Category: golden rule

            See what I did there?  A clever play on words.  Not quite a pun, definitely not a pop culture reference, but… well, it’ll do.

            It’ll do, pig.

            Also, random note—I set up a Tumblr a while back.  If you ever want to ask a quick question, send anonymous insults, or whatever, please feel free to stop by.

            Anyway, I’m about to wrap up this draft of my current project and it struck me that I haven’t blabbed on about the drafting process, so to speak, in a while.  A lot of folks hate doing drafts.  Some folks skip them altogether, convinced their words are gold the minute they’re set down.  And a few folks get caught in an endless loop of writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and…

            So, here’s a basic step by step of how I go from bare idea to something I’m willing to hand to an editor.  And when I say editor, I mean “someone who will pay for these words I’ve written.”  That being said, this is also a good time to bring up the ever-popular golden rule.

            I’ve mentioned once or thrice before that we all have our own way of writing.  Working through drafts in this way helps me a lot, but it’s not a guarantee of success for anyone except me.  You might need to modify these steps a bit, or maybe a lot.  But I think this is a good baseline method.

            To begin…

            While I’m working on a book, I usually scribble down notes and thoughts about the nextbook.  Characters, dialogue, action moments, reveals… all sorts of different elements.  I’ll shuffle these around into more or less the order I think they’ll end up.  These notes serves as a very, very rough outline, just enough so I can start writing on page one and go when it’s time to start…

            The First Draft—In my mind, this is the “just finish it” stage.  I just want to finish this draft with a beginning, an end, and the majority of points in between.  I don’t worry about catching typos or crafting every subtle moment in the plot. 

            Consider this… diamonds don’t come out of the earth as clear, faceted gems.  They come out as ugly blobs that need lots of cuts and polishing.  So if I dig up a ten-gram diamond, I can’t expect it to make a ten gram gemstone.  If I’m lucky, I might get three or four grams out of it.  It’ll shrink as I work on it, because that’s how I improve it (see below).  So if I’ve got a ten-gram diamond and I’m insisting on a 9.9 gram gem… well, that’s going to make a pretty crappy engagement ring, yes?

            At this early stage, I don’t hold anything back.  I let dialogue, descriptions, and action scenes run on a bit longer than they probably should.  I know I’ll be cutting eventually, so there’s no reason to worry about length now.  For this stage, it really is quantity over quality. 

            If I get stuck on something (an awkward conversation or complex action scene), I’ll just skip it.  Things might not be perfect right now, but I know I’ll be able to go into the exact details of that conversation or this sequence later, so I’d rather keep moving forward and leave that stuff for Future Peter to deal with.  Again, for me, the most important thing is to get the overall frameworkdone.  It’s a lot easier to think about the little things when the big things aren’t looming over you.

            Depending on the book, this process takes me anywhere from two to three months. I had one book take about six weeks, but that was pretty rare for me.

            I don’t show this draft to anyone.  I may take a night off, work on something else for a day, and then it’s right back for…

            The Second Draft— Remember all those problems I left for Future Peter to deal with?  Those need to be dealt with now.  Gaps get filled in.  Characters get fleshed out a little more, and sometimes renamed.  All those awkward knots get worked out.   Because I can see a lot of these elements in relation to the whole story now , I’ll usually find the answers to these problems are more apparent. 

            The goal with this draft is to have a readable manuscript.  No more little notes to myself  or trailing paragraphs that need to get connected somehow.  Someone should be able to pick this up and read it start to finish without thinking they lost a few pages or only got my notes on a chapter.

            Keep in mind this doesn’t mean I do show it to people.  It just means I should be able to.  Really, the only person who might see this is my lady-love, and not even her always.  Usually she has to wait.

            For some folks, this stage would really be the first draft.  Those people have nice pages of their own somewhere out there on the web.  This isn’t one of them.  Plus, breaking it up like this takes a lot of pressure off, which I think is a good thing when you’re trying to treat writing like a real job.  No one likes a high-pressure job.

            Okay then, so… now I step away for a couple of days.  Maybe as much as a week.  I’ll watch movies, work out a little, or maybe even scribble up a few ranty blog posts in advance.  The goal is to push the manuscript as far out of my mind as possible.  Don’t look at it, try not to think too much about it. 

            I’m just into this now with The Albuquerque Door, for those who care about such things.

            The Third Draft—Time to make like a slasher and cut, cut, cut.  Two great rules-of-thumb I’ve mentioned a few times—

            Yeah, the second rule goes off the previously mentioned assumption that my first clean, readable draft is my first draft.

            I spend this draft tracking down adverbs, adjectives, pointless dialogue descriptors, and so on.  If they can be cut, they get cut.  One thing I also go after here is common padding phrases that don’t really do anything (sort of, somewhat, kind of, more or less).  One of my regular readers dubbed this somewhat syndrome, and I still call it that.  I like to tell myself I’ve gotten much better about it now that I’m aware of the problem. 

            Sometimes I also like to tell myself that I haven’t gained that much weight since college…

            At this point I’ve gone through the whole manuscript at least twice, so a few larger cuts should be apparent, too.  Overcomplicated descriptions that slow down the narrative.  Awkward sentence structures.  Extensive character moments that really add nothing to the character, the story, or the plot.  Many of these things get tightened or cut altogether.

            I spend a week or two doing this.  This is usually when I let my lovely lady have a look.  She’s my first set of eyes and lets me know I screwed up and I’m too close to see it.

            The Fourth Draft–This is the first big polish.  I go through sentence by sentence, looking for words that come up too often or stilted dialogue.  I also make sure all the cuts and swaps from the last draft haven’t messed anything up.  Are the logic chains still complete?  Did I forget to change Pash’s name to Veek anywhere?  Does Arthur still have time to get that pistol?  Are there any odd character tics that I forgot to remove or add?  Does the whole thing have a good flow to it? 

            This draft doesn’t take long.  Just a day or two.  It’s just one slow, careful read of the story.

            Once I’ve got a solid fourth draft, I send it off to folks to get fresh eyes.   I generally use four or five friends I’ve know for years.  All of them are all professional writers and editors who know how to give useful criticism.  Not to beat a dead horse, but by professional I mean they get paid to do this for a living.  They have actual credentials.

            Speaking of which, some folks might hire a professional editor at this point. Nothing wrong with that.  The important thing is to get an opinion I can trust to be honest, even if I have to pay for it.  A few folks might argue that this is the publisher’s job, but I need to get a publisher first, and why are they going to bother with my crap manuscript?

            Anyway, this draft goes off into the world and it may be two weeks to a month before I look at it again.  The challenge is to resist messing with it while those people are looking at it.  I try to spend the time relaxing a bit, scribbling down ideas for later books (see above), or flexing different mental muscles.

            More than once, I’ve cleaned my office.

            The Fifth Draft— Now I’ve gotten notes back from the folks I begged/ blackmailed/ paid to read this thing.  I go through the whole manuscript page by page with their comments.  If you’ve got multiple monitors, this is a great time to use them.

            Page one… what did everyone think?  What about page two?  How’s page three look?  As I’m doing this, I’ve also got my own copy of the fourth draft that I’m using as a “master document.”  This way I can see all the notes and make whatever changes are required. 

             I mentioned that I ask four or five people to make notes for me.  That gives me a broad sampling on each note/ issue that comes up.  If four people like something but one doesn’t, odds are I’ll call that good.  Nothing’s going to work for everyone.  If three don’t and two do (and of course I do, or I wouldn’t’ve written it), I’ll sit and give it a good look.  If nobody likes it, well… I’m smart enough to admit when I’ve screwed up and something doesn’t work.

            This draft can take another two weeks or more to finish with a full book manuscript.

            The Sixth Draft— This one’s another polishing draft, just like the fourth.   I need to make sure everything still works now that I’ve made those changes and tweaks from my reader’s comments.  So, yet another line by line reading, adjusting as I go.

            And at this point… this is when I’m done.  There’s only so much a given writer—in this case, me—can do with a given story.  There comes a point when further work accomplishes nothing and I’m just rewriting for the sake of rewriting. I’m sure we all know someone who’s just been working on the same manuscript for years and years because they’ve got another one or two drafts to put it through.  If my manuscript’s not ready for a publisher (or film producer) by now, it probably means I screwed up something big right at the start. 

            Maybe with my initial idea of rebooting the Laff-A-Lympics as a medical drama starring a gender-swapped, alcoholic Captain Caveman.

            Next time… well, if there’s anything next week it’ll be really quick.  I’ve got a flight on Thursday.  If you’re in Dallas next week, please swing by Texas Frightmare and say hi.  I’ll be in the Made in Texas room.

            Either way, go write.

            2014!  Welcome to the world of tomorrow!  Just with no flying cars.  Or jetpacks.  And far less moonbases than Space: 1999, Inherit the Stars, or 2001: A Space Odyssey led us to expect.

            Wow.  We’re only two days in and 2014 is kind of a letdown so far.

            Anyway, as I often do at the start of the year, I’d like to take a minute or three to talk about this page and the kind of stuff I babble on about.  And touch on a few of the things I don’t.

            And to do this, I’m going to dip my toe into a potentially controversial subject.  So hopefully I won’t offend anyone too much

            Maybe it’s just the circles I travel in, but I tend to see a lot of “after the fact” material.  It’s on pages I get links to or I get spammed with messages about it.  People with blogs about how to self-publish and why traditional publishers are dinosaurs.  About how to get past those evil “gatekeepers” and why they’re pointless.  Which ebook platform is best.  How to format for said platform.  Where to find a good agent. Where to find a good artist for my cover.  How to network.  Good places for self-promotion.  How much I should self-promote.  How much I should pay for that promotion.

            The reason I call this “after the fact” material is because it skips a major step.  Every one of those issues is about getting my book in front of readers.  None of it addresses the important question…

            Shouldmy book be in front of readers?

            Is my book ready to be published, by me or anyone else?  Does it deserve to make it past those gatekeepers?  Do I have something worth promoting?

            And that’s what I don’t see a lot of out there—help to get past that first step.  Because the best chef in the world can’t do anything with no tools and an empty kitchen.  If I don’t have a full, polished manuscript, all those other tips are kind of useless.

            This is why, in my opinion, self-publishing still has—and probably always will have—a stigma hanging over it.  There are some absolutely phenomenal self published books out there, and some authors who are making great money as self-publishers.  But the ugly truth is that, statistically, most self-published material is bad.  Now that it’s so easy and cheap to self-publish, I’d even say that these days the vast majority of self-published stuff is awful.  There’s a lot more good stuff than a decade ago, absolutely, but by the same token  there’s tons and tons more bad stuff.

            So, that’s what I want to do here.  I try to help with that first step. Every week I toss out some advice, tips, and observations on how to improve a manuscript and turn it into something people want to buy and read.  Things I was told or stumbled across (or learned the hard way) in the thirty or so years that I’ve been stringing words together.

            Now, the two main things you’ll find here is advice on writing and ruleson writing.  Yes, there are rules.  No, I don’t care what he said.  No, I don’t care what she said either.  There are rules that have to be followed.  Bear with me.

            Adviceis optional.  When to write.  Where to write.  What to write.  How to develop characters.  How to edit.  How many drafts I need to go through.  What kind of structure a particular story should have.  What point of view to use.  I’d say the ranty blog is about 60-65% advice.

            This is the kind of stuff that’s going to be individual to each writer.  I like to write in the afternoon, but you might be more productive in the morning, and she’s more productive after midnight.  I tend to plan a rough outline in my head, but you might need three really detailed pages before you begin, and he might be fine with a dozen notecards taped to the wall.  I might need music to write but you need absolute silence and she can’t write unless she’s outside and wearing a Ren Faire outfit.  The thing about advice is that it’s rarely wrong, it just might not be advice that works for me or you.  That’s one of the main tenets here, my golden rule.

            It drives me nuts when I come across someone insisting advice must be strictly followed.  I think a lot of would-be writers get messed up by this, and these are the folks who end up staring at a blank page every morning in a silent room, wondering why they can’t write the opening of the goth-witch-lit novel they have no interest in but were told is going to be the new big thing.  They often get stuck wearing an itchy corset, too.

            Y’see, Timmy, rules are the real non-optional stuff.  Spelling.  Grammar.  Structure (you have to have some kind of it).  Likable characters (not necessarily good characters, but someone my readers won’t mind following) with believable arcs.  Flow.  Coherency.  This page is maybe 35-40% rules, at any given time.

            Most of us had at least five or six teachers during our lives who tried to teach us the rules of writing—the basic mechanics of how words go together to express ideas.  If I want to make a living at this, I need to know those mechanics.  If I don’t know how to spell, if I don’t understand structure, if commas and apostrophes are baffling to me, if I can’t sense how my readers will react to something… well, it’s going to be very hard for me to have any success as a writer.

            The flipside of what I mentioned above, it’s also very damaging when some folks try to insist that rules are just loose guidelines, that it doesn’t matter if I follow them or not.  I think a lot of that comes out of folks who see the rules broken by an experienced professional and assume they can be ignored from the start.  They point to the exception and use that as their reason to not learn the rules.  This kind of deliberate ignorance leads to poor writing and bad habits, and it means a lot of potentially good writers never improve. 

            Y’see, Timmy, if I don’t understand the rules, I’m not going to know how to break them.  A good writer can break some of the rules, but it’s like playing Jenga.  I can’t pull out all the blocks holding up the stack, and if I’m going to pull out this one I need to make sure that one is rock-solid.  If I don’t understand the basic rules of how the tower stands, I’m going to bring it crashing down on my second turn.  Maybe even my first.

            Actually, that’s an even better analogy.  Breaking rules is like demolishing buildings.  It looks simple, but the folks who do it actually need to know more than the people who built it.  They need to understand which walls are load bearing and which beams are supporting, but they also need to know how the material’s going to break or crumble or shatter and how much explosive is needed for each result without there being so much that the building collapses out rather than in.

            Because it might look really cool and fun when the building collapses out across the city, but it doesn’t get a lot of repeat customers.

            What else, what else, what else…

            Do I repeat myself here?  Well… yeah.  Especially if you’ve been following along for two or three years.  I try to come up with new ways to approach the same problem.  Sometimes I’ll hear something new and clever that I’ll try to share, or maybe even expand on.  At the end of the day, though, this page is more like a mid-level class on writing.  You can take the same class twice and get more out of it, but by the third of fourth time there’s a serious case of diminishing returns.  I’m not saying any of you long-time followers should leave, but don’t be too surprised if I end up talking about dialogue or character voices or something like that.

            Speaking of which, next time I wanted to talk about dialogue and character voices.

            Until then, go write.

            Actually, those are pretty good excuses.

            So, while I finish getting caught up, Thom Brannan has offered to step in with a post about scheduling your writing time.

            (maybe I should’ve read this two weeks ago…)

* * *

            Hello is all right.

            I know, I know. You came here to glean some of Peter Clines’ wisdom, and what the hell is this? Right? I’ll do my best to keep your disappointment to a minimum.

            My name is Thom Brannan, and some of you know me from Cthulhu Unbound, some from Survivors, some from Pavlov’s Dogs, and some from filing restraining orders. Some of you don’t know me from Adam. This should help.

            I’m here in Pete’s blog to help you with your writing. I’m not a guru, and if you’ve read my work, you’d probably agree. I’m probably only a notch above “adequate.” But one thing I do well is produce. I am a productive individual for someone who does not write for a living. And the reason for this is scheduling. So, I’m here to talk about scheduling and its importance for writers (and for any other creative endeavor, really) in my experience.

            (It should be worthwhile to note, for the rest of this blog entry, whenever I say “it’s this way,” or “this is what works,” I’m speaking of what I’ve experienced for myself and through others. I have no guru hat.)

            The first thing to realize is we are creatures of habit, all of us. Good habits, bad habits, everything in-between. It’s hard to break habits, so rather than suggesting you alter something about yourself that may require the assistance of a psychiatrist, let’s talk instead about forming good habits, which will hopefully be just as hard to break.

            Pete has hammered home the point: to be a writer, you must write.  I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve found that doing it at the same time every day helps the process. Your body and mind know when it’s time to do something. There are things you do so often and so insistently that you feel off if you’re not doing them. Liken the creative process to a workout, and you’ll see what I mean.

            These things are part of your daily routine, and if you are fortunate to be able to carve out a niche in your day for writing, you should definitely do so. Allow me to share with you my experience.

           After finishing work on Survivors, I had the opportunity to write a novel for the same audience. I leapt at the chance, and after wrestling with several ideas (and gathering input from friends) I chose one and got started.

            I’d written before, but always for myself, or to have a Cthulhu Mythos story in my back pocket for whenever an anthology opened, or what have you. I had never written with a deadline before. Now, I know myself pretty well, and I know this is how I am: if you give me a deadline, that’s when I’ll turn it in. If you wanted it earlier, you’d have made the deadline earlier. Right? Right. That’s kind of crappy, and I want to change that.

            So, to that end, I tried something new and scheduled myself some writing time. And, to keep myself honest, I tracked my daily and weekly progress in an Excel file. The first week, I averaged about twelve hundred pages a day, say five pages in standard manuscript format.  That seemed pretty good to me, and in keeping with Robert B. Parker’s self-enforced rule.

            My second week of writing at the same time every day yielded slightly better results: eight pages a day. By week three, I was up to thirteen pages a day. By the last week of working on the novel, I was churning out eighteen pages a day.

            I leaned to take the weekends off, which allowed the grey matter to decompress, and it kept me from burning out. I also only do this four weeks at a time, with four weeks off in between.  

            To date, when working on a solo project, I write an average of twelve SMF pages a day. Slightly less when collaborating, but that’s to be expected. Compared to a powerhouse wordfount like Eric S. Brown, it’s not very much. But if I compare it to my previous output of one or two pages a week, it’s a vast improvement.

           I’ve also found that if I sit and play my guitar for five or ten minutes before writing, that primes the pump, so to speak. But that’s me. Everyone has something different to get them started when it comes to write. I’ve read that Hemingway would leave off in the middle of a sentence. The proprietor of this very blog makes sure he has something left over from today’s writing time so he can write tomorrow.

            So, there you have it. My 2¢ on scheduling. If I’m back at some point, I’ll likely blather on about collaborating.

            Until then… well, you know what Pete says here.

            As I often do at the start of the year, I wanted to blab on for a minute or three about what I try to accomplish with this little collection of rants and ravings.  And I think one of the best ways to accomplish that is to start off by mentioning a few things I won’t be doing here.

            First and foremost, this page isn’t about “when you’re done.”  I’m always coming across blogs and message boards where people want to know what to do with their finished manuscript.  How do I get an agent?  How do I promote myself?  How do I get an “in” with a publisher?  Should I self-publish?  How do I get blurbs?

            None of that here.

            Speaking of which, I also don’t use this page for self-promotion.  I may mention stuff that’s new or noteworthy, but that’s about it.  No sales or contests or interviews (not with me, anyway).  There’s some Amazon links on the side, yeah, but those are almost more for credentials purposes than sales.

            (Although if you want to buy them, I’ll never object to that…)

            Not to sound harsh, but this page also isn’t for inspirational ideas, mindless encouragement, or a joyous celebration of art.  I’m not really big on the special snowflake, “we can all succeed” mindset.  To be honest, I think it’s one of the most damaging things out there on the internet.  I’m also not a fan of those folks who see writing as some wild, bohemian expression of art where there are no wrong answers or directions.  They’re not far behind the special snowflake people.  If that’s the kind of “advice” you’re looking for… wow, this is so not the place you want to be.

            So, with all that out of the way… what is this place supposed to be about?

            Well, it struck me many years back that there aren’t many places online to find actual help with writing.  Not useful help, anyway.  Yeah, all that other stuff is important, but the writing is the big thing.  Nothing else matters if my writing is sub-par.  I can do tons of research on surfboards, wetsuits, skegs, surf wax, wave formation, and all that.  Thing is, if I don’t take the first step of leaving Nebraska, that’s all pointless information.  If I don’t have a decent book or script, it doesn’t matter how much work I put into self-promotion.

            I look around and I see a lot of folks making mistakes.  Sometimes it’s from inexperience.  Sometimes it’s from following bad advice.  And a few times… okay, sometimes I have no clue where people are getting their information from.  None whatsoever.

            I also see some would-be gurus offering hard-fast “rules” for writing.  Your characters must do this.  This element of your plot must unfold by this page.  And it gnaws at me because they’re just plain wrong.  There are a lot of rules in writing, but it’s not all rules.  If it was,  writing would just be mechanical fill-in-the blanks (granted, it seems like it is for some people).  One of the biggest things to realize is which rules can and can’t be ignored.  It’s finding the methods and styles that work for you within the frameworks that work for everyone else.

            That’s what this is all about.  Taking that idea in your head and fleshing it out and turning it into a few dozen or a few hundred coherent pages.  Hopefully pages other people will want to read all on their own without you begging or pleading or tricking them into it.

            Heck, maybe they’ll even pay you for those pages.

           So sometimes I point out the places where you really have to do this, but also the places where it’s entirely up to you.  Every now and then I’ll talk about a  recurring mistake I see a lot.  And most of the time I’ll just toss out a few ideas on how to work with (or work around) different issues that can come up when writing a short story or novel or screenplay.  Issues like spelling or structure or dialogue or characters or action or point of view or… well, there are a lot of them.

            Anyway, what makes me qualified to say these things and toss out these tips?

            Well, I’ve been trying to do this for over thirty years now.  I was stabbing at the keys on my mom’s old Smith-Corona before most of you ever considered writing as anything more than homework.  I tried to write my first book in third grade, then another one in seventh grade, plus two while I was in high school.  I spent years poring over different writing magazines and journals, pulling out every tip and hint and suggestion I could, and then trying all of them out (even the contradictory ones).  I took writing classes in high school and college.  I joined writing groups.  I made two attempts at the college novel, then the after-college novel, and then the “moved to California” novel.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say I probably submitted more manuscripts with paper and postage than at least half of you have done through the miracle space-age technology of email.

            And it all led somewhere.  I received personal rejection letters from editors at magazines and comic books encouraging me to try again.  One of my college writing professors, the multi-award winning novelist John Edgar Wideman, told me with absolute certainty that I was going to make it as a writer.  The first script I wrote got me a meeting with Ron Moore (of Deep Space Nine and later Battlestar Galactica).  Agents asked to look at my manuscripts.

            More to the point, people eventually started to pay me for my writing.  It’s not the only yardstick for success, granted, but I think we can all agree it’s the one that’s universally accepted and pretty much always has been.  My ability to write got me a job as an entertainment journalist.  I sold short stories to journals and anthologies.  I’ve sold half a dozen books to Permuted Press, and later to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House—and some of those books have sold very, very well and received a lot of praise (okay, so there’s a little self-promotion).  Amazon Studios hired me to develop a screenplay idea for them and write up a treatment.  For the past six years, I’ve supported myself by stringing words together in a way that pleased people enough that they paid me to keep doing it.

            So… that’s what I’m bringing to the table.

            If you’re interested, stick around.  Next time I want to talk a bit about the BFG-9000 plasma rifle in the forty-watt range and other firearms.

            Until then… go write.