December 30, 2019 / 1 Comment

Performance Review

Hello, all. Hope the holidays have been good to you so far. I got to play a pleasant Christmas morning game with most of the presents called “Did the Tree Leak Or Is This Cat Pee?” Fortunately nothing was damaged. And we’re pretty sure it was just water. Like… 83% sure.
Anyway…
I had something else planned for the ranty blog but it struck me this is the last week of the year, so I wanted to stick with tradition and talk about what I got done over these past 367 days. It’s not meant as a brag or guideline or anything like that—my pace is my pace, your pace is your pace. Plus, talking with another pro friend at a Christmas party reminded me how slow my pace is compared to some folks. And I know I’m much faster than some.
Really, this is one of those posts that’s more for me than you. It’s me going over the year and seeing how much did I really get done? How much did I write this year? And this involves going through lots of files, checking the blog, searching under the couch cushions for excess words, all of that.

Anyway, here’s some of my noteworthy accomplishments of the year, if such things interest you.

I write the back half of Terminus, the new Audible exclusive that you’re probably going to be seeing (well, hearing) in about four weeks, if all sticks to plan. I was about 45,000 words into it when last year ended and then did another 60K or so. Then there was lots and lots and lots of editing. And copyediting. I think we ended up with a manuscript of about 101,000 words, when the smoke cleared and all the blood was hosed away.

I went back to work on the outlines for another book and ultimately decided… it wasn’t going to happen. I had beginnings I liked. I had endings I liked. But I just couldn’t seem to make them meet in the middle, no matter how I tried it. And after sort of banging pieces together for a week or three (after already working on it for a few weeks before Terminus)… I gave up on it.

I mean, I didn’t burn all my notes or anything. It’s still there wating for me to go back to it. But I’m a big believer that there’s a point where outlining and other forms of prep just become… well, wasted time. At that point I’d spent over two months trying to make the outline work and I’d lost a lot of enthusiasm for the project in the process. So I set it aside and moved on.

Fortunately, another idea had kinda splashed down in my head like an old Apollo capsule, and it seemed really solid. I had a three page outline that made me happy in about as many days and I just… dove in. That was mid-October or so. As I’m writing this, it’s just shy of 50,000 words in. Which I think isn’t bad considering the holidays and we had my parents stay with us for Thanksgiving.

There were also lots of blog posts. Counting this one, there were sixty-seven posts here on the ranty blog this year. In all fairness, I think nine or ten of those were cartoons by Tom Gauld or something similar, but I feel pretty safe saying there was, on average, a new post every single week, most of them around 2000 words or so. That adds up pretty quick.
There were eleven Writers Coffeehouses up in Burbank at Dark Delicacies and maybe another four or five where I filled in down at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.

I read a lot, too. Thirty-seven books, if my math is right. Twelve of those were for the dystopian book club at The Last Bookstore. Also a good-sized pile of comics and trade collections. A dozen or so different articles from the Washington Post each week.

And if we want to get silly, there were probably forty or more Saturday geekery rants analyzing bad movies and some of the basic flaws they were tripping over. Sure, that’s Twitter, and it’s kind of my downtime, but it’s still me actively analyzing and critiquing stories

How about you? What did you get done this year? What things could you add to your list of writing accomplishments? Nothing needs to be official or accepted. You didn’t need to earn a minimum amount off it. It’s just stuff you do that you honestly feel contributes to your writing process. How much progress did you make toward your end goal?

What did you get done this year?

And with that, I bid you farewell until next year, when we’ll talk about… well, I’m sure all kinds of things. Is there some particular aspect of writing you’d like to hear me blab on about, or a problem I could possibly help with? Just let me know down in the comments.

Happy New Year. See you again in the far-flung future of 2020.

Until then, go write.

October 25, 2019

Some Outlining Questions

Look! Bonus content! It’s what the internet screams for!
Last weekend I was in Dallastalking to folks about NaNoWriMo. Overall I think it went pretty well. People laughed and chuckled in all the places I hoped they would.
However… there is strong evidence that I may have had waaaaaaaay too much caffeine before giving said talk. Combine that with a very echoey big room and, well, some of my brilliant observations about writing were lost. And most of my awkward jokes, too. So it’s a pros and cons situation.
Anyway, since I’ve been asked about a few things that got lost in my speed-echoes, I thought I could tweak part of the speech and post it here for everyone. It’s helpful for NaNoWriMo, but it’s some good overall stuff to keep in mind, too. Plus, this way I can add in a ton of links to help explain things even further.

What I’ve got below are eleven questions for you to think about when you’re sitting down with your story.  Depending on your particular plot/story/genre/cast of characters, there’s a chance one or two of these might not work for you.  But a lot of them should. In fact, I’d say if a lot of these don’t apply to the story I’m trying to tell, I’m probably missing something important.
1) Who’s my main character—or characters, depending? Man, woman, non-binary, young, old, straight, gay, werewolf, vampire, bionic space Pope, who are they?
2) What’s a normal day for them? What would they be doing today if they weren’t falling in love or saving us from vampire kaiju? What’s their day job?

3) What happens to make this not a normal day? What changes in their life? Why are we writing a story about this day & not a day last week or next month? Fancy folks call this the inciting incident or introducing conflict. I just like to say… why is this not a normal day?
4) What are they trying to do? Really simply, what’s my book about? This is their goal.

5) Why are they trying to do it? Fancy people call this “their motivation.” Kidnapped friend? Revenge? The greater good? Nanite bomb implanted in their groin? Why aren’t they just saying screw this and going back to their normal life?

6) How are they trying to do it? What actions are they taking? Do they have a plan? Are they making it up as they go along? We want our characters to do something.

7) What’s stopping them from getting it done right now? Is their goal far away? Under guard? Super expensive? Only dates cheerleaders?

8) Do I have an antagonist? Somebody openly trying to stop my hero, for major or minor reasons. My antagonist doesn’t need to be a villain, but they’re definitely somebody with opposing views.

9) What does my antagonist want? This is another character, so we want to develop them. They’re going to have goals, too, even if it’s just “kill all those kids out at the summer camp” or “stomp across Vatican City once the sun goes down.”

10) Why do they want it? My antagonist needs to have motives, too. So just like with my hero–why are they doing this?

11) Finally, what happens when my hero achieves their goal? Are there parades? Explosions? Bloody vengeance? Long passionate kisses? What happens if everything works out right? And on the flipside, what’s going to happen if they don’t achieve their goal?

Now, again, these aren’t end-all be-all questions. There’s a good chance 1 or 2 of them might not apply to the story you’re telling. But the answers to most of these questions should exist, even if I’m never going to specifically spell them out in my story.

Y’see, Timmy, if I can answer all of these… look at what I’ve got. It means I’ve got characters. I’ve got an established norm. I’ve got an inciting incident. I’ve got goals and motivations and obstacles. And these are the kind of things that form the bare bones of an outline. They should spell out a basic plot and story. If I can answer these, I know I’ve got an actual story.

And if I can’t… well… odds are I’ve got some more work to do.
Hey, speaking of bonus posts, I wanted to toss out something else seasonal on Monday or Tuesday. And then back to our usually scheduled rants on Thursday.

Until then, get back to writing! Go on… write!

August 20, 2019

Craig DiLouie’s OUR WAR

So, hey, random bonus interview!

Well, not exactly random. Tuesday is the day new books come out and one of them’s from my good buddy Craig DiLouie, who I crawled up out of the zombie trenches with many years back. We ended up seated next to each other at our first convention as writers (well, it was mine—not sure it was Craig’s and now it’s too late to ask for this), and we sat next to each other many, many times after that. At one point we had a combined sales pitch where we could talk about each other’s books to people.

Anyway, he and I were shooting messages back and forth last week, talking about publicity and visibility and authors helping authors. At some point during the back and forth it struck me we could just do it ourselves. I mean, I used to interview complete strangers for a living… surely I could interview someone I know and help them get a tiny bit more exposure. And maybe talk a little bit about writing, too.
So welcome to what may be a new regular feature, based entirely around my schedule, my friends’ schedules, book release schedules, and okay maybe it won’t be that regular. Semi regular. And before we go, here’s all the usual explanations/ provisos that I put on every interview I post here. Bold is me asking questions, the rest is Craig answering. I’ve dropped in a couple links, but this isn’t meant to imply Craig’s endorsing my views. It’s just giving you a handy connection when he’s said something that might sound similar to something I’ve said.

Our War is out today everywhere. Go pick it up at your favorite local bookstore.

We’ve known each other for eight years now, right? I think we first met face to face in 2011 at a Seattlecon, right?
It was around 2011, that’s right—Zombiecon. We were with Permuted Press in those years, churning out zombie fiction. It was an amazing time. At these cons, you meet all these great people, but sometimes, you run into a brother from another mother. You were one such guy for me and still are! We talked a lot of shop at that con, and I remembered thinking right off the bat that you were a writer who was going to go places. This was right about the time your novel -14- was in production. It’s incredible how much has

changed for both of us.

Right, We did Crypticon up there a bunch of times and I always forget we started with Zombiecon at the same hotel. And, yeah, I love that every time we get together we just instantly drop back into conversation mode and start talking.

Speaking of which (clever segue), let’s talk about Our War  What’s your two or three line elevator pitch?
Our War is a dystopian thriller about a brother and sister forced to fight on opposite sides of a second American civil war. Recruited and radicalized, they eventually realize they must fight for each other and themselves if they want to survive. The novel might be described as Omar El Akkad’s American War meets Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo, both of which put a human face on the horrors of modern civil war.
I think I already know the answer to this, but other people might not– when did you start writing this, or playing around with the idea, I guess? Was it something recent you based off current events or one of those cases where reality started leaning into your story over time?
Why would I write a dystopian novel? Because they always say, “Write what you know!” Americais more divided than ever. The tribalization of American politics has always troubled me because there’s only one way it can go, which is worse. So I did what I often do when I start a novel, which is say, “Okay, let’s take this to its logical conclusion. What would it really look like?” No wish fulfillment, no straw man supervillains, no romanticism, no plucky patriots resisting tyranny. Just Americans living in different political narratives fighting over which narrative was true. While I was writing, real events started to feed me fresh ideas, making the story feel torn from current headlines.
Okay, you’ve actually given me lead ins for two things I wanted to ask you, because one thing I really liked about this was that you kept it grounded. This isn’t some over-glamorized epic, it’s very close and intimate. It’s a national civil war, but I really like the idea that it’s not a north and south thing, but individual cities that have split in half, more like gang turfs than enemy lines. Was that a key idea from the start or was it something you sort of found yourself working into to solve problems, this whole smaller-scale? I mean, for me there’s almost always at least one point in the process where I realize “geeez, this will all be so much easier if I just do this…”
Early on I planned this book out, I came to the conclusion that a civil war in Americawould look far more like the Bosnian War in the 1990s than the last civil war in the 1860s. Triggered by a Constitutional crisis, an armed national protest by the Right snowballs into a revolution. The resulting war is rural versus urban, not states versus states, and in that type of conflict, how could the military respond? Look at an electoral map by county, and you can see the battle lines drawn along the red, blue, and purple. This is a war in which everybody fights, and nobody wins.
By making two of Our War’s protagonists child soldiers—who didn’t want the war and barely understand it—we see the real victims of civil war. In this type of conflict, the innocent always lose the most. All the things Americans shake their heads at happening in other countries like Syriacould happen here. Early on, I wanted to focus on the child soldiers’ story and the people whose lives they touch—a UNICEF worker, a journalist, and a rebel militia sergeant—to show different perspectives but otherwise keep the war local. They all care about the big picture, who’s winning or losing, but they are far more concerned about what’s happening right in front of them. This makes the story feel both intimate and deep.
You actually write about kids and horror a lot. I mean, Suffer the Children had adult protagonists, but the story was all about their kids. One of Us. Now this. Do you always intend  to write about children? Or, I guess, a better way to put it, are you starting with the core idea that horror/suspense is always creepier with kids (which it is) and moving forward from there, or are you coming up with your plot, your world, and at some point going “y’know what would make this really intense…” ?

It’s funny because it’s not my intent, it just turns out that way. I think a big part of it is being a father who is deeply invested in his kids. They really are the world to me and never far from my thoughts. In fiction, children are also an excellent lens to examine big issues from a fresh angle. In Suffer the Children, we have a vampire novel where the world’s children are infected by a parasite that requires them to drink blood in order to stay alive. The result is a horror story that is also an examination of how far parents will go for their children. In One of Us, the story is about teenagers who are part of a generation born with strange mutations, which became a way to examine prejudice. And with Our War, having two of the five protagonists being children, and joining the war by becoming child soldiers, shows the real cost of war and in particular civil war. The contrast of innocence with very real horrors I think punches the theme to a higher level.

It strikes me that you and I rarely talk about politics. We talk about story ideas and movies and publishing paths and a lot of stuff in our field, but I’m trying to think of any political discussion we’ve had that did more than skim issues. So, that said, there’s no denying this is a really political novel. Probably the most starkly political one you’ve written, yes? Or, at least, that I’ve read (maybe your submarine novels are super-partisan–I have to be brutally honest, I haven’t read them). I do remember us talking about Our War at one point while you were writing it and you laughing and saying “this is going to give everybody a reason to hate me,” or words to that effect. Now that you’ve had time to get some distance, do you still feel that way? Are you still nervous about this part of it?
I’m not as nervous as I was because the early reviews are saying good things about the novel being ideologically fair, which was my intent. Look, typically, when you have a second civil war novel, the author has three choices. They can choose an ideology and offer a wish-fulfillment story, they can avoid politics entirely and set the war far in the future to make it fantastic, or they can tear it from today’s headlines but try to be fair. I took the last path, which is the most challenging and risky. Challenging because I as the author I had to keep myself entirely out of the story, even though I have strong political convictions. And risky because when you strike the middle path in a polarized environment, you risk pleasing nobody.
With Our War, two of the principal protagonists are children indoctrinated into opposing militias, and while they grasp core ideas, the politics are gibberish to them. They are exposed to ideological viewpoints, and then the other protagonists have their own convictions the reader gets firsthand. So the reader is exposed to a palette of views from characters entirely convinced they are right, and I trust the reader to do their own thinking without me trying to force anything on them. The primary point of the book isn’t the politics, however, but the polarization itself that leads to civil war. In that, Our War does its job as dystopia by issuing a warning, and it fights political narrative with a different story of what happens when tribalization goes too far. And despite dystopia being kind of dark, I think there’s a lot of optimism in Our War, if readers come away with new energy to resist such a future.
It’s funny, you mentioning the wish-fulfillment option. I think we both probably saw a lot of that when we were doing a lot more in zombie circles. Do you think–I’m gonna step away from your book for a sec to ask a general question–do you think those books come from a lack of empathy, or just a disregard for it? I mean, any sort of wish-fulfillment story is going to have kind of a narrow, focused audience. So do you think people tent to write them because they’re choosing to aim at that niche, or because they honestly don’t realize it’s just a niche and not a widely held view?

I remember back when we were writing zombie fiction, I used to categorize zombie books as either wish-fulfillment to satisfy the Z Nationcrowd or exploring all possible consequences of TEOTWAWKI to please The Walking Dead crowd. As for the authors of both, they were probably writing what they wanted to read, or they had a good sense of what some readers wanted, or both.

I get what you’re saying about empathy and would say it’s probably a disregard for it. Not a bad kind of disregard, though, it’s more like setting it aside so the story can go where it needs to go. Personally–and this is just me without judgment on what other authors and readers like–I like consequences in my fiction and the fiction I read, and I want realism to make willing suspension of disbelief all the more satisfying. But that’s me as I’ve gotten older; when I was a teenager, I read every Robert E. Howard story I could get my hands on, wishing I was Conan and loving getting to be him for a short period of time.
When dealing with a topic like a second American civil war, the wish-fulfillment aspect takes a different turn into politics, which is what I was referring to in my previous answers. This is where say a plucky band of patriots resists a tyrannical Marxist government putting all Americans into concentration camps, a storyline I’m not making up as I read one exactly like this. This type of novel provides a wish-fulfillment experience for a certain type of reader while reinforcing their ideological worldview. Which is fine for people who want that, but for me, telling the story of a second American civil war demanded gritty, unflinching realism and an impartial approach. A story not aimed solely at a certain reader but at everyone.
Yeah, I remember you and I were on a post apocalyptic panel years back and one of the of the panelists very much had that wish-fulfillment/ideological reinforcement view. I think we talked about it for a while as a business path.

Hey, it just struck me this is going to be on my ranty writing blog, so let me ask you a few writing-related questions, and you can talk about Our War as a reference. How do you generally plan out a book? Do you like outlining? Notecards? Are you a little more of a pantser? How much do you usually have by the time you start writing?
I’m an absolute plotter, though there’s plenty of discovery and change as the novel progresses. In a given year, I produce a standalone novel for Orbit, several episodes in various self-published series, and a huge output from my technical freelance writing business. So for me, efficiency rules.

My main plotting tools are a four-act plot structure and character arcs. With a four-act plot structure, you have the inciting incident, which kicks off the central conflict; introduction to the normal; first plot point where something happens that changes everything; the protagonists react to that change; the midpoint; the protagonists are propelled to become more proactive toward the central conflict; second plot point; and then the protagonists go all in to win or lose. Character arcs can be fairly detailed, but in its most basic form, the protagonist has a need to change, a mis-belief preventing that change, an external goal with an opposing force, and personal transformation achieved through the resulting struggle.

For Our War, which is more of a character-driven work, I relied more on character arcs than major plot points to move the story forward. In this story, the first, mid, and second plot points marked major changes on the battlefield and resulting balance of power and stakes. These big changes in the protagonists’ world affected the dynamics and choices in their individual character arcs, which I also mapped out until I really knew whose these people were from the inside out. While I was sketching out these goalposts, I was “dreaming” the book–doing tons of research, taking plenty of notes, and otherwise allowing the story to percolate in my subconscious until it all hit a critical mass and I could start writing it. And while I had the goalposts set up before I started writing, the actual writing involved a lot of discovery, where I allowed the characters to develop as they needed to. The result is a story that is both planned and organic. In the end, even when you plan it, the novel will tell you what and how it wants to be.

Okay, follow-up question, because I think we both know people worry about this a lot when they start out. You’re a dad and you still have a full-time job. How much time do you actually get to write each day? Do you have set word counts you try to hit per day or per week?
I’m really lucky in that my full-time job as a journalist and educator in the lighting industry is at home. You know what they say about people who work for themselves: They can work anytime they want, but they’re always working. So it was always super busy–which is a good thing–but there was just enough time to develop my own projects. Over time, as I gained some success, I was able to treat my fiction as a client and give it the time it was due during my day. Over the years, the amount of hours I put in tuned my brain for writing, and I now produce projects fairly quickly compared to that first novel back in my early twenties, which felt like mentally climbing Everest.
So how fast do you turn a draft around? I mean, you’re writing a lot of stuff every year. Once you’ve got an outline, how long does it usually take you to get a completed first draft? Like, how long did Our War take, beginning to end, however many drafts you did?
These days, I can write a novel first draft in about six weeks. That’s actual typing time, during which I’m living and breathing the novel. Before that, there is maybe one or two months of planning and dreaming,note-taking and research. The beauty of working with Orbit is Bradley Englert, my editor, is both talented and kind at his job, and the long stretches of being away from the manuscript during the production process gives my brain some objective breathing space so I return to it fresh. Bradley’s edits always cut straight to the heart of what needs work, and then I spend another say four to six weeks on revising and editing. In all, the book is completed in two major drafts, with nothing rushed. By the time I hand in the final manuscript, I’ve read the book probably eight or nine times, endlessly polishing.
Three things have aided me in terms of speed. One is me constantly learning and internalizing craft, tuning my brain through practice, and having been at this long enough to discover my natural voice. The second is raw passion for the project, the joy of writing a novel I wanted to read myself and share with others; you have to love what you write, and if you do, that love will become infectious for the reader. The third boon to speed is the simple benefit of a contract, knowing at the end of all this hard work that a quality publisher was going to publish it if I gave them a good product on deadline. 
We should probably stop now–we’ve been batting this back and forth all weekend. Unless there’s some last thing you want to get in.  Your secret pet peeve? The one question you always wish you were asked? New projects?
Right now, I’m wrapping up a new supernatural horror novel for Orbit titled Mysterion, which is about a group of people who grew up in an apocalyptic cult and survived its horrific last days. Years later, they reunite to confront their past and the entity that appeared on the final night. Think Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House meets the Jonestown massacre. Thematically, it touches on trauma, memory, faith, and belonging. Stay tuned–this one is coming in the fall of 2020. In the meantime, I’ll also be launching a new self-published WW2 adventure series titled Armor, which follows the crew of a Shermantank from North Africa to Berlin. Readers can stay tuned at my website/blog at www.CraigDiLouie.com.
Thanks for the opportunity to visit with you, brother! I’m looking forward to my next Peter Clines read!
April 25, 2019

In The Beginning…

Running a bit late with this today.  Sorry.

So, I’m wading into a new book this month, and I figured… well, that’s probably a great time to talk about getting started and the draft process.

Of course, right off the bat… did I really start it this month?  I mean, sure, about two weeks ago I sat down and started actively working on an outline for it.  But the truth is, this is actually the second outline.  I first pitched it to my agent almost two years ago (and then again to my editor that summer).  They both said (and eventually, I agreed) that it needed some more work.
And, really, the bare idea came almost a year before that.  Back in early 2016, if memory serves.  I know I talked with another author, Kristi Charish, about one aspect of it back then, to get her thoughts and expertise on parts of it.

When do we “start” writing?  When does it count?  Is it when we first start thinking about a project?  When we actually make some notes or an outline?  Or is it not until I write VAMPIRE KAIJU: BOOK ONE by Peter Clines   CHAPTER ONE…?

I think that’s worth mentioning, because whenever I see someone talking about writing a book in five weeks or two months or whatever, I always wonder what they’re counting.  A finished, polished manuscript?  Just the first draft?  Are they counting the time they spent outlining, or that they started mulling it over months—maybe years—in advance?

Paradox Bound came out in 2017, but I pitched it to my editor and wrote up a first rough outline back in 2013.  And Dead Moon, my new one that just came out on Valentine’s Day?  My very first stab at that actually happened back in 2011, right after I finished writing Ex-Patriots.  Yeah, it was a different book back then, but still… when I sat down to “start” writing it in 2017, I already had about 30,000 words done.

So how long did they take to write…?

Again, just think about that the next time you see someone say they wrote something in a short amount of time.  Or in a very long amount of time.  We all have our own thoughts about what counts as starting and stopping points.

Anyway…

At the risk of sounding arrogant, let me walk you through my process.  Well, more of a quick stroll, really.  I’ve talked about a lot of this before (so I’ll add a lot of links), and I don’t want to bore you with it since… well, odds are you won’t be doing things this way.

No, seriously, you won’t.  The process I use is pretty much unique to me.  And the process you use is unique to you—even if maybe you haven’t figured it out yet.  Or you’re in the process of evolving from one process to another.  I’m just showing off mine to maybe spark some thoughts and help you think about such things.

So… let’s get started.

All of this always starts with an idea.  Maybe you’re the type who writes them down, maybe you keep it in your head for a while.  I’m 50-50 on it.  If an idea really sings in my head right at the start, in any sort of way, I always write it down.  But some I mull over for a while.  I let them ferment in my brain, see if they grow a little or get a better shape.

Eventually all these notes come together in some form of rough outline.  I think we all do some kind of outline.  Even the most random of road trips starts with, at the bare minimum, “let’s head west.”  Maybe it’s just a page or two of those rough notes.  Maybe it’s an extensive beat sheet.  It might be a huge stack of color-coded index cards.  This stage is really going to come down to “whatever works for you.”  The outline I just finished up for this project is twelve pages, with another two page document about the characters, but that’s just me.

And now, I guess, we’re ready to “start” writing.

My first drafts are big, messy things.  I write a lot, but I also skip a lot of things.  The only goal with a first draft is to get it done.  Nothing else matters.  Not punctuation, not spelling, not finding the exact right word or crafting the perfect cool line to end that chapter on.  These things’ll matter eventually, but right now… I just want to finish this draft.

NaNoWriMo is really all about this.  It’s pushing yourself to just focus on finishing a first draft, rather than slowing down to worry about individual scenes and chapters.  If you’re especially determined (or masochistic) you could try the 3 Day Novel contest.  My partner’s done it a few times now and… well, I just try to keep her supplied with coffee and stay out of her way.

Once I’ve got this done, I dive into my second draft.  This is me in clean-up mode.  All the stuff I skipped gets filled in.  Sentences I never finished, incomplete descriptions, the places where I had to look up a certain place or name and for now it’s just ######### or [ADD BIG FIGHT HERE] or [MAKE THIS NOT SUCK SO MUCH!!!]
I also take a good look at the things I skipped.  Why didn’t I write it earlier?  Could I not come up with anything to go between these two elements?  Was I just not interested in writing that bit? If I’m not interested in writing it, people probably aren’t going to be interested in reading it.  This might tighten things up right here.

For me. the goal with this draft is to end up with a solid, readable manuscript.  Someone should be able to go to page one to page 500 and never hit any weird gaps or confusing typos or anything else that immediately kills the flow.

Third draft is editing.  I go through the whole manuscript line by line.  I check all my spelling.  I look for repetition and redundancy.  I cut a lot of excess words here.  Thousands of words, usually.  This involves a bunch of passes, the last one to make sure all this random cutting and tweaking hasn’t created any new hiccups.

When I’m all done with this—which can take a week or so—I try to get it in front of a few people I trust.  My partner.  Old friends who’ve ended up in the storytelling line of work.  People who’ve heard me talk about it and people who don’t know a thing about it.  The important thing is they’re all going to give me honest thoughts and opinions.  Which may sting sometimes, but will be much more useful.

Once I have all these notes from folks, I start my fourth draft.  Now I’m going through all these copies one line at a time, taking notes of my own and implementing changes where they’re needed.  How many people liked this bit?  How many didn’t like that one?  Whoops, guess I missed a comma there.  Now, having been away from this for a month or so while other folks were reading it, that line’s really dumb, isn’t it? Did I actually think that was deep and clever at some point?

This takes at least a week. Often more.  I’m simultaneously reading three or four copies of the book line by line, getting everyone’s thoughts and takes on it.  Weighing their thoughts against my own and each others.  Sometimes it goes fast, other times… it’s really slow.

And this eventually, finally brings us to the fifth draft.  This is me going through the whole thing again to make sure those fourth draft edits didn’t leave anything hanging or tweak a key point.  Just a nice, slow read-through.

One thing I like to do at this point is switch the whole thing into another font.  If I’ve been writing in , I switch it all over to Courier New.  If you’ve been doing that Comic Sans thing, hey, you needed to switch anyway.  When I do this, it makes everything sit differently on the page.  The words look different.  And suddenly passages I’ve been glossing over (after going through this a dozen times) are fresh and new.

And at this point… I wrap it up.  I think it’s important to just say “done” and move on to new projects, or else you can get stuck in an endless trap of rewriting again and again.  After all these rewrites and edits, there’s not much else I can do.

So that’s my process, beginning to end, in a nutshell.

Hey, what do you want?  I just started a new book.  I’ve got work to do.

Speaking of which… next time, I’d like to talk to you a bit about that guy across the street who just said the weirdest thing to me.  See him right over… where did he go?

Until then… go write.

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