribed to the newsletter are the first folks to see it.

Oh, I also finished that comic script and the editor said… it was actually pretty solid for a first try. He suggested one tweak and, yeah, it was a good suggestion and makes a few things work better.. As I’ve said, it’s a new format for me so I’m still stumbling through it, but we’re moving forward.

What else do I have for you…

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
I’ve got to be honest…. not a lot. Well, not a lot I didn’t talk about in the last newsletter. Doctor Who is still fantastic. The Grimm rewatch continues (we’re almost done with season three) and I have many, many thoughts about it. We’ve also been watching the last few episodes of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and godDAMN that show should’ve run for four or five seasons. And of course, as I write this tomorrow’s the premiere of Murderbot. And some point soon I’m probably going to binge all of Andor in two or three nights.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
With all the sickness and cat stuff… not much, I’m ashamed to say. I read an early draft of a friend’s clever and very timely book. Currently reading Overgrowth by Seanan Mc *cough* Mira Grant and I’ll be talking with her about it next week at Mysterious Galaxy (if you happen to be in the area). Next up for me… Well, I just got another blurb book, but I may dive into this Godzilla novelization/ translation. And then Staircase in the Woods is just sitting there…

Cool New Toys
I’m in that part of the year where I try not to get much for myself because my birthday is coming up. But a bunch of preorder stuff showed up, and I took advantage of a few sales. The biggest one is that I finally got my Marvel Legends Rom, an action figure I’ve essentially wanted since I was nine. I haven’t even taken him out of the package yet, and I have some plans for once he’s out (expect many photos). I also ended up building my own custom Four Horseman demon. He doesn’t have a name yet, but he looks really cool.

And I think that’s all I’ve got for you right now. As always, thanks for reading. See you again in thirty days or so.