Category: genre

If you’re reading this, it probably won’t come as a shock to you, but… people love stories. Literally, since the start of recorded history. They love reading them. Hearing them. Watching them. They love having their emotions played with and their expectations subverted, and they also love comfortable, familiar tales and they can sink abck . They love made up people and places and event that never happened.

Believe it or not, some people also love telling stories. Pulling people and places and moments out of their head and presenting them to an audience. They love the act of stringing these specific words together in this specific order and knowing it’s going to get that response.

Another thing people love is, well, easy solutions. If there’s a way we can get around doing some work, we’ll usually do it. Yeah, this takes sixteen steps, but is there a way I could do it in fifteen? Or maybe eight? Could I skip over the first dozen steps and maybe just do those last four?

But sometimes we just can’t cut corners. For complexity reasons or safety reasons or just because, look, this is how long it takes to do this. As much as we want ease and simplicity, there are some things in life that take time and effort.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about the Warren Commission.

A week after the assassination of JFK in 1969, newly sworn-in President Johnson ordered Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the killings. Warren assembled a group of congressmen and specialists to gather evidence and quash all the conspiracy theories that were already starting to run wild throughout the country.

The Commission’s final report, alas, didn’t really help calm fears there was a big cover-up going on. One of the more controversial declarations it made was that a single shot caused all of the non-fatal wounds to both President Kennedy and Texas Governor Connally, a shot that changed directions multiple times during its flight. Even more amazing, said bullet was miraculously found on the floor in Connally’s emergency room, having supposedly fallen out of his bloody thigh, completely clean and not even deformed…

The popular term we got from this report, which you’ve probably heard before, was the magic bullet. A small, simple thing which defies every bit of common sense to produce borderline-miraculous results. Some might even say… magical results.

Some folks think to be a successful writer, it’s just a matter of finding a magic bullet. I mean, all these folks talk about spending years trying to “hone their craft” but it can’t actually be that difficult, right? Surely there’s a trick that’ll let me skip to the front of the line—an easy way to bypass all those early, boring stages—and get to the point where people are fighting over my manuscript.

So let’s talk about some of the magic bullets folks spend time looking for..

The magic word
Back when I read contest screenplays for food, a common thing to see was scripts entered into a very niche contest with clearly minor additions to make them fit the requirements of said niche contest. I saw countless stage plays that had a few camera directions sprinkled on them. More than a few token minorities and painted-on sexualities. My favorite, however, had to be the sex comedy that showed up in the pile for a faith-based, prayer-centric screenplay contest, where the protagonist desperately prayed to God oh please, please Lord, let me get this woman out of her clothes!

Storytelling doesn’t work this way, either with audiences or publishers. I can’t expect that using this word or that one (or this phrase or that label) is going to be an instant key to success. I definitely shouldn’t expect that it’ll make people overlook certain other glaring issues my work may have.

The magic genre
Pretty sure since the dawn of storytelling there’ve been folks trying to jump on the hot market bandwagon. Thag gets all the applause for his mammoth-hunting story? Well, Bron have mammoth hunting story, too! Two mammoths! With lasers mounted on skulls!

With the desire to make a sale, some folks try to follow the “hot” markets. Right now young adult science fiction is hot? Guess I’ll write YA sci-fi. Historical romance is hot? Did I mention my YA sci-fi is a time travel story with a historical romance element (mammoths in love)? What’s that? Horror adventure is hot? Guess I better dump the YA and start over

The issue here is timing. Even if I lunge at that hot new genre, there’s simply no way to get a manuscript done, polished, and in front of someone before the trend’s passed. Seriously, none. Especially when you consider most publishers are already working a year or so ahead of the current market.

Worth noting there are folks who write very timely books and they write them very fast, but a lot of them almost inherently don’t have much of a shelf life. They sell really well for a brief window and then usually never again. I need to decide if I’m okay with that. Assuming I even have the ability to do it

Don’t try to follow a market trend. Just write the horror/ romance/ faith-based/ mystery/ sci-fi story you want to tell and make sure it’s the absolute best one anyone’s ever read. That’s what’ll catch people’s attention and make hundreds of others rush to hop on my bandwagon.

The magic aesthetic
More than a few folks think the secret to success—real, worthy success—is to create art. Actual literature which will be recognized immediately for its inherent worth and my inherent genius. That deep, overwritten sort of art that makes grad students start to feel warm in the middle of intellectual discussions.

This one’s a double edged sword, because a lot of the folks going for this bullet end up taking it in the chest (I believe the gentleman ordered a metaphor, mixed over ice?). It’s my firm belief that attempts to create art usually lead to forced scenes, painful dialogue, and unbelievable characters. Plus, that same art then becomes a blanket excuse to let the writer brush off any comment or criticism their work may get. After all, only the sophisticated and intelligent people are going to understand art. If they don’t understand, it just proves they’re not intelligent and thus not qualified to judge it, right?

As I’ve said many times before—don’t try to create art. I just want to tell the best story I can the best way I can tell it. Let somebody else worry about if it’s high art or if it’s just some pedestrian, pop-culture crap that’s going to sell a million copies and get a movie deal.

The magic message
Close behind the above bullet is the belief a story needs to have a deep, powerful meaning. Every element should be loaded with subtext. Each page should make the audience rethink their beliefs.

While it’s great to have subtext, a writer shouldn’t be fighting to force it into their story. Likewise, if I’ve come up with a clever metaphor which applies to the catchphrase/ scandal/ fashion of the moment, much like the special genre above, odds are that ship will have sailed loooooong before anyone ever sees my work.

If I feel like my work has to have a greater meaning… maybe I should ask myself a few questions. Do I think it does, or am I trying to live up to someone else’s expectations? Will it still be relevant six months from now, or six years from now? Most importantly, does this greater meaning serve my story? Or is my story bending to this greater meaning?

The magic contact
One of the more common magic bullets you’ll see is networking. My writing’s irrelevant compared to knowing the right people who have the right jobs. For a long time it was (incorrectly) touted as the only way to succeed in Hollywood, and I think that belief spilled into prose writing as well. Some folks spend more time hunting down “contacts” than they do working on their writing.

Alas, active networking is dead. Any seminar, website, or app that promises me tons of networking opportunities will not offer a single useful one. I’m a big believer that the best networking only ever really happens by accident, and trying to do it defeats it immediately.

The people I want to make connections with are… well, the people around me. The folks I’m already talking to and hanging out with because I like them. And they like me because I’m not basing these relationships on a personal agenda, just on a shared interest of movies or toys or gardening or games or just weird shared life experiences. They’re the folks I’m more likely to help later on. And they’re going to be more likely to help me.

The magic software
I’ve talked once or thrice before about becoming too reliant on technology. There’s nothing wrong with using a spell-checker to double-check my work, but I shouldn’t be relying on it to actually know how to spell for me. Or to know which word I meant to use. Or to know what that word means vs what I think it means. Because… well, it can’t do that. Any any of that.

Seriously, how often have you had spellcheck tell you something’s wrong just because the word’s not in its vocabulary banks? Maybe it’s just a word that particular dictionary didn’t adapt yet. Maybe it’s an alternate but still widely -accepted spelling.

And now there’s also grammar checkers and style checkers and you may have even heard there are some fancy futuristic lines of code out there that’ll write the whole story for you. But the sad truth is, none of this stuff actually works. No, it doesn’t. They all understand “writing” in the same basic-competency way a second-grader does. They barely understand the rules, and they definitely don’t understand when and how to break the rules. They don’t understand context or subtext or nuance or, yeah, even basic vocabulary.

So anything these systems do for me, I’m pretty much going to have to double and triple check from every angle (if I actually care about it being good). I’ll need to actually know the spelling and the grammar and the style I’m going for, and I’ll need the patience to do it all line by line, rewriting as I go to make sure there’s consistency.

Which really means… I’m doing all the work anyway. So, y’know, maybe I could just cut out that legally/ ethically/ artistically questionable step and just start learning to do this stuff.

Y’see, Timmy, as I’ve mentioned once or thrice, there’s really no trick to writing (the Y’see Timmy means this is or big overall windup, for those of you who are new here). No secret words or key phrases or handshakes you need to know to get past the doorman. It’s just about being willing to put in the time and effort to become better at something. Some folks are. Some folks aren’t. Guess which ones tend to succeed more? Believe me, I say this standing with thirty years of literary garbage swirling in the wind behind me. The most terrible, derivative fanfic. Some truly God-awful sci-fi and fantasy tinged with high school angst and college melodrama. Heck, look back far enough and you’ll see three completely different versions of that long-lost American classic Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth.

So, there you have it. A handful of things you shouldn’t be spending time looking for. I mean, seriously, who spends their time trying to get hit by bullets?

Next time (assuming you survived all those bullets) I’d like to talk about baseball and Lindsay Lohan.

Unless you’ve got a better idea…?

Until then, go write.

I wanted to jump back to something I mentioned a few weeks ago. Creating my own words for stories. Yes, all words are made-up– don’t be the clopos in the room, okay? I recently got a new laptop and as I was bringing everything over I stumbled across a very old blog post about using made-up words. It had a few nice rules of thumb for separating good uses from bad uses, and I thought it might be worth revisiting them.

So let’s dive right in.

First off, let’s talk about names. Proper names for people, places or things. This may sound kind of simple, but I’ve seen it go wrong enough that I think it’s a good place to start off.

When we’re worldbuilding an alien or fantasy world, or sometimes one in the distant past or future, there’s an urge to hand out a lot of different names. For characters, towns, deities, what have you. On the surface, there’s nothing really wrong with this, but I should think a bit about how I’m going to introduce these names. Especially if I’m going to do it in dialogue or a first person POV.

Let me give you a few quick, example sentences.

    “Tim, it’s good to see you.”
    “We’re going to try for another child, if Phoebe’s willing.”
    “Sarah, what are you doing here?”

Pretty straight-forward, yes? No confusion about what any of these sentences mean. Heck, the second one even slips in some personal information about the speaker. But watch what happens when I switch the names like this?

    “Jesus, it’s good to see you”
    “We’re going to try for another child, if God’s willing.”
    “Christ, what are you doing here?”

See? Now these these sentences are conveying different information. They’ve shifted to expletives and figures of speech. But we only know that because we recognize this second set of names. Because watch what happens when we don’t have reference for any of these names…

    “Tokar, what are you doing here?”
    “We’re going to try for another child, if Ostriax is willing.”
    “Grothnixian, it’s good to see you.”

Soooooo…. now what are these sentences saying? We can’t really parse them without a frame of reference for those names. Is Ostariax the speaker’s wife, husband, or chosen deity? Heck, Tokar and Grothnixian might not even be names at all. Maybe they’re swears I made up and they’re just capitalized because they start the sentence. I mean, it’s clear to me, the writer, so I guess if you don’t understand it in context the problem’s just you…

The problem here is that when a reader stumbles across this, their brain’s going to make a decision and stick with it. It’s going to say Grothnaxian is a proper name, Ostariax is a god, and Tokar is one of those words you might use with your close friends, but not in polite company. You definitely wouldn’t use it on the internet where it might come back to haunt you years from now.

And when, fifteen or twenty pages later, my reader realizes Ostariax is actually someone’s sister… It’s going to break the flow. Like, shatter it. My reader’s going to stop and re-read those last ten pages to see how many things they misunderstood, or if some things make more sense now. And they’re going to double check Tokar to make sure they aren’t misunderstanding that name, too. Heck, odds are pretty good they’re going to be cautious moving forward, because I’ve shown I can’t really be trusted to be clear about this. All the names are suspect now.

As I said above, I need to be very careful about how I first introduce these.

Also, as a quick aside, something to consider for distant past/future names. Truth is, they’re probably not going to be that different. I mean, how many Biblical names are still in common use today? Matthew, John, Mary, Joseph, Luke, Thomas (and let’s not forget Peter). Odds are you even run into some of the Old Testament ones on a regular basis—David, Abigail, Joshua, Leah– heck, Adam and Eve. Regardless of your religious beliefs, it’s clear these names have been around historically for thousands of years. It’s not hard to believe a lot of our present names will go that far into the future. I mean, does anyone even think twice about it when names from today show up in the hundreds-of-years-from-now world of Star Trek? Christopher, Michael, James, Will, Beverly, Ben, Miles, Katherine, Tom, Harry…

You get my point. Do I really need to create “ancient” or “futuristic” names? Probably not.

As for making up words for regular things—calling eyeglasses optykwear or motorcycles bipulsors or a breastplate torsarmor—maybe I should stop for a moment and consider why I’m renaming them. Am I doing it because it actually matters to the story or plot somehow? Or is this a cheap, quick attempt at worldbuilding? Just hitting something with a coat of literary paint to try to make it look shiny and new?

Here’s one of those easy rules-of-thumb I mentioned up top. Try to sum up your whole story in about two pages. You don’t actually need to write it all out, but try to at least have the whole thing organized in your head so you could jot it down or explain all of it to me in under five minutes. This is the long-ish elevator pitch.

Got it?

Okay, if at any point find myself simplifying some of my terms for this summary—just talking about my character’s glasses or her motorcycle or the breastplate that saves her life—then this is the term I should probably be using in my story. Why force the reader to remember an awkward name for something common? Let’s just call a sword a sword and be done with it. We’ve got better things for our readers to spend their time on, right?

Y’see, Timmy, I don’t want to overcomplicate my story with details that are just going to slow it down and drive readers away. If I don’t need to make up a name or a term… then why would I? It’s better just to keep it simple and let them enjoy the read without me getting in the way.

Speaking of getting in the way, this is the point where I awkwardly insert a reminder that my latest book just came out this week. The Broken Room is an action/thriller/sci-fi/horror story with a lot of heart. No, really. One blurb called it “a cosmic horror John Wick” which I was kind of fond of. You can pick it up at your friendly local bookstore, and probably in any format you could want. Fair warning—it does sound like there may have been some supply chain issues this week, so try to be patient with folk if they can’t put something in your hands right this second.

On which note, I did a signing with Mysterious Galaxy last night and scribbled in their extra copies. You could give them a call and they could ship you one. And this Saturday, for you LA-area folks, I’m going to be at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, scribbling in even more books. If you’d like one personalized, please swing by. Or give them a call ahead of time.

And speaking of time… next time, I’d like to talk about framing things.

Until then, go write.

Holy crap how is this year almost over? Why is time moving so fast? What did all of you do? Who touched the red button?!?!

So, not to keep mining the past, but I wanted to talk about one more thing that came up at the SDCC Writers Coffeehouse. During the Q & A someone asked what I generally think of as an “impossible” question—although just looking at that written out I really should find a better term. See, it’s not so much that these questions are impossible to answer, it’s that there’s really only one person who can give a definitive answer. And it’s usually the person asking the question.

Y’see, there are questions that are very specific to my story, and the “correct” answer for me probably isn’t going to be the same correct answer for you. Things like, how many characters should I have in an ensemble? What’s the correct point of view to use? How much sex is too much? How much detail do I really need? See what I mean? There’s no real way to answer that unless I know the whole story, how it’s written, the context things are happening in…

Somebody at the Coffeehouse asked (paraphrasing from memory here) “how many made up words can you have in your first couple pages before an editor stops reading?” And my immediate answer was, well, I couldn’t really answer that. Again, the right answer for me won’t be the right answer for you, and said answer’s going to change from book to book.

But about a week later it struck me there is a way that we, as writers, can at least get a sense of if something’s disruptive or not. And that’s by being aware of the flow of our work. So let’s talk about that a little bit.

I think we’re all aware of flow on one level or another. I first heard the term from a writing coach named Drusilla Campbell, but I knew what she was talking about as she explained it. Paraphrasing a bit more, she described it as why some books you can’t put down and other books make you think about how  the laundry needs folding.

I’d say flow is equal parts pacing, tone, and empathy. It’s about me understanding what’s going to jar my reader, either by nature of structure or material or vocabulary. What’s going to make them pause to remember these are just words on a page and not actual events. It’s about me stepping out of the way and not trying to be seen as the author. Letting people read my story rather than analyzing it. Really simply put, flow is what keeps people in my story instead of, well, knocking them out of it.

And that brings us to using words we’ve made up. Could be a simple portmanteau or clever bit of wordplay. Maybe terms from a technology we made up. Or a secret dark order. Maybe even a whole language. But I have to be careful, because  there’s a good chance I could kawonk someone right out of the story if I’m using a lot of words I’ve made up.

You all see what I did there, right? Or maybe you didn’t. Kawonkis a nonsense pile of letters I threw together, but in context you kind of understood what I was saying with it almost immediately. Some of you may not even have really registered it as a made up word and just read it as a funny onomatopoeic sound effect or something.

But something can only work in context when I understand the context. So the more words I swap out with made up ones, the less chance there is of my readers understanding what I’m trying to say. Like if I told you we needed to kawonk this dreeenil ptoob before we niknik ptar the cheegles. I mean, if we hit a sentence like that we’re going to instinctively stop and start parsing the structure to figure out what this whoa I just broke the flow, didn’t I?

And even if there is plenty of context, it can get annoying to read something where I’ve decided to substitute existing words with made up ones for no real reason. Say, for example, people in my fantasy world all duel with scheevs. Some are cheap and crudely made, some are works of art, but most people have one. You see, a scheev is a narrow, double-edged blade about 24 to 30 inches long (originally iron or bronze, but mostly steel now), with a strong grip, some sort of protective guard or crosspiece between the blade and the grip, and often a small counterweight at the base that also locks the blade in place. And if you’re thinking, wait, did I just spend a whole paragraph describing a sword you are correct.

Except here they’re called scheevs. For… reasons.

And again, imagine how frustrating that paragraph would be if instead of bronze and steel it talked about droker and ogyed, flokks instead of inches, and an oppomass instead of a counterweight. Hopefully I didn’t make up my own numerical system, Think about pausing to dig through all of that and try to glean a meaning out of it and realizing we’re just talking about goddamn swords.

I don’t know about you, but that’d bring things to dead halt for me as I groan and rub my eyes.

‘Cause here’s the thing we always to remember. Weird as it may sound, the words I use don’t really matter. I mean, of course they’re important and they’ll bring nuance to the story. But that’s my point—the story is what matters. The charactersmatter. The plot matters. The actual words are just a delivery device. They’re the corn chip getting all that delicious salsa and guacamole into or mouths. And if I’m focusing a lot of my time and energy on coming up with a new way to say corn chip, that’s a good sign something’s probably going wrong in my writing.

I’m not saying don’t make up words. I mean, I put squale out there into the world. But there should be a reason for them being in my story, and the reason should be better than “I wanted to make things sound different.” Ultimately, they should be adding to my story, not distracting from it. Definitely not knocking me out of it to diagram sentences, glean meaning, or just grind my teeth in frustration.

Next time…

Okay, this was super late, so next time will be in three days. And I’ll probably be talking about the holidays.

Until then, go write.

Let’s be honest, we’re not going to get a lot more in before 2022, so try to make it count.

I (finally) wanted to step away from the usual process stuff we talk about here—structure, dialogue, characters, editing, and so on—to talk about another important part of the process.

Dating apps.

When we’re looking to find that partner for life—or, y’know, maybe just for the weekend—these apps can be phenomenal. They’re not perfect, no, but they can save a lot of time by, well… weeding out a lot of folks that aren’t going to work for me. For whatever reason. Maybe I have some really firm personal philosophies. Perhaps I know exactly what kind of relationship I’m looking for right now. Maybe, hey, there’s a certain body type I prefer—or one I don’t. Regardless of what my criteria are, whether they’re right or wrong, these apps can help whittle down my prospects to a manageable size by matching me up with the people who meet my requirements.

Except… well…

Okay, look. Clearly there can be basic misunderstandings now and then. She said she likes football, I said “hey, I like football,” but it turns out she meant soccer and okay, well… this was awkward. Sorry I scheduled our first date during the World Cup.

Or maybe it was a little more deliberate. Maybe I realized I get a lot better matches when my profile says I’m six foot even and 179 pounds with a thick head of dark hair. Which, for the record, is a 100% accurate description of me that I’m just using for this example. Except then we finally meet face to face and now I can’t hide that, okay, yeah, I’m closer to 5’9” and 225 pounds (look, lockdown was very stressful) with a silver-gray widow’s peak that’s pulled back a bit over the past decade or so. But I have a great personality and I’m sure… well, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if the matchee wasn’t too interested when they finally saw me. They might even be justifiably annoyed. I mean, they spent time looking for a good match on this app.

Hell, maybe I’m just going to be kind of obnoxious about it and rationalize away their criteria. Her profile clearly says she doesn’t want short guys and no sci-fi/superhero geeks, but she’s hot, dammit. I’ll just explain to her how short guys are more dependable (in so many ways) and that Star Wars is actually more in the science-fantasy genre, so we should definitely hook up. I mean, that’s what DMs are for, right? To make my case and skip over all those limitations she’s putting out there to weed out other guys exactly like… me.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, right, why the hell are we talking about dating apps on this here writing page? What’s going on?

Well, as I’m sure a lot of you have already figured out, using a dating app is a lot like submitting my work somewhere. It’s trying to find that perfect person who’s looking for what I’m offering. Either a long term partner like an agent or maybe just a quick, one-time thing like placing a short story in a magazine, anthology, or a contest. And I’m going to have my best results with these submissions if I’m being honest. With myself and with them.

Yeah, sure—there’s always going to be the occasional mistake. I might spell someone’s name wrong or misread a requirement. Hell, one time I submitted to a magazine and the editor politely wrote back and pointed out thanks but they’d gone out of print six months earlier. These aren’t a lack of honesty as much as signs I’m maybe rushing things a bit at times and need to slow down a bit.

But I really don’t want to be lying about what my manuscript is. I shouldn’t reformat it to make it hit a certain page count. I don’t want to call it a romance when it’s a thriller with a minor romance subplot. I definitely shouldn’t say it’s got strong religious themes without being clear the “religion” is a doomsday cult trying to summon the old gods to cleanse the Earth.

I especially don’t want to ignore what they’ve specifically said they want. Yeah, they don’t want urban fantasy novels—but they’ll want mine, dammit! All short stories have to be under 7500 words, but once they read mine they’ll understand why it’s 11,000. No explicit violence toward women or animals… but I mean, they just say that to weed out the real weirdoes, right? And I know I’ve mentioned the guy who sent his sex comedy to a Christian values screenplay competition… ?

If I want to make a connection—a serious one that’s going to lead to something, even if it’s only something short term—I need to be honest. I can’t lie about what I’m offering. I can’t ignore what they want. If I do, I can’t blame them when they toss my manuscript in that big pile on the left.

Or, y’know, if they swipe that way.

Next time, I really want to not talk about something.

Until then, go write.