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How to Write a Story

Author: June 18, 2018 2 Comments

One of the most basic and common questions a writer gets is ?how do you come up with ideas’ or ?how do you write a story,’ both of which are almost koan-like in their complex simplicity. While some folks see margin in making the writing process extremely complicated and filled with jargon and mystery, it really isn’t that hard. In fact, I’m going to show you how to write a story right now. If you’ve never written a story ever, this is for you.

One disclaimer: The story you write may not be a good story. And finishing it is up to you. But using this incredible secret, anyone—literally anyone—can write a story. Here goes.

Step 1: Imagine a Scenario

Start with any sort of scenario. It could be a Half-Dog, Half-Man Warrior in the depths of space trapped on a spaceship rapidly leaking oxygen, or it could be an old man weeding his garden on the last morning of his life. Or anything, really. Just imagine a scene. Crib something from your own life if you can’t drum up something purely imaginary.

Step 2: Imagine Something Unexpected

Next, ask yourself what the people in your scenario expect to happen. The Half-Dog Warrior might expect to die. The old man might expect to have breakfast in a few minutes, once he’s done with his gardening. Then, make something else happen. Something unexpected. The Half-Dog Warrior suddenly picks up a distress call. The old man sees Death, a corporeal hooded figure, lounging in a lawn chair across the street, waving.

Now, imagine how the character reacts to something unexpected. There’s your story.

Step 3: End the Damn Thing

Ending it can be hard, but only if you insist on a clever, or mind-blowing ending. If you decide you just need to end it, it’s easy. Do that. Clever or mind-blowing tends to happen when you’re not looking, so by pursuing endings of any kind you’ll wind up with finished stories, some portion of which will be brilliant in their endings.

The Half-Dog Warrior breaths his last bit of air as the young puppy he rescued speeds off in the ersatz escape pod he fashioned. The old man invites Death in for tea, and Death, startled, decides to spare him. Whatever. The Warrior flies into a star just to see what it’s like, or crosses the Event Horizon of a Black Hole to experience eternity in a moment. The Old Man sets his house on fire in his last excruciating moments, out of simple bitter rage. Whatever.

See? Stories are easy. The hard part is actually writing them down.

ideas, Writing

Luck Denial

Author: June 14, 2018 0 Comments

One of my goals when putting Writing Without Rules together was to get past the idea that you needed to be an expert, a guru in order to write and publish a book. The whole premise is that if you spend any amount of time talking to me, you start to get the creeping feeling that this guy doesn’t know anything about anything, he’s just making shit up and then you realize that if I can publish all these books, for money, so can you!

So, success at writing doesn’t require expertise in a dozen different skill sets, it only requires one—the actual writing part. It also requires hard work, of course; saying that I’m an absent-minded guy who doesn’t understand business or social media isn’t meant to imply that I’m lazy. And there’s a third aspect to writing and publishing success (and success in general) that people don’t like to discuss: Luck.

90% of Success is Just Showing Up

Luck and its twisted cousin, privilege, make people uncomfortable. People think that if you point out their luck, their privilege, you’re taking away from their accomplishments. The fact is, luck is always a factor. Whether it’s the privilege you were born into or happening to be in the right place at the right time, selling novels and getting a writing career off the ground requires luck. It’s just that simple.

But luck just gets you in the room. It doesn’t actually write the novels or the articles. Being lucky—and acknowledging that luck—doesn’t mean your work isn’t great. They are separate considerations.

I’ve been lucky in my career. Plenty lucky. I’ve also worked my ass off. The former does not erase the latter, but neither does it work the other way around—no matter how hard I work, the fact is that luck has played a role in my career, as it has in most careers. I’m okay with that, and I’m also okay with efforts to spread the luck around more evenly. Success isn’t finite. The fact that some groups that have been underrepresented in publishing for decades—centuries—are finally getting more attention, more deals, more support doesn’t mean that my own career suffers. As long as I’m writing good stuff, I’ll get it published. With a little luck.

The bottom line is: Anyone who pretends that luck has never helped them to success is lying to you, or to themselves.

career, Writing

Haircuts & Writing

Author: June 12, 2018 3 Comments

I’ll take one of each, thanks.

When I was a kid, I was an insufferable bootlicker. My brother, older and smarter, was socially inept and often difficult in public, and thus despite my slightly dimmer mental prospects I was often the Golden Boy in the sense of being relatively well-behaved in public. For example, at the barbershop, where my brother fidgeted and complained and generally made it a torturous experience for all involved. Knowing that he’d fallen short of the mark, I made an extra effort to be the perfect little kid in that barber chair with the kid booster. I sat rock still, responding like a puppet to the whispery touch of the barber as he positioned my head.

The fact that we have to occasionally trim back our horrifying, disgusting bodies has always bothered me in the same way the fact that I have to spend 1/3rd of every day unconscious bothers me. It’s curiously intimate, to the point where I’ve spent a lot of energy in my adult life seeking out a person who will cheerfully cut my hair without speaking a word to me. Being a captive audience while some jackass with a pair of scissors insists on small talk is a terrible thing, and I’ve burned through a ton of barbers in my search for the Glorious Silent Barber.

Between sitting on that booster seat and my Gloriously Silent Barber, I’ve had plenty of haircuts. I suffered through haircuts as a teenager where my barber not-so-subtly rubbed his crotch against me as he strained to reach the top of my head. I’ve endured a savage, brutal act of hair vandalism when I took my longhaired college mullet to an old Italian barber and asked for a “trim”; his disdain and dislike for me resulted in a haircut that took five seconds and left me looking like I’d recently jammed my head into some sort of terrifying machinery. I’ve spent plenty of awkward hours in SuperCuts resisting their incessant effort to upsell me hair product and shampoos, conversations that usually started with a gaslighting campaign regarding the awful state of my hair in terms of health and appearance, leading to a heartfelt endorsement of some bottle or other guaranteed to make me look like a normal human being again.

I’ve spent my time in the hair trenches. Which is why haircuts fascinate me; I tend to announce them on social media, and I write about the experience more than is normal, which is to say at all.

Socially Acceptable Weirdness

Getting a haircut is a strange experience for a guy who, you know, isn’t exactly a fan of being touched by strangers, much less touched on the head. It’s weirdly intimate. You might not mind, or even enjoy the experience, jetting off to head-touching orgies in Ibiza and the like, but to each their own, and my own does not include a weird old man putting his sweaty hands in my hair.

The other aspect of a haircut is the forced socialization. In every aspect of my life I aspire to having zero conversations with any of you people. Ironically, the only people I do want to have conversations with are the people who also don’t want conversations; the moment that changes I lose my will to speak with you. So making small talk with someone while their sweaty hands are in my hair is possibly the worst experience known to man. If anyone is ever going to spontaneously develop the ability to teleport themselves, it’s gonna be me, through sheer force of will, while some barber is telling me about his weekend.

Being Alone with Yourself

So what does all this have to do with writing? Nothing and everything.

There’s precious little time in the modern world to just sit and be alone with yourself, to have a conversation with yourself. To meditate in some sense. Yes, you can make that time, but there’s something special and creative, in my experience, with the sudden and surprising moments when you’re prevented from distracting yourself. Getting a haircut is, for me, one of those moments, because I am sloppy and pay little attention to my grooming. So my haircuts are always spur-of-the-moment things.

And then I’m sitting there, and if the damned barber will shut up I have a half hour of just staring into the void while I am groomed like a dumb animal, and I do some good thinkin’ under those circumstances. And some occasional napping. Hell, I fall asleep when I’m at the dentist. The barber has no chance.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Writing

Surviving BookCon 2018

Author: June 4, 2018 2 Comments

One of the hardest lessons for any author is that getting a book published is only half the job. Or one-fourth of the job—you have to write the damn thing first, and then revise and perfect it, and then get it published. And once you’ve got it out there, you have to promote it.

Different writers will approach promotion differently. You might concentrate on social media, or you might make videos, or you might go to cons and other events in order to meet real, live people and try to hand-sell them some books. I’ve done cons before—ComicCon and the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, for two—and this month I found myself at Book Expo America and BookCon at the Javits Center in New York City. My publisher, Writer’s Digest Books, asked me to stop in and do some book signings, and it reminded me of a few book promotion lessons I’ve learned at these things.

Be Prepared

Be prepared for two things at these sorts of events: One, the sheer scale of it—there will be a lot of people, most of whom have no idea who you are. Two, the psychology of it. Unless you’re super famous, chances are no one will have heard of you, and you have to be ready for the vaguely interested looks and the blunt questions about why anyone should care about your book.

Be Active

If you’re not famous, don’t assume people will just be drawn to your booth by the sheer animal magnetism of your talent, charm, and fashion sense. Get crowd wranglers out there—people who will walk around with your book and go up to folks and say “Hey, want a free signed copy? This guy’s awesome and he’s right over there!” No need to get fancy about this—trickery, like having folks pretend to be just plain old fans, won’t work. But wrangling the crowd is the difference between sitting alone, silently crying, and having a robust line of people.

Have Fun

Probably the most-forgotten bit of advice is to always have fun when promoting your book. Enjoying what you’re doing will make other people enjoy it as well—and the opposite applies, believe me. If you force yourself to deal with crowds despite wanting to vomit at the thought of it, that flopsweat is going to be obvious to everyone and they will run away. Stick to whatever it is you enjoy. Me, while meeting 200 people in half an hour is a bit stressful I do kind of enjoy bantering with people. I like the folks who challenge me—they walk up and say, why should I read this? Or, what’s your favorite part of the book? I like the glint in their eye as they challenge me to prove to them that it’s worthwhile.

But not everyone enjoys that. If you don’t, don’t force it.

Have Merch

It’s a basic thing, but it’s essential: Have bookmarks, or business cards, or candy, or something to give people with your name and website on it. Like I said, a great majority of these people don’t know you and are only barely interested. Slipping a bookmark into the book you just signed could be the difference between them forgetting all about you and remembering something you said a month later when they’re in their local bookstore.

Also: Be prepared for awkward conversations. There will be many of them.

BookCon was a blast. We gave away ~200 copies of Writing Without Rules, I met a bunch of cool people, saw some old friends, and got to meet people from my publisher I’d only emailed with before. Plus the sheer scale of the event and the energy in the air was incredible. And I managed to keep my pants on the whole time, which surprised more than one person, let me tell you.

promotion, Writing

When Description becomes a Delaying Tactic

Author: May 30, 2018 0 Comments

WE’VE all probably read at least one of those lengthy old classic novels where the author spends copious amounts of verbiage describing things—endless rafts of detail. You read something like Swann’s Way, for example, where the intense detail-drenched description is part of the whole point, and you think, well, why not me?

Every young writer goes through a phase of insane, intense wordiness; it’s part of either trying on different writing personas like hats or simply experimenting with different approaches. I know that even in my dotage when I read an exciting new writer I often find myself mimicking their style and stealing their tricks. Eventually it all gets sanded down into your style (hopefully), the individual bits lost.

Except sometimes things become bad habits. Like excessive description; if it’s part of your style, if it’s purposeful, that’s fine. Just be careful that you’re not spending 10,000 words describing how the room smells because you’re not sure how to move forward.

Spin Those Wheels

We all have tricks that we use when we get stuck. Whether you’re a Pantser who gets caught without any clue how to get your character out of the locked room you’ve put them in, or a Plotter who has suddenly realized that your genius plot twist in Chapter 23 makes zero sense, we all get stuck and hit a wall from time to time. And sometimes that means you have a choice: You can just stop dead while your underbrain works it all out, or you can just keep writing nonsense in the hope that the physical act of pouring words onto the page will shake something loose.

And this can work, it’s true. Sometimes when you get stuck, just going ham on describing everything in minute detail can get you moving. You just keep disgorging words until something shakes loose.

But you have to do this thoughtfully. Don’t get confused and think that this sort of mindless automatic writing is good—it might be, but don’t assume it is. Sometimes excessive description is just a way of filling up pages and keeping your fingers moving. Useful, sure, but not necessarily something you’re going to keep. Knowing when you’re just treading water like that is powerful. It means you’re completely in control of your writing.

Of course, maybe you are the sort of writer who spends 10,000 words on how the room smells. That’s fine, too. As long as it’s purposeful, as long as it’s intentional and wielded skillfully, it can work. You just need to be in control of it.

When I’m stuck I don’t dive into description, though. I usually just open a new bottle of Scotch and see what happens. Works every time.

General, Writing

Writing Without Rules Launch

Author: May 26, 2018 0 Comments

We had the launch event for Writing Without Rules last night, at the totally awesome Little City Books in Hoboken, New Jersey last night, and it was awesome! Beer, wine, and whiskey, Jeff sweating profusely in front of a crowd, The Duchess taking charge and orchestrating everything, my agent gently mocking me from the front row — what could be better?

If you missed it, here is a video documentary of the even by the incredible Bruce Meier of uhmm Ltd.

Writing Without Rules by Jeff Somers

Writing Without Rules: How to Write & Sell a Novel Without Guidelines, Experts, or (Occasionally) Pants Most writing guides imply–or outright state–that there’s a fixed, specific formula or list of rules you must follow to achieve writing and publishing success. And all of them are phonies. Well, not completely.

promotion, Writing

Writing Without Rules Launch Video

Author: May 26, 2018 0 Comments

Remember our little launch event at Little City Books? OF COURSE YOU DO, I WON’T SHUT UP ABOUT IT. Anyways, here is the excellent, awesome, and incredibly video documentary of the event put together by the talented Bruce Meier of uhmm Ltd.

Writing Without Rules by Jeff Somers

Writing Without Rules: How to Write & Sell a Novel Without Guidelines, Experts, or (Occasionally) Pants Most writing guides imply–or outright state–that there’s a fixed, specific formula or list of rules you must follow to achieve writing and publishing success. And all of them are phonies. Well, not completely.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing, Writing Without Rules

The Marathon: Book Promotion

Author: May 23, 2018 0 Comments

As I write this I’ve been pushing Writing Without Rules in one sense or another for about 2 years. Promoting a book can be exhausting, and slightly humiliating; when every other tweet or post is essentially “HEY BUY MY BOOK” you start to feel a bit like a charlatan. But the grim truth is, if you don’t remind folks about your work, they might forget you. If you don’t mention your books often, you might miss any number of serendipitous moments when someone passing through your social media might see a cover, or a quote, or a snip of a review and decide to check it out.

But it is exhausting. And it can wear you down because so much of it seems to be useless. The trick to promoting a book, friends, is simple: Don’t think about it.

Set It and Forget It

So much of life, I’ve come to realize, lies in being able to keep your thoughts off of something. Your own impending death, certainly. The cycle of horror that is the New York Mets season. And your spastic, unhappy book promotion efforts.

The trick to it is, set things up and then forget them. I set up tweets about my books every week, and then I forget all about them. I don’t check to see if they get any response. I’ve got a half dozen appearances set up to promote Writing Without Rules, and I am not thinking about any of them at all when I’m not preparing materials or getting the logistics worked out. If I allowed myself to think about these events and tweets and contests and giveaways and started comparing them to bumps in sales, I’d be pretty depressed. Because the simple truth about book promotion is that most of it doesn’t actually accomplish much.

It’s like those 419 scams where you get an email informing you of millions of dollars in a bank, and the corrupt government official needs the help of some American citizen to get it out. Sure, 99.9% of the people who get those emails are gonna laugh and ignore it. But they just need that 0.01% to make the scheme profitable. So it is with your book promotion efforts: 99.9% of people will just ignore you, but if you do enough of it, that 0.01% that don’t ignore you can make all the difference.

Doesn’t make it any less humiliating, of course. Just remember, every day that you don’t buy one of my books, you’re ruining my life.

promotion, Writing