Category: Broken Room

Okay, well… it’s been a while.

Again.

If you happen to subscribe to my newsletter, you know it’s been a weird, long summer that ended with me deciding to, well, go hide in the garage for a while. But I’m back and feeling, well, a little recharged. Let’s say not quite as overwhelmed by, y’know… everything

Anyway… let’s talk about writing. Haven’t done that in a while, have we?

So, just a few weeks before I went on this extended hiatus, Alex asked—

How do you go about writing characters with thought-processes considerably different to your own? Fundamental differences like Mike’s savant syndrome, for example, or ingrained stuff like Hector’s military skill. They both read as natural and believable depictions, and I’d kill for some advice on how to make something like that work.

Unless you secretly have savant syndrome and are an ex-secret military agent and are writing from the heart–in which case, props to you.

Are you even still here, Alex?

Funny, semi-relevant thing– after The Broken Room came out, I got a happy-but-puzzled email from a friend back east. She loved the book, loved the characters, but one thing she couldn’t figure out… If Hector knew how to do all these things—his skill with weapons, cars, people, tactical situations—well, didn’t that mean I knew how to do all of this? So where and/ or how had I learned all that?

As they say… let’s put a pin in this for a moment.

So, getting back to Alex’s question, the big thing here is we’re talking about characters. I’ve mentioned once or thrice before that it’s a big step for all of us when we start writing characters that don’t sound… well, just like us. We all do it when we’re starting out (yeah, all of us) because the easiest head to get inside is the one we’re already inside. So we write a lot of characters who have similar thoughts, similar views, and/ or similar experiences to us. I mean, everyone always say write what you know, yes?

It’s a big thing when we decide to start stretching out of that comfort zone, and it’s not unusual for it to bring things to a halt at first. Suddenly feeling around in someone else’s head can be… weird. A little invasive? Personally, I remember second-guessing myself a lot about writing characters who weren’t just, y‘know, me with a fresh coat of paint. Especially if these people happened to have different skin tones. Or genders. Was I just completely out of line trying to write the POV of a Black woman?

Here’s two things I did for these characters who weren’t me.

First, I did research. Lots and lots of research. Over the years I’ve researched scientists, soldiers, ballerinas, doctors, and government agents. I’ve researched high IQ people, people with missing limbs, people who run ultramarathons, and more.

A few key things…

One is that I tried whenever I could to actually talk with these folks. In person, on the phone, on video chats. Because I didn’t just want to know things, I wanted to hear how they talked about these things. People tend to respond a bit differently when they’re talking than they do when they’re writing out answers to emailed questions. You’ll also notice that professionals in most fields tend to talk casually about the things in that field.

Another is that I always tried to have follow up questions. How long did it take you to learn that? You always do this, but what would happen if you didn’t? One of my favorite questions is “but what’s the real way this happens,” because for a lot of things there’s the official way we’re all taught or trained, and then there’s how it actually gets done on the job site or out in the field. There’s the way they teach film making at film school, and there’s the way film making happens on set—they’re not the same thing. Heck, remember that part time job you had in high school or college with the silly training videos they made you watch? How to stock shelves. How to talk with customers at the register. Did anyone ever follow those to the letter?

And the last thing in this little subset… listen. Actually listen to people. Not just the things we want to hear, the specific facts we’re looking for, listen to all of it. Like I mentioned above, the way they talk. The tone of their voice. The points they’re sure to make and ones they sort of talk around.

This leads nicely into the second thing, which is empathy. I’ve talked about empathy here once or thrice before. Really simply, it’s the ability to put yourself in someone else’s head. To figure out why someone like that would do something like that. I really, truly believe this is one of the most important skill we develop as writers, and I think it’s really hard for anyone to have any sort of wide appeal if they don’t develop. I’ll always be able to find an audience of people who think just like me, but I’ll find a much bigger one if I can find people who think in different ways about different things.

The catch is, empathy isn’t something we can really teach. We each just need to sit down and figure it out. And that can be rough because sometimes, for whatever reason, we don’t want to put ourselves in that other point of view and take an honest look through those eyes. Maybe because it’s uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because it’ll make us see something uncomfortable in ourselves.

If I’ve got a character who’s radically different than me, I’ll spend a lot of time just thinking about them. What would they think of X? How would they justify Y? Would they ever Z? A lot of the time, these situations will have nothing to do with my plot– I don’t want to possibly get lazy and just give them a reaction that would be really good for the book. I mean, I want it to be good for the book, yeah, but I also want it to feel true to them, the actual character. If they’re just going to be a plot zombie I’m kind of wasting my time. On a few levels.

Let me give you a few quick examples, using the examples Alex asked me about.

When I was figuring out Mike from The Fold, I knew from the start I wanted him to be someone with a high IQ, but his defining thing became his memory. By all accounts, actual, comic-book level photographic memory doesn’t exist. Or at least, nobody’s been able to prove it exists. But I started wondering about what it would be like for someone if it did.

The big moment was at one point I was playing with the idea of ants as a sort of self-built mental structure. One group of ants carries thoughts, the other carries memories. But then, as I played with this, I had the thunderbolt realization that if Mike every toyed with this idea, he’d never be able to get it out of his head. And that’s when I realized true photographic memory would almost be a curse. It wasn’t about being able to remember everything– it was about never being able to forget anything. Never having anything slip your mind, nothing dulling with the passage of time.

Needless to say, this gave me a huge insight into how Mike would view and interact with the world. It also meant that, as the author, I wouldn’t be able to use a lot of common narrative devices like “it looked familiar” or “he couldn’t place it” or those sorts of things. Essentially, if Mike had ever been exposed to a visual, a concept, a sound, anything—it was right there, in perfect clarity. So this shaped his point of view even more.

As for Hector in The Broken Room… I knew from the very start that Hector was going to be a former secret agent who was living below the radar. Heck, he’s living below the radar in what he views as a hostile country. So he’s always watching everything and trying to stay one step ahead of everyone around him—knowing how they’ll react and how he can take advantage of that.

So really, this is just empathy dialed up to eleven. In order for Hector to believably manipulate this hotel clerk, I need to have the clerk act and react to things in a way that makes sense and will be believable for readers. But I also need to have Hector believably predict that. The less “baseline” their reaction is, the less likely it is my readers would accept him predicting it. Make sense?

Plus… okay, here’s the trick that gets completely overlooked when it’s done well. I’m the one writing this. I can tailor her reactions to his plans and make sure it all works out for maximum effect. So by being able to put myself in both characters’ heads, I can make these scenes even stronger and make Hector seem even more competent. Enough so that I had people who worked the desk in hotels writing to me to say “that absolutely would’ve worked on me” and a friend who’s known me for over thirty years wondering “but how do you know how to do this…?”

That’s it. That’s the whole secret to getting into the heads characters who are really different from me, the writer. Research. Empathy. Mostly empathy.

Next time…

Crap, it’s been a while. I should probably mention that God’s Junk Drawer is out in paperback in just a little less than three weeks. You could preorder a copy now. If you get the newsletter, you know there’s a way you could preorder a signed copy. Ho ho ho.

Next time, nothing’s happened in a while, so I’m going to talk about action. Unless one of you has some pressing topic you’d like me to address? I promise, I’ll get to it much quicker than I got to Alex’s.

Sorry Alex.

Until then… go write.

Oh! Hello there. Yes, this is very overdue, isn’t it?

The past month has just been wild. The book tour. Thanksgiving. Three or four vet visits. Two or three doctor visits for me (minor stuff, in the big scheme, don’t worry). Assorted holiday activities.

Oh, and this book I’ve been editing. And another book I’ve been poking at.

It’s still really weird to me sometimes to think I’ve had over a dozen books published. Me! That’s not even counting all the short stories and collections. It’s just… weird.

Which leads me to this (very overdue) ranty blog post. I’d planned to do it waaaay back at the start of November but… y’know, maybe it’s better now, as we’re all starting to think about top ten lists and how much we got done and all that sort of thing. Those can be fun, but I think they can also be kind of demoralizing. It can be rough when you’re trying to find time to write while someone else is pounding out three or four books a year. Heck, even once you’re kind of established, it’s easy to watch people talk about all those end of year accomplishments and feel like… wow, I didn’t do much at all, did I?

One thing it took me a while to figure out was that a lot of us have very skewed ideas of the time frames involved when we talk about “how long things take” when it comes to art and artistic careers. F’r example, when I first started out, people thought I was ridiculously prolific because I had four really solid books (and a bunch of short stories) published in less than two and a half years. But it actually took five years to write all of that. Likewise, right now it looks like it took me three years to write God’s Junk Drawer, since that’s how long it’s been since The Broken Room came out. But I actually wrote three books in that time. You just haven’t seen them all yet. And when those start coming out, I’ll bet you anything someone pulls out the prolific label again.

Like, okay, how often do we (as a society) dwell on how long it was since someone started writing until they sold their first book? Once they decided to do this, how long did it take them to get published? It sounds straightforward, but all of these are kind of tricksy points in time. Like, okay, my first published novel (Ex-Heroes) was written in 2008 but it came out in early 2010. And there were a few novels before that one, but they didn’t sell. For good reasons.

And the starting point? When did I actually start writing? Well, if we use when I started telling stories as an eight year old (using my Death Star playset as a slowly-evolving diorama of Star Wars figures), then from that to first published novel was about thirty-two years. But if we go off when I first actually writing things out on my mom’s typewriter and my first attempt at a “novel” (the often-mentioned Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth), then we’re looking at about thirty years.

Then again, we could go off when I first tried submitting stuff (some just-as-awful comic book “scripts” to Marvel when I was eleven) and then it’s twenty-nine years from starting to write to first published novel. But those were comic book submissions, not novels soooooooooo… I don’t know. Do we count that? Yes? No?

If we want to start at when I actually learned how to submit (whoa, publishers and editors and agents have guidelines? who knew?), then I guess we’re looking at about twenty-two years from “starting to write” to “published novel.

We could also consider the college novel as my starting point, so now it was nineteen years. Or if we use the after college/ moved to California novel it was maybe seventeen.

Also, to be honest, for about seven years in there (while I was working in the film industry) I put books aside and just worked on screenplays. Had some mild success, too, relatively speaking. But like with the comic book scripts… should we count that time? Skip over it? Half-count it as general storytelling?

It was in 2001 that I decided I’m going to go back and finish the after-college novel. Polish it up, actually turn it into something I could submit. I remember the moment I decided it. So if we go from there, it only took nine years to get from “starting to write” to “published novel.”

And, of course, in late 2006 I left the film industry to focus on writing. Fiction and non-fiction. If we want to use *that* as the starting point… well, it only took me two years to sell a novel once I put my mind to it.

See what I mean? Those points are pretty damned flexible. Depending on how we want to look at it—and the story we want to tell—it can look like my career took forever to take off or I did it without much effort at all.

This is true of most books. There are early inspirations and ideas, first thoughts, outlines, drafts. Once we mix in behind the scenes stuff—like the very random amount of time between writing and publication—it’s not hard for people to look very slow or very prolific. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally.

Y’see Timmy, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over those end-of-year lists. I got a lot of stuff done. I bet you did, too. That’s what matters. Not how much someone else got done.

Next time…

Hell, next time is Christmas. And the Thursday after that is, well, next year. But I’ll still try to squeeze in one more post about… something? I’m taking requests, if there’s something you’d like to hear me blather on about.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a last minute gift– hey, maybe a copy of God’s Junk Drawer? No, no, Grandma will love it. Really.

Until then, go write.

A few years back I was on a panel with Pierce Brown (back when cons were safe) and he made the great analogy that genre is like a compass. It’s a thing pointing you in a certain direction. You like sci-fi, go north. Fantasy is off to the west. Romance, head east. Sexy romance, you head south-east. You may not find the exact thing you want, but that’s the direction of things that’ll probably interest you.

I think genre is also a set of expectations. Really, I think genre sets expectations. If you tell me something is horror, at some point I’m going to expect something scary or creepy. If you tell me it’s comedy, I’m going to be waiting for the laughs. If it’s a murder mystery, where the heck is my body? I WAS PROMISED A DEAD BODY!

And I think this is where problems can arise. Because if I’m following that compass and I’ve got those expectations, it can be very disorienting to get something else. More to the point, no matter what it is, that something else is going to fail to meet those expectations I have. And when something doesn’t deliver like that, our automatic reaction is almost always that this thing is bad. It’s wrong.

Look at it this way. If you tell me we’re going to the LEGO store and instead we go to the book store… well, I mean, these are great and I enjoy them both a lot. But they’re still different places. And depending on how much I was looking forward to one, I might be less inclined to see the good points of the other.

Likewise, if I’m referring to something as the wrong genre, or leading people to believe it’s a different genre… they may view things with a harsher eye when they follow that compass to my work. I mean, you can try to defend it any way you like, but the simple truth is the latest Hellraiser movie is the worst-written, worst-structured romantic comedy you’re ever going to watch. It’s just horrible. Seriously, it misses every single romantic comedy benchmark you can think of. The two leads don’t even kiss at any point!

Of course, Hellraiser wasn’t trying to be a romantic comedy. Not remotely. It’s a fantastic horror movie, but that won’t matter when I’ve told everyone to judge it by romantic comedy standards. They’ll look through that lens and nothing will line up. It’ll all be… wrong.

And this holds of sub-genres, too. We all recognize that “horror” isn’t one, monolithic thing. There are so many different types and flavors of creepiness. Cassandra Khaw’s The Salt Grows Heavy is horror, sure, but that doesn’t mean we immediately lump it in with The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Cherie Priest’s The Toll is horror, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing the same things as Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard, which doesn’t approach things the same way as the Out There Screaming anthology. And none of these are like my own book, The Broken Room, which has a bunch of horror elements.

Why do I bring this up?

When most of us start off as writers, we flail a bit. We attempt to copy stories even though we don’t quite understand all the mechanics of them. We’re not sure where our own stories fit under that big horror umbrella (or sci-fi, or fantasy, or…). We’ll begin a tale in one sub-genre, then move into a plot more fitting a different one, wrap up with an ending that belongs on a third, and have the tone of yet another through the whole thing.

Y’see, Timmy, it’s important to know what I’m writing for two different reasons. One is so I’ll be true to it and don’t end up with a sprawling story that covers everything and goes nowhere. Two is that I also want to be able to market my story, which means I need to know what it is. If I tell an editor it’s not torture porn when it plainly is, at the best I’m going to get rejected. My readers may toss it aside.

At the worst, they’ll all remember me as “that idiot” the next time they see something of mine.

Next time… well, for some of you November means NaNoWriMo. It used to, anyway. So I wanted to toss out a few quick thoughts about that.

Until then, go write.

Let’s start with a question. I’m guessing most of you have read a Sherlock Holmes story or three, yes? Seems like everyone ends up going through the first dozen cases or so at some point in their lives. So let me ask you something about them.

Why did Doctor Watson live with Sherlock Holmes?

No worries if you don’t know. I want to talk about the answer a bit. Truth is, this is a trick question because there’s two very different answers.

One answer is that Watson moved in with Holmes because he’d just returned from abroad (Watson was a retired soldier and battlefield medic, as some of you may know) and, well, he needed to find an apartment in London. A friend put him in contact with Sherlock Holmes, who needed a roommate, and the two found each other agreeable enough and bam, a legendary duo was born.

But…

Watson also moved in with Holmes because Arthur Conan Doyle (still a few years out from being “Sir”) needed a reason to explain why the two of them were always together. Since Watson was going to be narrating these stories, it gave him an excuse to be there when Homes had a third-pipe breakthrough. When Holmes woke up early with a solution, Watson was just in the other room. This meant Doyle didn’t need any odd additional exposition to explain how/why Watson knew things he otherwise wouldn’t be present for. He was an active witness for everything.

Now, I chose this particular example for a reason. There’s a pair of terms that’ve been drifting around for a while– Watsonian and Doylist (or sometimes Doylistic). Essentially, they refer to the different reasons things happen in a story. On one level, they happen because the characters are responding to plot events, making decisions and being active participants in the story. But on another level, things happen because I—the author—have structured and plotted the story in such a way that it passes information to the reader and gets certain specific reactions from said reader.

Let’s pick apart the first few chapters of one my recent books– The Broken Room. I want to talk about meeting Hector and what happens in the bar. And why it happens.

When we meet Hector it’s mid-afternoon and he’s already had a few drinks because he’s a guy with a lot of regrets and guilt he’s trying to forget. He’s chosen this particular dive bar for safety/security reasons, because Hector’s trying very hard to live off the grid, but old habits die hard. Especially when you’ve maybe got good reason to be cautious. When little Natalie walks up and starts talking to him, he’s immediately suspicious of who she is why she’s here because… well, nobody should know him (see all those previous points). When he realizes she’s at least somewhat on the level, and hasn’t eaten in a few days, he orders her some food because he’s a halfway decent guy. And when the men show up to claim her, Hector’s gut reaction is not to trust said guys (again, see above). Then there’s a moment where Hector’s weighing his own desire/ need to stay under the radar against… well, two guys harassing a little girl. And then he beats the crap out of said guys very quickly and efficiently, because that’s how Hector was trained to deal with problems.

All good in-character, in-world stuff, yes?

Now, on my side of things… I began with Hector half-drunk in a dive bar in the middle of the day because it immediately tells you he’s a bit of a burnout. Right there on page one. But there’s also all these little hints about the kind of person he is as we’re giving a description of his average morning and his tactical analysis of the bar. It’s the kind of stuff that makes the reader intrigued about who he is (or was). When Natalie shows up, it’s more analysis, we’re getting a stronger sense of who Hector is and how he views the world. And again—it’s intriguing. We’re immediately understand this guy comes with a lot of backstory. Getting Natalie some food is basically a “save the cat” moment. It’s him doing something decent early on that he didn’t need to do, reinforcing in the reader’s mind that Hector’s a good man. Finally, when the two men in suits show up, it’s Hector’s big moment. Now he’s given a chance to step away and go back to his normal life and instead he’s making an active decision to become part of the plot.

There’s two and a half chapters roughly broken down for you. The Watsonian reason why Hector is doing things. The Doylist reason he’s doing things.

When I’m reading something (or maybe watching something) that’s just not working for me, one thing I ask myself is what is the storyteller trying to do here? What reaction is this chapter/ scene/ interaction/ line supposed to get from me? What information is it trying to get across?

I think it’s important to be able to answer these questions. Last time I talked about how it’s fine to break the rules as long as you have an actual reason for breaking them. This is kind of the same thing. If I want to do a weird structure or have a horrible protagonist or an odd way of doing dialogue, that’s cool. There are a bunch of stories out there that went against the norm and did some amazing things.

But…

There’s also a lot of stories out there that went against the norm and did… well, nothing. They end up being boring, erratic, confusing, or just plain bad. And I think it’s because those storytellers didn’t know why they were doing things. Their only reason was… they wanted to? They saw someone else do it in a book and just decided to do it in their own completely different book. They just… thought it’d be cool because they were doing something different?

Y’see, Timmy, I need to know why my characters are doing things, and their reason for doing things need to make sense, on some level. But this also holds for me as the author, I need to know why I’m doing things with my story. What I’m hoping to accomplish. How I expect my readers will receive this structure, that format, those creative choices.

And like most things in life, if I’m just doing it to be cool… it’s probably not going to be cool.

Next time, tis the season and all, so I thought I’d talk about Leatherface, UberJason, and Frankenstein.

Until then, go write.