Writing

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.

One of the toughest things to attain in any story, but especially in a speculative story, is verisimilitude, that sense your reader gets that the universe they’re reading about actually exists. When your story is set in the real world and in contemporary times this is a little easier, of course, but no matter when your story is set if it’s supposed to be in this universe you’re going to run into the Pop Culture Problems.

Pop Culture Problem One: The Times They Are A’Changin’

Smart phones didn’t really become a thing until 2008, 2009. Before the first iPhone, people had cell phones and they were boring, and mainly used as, well, phones. Any story set before the arrival of the iPhone might as well have been written in a different century when it comes to how people live and how they communicate, and if you wrote such a story I’m sorry to tell you you’re boned. The only solution to this is to make all of your stories speculative in the sense that they’re set in an alternative universe that follows a technological history devised by you alone, and good luck managing to convey that to your readers.

Pop Culture Problem Two: Your Main Character, The Weirdo

When I was a youngster my parents allowed my brother and I to get a goldfish, because she hoped it would distract us from our burning desire for a dog or cat. We named our goldfish Topper. Any idea why?

If you answered yes, congrats, you have a knowledge of and possibly affection for 1930s screwball comedy films or 1950s TV series. Topper was a 1926 novel adapted into a 1937 film starring Cary Grant, and spawned sequels and a TV show. My brother and I watched the reruns as kids and there was a brief period of Toppermania in our house. What can I say: In the novel of life, I am the weirdo.

Would you ever use Topper as a cultural signpost? Probably not. Yet in many speculative novels we’re expected to believe that the main characters are super into the pop culture of the 20^th or 21^st centuries so the author can use those cultural signposts despite telling a story set in, oh, the year 3147. Having your SFF characters super into things like Seinfeld in the year 3147 is like having someone be super into Topper in 2017. It will never feel real.

Related: Pop Culture Problem Three: Look on My Works

Of course, all pop culture references should be avoided for the simple reason that they age like old paint: Badly. Having your characters Dab might feel cheeky in 2017 (or, more accurately, might have felt cheeky in 2016). In 2027 it will feel … silly. Or mysterious, if your potential readers are young’uns.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out a way to get a reference to fidget spinners into this scene I’m working on, so I’ll seem cool.

Some of you might know I used to publish a zine, The Inner Swine. For nearly 20 years I self-published four issues a year, 25,000 words an issue.

What was in it? Short stories. Occasional poems. And a lot of essays about whatever happened to be on my mind that month, that day, that year. Some of it has stood the test of time, some of it I’m embarrassed about. It was a lot of fun, though, and I learned a lot about writing simply by, you know, writing. More or less constantly for 20 years, because you don’t crank out a hefty novel’s worth of material every year if you slack off.

I never expected to make any money from the zine, or gain any sort of recognition. It was just self-indulgent and fun. I had a few hundred subscribers, was in a few stores. One of the main things I learned from the zine was this: Sometimes you have to write just for yourself.

The Brand

When your ambition is to make a living from writing, from telling stories, you can lose sight of that, sometimes. There’s certainly nothing wrong with trying to write something that has commercial potential—we all gotta eat. But it’s easy to get caught up in polishing pitches, collaborating and revising to get a book sold, or trying to constantly imagine what people will like and respond to. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing is to unplug from all of that and write something simply because you’re excited about it, find it interesting or entertaining, or want a challenge. Put aside any considerations about its marketability—or even if anyone else will “get” it—and just write for the sheer joy of it.

It isn’t easy, sometimes, with schedules. Sometimes you’re lucky if you get to work on anything, much less something just for the freedom of it. But if you can, you should.

Now, I have to get back to my epic poem composed in Esperanto. Which means I have to learn Esperanto, and soon.

Writing isn’t easy. Well, no, it is easy in the sense that you’re not climbing a mountain without oxygen, or living with some terrible affliction, or working in a salt mine. Or maybe you are doing one of those things and writing is even harder because of it, I don’t know, I can’t see you. But writing a story is just thinking of an idea and then typing or scratching at a piece of paper until you’re done. It’s not exactly negotiating Middle East peace or performing brain surgery.

On the other hand, writing isn’t easy. Every writer has failed novels, abandoned projects, or juvenelia they would very much prefer to bury somewhere deep. For those of us who have two jobs, or debilitating circumstances, or other difficulties, writing gets even harder. Often the only time you have to write is after hours, or in snatches here and there throughout the day. Not everyone can just take off for a writing retreat, or easily find an hour every day to sit in a quiet, well-lit place and think.

So, take this advice with a grain of salt: Don’t work when you’re tired.

Screw the Word Count

It’s no secret I’m not a fan of word count as a metric of writing success. I understand a lot of folks find it useful and that’s great, but one reason I disparage its use is the way it makes people believe that pushing yourself to drop words onto the page long after you should give up, have a beer, and take a nap. Daily writing goals are great when they inspire you to produce quality work. The trick is to be critical of your daily production, and ask yourself whether the words you’re forcing yourself to write are any good.

Often, when I’m struggling with a scene or some other aspect of a story, the easy fix literally is easy: I quit. I go to bed. I go watch something. I read a book. When I’m tired and frustrated, the worst thing I can do is force myself to keep working.

And sometimes that’s tough, because maybe I’ve had a string of days where I haven’t gotten much done, and I’m getting that weird feeling I might never write anything good ever again, and all I want before I turn in for the night is to feel like I wrote a good sentence or paragraph, so I’ll have someplace good to pick up from the next day.

The trick is, I usually write that good sentence the next day.

You do you, by all means. But next time you’re bleary-eyed and yawning and wondering why you can’t hit that word count you set for yourself, maybe take a nap instead. Then again, I think pants are unnecessary in the modern age, so listening to me is dubious at best.

IN the realm of writing advice offered by possibly Day Drunk authors currently hosting at least two cats on their laps, forcing them to type in a pose I call “T-Rex Yoga” (arms up and bent downward so you can hunt-and-peck), there are two basic flavors: General writing or career advice that covers whole universes of writing challenges, and extremely narrow and specific advice. This is going to fall into the latter category, as it applies specifically to scenes in a story that just aren’t working.

If you’ve tried to write a story, you will likely recognize this scenario: You know where you want the story to go, you have what seems like a good outline for getting it there, but every time you start writing it feels dead. Nothing is working. The starter is grinding but the spark plugs won’t fire.

When this happens to me, usually the problem turns out to be pretty simple: I’m being too clever by half.

Just Say It

When I’m working out the plot of a story and I’m looking forward, say, twenty chapters to a Big Moment, a twist or a reveal that’s pretty exciting, I usually have an idea of how I’ll handle that Moment, and it’s usually too smart by half. I always imagine the subtle hints leading up to it, and I always—always!—have a strong urge to resist anything that feels expected, or traditional. In short, I always want to be the smartest man in the room.

But invariably if, when I get to that Moment, I just can’t seem to get the gears to bite and the words just sit there, dead and lifeless, it’s because I’m trying too hard. I’ve got all this subtext, and subtlety. Like, my villain is revealing their plan—and naturally I don’t want this to turn into an Exposition Fest, so I’ve got this idea of how their evil plan will be revealed almost casually, in the course of telling another story altogether. In my head, it’s brilliant. On the page … a fucking disaster.

The answer is usually to dispense with subtlety and make subtext into text. In short, the solution is to just have the villain make a speech. Let them build a little Exposition Village and explain everything. Then move on and finish the story. I can always go back in revision and rub at that Exposition until its gone, and in the mean time I’m making progress.

It’s key to remember that while I’m no fan of excessive revisions, your early drafts don’t have to be perfect. If being clunky keeps things moving, then be clunky, and fix it later. That is also my romantic advice: Be clunky, and fix it later.

I’m reading a pretty terrible novel in fits and starts; I like to finish novels when I start them. In fact, there has been just one novel I’ve picked up in my life that I didn’t finish. That was a weird moment in my life, actually; I bought the book when I was probably 15 or 16 and felt this weird antipathy towards it. Like, I dreaded the book. I also hated the story, but I dreaded the physical object. So I decided to bring it back to the store for a refund, but when I got to the store I had a weird anxiety attack and so I wound up just leaving the book on the shelf again, no refund.

In another life, that’s the beginning of a horror story, somehow.

Anyways, other than that one time if I start reading a book I finish that son of a bitch, trust me. So I’m struggling through this one, and one of the main reasons it’s terrible is the way the characters routinely stop whatever they’re supposed to be doing to explain themselves. Everyone in this book is a Basil Exposition, constantly pausing to make a speech about their motivations.

Here’s a simple trick for better writing and better characters: Don’t do that. In fact, it’s better if your characters never actually explain themselves at all.

Sweet Mystery of Life

Exposition and how to do it is always a challenge, but having your characters stand up and make a speech is almost never the right way to do it. The Somers Rule for How to Do Characters Or Not Hey What Do I Know Rule states that your characters should behave like real people, within the bounds of the universe you’ve created. And real people don’t usually stand up and make speeches explaining themselves.

In fact, in my experience people are frustratingly prone to the opposite. People usually assume their motives are obvious, their innocence printed on their faces, their feelings towards you plain. Imagine if everyone around you randomly launched into lengthy speeches about their plans for the evening, the reason they’re not attending that meeting, that party, their lengthy designs on world domination and mass murder. It would be kind of weird, wouldn’t it?

So it is with characters. If the best way you can explain your plot or your timey-wimey bubble of special universe physics is to have everyone stop cold and make speeches, you are not writing a good book.

However—if you’re working on a zero draft and you’re using the speech technique just to map out the fundamentals, and you fully intend to revise these ugly speeches out when you get to later drafts that humans will be expected to read, that’s totally fine. Zero drafts are ugly, pus-filled horrors. All is forgiven if you rub enough revision salve on ?em.