Writing

So, I watched season one of The Umbrella Academy. I’d never read the comics, and so went in pretty cold, aside from knowing that the lead singer of My Chemical Romance wrote the original comic stories. And it’s a pretty fun series if you’re into superhero stories!

It’s also a great place to discuss a specific writing challenge that comes with superheroes, which goes like this: Just as we’re all dying from the moment we’re born, every super-powered character has to be neutered at some point the moment you create them.

With Great Power Comes an Equal and Opposite Power

The problem is obvious, right? When you have a character who has an incredible power, they can slice through plot problems. In The Umbrella Academy, the kids all have powers, but one character is a cut above: Allison, who can make people do anything she wants by saying I heard a rumor. That’s a pretty potent power; after all, she can stop the villain at any time simply by whispering in their ear.

And so, the moment she’s created, she has to be smothered, or else nothing makes sense. When you create a hyper-powerful character you have two basic choices: One, you can neuter them somehow. Two, you can create a villain that is equally powerful. That’s it, and they both have problems.

In The Umbrella Academy, they chose option one. SPOILERS: They were clever about it in the bulk of the series; Allison is guilty about using her power throughout her life to get what she wants, and super guilty because she used it on her own daughter to get her to go to sleep. That’s a believable motivation for not using your godlike powers every five minutes. Later, when the true adversary is revealed and Allison must as a character start unleashing her power, however, they have to stop it or the story ends with one episode to go as Allison just says I heard a rumor you’re gonna take a five-year nap and that’s it. So they injure her vocal chords, essentially rendering her immaterial to the story, which kind of sucks.

Option two is also kind of boring, because when your villain has the same abilities and powers it turns into a slugfest. A boring trading of blows that amounts to two drunk guys having a fist fight in the parking lot of a 7-11.

So what’s the solution? Frankly, the solution is to not play the game. Don’t create a character whose powers are so incredible they can solve any plot problem you throw at them. Give their power a flaw, or a limitation, or a steep price to be paid. This way you can avoid having a mind-controller character who literally controls zero minds during the big final battle in your story.

Like a lot of folks, I’m a broadly creative kind of person—I just like making shit up, in a wide variety of media. The fun of making stuff doesn’t necessarily require talent; I make videos and music and sad, misshapen things around the house using editing, composition, and carpentry skills that run the gamut from mediocre to nonexistent, but I don’t worry about the end result much. I just enjoy making stuff.

So, one reason I’m a writer instead of a musician or a furniture-maker is the fact that I’m good at writing, whereas I am … not good at those other things. I might enjoy making music, but I’m not good at it, and that’s okay.

But you know what, there’s another reason I write instead of some other creative expression: The lack of collaboration.

Me Myself and I

To put it bluntly, I hate working with other people. I hate having to offer up my ideas before I’ve polished them, and I hate having to fight and push to get things the way I want them. I fully recognize that this process of having to defend your ideas is healthy, and often results in better work. When you’re forced to defend every idea, you have to up your game.

But I don’t enjoy it, so I don’t do it.

The great part about writing is, you don’t need other people. Or special equipment. Or software skills. All you need is a writing implement and some ideas. That’s awesome. Even if I had some special talent aside from writing—which, it’s worth repeating, I do not—writing would attract me because it’s so old school you can literally do it with a piece of charcoal and a rock. Nothing gets in the way—not screens, power failures, or the annoying tendency of people to have feedback and alternative takes.

Of course, the real epiphany always comes late in the essay: The fact is, the collaboration comes in the writing game, it’s just kicked down the line. Because once you convince someone to represent or buy your work, the notes come. The edit letters. The comments in the margin. The tracked changes. Whether I like it or not, selling your work usually means opening yourself up to collaboration.

But, there’s a crucial difference. When I am forced to collaborate later in the process, I’ve sold the damn thing. I have a fair amount of confidence that it’s pretty good. Which not only makes the act of having to interact with other people (shudder) much easier, it makes it much easier to push back on feedback and take a stand on the intention behind your writing choices.

Of course, my other secret weapon is my social awkwardness and charming personality, which combine to ensure that no one wants to collaborate with me twice.

The fact that all writers steal is common knowledge. Naturally this doesn’t mean we’re all breaking into each other’s literary vaults[1] and literally stealing pages of pure prose gold, or that we’re plagiarizing the shit out of each other[2]. It means we’re all constantly evolving and developing our style and the tools we have at our disposal for telling stories by reading other people’s work and getting blown away-cum-jealous of what they pull off, and then trying to steal those techniques and ideas.

Far from a shameful display of artistic emptiness, stealing from other (usually better) writers is a time-honored tradition. But it’s easy to flippantly say that good writers borrow and great writers steal without actually explaining how one goes about stealing something like another writer’s technique. Here’s how I often do it when something I’ve just read impresses me, entertains me, or simply gets me excited.

STEP ONE: EXERCISE

The first step for me is usually a simple exercise involving copying the technique in question, usually by writing a slavish and unoriginal short piece that mimics what I’m stealing really, really closely. This is usually a whole short story in which I play with the narrative trick, Voice, or other aspect of the inspiration material I’m trying to nail down.

These stories are usually not great, or even good. The focus on the technique means other aspects of the story (yanno, plot, character, setting) get short shrift. What you want to accomplish here is mastery of the specific technique.

STEP TWO: ADAPTATION

Once I feel kind of comfortable with the specific technique I’m trying to steal, the time has come to try and bend it a little so so it fits into my own personal approach. If you don’t do this, after all, you have a very odd piece of writing that doesn’t really fit in with the rest of your work. Also, if you can’t bend it to your own specific goals, are you really in control? It’s kind of like owning a standard shift car when you don’t know how to drive a stick shift.

You can pursue this in a few different ways. One, you can revise the story or piece you just created, working to make it your own now that you’ve replicated the technique you’re stealing. Two, you can start something new or begin a fresh revision and insert the technique. Sometimes I like to start a new scene in a WIP that explores this new idea, even if it doesn’t really match the previous work I’ve done; I can always revise it later.

STEP THREE: BOREDOM

Eventually, the goal is for the thing you’re stealing to become just another boring part of your toolbox and repertoire. This usually requires using it constantly in your new work, even in places where it is glaringly obvious that it doesn’t belong. A sudden stream-of-consciousness sequence in the midst of a gritty detective noir? Oh, I’ve done that.

Once the tool becomes boring, you own it. It’s yours. When you’re no longer excited about it, it’s because it’s just one more tool among the many you have.

And that’s the saddest part of this writing gig. It’s really about draining all the wonder out of a bunch of magic tricks, until one day you know all the secrets, and have nothing left to say with them.

God, I need a drink.

——————–

[1]Do you not? How does one live?

[2]Although in all fairness I have drunkenly shouted I AM STEALING THAT when having drinks with other writers.

My memory is broken and always has been, although it took some time for me to figure this out. Where some folks worry that one day they will be old and will realize they can’t remember why they’re standing in the kitchen in their boxer shorts, that’s how I’ve been since I was born. The past, for me, is formless and vague. I can remember things from my past, of course, but they’re not, like, lived in. I remember things in a detached, academic way.

I also lack any kind of attention to detail. The present sluices through me like a confusing existential wave, and I often barely retain enough information to present myself as a somewhat capable and competent adult as opposed to, say, a shrubbery. This means that my daily interactions are fraught with more stress than they should be, because I am always owlishly trying to make up for my lack of attention to detail with charm and trickery:

THEM: … so, Jeff what do you think of that?

ME: (completely uncertain where I am or what we’ve been talking about or who these people are or why I am sitting at a conference table with 37 people in suits with a stack of papers in front of me and a tuna sandwich in my shirt breast pocket) Uhh …

<and tosses stack of papers into the air>

ME: Everybody dance!

It’s incredible I manage to make it through a day without being committed to an institution. But you know what? My lack of attention to detail actually helps my writing.

Wait, What Was I Saying?

Detail can be confounding for writers, because there’s a sweet spot between too much detail and empty prose that conveys nothing of the flavor of your setting, nothing of the subtleties of your characters’ reactions to things. For folks who have a mastery of detail and great memories, who can conjure up the way something felt or smelled or looked in a precise moment, there’s a huge amount of data they can potentially pour into their writing. And writers usually start off putting way too much detail into their writing as they seek to conquer verisimilitude through sheer volume of words.

Me, since all of my memories are like those scenes in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where the books are all white with no words because Jim Carrey’s memories are being sucked out of his head, I have the opposite—and, I think, easier—problem: I have to go hunting for more detail to pour into my scenes because, frankly, I can’t remember anything.

It also frees me to, you know, make shit up. I never have to negotiate with myself over whether it’s playing fair to describe something in a way counter to how I actually experienced it, because I can’t remember how I experienced, typically. That basically gives me permission to just imagine it however I want and write it that way. The takeaway is that details are just tools. They’re just bits and pieces and you get to decide how many—if any—your scene or story requires.

For me, I figure it’s probably two, three years tops before I have full on facial aphasia, and I spend all my time watching the same TV show over and over again. Which means I better get cracking on this book.

Writing anything more than a piece of flash fiction usually requires that you flex several different tools in order to get the story over the finish line—description, dialogue, exposition, and, depending on the kind of story we’re talking about, action.

Action scenes can be a challenge. Just like a film director who edits the scene so frenetically the viewer has no understanding of the spatial relations, a writer can botch an action scene, rendering it confusing or, worse, unexciting. In fact, one of the easiest ways to screw up an action scene, whether it’s a gunfight, hand-to-hand combat, or a chase, is to model your scene mechanics on a visual medium. We’re all trained at this point in the 21^st century to imagine our scenes as movies, but you have to take a more literary approach if you’re going to sell your action.

Ouch

The key here is to avoid the Superhero Problem. We’ve all seen action scenes in films where the hero takes a beating that would leave any normal human a smear on the floor, but the hero just shrugs it off and comes roaring back. Even in recent entertainments that have tried to introduce an element of realism—Atomic Blonde, say, or Netflix’s Daredevil with their out-of-breath heroes struggling to find the strength for one more go-round—still have the hero exhibiting ludicrous amounts of energy and strength, not to mention a tolerance for pain and injury beyond mere mortals.

That’s not really the problem, of course—these are superheros or superspies, after all, and the audience isn’t really looking for realism, I don’t think. The problem with this approach is really how it lowers the stakes. If your combatants can’t really be hurt, if no amount of exhaustion will stop your heroes, then why will your reader care?

The trick is to remember that you’re writing, not filming. Convey to your reader how it all feels, how it affects them. Make it personal. If your protagonist conveys agony and exhaustion, you’ll be better able to sell desperation and courage. And you’ll also seize better control over the blocking and staging of your scenes, because you’ll be ‘seeing’ everything through your characters’ eyes.

Plus, if you’re like me and walking up the stairs leaves you winded and nauseous, having your characters be exhausted all the time will feel more real, and thus you’ll be more invested in the writing.

I recently read the first book in Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel steampunk fantasy series, Senlin Ascends. It’s a great book and I’m excited to dive back in with the next books in the series. Obviously this sort of fantasy might not be your cup of tea, but the book made me think about a specific aspect of worldbuilding that applies to my current WIP: Holding back.

It’s early days in my own new novel, and I’m pantsing it pretty enthusiastically right now. But I do have a general idea of where I’m headed with this story, and despite not sitting down to craft a history or any kind of detailed study of my fictional universe, I have some definite ideas about how this world evolved into what it is, and what’s going outside the specific concerns of my characters and the setting. It’s just that I won’t get to a lot of it for a long time—maybe not even in this book.

The Long Game

And that’s okay. In Senlin Ascends, Bancroft drops a bunch of references to aspects of his universe that never pay off in the first book. I assume they’ll pay off in the sequels as he develops those ideas—but maybe he won’t ever really get into it. And that’s okay.

When I’m excited about a fictional world I’m building I have to fight the urge sometimes to just dump it all on the page as I’m going, to hurry up and get it into the story. Because I’m excited about these ideas, and part of me worries if I don’t explore them immediately I’ll forget them, or at least many of the details. But there’s good reason to wait—one, these sorts of unexplained details tantalize and get your reader excited about what’s coming. Two, these sorts of unexplained details deepen your universe and cement the illusion of reality you’re going for, because there’s always more to discover. And three they act like a pressure valve—if you ever get stuck in your main story, you can just veer off to explore that weird thought you had 40 pages earlier.

That urge to just get it all out is pretty powerful, but a lot of writing is what not to include. In fact, the ability to self-edit your work in real-time is sometimes all that separates what’s publishable from what’s not. As is the ability to not make all your main characters a guy named Jeff whose superpower is charm.

Writing is 50% reading, and that reading should be broad and all-inclusive. Reading within a single genre or a narrow slice of stuff you’re naturally interested in might make you a bit of an expert in what’s selling in that genre, but it won’t make you a better writer—for that you need to challenge yourself and read stuff you don’t immediately connect with.

For example, I started reading Milkman by Anna Burns, which recently won the Booker Prize. It certainly wasn’t a book I’d naturally pick up and start reading in the bookstore, but sometimes it’s good to just read a book just because it won a prize. If you’ve heard Milkman, it might be because of it’s one gonzo literary stunt: There are no proper names in the whole book. It’s told from a first-person point-of-view without using anyone’s actual names. The first line is “The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died” and that’s how the rest of the book goes—characters are referred to by relation (Ma, Third Brother-in-Law, the Real Milkman, etc) but nobody and no place receives a real name.

And, frankly, it’s exhausting.

McSomebodying

Look, I’ve tried this myself. I’ll bet a lot of writers have—the unnamed protagonist, at least, smothered in mystery and soooo psychologically ripe. It’s probably something every writer at least flirts with, that Clint Eastwood archetype of the unnamed character. Burns takes it to an extreme, and it’s an effective trick, to be honest, though I found it to have diminishing returns. At first it was interesting and intriguing, but over time it got to be a little much trying to remember how many Brothers-in-Law there were, and trying to care about characters that appeared for a few pages, were never named, and then shuffled off into literary oblivion.

But, and this is the whole point, at least Burns had a purpose here. Her choice to eschew names was purposeful, and that’s the key. When my own unnamed protagonists failed it was usually because I made that choice for no particular reason, just because it felt cool in the moment, or because I’d neglected to name the character at first and didn’t feel like fixing it. Purpose is the key—if you choose to do something kind of gonzo like an unnamed character, have a reason before you start.

On the flip side, writing a story without naming any of the characters can be a great way to measure your ability to actually craft characters; if you don’t name them, you’re going to have to rely entirely on your ability to make your characters deep and detailed. When there are no names to differentiate who’s doing or saying what, it quickly becomes apparent if all of your characters are essentially the same flat empty space. This can be a great exercise to force you to think harder about how you create interesting people to populate your stories.

Of course, I haven’t won any Booker Prizes, so feel free to ignore me <pours himself a drink, stares sullenly out window).

Someday writers everywhere will gather in Central Park like in the beginning of The Warriors and a cult-like leader will strut about an ersatz stage demanding to know if we can dig it, and then everyone will form up into two armies: Pantsers and Plotters. The War of Literary Identity will be epic for about twelve hours and then everyone will realize they’re actually Plantsers and a new Pax Litterara will bloom.

Even though your personal approach to plotting is, you know, personal, there remains this sense among a lot of writers that there are rules to all this stuff, and that therefore there is a right way to Pants your way through a story. One school of thought is that if you’re a Pantser that means you don’t do any sort of planning whatsoever, that every novel is like an eighth-grade jazz ensemble—everyone just sort of playing something and then miraculously in hour two of the set everything comes together for ten wild minutes and a song is achieved. In other words, there has to be a lot of wasted time as you noodle about without any plan, until inspiration combined with luck results in a plot.

In my experience, this isn’t true.

No Stairway

The way Pantsing works for me is similar to working out a guitar part for a song. I’m no musical genius, and my knowledge of music theory isn’t broad. I play for my own pleasure, and I build my little songs using a pretty simple process: I start with a chord progression that sounds kind of interesting, then I start noodling with scales over that progression until something resembling a song emerges.

That’s pretty similar to how I write a novel: I start with something foundational, either a scene or a character or a premise, and then I noodle over that until something resembling a story emerges.

The key here is just that—the key. In my musical noodlings, I’m operating within the framework of a musical key, which dictates the notes that will sound good over the chords. It’s chaos and noodling, yes, but noodling within a framework. It’s the same for writing—yes, I’m throwing words around to see what sticks, but it’s within a framework. Pantsing is not, I don’t think, just starting with a blank page and then relying on automatic writing or something to come up with a plot. Unless it is, for you, in which case, you do you.

The framework is vital, for me. It can be so broad and flexible as to be nigh invisible and infinite, but it has to be there. Otherwise you’re that eighth-grade jazz ensemble. You might get lucky, but you can’t repeat a trick you didn’t understand in the first place.

Well, it’s 2019, and we’re all still here writing. Or at least I hope we are. No matter how many things I publish, how many manuscripts I complete and feel good about, there’s always an up-and-down quality to enthusiasm. Every writer experiences dark moments when they lose confidence in what they’re doing, or feel like their careers are stalled or perhaps ended forever. It’s inevitable.

When this happens in terms of what I’m working on, it’s pretty awful; whether you’re 3,000 or 30,000 words in, that sudden sense that your WIP is boring and not worth the effort can lead to day drinking and poor Netflix choices which can then slur into a spiral of lost time that undermines everything else you’re trying to do.

When this happens to a WIP I try a little psychological trick: I imagine my reader’s reaction to what I’m working on.

The Audience is Key

I’m a huge believer in getting your work out there. The act of creation is just half of it—the other half is getting your words in front of eyeballs to be appreciated, critiqued, and hopefully enjoyed.

When I was a little kid, I shared a bedroom with my older brother. When we were small, we’d lay in bed at night and entertain each other with stories. We just made shit up, and it was a blast, and I can remember the feeling of excitement when I had a good idea for a new story at night. I anticipated my brother’s reactions, and couldn’t wait to lay my genius on him. The fact that most of my stories at the time were satires of Star Wars which thought the height of humor was renaming Luke Skywalker Luke Mudd is beside the point, dammit. I was eight.

That anticipation sometimes solves my enthusiasm deficits. I imagine someone reading the story I’m working on, and getting to that big twist or that moment where I really sharpen and define the premise, and I imagine their reaction. I imagine that excitement—we’re writers, so we’re readers. We know that excitement that wells up inside when you realize the writer is about to do something really, really cool.

I imagine that. And then I want that moment. And often that clicks me back into being excited as a writer, and I get a second wind on the WIP.

Of course, if that fails, there’s always the aforementioned day drinking, which has gotten me through just about every other crisis in my life. To paraphrase The Simpsons, Booze: Teacher, mother … secret lover.