Author Archive: jsomers

Jeff Somers (www.jeffreysomers.com) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and regrets nothing. He is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series published by Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket Books. He sold his first novel at age 16 to a tiny publisher in California which quickly went out of business and has spent the last two decades assuring potential publishers that this was a coincidence. Jeff publishes a zine called The Inner Swine and has also published a few dozen short stories; his story “Sift, Almost Invisible, Through” appeared in the anthology Crimes by Moonlight, published by Berkley Hardcover and edited by Charlaine Harris. His guitar playing is a plague upon his household and his lovely wife The Duchess is convinced he would wither and die if left to his own devices.

The Art of Finishing

Author: July 20, 2017 0 Comments

I have a lot of trouble leaving things unfinished. I’m not sure where it comes from, but once I start something, I have a low-level compulsion to finish it, whether it’s my dinner or a bottle of wine or a novel.

This is great when it comes to home projects, because all I have to do is literally put one brushstroke of paint on the wall and I am locked in to painting the whole fucking house no matter what. No. Matter. What. It’s not so great when I over-order lunch and grimly force myself to eat all three hamburgers because by god I do not leave things unfinished.

It’s also great for the writing, because I finish all my writing projects, which makes for a lot of material. This is a good thing, and something more writers should engage in, because finishing a novel or story is a skill that will serve you well.

Marathon, Not a Sprint

Here’s the thing: Just about every creative project you ever engage in will lead you to a low point where you want to abandon it. The novel will get messy and you’ll wake up one night convinced that the premise is stupid and you’re screwing it up anyway. The story will lose its forward momentum and the brilliant twist ending will seem less and less brilliant as time goes by. Your rhyme scheme for the epic poem about your cats will sound harsh and uninviting to your ears. That sort of thing.

It’s soooo easy to give up. So easy to just close the file and shrug—oh well, it didn’t work out. And this is occasionally backed up by the times your writing is effortless, which happens for me sometimes. Sometimes I go from idea to completed novel in a few months and it’s like a dream. And when that happens it’s easy to imagine that’s how it should always happen.

Except, it doesn’t, really. Writing is usually gonna be hard work, and so learning how to force yourself to finish things is a skill you’re gonna be happy to have. And getting that skill starts right now: By finishing that crappy novel you’re ready to give up on even thought it’s 40,000 words and almost coherent. Get back in there and begin training yourself to finish stuff. It’ll pay off.

General, Writing

Walking the Walk

Author: July 19, 2017 0 Comments

Kids, I like to walk places, which makes me a little weird in modern-day America, where people apparently think walking three blocks to a store is pure insanity. One of the things I love about Hoboken, my home town, is its walkability. I don’t own a car currently, and don’t need one; literally everything I need is within easy walking distance, as long as you define “easy walking distance” as the distance that a normal adult in good health should be able to walk without complaining, passing out, or falling into some sort of storm drain. For me, that’s about 3-4 miles.

Now, some folks react to the fact that I walk 3-4 miles every single day with a bit of incredulity, as if spending hours at the gym working with machines is much less weird than simply walking around for exercise, but that’s okay. My brother, Yan, actually walks a lot more than I do. He often spends entire days just walking around. The man could use his legs as Jaws of Life in crash situations. So I’m not the weirdest Somers, which has always been my only true goal in life.

I like walking, what can I say? And when you walk around town every day like I do, you see some shit.

Some Shit Jeff Has Seen

ON my merry perambulations, I’ve seen

    • Many, many fancy people with umbrellas in the sunshine. Now, I know the sun is bad for you. I am sure my own skin is so damaged from the sun I will someday look remarkably like Tommy Lee Jones. Still, the number of folks I see parading about in the sunshine holding cheap, regular CVS-style umbrellas over themselves is remarkable. So I have remarked upon it. I wonder if these folks maintain their low-rent fanciness in other scenarios as well; perhaps all of their cans of diet cola at home sit on fancy white doilies?
    • Men walking about in 90-degree weather wearing long pants and jackets. Look, not everyone likes shorts. Some people think the world is far too casual, and some people just don’t like to expose skin. Fine and all, but … the jacket? I’ll be walking about in a constant puddle of my own sweat (and believe you me, I am wearing shorts in these scenarios and would go nekkid if I could) and some middle-aged dude will stroll past wrapped up like he’s recently teleported from the North Pole. And I can only think about the swampy nature of his nether regions.
    • Neighbors who live on my block getting out of cars approximately 3 blocks away from their house. It’s certainly possible they drove from another, distant location. But I wouldn’t be surprised to discover they drove from their house to the Chipotle, because walking 6 blocks there and back is obviously not what god intended them to do.

GEESES

  • A lot of geese, because we have a lot of geese living on the river here in Hoboken. They make me unreasonably happy for some reason, similar I suppose to the Tony Soprano Swimming Pool Ducks.
  • A lot of Stoop Sitting. I dunno about where you live, but here in the NYC metro area people of the older generations are still very fond of setting up shop on their front porch or stoop (or on the sidewalk if there’s no other choice) and … sitting there. All day. Just watching the world go by and engaging in conversation with anyone who wanders by. It kind of creeps me out, to be honest. My Mother once told me that when she was a young girl in Brooklyn, no one had air conditioning, so stoop-sitting was a consequence of their apartments being like ovens during the day. It’s possible these folks don’t have A/C either, but I am dubious.

Walking is about the only exercise I’m willing to engage in, because I am a strange and wonderful being filled with secrets. That’s me; if you prefer a gym or yoga or jogging, more power to you. I’ll just keep walking, and making mental notes about the terrors that await us on the streets.

Bullshit

Practice Makes Perfect

Author: July 19, 2017 0 Comments

A few years ago, my wife The Duchess, tired of my complaining, bought me a guitar and some lessons. I’d been saying for years that I wanted to learn how to play an instrument simply because I like to take on new challenges and learn new skills, and the whole guitar thing is something we white guys born somewhere between 1945 and 1995 have burned into our genetic code. When we’re 15 we very much wish to be in a rock band, and for those of us who never managed it as kids, it’s something that haunts us.

So, I learned to play the guitar, and to this day I play every day, for myself. I even make songs! That you can listen to! Though you probably shouldn’t.

You can learn about writing from playing guitar. Part of learning how to play involves practice. Playing scales, learning how to play songs, fingering exercises—you do these things every day in order to master the instrument. And you should be doing similar things with your writing.

I Got Blisters On Me Fingers

Yes, of course, most writers try to write every day. But we’re not talking about working on your novel or stories or epic poem about video games. We’re talking about exercises. Quick shots of skill-building work that keep expanding what you feel comfortable with. One example I always trot out is my habit of writing a short story every month. A lot of these stories aren’t great, but they keep me generating ideas, teach me how to end a story, and allow me to practice whatever I need work on. So, if I’m feeling rusty working with a first-person narrator, say, I can work on a story with that POV.

Maybe you need to work on dialog, so you should spend a week writing conversations. Or you need to practice world-building, so you should write some quick setting descriptions or histories. Only you know what you need to work on, but once you figure that out you should work on it every day. It doesn’t have to be in the context of a larger story—in fact it’s better if you break it out as a short practice bit you can get through very quickly.

Of course, if you listen to my guitar playing you likely have much less respect for me now, so forget I said anything.

Uncategorized

Never Discuss Cincinnati

Author: July 18, 2017 0 Comments

Noodle Incidents are one of the most powerful world-building tools you have at your disposal. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a Noodle Incident is a never-explained event in the past that the characters of a story refer to but never, ever flesh out. The term originated in an old Calvin and Hobbes comic and has been appropriated for literary technique discussion ever since.

Noodle Incidents are fantastic, because they have no limits, no shape, no beginning and no end. You refer to them with a cool, hilarious name, and you let the reader do the heavy lifting of filling in the blanks and shading the corners. Letting the reader do the work is actually the main benefit of Noodle Incidents, as the soaring imagination of your reader will always do a better job of fleshing out your half-baked Noodle Incidents then you will, and peppering your story with them gives the back story and world-building a mysterious, expansive boost you can’t match no matter how good a writer you happen to be.

Once you start using them, however, you have to stick to one Gremlin-like rule: Never explain them.

Day Old Pasta

The power of the Noodle Incident is in its mystery. The urge to explain them grows proportionally to the length of your story, the complexity of your universe, and how long you’ve been writing about a particular group of characters. In other words, the more you write about characters and their environments, the more desperate you can become for new material. And after you’ve told all the main stories, and even the side stories, the Noodle Incidents can start to look an awful lot like whole new veins of story material.

Except, because you’ve invited your readers to imagine them for so long, no matter what you come up with will never be as good as what they’ve come up with. You will lose that war, and losing an imagination war with your readers is not a good look. Let your Noodle Incidents do their work, and find another way to expand your story.

 

Of course, Noodle Incidents exist in real life. All of mine involve my pants, or lack thereof.

General, Writing

Another Blog: Writing Without Rules

Author: July 18, 2017 1 Comment

You may have noticed that I haven’t been terribly active at this here blog, which is as much a tragic story of authorial incompetence as anything else. One reason I’ve been distracted is the other blog I’ve set up: Writing Without Rules.

WWR is where I’ve been posting all my genius, sodden, slightly warped writing advice (craft and career). The main reason I’ve set this blog up instead of simply continuing to dump my writerly thoughts here is because I’ve sold a book:

BAM!

It’s not out until 2018, so let’s hold our applause. But since you can’t start promoting something too early, I’ve set up a companion blog centered on writing. I’ll be posting thoughts on writing novels, short stories, and other things, as well as my half-assed ideas about promotion and marketing. If you’re an aspiring writer and you’re under the delusion that you can learn something from me, please do surf on over and leave me some insulting comments. And mark your calendars to buy this book when it comes out, as I guarantee you will be a hundredaire after putting it’s concepts into action.

BAM!, Writing

Let ?Em Chat

Author: July 17, 2017 0 Comments

Dialog is one of the most challenging things for writers to get “right,” mainly because “right” is a moving target. Dialog can, after all, accomplish a task—exposition, say—and yet be a Fail because it sounds unnatural, or feels forced, or obviously exists solely to convey information and not as something that real people would actually engage in.

Sometimes even if you’re relatively comfortable writing dialog you get into trouble because your characters only speak when they’re conveying information. This is an easy trap to fall into because it feels concise and efficient, when in fact it’s weird because people love to chatter. Anyone who has ever tried to avoid conversation in an office setting, or when walking home through their neighborhood, knows just ho much people like to chat. No matter how good you are at dialog, if your characters only ever talk about Plot Things, it’s going to be a little uncanny for your readers.

One solution to this is to imagine you’re listening in on your characters chatting while they’re getting to the next scene.

Don’t Skip, Delete

The whole “skip the boring parts” writing advice is excellent stuff, but it’s often more useful to go back and delete the boring parts instead of skipping them in the first place. For example, writing the entire twenty-block car drive that your characters engage in between chapters 2 and 3 might seem like an obvious boring spot to skip—after all, who wants to read about two people driving ten minutes to their destination? But, what if you tagged along on that ride and let your characters chat. No Plot Things, just chatting, relaxed conversation about whatever your characters might be interested in.

It may well turn out to still be a boring part, in which case you delete it in revision. Or, maybe parts of the conversation your record there is actually interesting and fun, and so you keep some of it, or most of it, and delete only the truly boring stuff. Even if you wind up deleting the whole sequence, you will likely have learned something about your characters in the process.

In fact, any time your characters aren’t actively fighting vampires or seducing each other or robbing banks, have them talk. Have them talk a lot. About anything, about nothing, because that’s what real people do, and it can be incredibly useful when fleshing out characters and a universe. The true super power isn’t skipping stuff you assume will be boring, but deleting stuff that has proved to be boring.

Of course, if I’m following the Boring Rule, entire novels I’ve written might be deleted. Shut up.

dialogue, Writing

Let ?Em Chat

Author: July 17, 2017 4 Comments

Dialog is one of the most challenging things for writers to get “right,” mainly because “right” is a moving target. Dialog can, after all, accomplish a task—exposition, say—and yet be a Fail because it sounds unnatural, or feels forced, or obviously exists solely to convey information and not as something that real people would actually engage in.

Sometimes even if you’re relatively comfortable writing dialog you get into trouble because your characters only speak when they’re conveying information. This is an easy trap to fall into because it feels concise and efficient, when in fact it’s weird because people love to chatter. Anyone who has ever tried to avoid conversation in an office setting, or when walking home through their neighborhood, knows just ho much people like to chat. No matter how good you are at dialog, if your characters only ever talk about Plot Things, it’s going to be a little uncanny for your readers.

One solution to this is to imagine you’re listening in on your characters chatting while they’re getting to the next scene.

Don’t Skip, Delete

The whole “skip the boring parts” writing advice is excellent stuff, but it’s often more useful to go back and delete the boring parts instead of skipping them in the first place. For example, writing the entire twenty-block car drive that your characters engage in between chapters 2 and 3 might seem like an obvious boring spot to skip—after all, who wants to read about two people driving ten minutes to their destination? But, what if you tagged along on that ride and let your characters chat. No Plot Things, just chatting, relaxed conversation about whatever your characters might be interested in.

It may well turn out to still be a boring part, in which case you delete it in revision. Or, maybe parts of the conversation your record there is actually interesting and fun, and so you keep some of it, or most of it, and delete only the truly boring stuff. Even if you wind up deleting the whole sequence, you will likely have learned something about your characters in the process.

In fact, any time your characters aren’t actively fighting vampires or seducing each other or robbing banks, have them talk. Have them talk a lot. About anything, about nothing, because that’s what real people do, and it can be incredibly useful when fleshing out characters and a universe. The true super power isn’t skipping stuff you assume will be boring, but deleting stuff that has proved to be boring.

Of course, if I’m following the Boring Rule, entire novels I’ve written might be deleted. Shut up.

dialogue, Writing

The Obvious Mystery

Author: July 14, 2017 0 Comments

One of the easiest mistakes a writer can make in just about any genre, but especially in any story that features a mystery, is to assume that your mystery has to be mind-blowing and convoluted.

The fact is, most mysteries, once revealed, are pretty pedestrian. What makes a mystery work is that the author knows the solution and the reader doesn’t, and that gives the author incredible power. They can mess with the reader all they want. They can deceive, dissemble, and misdirect. And, most importantly, they can heavily imply that the mystery is a brilliant knot that only their weary protagonist can solve, when the mystery itself is actually pretty obvious once revealed.

Even in the most celebrated mysteries of all time, like the Holmes and Christie stories, the solution is usually a bit of a let down. Oh, they all killed him, you say? Oh, it was a poisonous snake placed in the room, you say? I’m not saying these aren’t clever, it’s just that once you know the secret the mystery is usually something perfectly rational and even obvious.

The trick is, your reader doesn’t know that.

The Obvious Child

That means that you really shouldn’t spend too much time trying to come up with a mind-blowing mystery that will shatter people’s psyches. The trick is, any crime becomes mysterious and enticing when it’s not explained. Start with a simple murder—say a husband killing his cheating wife—and then work backwards, erasing clues and coming up with coincidences. By the time you get to the beginning of the story, the mystery will be pretty thick and you’ll be able to sell your reader on its difficulty simply by dint of it being obfuscated.

The simple fact is, 99% of all mysteries are let downs. Once you see how a trick was done, it’s kind of disappointing. The joy isn’t in the solution, it’s in the journey—so stop wasting time trying to be too clever by half, and just work backwards.

Plus, make your detective a ventriloquist. There’s never been a ventriloquist detective. It’s genius. Like Jay-Z says, I’m just trying to give you a million dollars worth of game for $9.99.

General, Writing

It’s Okay to Not Know Everything

Author: July 13, 2017 0 Comments

One of my least-favorite things is when a reader asks me a question about my work that I can’t answer. This is usually in terms of worldbuilding or character back story, and the questions are usually incredibly detailed or thoughtful, which, hey, I get it: I do the same thing. I sit there and watch Twin Peaks and I spend a truly shameful amount of mental energy pondering the meaning of disappearing windows on a jet plane, and part of that is this innocent faith that David Lynch actually has a master plan, actually knows what all these things mean, and could clearly articulate it all if he had to.

But man, I usually can’t answer the questions. Because it’s okay to be the writer and not know every little thing about your universe, your characters. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s beneficial.

A Little Nonsense Now and Then

On the one hand, yes, you are correct: I created these worlds, these people. I am the god of my fictional universes and if anyone is going to be able to explain to you why a character wears a certain hat or makes certain life choices, it ought to be me. But the fact is, I usually don’t, because when I’m writing I tend to focus on the details that I need for each scene. I don’t worry about the Known Unknowns, because that knowledge is on a need to know basis, and I simply don’t need to know.

Until I do. And that’s the key here: Even if it never makes it into your draft, fixing every detail of your universe and character can tie your hands later—sometimes later in the same manuscript, sometimes later in the series. The fact that I don’t know exactly what my characters were like as kids, or what the story behind their tattoo is doesn’t mean I’m a lazy, dumb writer (although, of course, I’ll stipulate that I am pretty dumb and lazy). It means I’m leaving my options open for inspiration later. If I haven’t defined that tattoo today, I won’t have to retcon something next year.

Finding the balance between the right amount of iceberg under the surface when it comes to world building and character development isn’t an equation. It can’t be taught. You just have to play with the levels until you get it right. And then get comfortable admitting you have no idea why your character has that tatt. Yet.

General, worldbuilding, Writing

Making Fiction Out of Nothing at All

Author: July 12, 2017 0 Comments

Very often, what should be the easiest aspect of this writing thing is the most difficult. The moment you tell someone that you write novels they will ask you where you get your ideas. This will 100% happen every single time, and you will have to resign yourself to people demanding to know where you get your ideas as if they suspect there’s an Idea Store somewhere making drone deliveries.

The assumption is that ideas are plentiful and easy. The reality is, we’ve all sat in front of a blinking cursor or blank page and had zero ideas. Zero. It drives some of us to drink. Because the reality is ideas are cheap, and ideas are everywhere, but you have to combine your idea with that mystical energy (for once I’m not referring to whiskey, although it helps) that gets the creative energies focused on that idea. Without that thrilling sense of excitement, even perfectly good story ideas will sit there, inert and mocking.

The good news is, coming up with ideas to write about is easy enough. One of the easiest ways is plenty effective: Just answer a question.

Forty Two

There are two ways to go about this.

The first is to ask a question and then provide the answer. It’s important to note that we’re not looking for actual answers—in other words it’s okay to ask a question that has an answer but to ignore that answer in favor of something more fanciful, impossible, or insane. For example, maybe you wonder why UPS trucks are brown. There’s a real-world answer to that question, but fuck it: Maybe they’re brown because the wormhole technology they use to shift freight around the world reacts badly with other colors.

The second way to approach this is to come up with an answer and then wonder what the question is. If the answer is putting birthday cake into the dryer, figuring out the problem that solves is gonna be fun. It might not lead you to a coherent story, but it’ll get the juices flowing and for the moment that’s all we care about.

Don’t get chained to reality and the actual answers that exist. Plenty of stories have ignored easily observable reality in favor of crazy bullshit. The crazy bullshit is always more entertaining. I should know; at this point the local cops arrest me for public intoxication mainly for the stories I tell to explain my nudity.

ideas, Writing