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The Final Cut

Author: May 29, 2019 0 Comments

I make a lot of my living as a freelance writer, which means people pay me to write all kinds of things. Some are fun and creative, some are … not. Some make me question my sanity, but as long as the check clears, I tend to get over it with the help of a nice dram of something brown and liquory.

I have one job that has pretty strict word counts, and involves taking a lot of material and research and boiling it down to that word count. Invariably, this means that my first draft of every piece is approximately five billion words over, and I have to start cutting.

And as a writer, you learn a lot about the mechanics of writing from cutting. You also learn how terrible you are at first drafts.

Everything is Terrible

I am old and wizened enough to remember when Twitter had a 140-character limit, and every tweet was an exercise in sculpting language. Trying to communicate nuance with 140 characters was tough, but as a result of that hellscape I now find 280 characters flabby. It’s too much space.

Cutting, of course, is a skill. You don’t have to read the infinite ‘restored’ version of The Stand to know that writing without limits has its downside. And that’s why my freelance gig with the hard word counts is actually good for me. Taking 1,200 flabby words and cutting them into a diamond-sharp 600 word gem isn’t always easy, but it usually requires that I consider every sentence–every word. I have to justify every word, every phrase, and think about whether I can say the same thing in fewer words.

Usually, fewer words is more powerful writing.

As an experiment, I’m thinking of trying to write a novel with a preset word count. Something borderline, like 55,000 words. A big, epic story whose first draft is going to be 150,000 words, and then try to go through every line and cut out more than half of the words, just to see if what’s left is a razor-sharp story or a skinny mess.

Because I’m starting to think the main test of a writer is cutting the words down to the bone, and then cutting some more, and somehow still ending up with exactly what you wanted.

For example, this post was originally 6,700 words long, including a lengthy middle section in which I confessed to my crimes. You’re welcome.

freelance, Writing

The Character Isolation Effect

Author: May 22, 2019 0 Comments

I’m old enough to be amazed at the fact that I can just re-watch a TV show or movie whenever I want; when I was a kid this was impossible, and I still forget about this casual superpower sometimes. It’s a great opportunity to learn something from successful media; after watching it once (or twice) for the entertainment, you can go back watch it again for the structure, the writing tricks, and the fundamentals.

Recently I started re-watching Community, the sitcom that ran on NBC and Yahoo! for six seasons. Originally developed by Dan Harmon, who ran the show for season 1-3 and 5-6, I remember watching it pretty enthusiastically on its original run (it might actually be the last broadcast network show I ever voluntarily watched, actually). It was funny, it pushed some boundaries and did unexpected things.

Watching it again, it made me think about how we write about characters, and in particular a common trick used when story has a large group of linked characters: Isolation.

No Complications

In real life when you meet people, they come with all kinds of existing connections. Friends, family, and romantic partners that pre-date your own association. Sometimes, though, these connections are obscured because of the circumstances surrounding your meeting. For example, when I met people in my dorm in freshman year of college, most of those pre-existing connections had been left behind, albeit temporarily. For a while it was possible to pretend these people were yours, that the only relationship that existed was the one between you and them.

Of course, it’s not true. For a while it might seem like you’re all living in an intimacy bubble, but eventually other relationships push in. But then exclusive feeling is pretty heady stuff. You get to imagine you know these people better than anyone else in the world.

And that’s a powerful trick to pull when writing about characters, and pretty common in TV writing. Consider Community, a show about a disparate group of people at a low-value community college who form a study group. The characters are a mix of adults re-calibrating their lives and younger folks who couldn’t hack a traditional 4-yera college for one reason or another, and during the run of the show there are vanishingly few relationships outside the group. When one member of the group has a problem, they turn to another member. All major milestones, holidays, and other major events are attended and facilitated by the group.

This is seductive because it’s easy. In real life, when you enjoy someone’s company you have to schedule around the rest of their life, and maintaining intimacy takes a lot of work. I a SitCom world, it just … happens. Once you know someone long enough, they’re your closest friend and every single thing that happens involves you, effortlessly. The kind of intimacy and embedding in someone’s life that normally takes years, if not a lifetime, just sort of happens effortlessly. That’s one of the appeals of these fictional relationships.

So, when you’re putting your own characters together, think about that. Delete any ‘pre-existing’ relationships that have nothing to do with your story, and imagine that these people form a freshman-year bubble. It heightens all the stakes and emphasizes the bonds between them in an unrealistic but effective way.

Someone Else's Writing, Writing

Do The Work

Author: May 15, 2019 0 Comments

This article got me thinking.

On the one hand, it purports to be a long read on how journalism is being killed by the gig economy. But I’m not the only one who saw instead someone complaining that they can’t make more than $20K a year writing book reviews and rambling essays like this (which he got paid $1K for, which is about 50 cents a word, which ain’t bad for something requiring zero research).

Here’s the thing: If you want to make a living as a writer, you should get comfy with the idea that sometimes you’re gonna have to write stuff you’d rather not write.

Sex Toys and One Direction

When my day job and I, er, got a divorce, and I convinced The Duchess that I could make money doing freelance writing (a feat I may never equal in terms of sheer improbability), I had no idea how to proceed. Being the author of some admired SFF books and a slew of short stories didn’t mean I had a phone full of editor contacts I could tap for lucrative assignments.

Like a lot of folks, I imagined I knew what freelance writing was: I’d send out some emails suggesting topics to a few editors, someone would buy one and offer me some immense amount of money, and then I’d write this long article. I’d do this a few times a year and be comfortable.

I’m sure some writers manage to do that, but … not me. I didn’t even know where to start, so I found content mills, where you can get some very terrible writing work without trying too hard. I had bills to pay, and a wife to impress. I didn’t have two years to figure it out, I needed an income immediately if not sooner. So I took anything I could get. I wrote blog posts for a penny a word. When I made it to two pennies a word, I was depressed as hell but kept going. I wrote catalog copy for sex toys. I ghostwrote a blog about One Direction.

I didn’t want to write any of this, and I certainly didn’t want to write it for two fucking cents a word. But I did, because it was work. And I slowly found my way to better jobs. I worked steadily and got more clients and better-paying clients until I was finally able to quit the really awful jobs and establish myself, and it was all a messy mix of luck and doing the work. I wrote stuff I didn’t want to, because it was my job, not some genteel dream I could indulge.

Even today, when I make quite a lot more than two cents a word, I still write a lot of stuff I’d rather not. Because it’s a job.

Of course, some writers do better. Some cold-pitch like wizards and land in glossy magazines their first try. Some people are better than me. Some are better at networking, or luckier, or more privileged. I accept that; I’m not the smartest man in the room and just because I toiled in the lower hells of freelance writing for a few years doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way. But I do know this: No matter how successful you are as a writer, the fundamentals still apply: Do the work.

freelance, Writing

The End of Plot Armor

Author: May 4, 2019 0 Comments

Literature at all levels changes so gradually it’s hard sometimes to even see it happening. Like a glacier moving an inch a year, everything seems static and ordinary until you suddenly look up and realize you’re miles away form where you started.

Like eleventy billion other people, I watched “The Battle of Winterfell” episode of Game of Thrones last week, squinting into the pixelated darkness, and really enjoyed it. I’ll go on record as liking the plot twist involving Arya, and not minding at all the sometimes sketchy tactics the living used against the dead, allowing that fighting an army of zombies that’s endlessly replenished from your own casualties and is directed by an ancient being killable only by an extremely rare substance has its challenges.

What struck me more than the technical lighting issues and the surprise way the supernatural villain of the story was dispatched in an 80-minute battle was the way people were disappointed by the lack of main character deaths.

Are You Not Entertained?

If you’re not familiar with the term Plot Armor here’s the thumbnail: It’s when a character is so important to the story their death is impossible, with a resultant loss of drama and tension. You can put Harry Potter in all sorts of sticky situations, after all, but we know he ain’t dyin’ before the final confrontation, and probably not then. Plot Armor has been an unavoidable fact of most fiction for a long time.

But there was a bit of a sea change a few decades ago, as writers working in multiple genres sought ways to upend convention and escape hoary old tropes. George R.R. Martin was one of those writers, and since A Song of Ice and Fire is essentially one extended deconstruction of epic fantasy tropes established in Tolkien’s time and slavishly followed since, one of the things he sought to undermine was Plot Armor. Hence, Ned Stark losing his head just as he should have been gathering his energy to be the protagonist.

This was more shocking back in the 1990s when the series first published, of course; many have followed in Martin’s footsteps, and Plot Armor has decayed, leading us to a point where we’re all surprised and disappointed when major characters in an epic fantasy story survive. The whole trope has been turned on its head. Death isn’t shocking. Survival is.

The ultimate lesson here is this: Know your genre. Know the tropes you’re working with. And think about whether there are any you can play with successfully–but also know which ones work for your story. You don’t have to deconstruct, subvert, or complicate every single convention in your chosen niche, but it can be a glorious success when you hit on a rule you can break to great effect.

Now, if all of these characters survive the entire series, then we riot.

Writing

Familiarity and Contempt Among the Produce

Author: April 26, 2019 0 Comments

Having just read Supermarket by Bobby Lee, I’m thinking about all the time I spend in my local supermarket, which is a lot of time. A lot of time. Because I work from home the supermarket is directly across the street from my house. Which translates to dashing over there every time I am missing even the most unnecessary condiments or ingredients—like, literally, if there’s no mustard, even if I’m having a meal that I would not normally use mustard with, I am across the street buying mustard within seconds. Because I can.

This is what being comfortable with your middle aged-ness looks like, BTW. Buying mustard because you can.

Anyway, I literally am in the supermarket at least once a day, sometimes twice, sometimes, in a cascade of incompetence, three or four times. Due to its convenience I imagine you can buy a long list of unlikely things at the supermarket, simply because somewhere deep in my lazy lizard brain I want the supermarket to sell whatever it is I need, from socks to furniture to deck screws. And when you spend as much time in a supermarket as I do, you become aware of just how crazy a place it is. On the one hand you have the food abstraction, as everything is presented in a plastic-wrapped, nutrition-labeled unit. And on the other hand you have the people, who are kind of nuts. And on the third hand you have the company behind it all, which is probably run by alien lizard people.

Nutrition Units

Sometimes I think supermarkets are part of an insidious psychological experiment. On the one hand, I am so divorced from my wild, hunter-gatherer-farmer roots that if the supermarkets were all sucked into a temporal anomaly, I’d starve almost immediately, withering away in a matter of minutes as my DNA simply assessed the situation as impossible and gave up.

On the other hand, their stocking practices are clearly designed to test us all. The supermarket is probably the only business in the world where being sold out of something indicates a lack of interest advising towards a lengthy think before reordering. Based on how often I will discover some product or foodstuff that I really enjoy, only to never see it again, I sometimes picture the manager sitting in his tiny office pondering the empty shelves in his store as some sort of insoluble mystery, a puzzle beyond human comprehension.

Insane People of The Supermarket

Shopping for food is a gauntlet of microaggressions and minor humiliations. Just the other day I ran across the street to purchase a single item, which anyone will tell you is a rookie move: Buying a single item is basically inviting the universe to enrage you, because the difficulty in paying and leaving the store is the inverse of the difficulty involved in acquiring your groceries.

I got behind a woman who was finishing her check out; all her items had been bagged and rung up. All she had to do was pay and exit the store. Which took a phenomenally long amount of time, as she proceeded to treat the check out line as if she were alone in the world. She checked her phone, fished for her sunglasses, unscrewed the cap on her water bottle and took a sip, went through her pockets, and performed a dozen other small organizational moves while I stood there, my one item rung up, the point-of-sale just past her. Finally, after enduring thirty seconds of this, I reached past her to pay, at which point, naturally, she became offended. The checkout guy, for his part, was clearly three hours into a four-hour shift and wanted nothing more than for all of us to dissolve into Thanos Snap Dust at our earliest opportunities.

The Lizard People

The fact that the company that operates this grocery store imagines that anyone enters it for any reason other than it is the closest and most convenient place to purchase Doritos and other necessities of life proves their alien origin. The other thing that proves their alien origin are there insane promotions, which generally involve complex ?games’ that require their customers to collect inane pieces of paper in the vague hope of winning money or groceries. The rules are labyrinthine, and the end result is that you’re handed a stack of paper about an inch thick every time you check out of the store.

I get that I’m supposed to hurry home and tear open my … I don’t know, tokens? tickets? and do … something with them. But I don’t, because my life does not revolve around jumping through the hoops my corporate masters put in place for me. I throw those tokens away, because I am a normal person. If the grocery store truly wants my affection and loyalty, they could hand me a crisp $5 bill once a week when I check out. That would do it. But this game token business? Lizard people thought that up.

Also, the grocery store stopped selling alcohol a few years ago, which angered me unreasonably as I now have to walk two blocks, like a sucker.

Bullshit

The Backwards Mystery

Author: April 24, 2019 3 Comments

I read a lot, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since I’m not only a writer, I’m a writer who writes an awful lot about books and literature in general. My reading list isn’t all that erudite; in fact, I’ve always been a sucker for a good mystery, especially the old classics—Christie, Sayers, etc. In fact, I’d argue that there’s a lot you can learn about writing in general from mystery novels. You can learn how to sketch a character quickly, how to manage the Law of Conservation of Details when describing things—and how to plot.

Working Backwards

A lot of newbie writers ask the gormless question “How do I plot?” Usually they start off by saying they’ve done all the fun stuff—they’ve imagined a great character, daydreamed a universe, and done whatever else catches their interest; some writers will spend time on the tax laws of their fantasy universe, others will write a 30,000 word backstory about the rise of the robots. What neither does is the hard work of actually working out what happens in your book.

Well, look to mysteries. When you finish a mystery—even a very good mystery, maybe especially a good mystery, you know what the secret is, right? You know who did it and how. And usually, almost always, once you know how the crime was committed, it’s not so mysterious any more, is it? In fact, it can seem kind of dumb. What was a tantalizing mystery at first becomes just a bunch of stuff you didn’t know before.

Embrace that. Because Plot is just a bunch of stuff you didn’t know before.

Start with the end and work backwards. Sure, you still have to think of the end, but this is usually easier, big-picture stuff. Like, the protagonist is the most powerful wizard in the realm and has saved the world. Or, the alien invasion was stopped because the hero figured out how to kill them. Then work backwards.

It’s going to seem dumb. Obvious. Of course this has to happen, or of course this has to happen—but the thing is, it’s only obvious and dumb to you because you already know what happens after each step. Once you figure out what happens before, the after part will seemed obvious.

This doesn’t remove all the effort, of course, and can still go wrong. But when you can’t see Step 1 but you can see Step 100, working backwards is a great way to figure out what, exactly, happens in your story.

I have a lot of practice in this, of course, because of all the times I wake up in strange places wearing someone else’s clothes.

Writing

Excerpt From the New Avery Cates Novella, “The New World”

Author: April 18, 2019 0 Comments

Hey kids; the new Avery Cates novella, The New World, is available for pre-order everywhere. Here’s a short excerpt to whet your appetite.

I sighed. “Burn her mark, upload her face, dump her outside.”

There was a wave of something that might have been frustration, or disappointment. I knew there was a contingent that thought the Angels should all just be set on fire when caught in order to send the right message to the Archangel, and there were my fans who seemed to like the idea of me killing everyone I met. I could only imagine that Renque and the other Idiots told themselves that The Pale had not read Nicoleta’s fortune, and thus it wasn’t in the cards for her to be gloriously slaughtered by Avery Cates.

As I started to turn away, she convulsed again, and all of Dan’s Tele-K’s went into the air. They flew like missiles, smacking into everyone else and instantly plunging the space into chaos.

Nicoleta fell, as Danni’s team released her from their grip in startlement. She hit the packed dirt floor hard, bouncing a little, her bones rattling. As I ducked a body, I saw her climbing to her feet, rattled but conscious and moving. She spun around, then chose a direction and lurched into something resembling a run.

The Roon was in my hand. I was moving before my thoughts caught up, which was good, because my thoughts were centered on how old I was and how fragile my back was these days and how the whole fucking point of being a City Lord was that I had people for this sort of shit. And then I was in the tight brick tunnel, running.

She wasn’t fast. I rounded the first curve and saw her up ahead, limping, arms flailing as she tried to will herself to move faster. We were in a straightaway, so I planted my feet and took aim, squeezing the trigger, the shot sounding incredibly loud in the confined space.

Without even turning around, she sent the bullet back at me, screaming just past my ear. Not fast enough, maybe, to kill me, but disconcerting nonetheless. I grimaced and took two more shots, one high and one low, quick and sloppy.

She spun around, eyes big and round, and I was off my feet and sailing backwards. I smacked into the wall and the breath got knocked out of my lungs. I hit the floor and my teeth clicked, sending a dull throb directly into my brain. Hands were on me, then.

“Why do we fucking bother to provide security when you leave us behind all the damn time?” Moreau complained, as he set me on my feet.

“Come on,” I said, throwing myself into a staggering run.

We didn’t know anything about Nicoleta—what she’d come to do here, what she’d seen, what she’d be able to report—or who she’d pass that information to. And we didn’t know anything about the Archangel and his forces. All we knew was that he didn’t seem keen on non-Tele-Ks walking around breathing.

“Where’s this tunnel exit?” I asked.

“No fucking idea,” he rumbled.

Every step seemed to shake something painfully loose in my back, and whatever it was sifted into my lungs and clogged them up. I ran like gravity was getting stronger with each step. The world wasn’t designed for someone of my vintage. I’d so wildly overshot my life expectancy things were breaking down that I hadn’t known were part of my physiology.

We thundered down the tunnel, and for once I didn’t mind the noise—terror was useful. When we rounded a final curve and found our quarry standing in front of a solid brick wall, I had the presence of mind to duck down and hug the ground just as she spun around. Tele-K’s, like anyone else, tended to deal with things in their eye line first.

I heard two strangled grunts of pain behind me. I rolled onto my belly and brought the Roon up, squeezing off two shots in quick succession. Nicoleta spun back around, smacking into the wall and crumpling to the ground.

For a moment, it was just breathing. I got my feet under me with a grunt and a wince, clinging to the wall as I stood up. Sweat stung my eyes as I holstered the Roon and tried to look like something other than a broken-down old man.

“Burn her mark, upload her face,” I said, breathing hard. “Then dump her outside.”

Avery Cates

Shake It Up

Author: April 17, 2019 0 Comments

Friend, are you in the doldrums? Has your idea factory shut down? Have you been working on the same scene in your WIP for six months with the end result being 500 fewer words than when you began?

We’ve all been there. Even me, despite being more or less a genius and one of those prolific assholes who routinely writes 3 books a year just to be smug about it. Although, it hasn’t happened to me recently; the last time I had what could be described as a Doldrums Moment was about two decades ago, a protracted period of emptiness where I couldn’t even get a short story going. It was one of the most frustrating and terrifying moments of my life.

Because, as I’m sure you all know, there’s the fear that whatever weird chemical imbalance in my brain or specific experiential weirdness that unlocked this creativity might go away. The mysterious spark that makes me able to tell stories and invent people and build worlds isn’t under my control, after all. I was born with it or it was baked into me by forces I was most certainly not directing at the time. As a result, it might disappear at any moment. We’ve all read a new book by an old favorite author and thought, well, that was disappointing and then watched in horror as every new work by that author also disappoints and you realize they’ve lost it, whatever ‘it’ gets defined as.

That could be me, and it could be you, and so the Doldrums terrify us. If we’re not working on something that feels good and strong, the possibility that we wrote our last good piece yesterday starts to loom.

I got out of my doldrums twenty years ago and have prevented them ever since with the application of two things. One is constant work—writing a story every month, always having a file open somewhere. That keeps things percolating. The other crucial step is shaking things up.

Crisis and Opportunity

Shaking things up can mean different things to different writers, but fundamentally it calls for forcing yourself to work and think differently, either temporarily or as part of a fundamental shift. When I feel a little stale, I try any or all of the following strategies:

  • New implements—write a novel in longhand? Why not. Write a short story by dictating into my phone? Might work! The point is, force your brain to forge new connections by working with novel mechanics.
  • New genre. If you’ve been writing nothing but noir detective stories for 20 years, the effort involved in writing a comedic fantasy might be just what you need to shock your creative battery into new life.
  • New experiments. I personally get very fixated on finishing things—which I regard as, overall, a superpower for any writer, as you can’t sell/publish what you don’t finish. But, sometimes getting away from that and just writing scenes or dialogs or fun little bits is a tonic.
  • New projects. If the fiction writing starts to feel like heavy lifting, I’ll start a new creative project, which doesn’t have to be writing. I compose and record songs for my own amusement. I started a podcast this year. Sometimes I create book covers just for fun, or cut trailers for my stories using free stock video. Rechanneling your creativity away from writing lets your brain do some subconscious work in the background.
  • Change in schedule. Grinding can get work done, but following the same routine day in and day out can make writing feel like a chore. Take a day off, then pick a new time to write, see how it goes. You can always go back, but the disruption might be revelatory.

None of these are guaranteed to work, but so far they usually do. And you can always go back to your original schedule or process once you’ve gotten past your doldrums.

Did I forget to mention alcohol? Because yes, sometimes the best way to shake it up is to drink a bottle of bourbon and wake up in a dumpster wearing a funeral suit.

Writing

Avery Cates: The New World

Author: April 13, 2019 0 Comments

So, I can’t quit Avery Cates, and the last experiment in form — writing a novel as a series of novellas that linked together — was so much fun, and so successful, I’ve decided to do it again.

Like last time, the plan is to write this story in several big chunks which will then be collected into an omnibus like The Shattered Gears. Each separate novella will be released independently so you can either read them as I drop them, or wait for the collected novel, which will be titled The Burning City. The first part is The New World, and it’ll hit online stores on May 15th. This is a direct sequel to The Shattered Gears; there will be one more book after this, as well.

Beyond The New World, I don’t have a clear schedule. These will get written as time permits, so I can’t say when exactly the next part will come, or when the omnibus will turn up. Watch this space and I’ll keep y’all apprised.

In the mean time, you can pre-order The New World for 99 cents at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and (soon) Google Play. Huzzah!

Avery Cates, BAM!, Fiction, Novels

Stop Asking Questions

Author: April 10, 2019 0 Comments

It happens to the best of us: You’re writing, making progress in a story, and suddenly you realize that you’re missing a piece of real-world information. Like, say, you’re writing a story about an aspiring singer, and you’ve got an idea for a scene where they practice a song in the privacy of their room, and you realize you don’t really know what kind of song they would choose to practice. Or you’re writing a spy thriller and your character needs to buy a gun, and you realize you have no idea what kind of gun they would choose or even what the considerations are.

Hey, it happens. We can’t know everything. No matter how widely you read, travel, and interrogate alarmed strangers on public transportation, no writer can know every single thing that might seem like it belongs in your story. And a really bad habit a lot of young writers is to stop what they’re doing in order to ask for suggestions on what detail to include.

Dear Hive Mind

On the one hand, this is just research, right? It’s something a huge number of writers do in order to get the real-feel aspect of their writing on point. And that’s true, and there’s nothing wrong with doing a bit of research to get your facts straight. And with the Internet it’s soooo easy to stop writing and just ask a million strangers what they think.

What I advise against, however, is stopping cold to poll the room or the Internet for a suggestion. All this accomplishes is ruining your flow and rhythm, taking you out of your story and holding you up while you debate what’s probably an unimportant detail in your story. Because if it’s important, then you probably would have encountered while conceptualizing your idea. If you’re knee-deep in the narrative before you realize you’re lacking, like, crucial information, you’re doing it wrong.

Another reason to avoid this is that it can easily become an excuse to give up, or at least take an extended break. The Internet is enough of a distraction. Don’t go down a rabbit hole about what kind of shoes your main character would wear to a cocktail party unless those shoes are the murder weapon or something.

And if it’s not crucial, it’s not worth stopping for. Put in a placeholder and fix it in revision.

Pausing to have a drink and stare heroically off into the distance, pondering your work-in-progress? That’s fine. And kind of sexy.


Writing