Inkpunks

Tracie Welser is a graduate of the 2010 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her recent publications include “A Body Without Fur” (May/June 2012 Interzone) and “Her Bones, Those of the Dead” (forthcoming in Outlaw Bodies). You can find her online at This Is Not An Owl and twitter: @traciewelser.

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing.” –Ernest Hemingway, from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1954.

I wanted to start this post off with a pithy quote about how writing isn’t a solitary task, but apparently a lot of Famous Writers think it is.

For me, attending conventions and other gatherings populated by members of the speculative fiction writing community has been a vital part of my writing life. I’ve made countless connections, some of which led to specific opportunities. Mostly, I felt inspired and educated and heartened by the people with whom I’ve connected. This year, travel to cons is less financially feasible for me, and that sobering fact has me thinking about just how very important they’ve been.

Also, I’ve been thinking about what writing community looks like from the outside. With WorldCon and the Hugo Awards right around the corner, the usual sour grapes grumbling has started online, implications that the whole of spec-fic writerdom is an exclusive, self-congratulatory club. But perhaps a bit of truth is lodged in there somewhere.

We ARE a community. Well, lots of little communities loosely networked together. A system of satellites in orbit around one another: toss in some shooting stars and some gas giants, and, well, you get the idea. From the “outside,” that community, which is so good at fostering new writers, may seem a tad intimidating. It may seem exclusive when in fact it’s extraordinarily welcoming.

I’ve been part of the community for a few years now, but I remember the awkwardness and exhilaration of my first con. Here are some basic tips I hope will help the first-timer:

Before You Go:

• Research. Which conventions are other writers recommending? Don’t discount small regional cons, but do think carefully about choices that are geared mostly toward fan activity, even if the guests of honor sound exciting. Be aware of the “culture” and history* surrounding particular events (for instance, recent conversations about sexual harassment at Readercon demonstrate the responsiveness of the writing community and are an instructive resource for behavioral expectations).
• Prepare. Be ready to connect with business cards. Know which panels or publisher parties are be the most beneficial to attend (those best suited to your work and interests). Be prepared to talk about your own work succinctly.
• Connect. Do you know anyone planning to attend? A more experienced writer can help you navigate and network until you feel comfortable. Consider connecting IRL with writers you’ve met online as a way to build your network.

During the Con:

• Attend panels, but not exclusively. Look for informal opportunities to chat with other writers (some attendees ignore programming altogether), but don’t expect to be able to jump into conversation with anyone and everyone.
• Be mindful. Most people attend conventions to network and promote their work, just like you, but that doesn’t mean everyone you meet is open to talking to you.
• Be professional and friendly.
• Talk to panelists afterwards. Don’t be afraid to offer your contact information if you have common interests.
• Take care of yourself physically. This is tougher than it sounds, but make sure to eat and sleep, and drink in moderation (for lots of reasons).

When You’re Home Again:

• Follow up with connections you’ve made via email or social media in a timely way.
• Rest! Sudden illness (what’s affectionately known as “con-crud”) after attending a convention is not uncommon.
• Keep writing. If you’re like me, convention-going feeds my creativity. Don’t let that slip away.

Are you considering attending a con for the first time? What questions do you have? Are you a pro? Tell the story of your first con! What cons/activities do you find important, and what advice do you have for new con-goers?

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Community, Cons, Going Pro

Here’s a guest post from the fantastic writer/poet/editor/code dude/creator Kaolin Fire. If you’ve ever wondered what it means to write by the seat of your pants, this is the way he does it:

Hello. My name is Kaolin, and I’m a pantser. I think that means the same thing for everyone, pretty much, but I was recently asked how I went about writing a story, and I thought I’d try outlining a somewhat concrete—and all-too-typically-incomplete—example of the process.

My writing group did a 12 minute warmup today—we spent two minutes each coming up with a plot based on a theme, and tossed that into a hat; then we each pulled a theme from the hat and spent 10 minutes trying to write a “complete” story. Now, a complete story can be a paragraph, or a page, maybe even two or three pages—in ten minutes, you’re going to get a piece of flash fiction, or a vignette, or you might only get a couple of disconnected ideas (or no ideas at all that you can convince yourself have a prayer of working…it happens, though it’s better to write a bad idea than to not write at all, especially for warm-up). And then we read our stories at the end…not really for critique, but just to share.

The plot (well, plot hook) I got was “you’re slowly turning into a dinosaur”. Of course, I flashed immediately on “The Metamorphosis”, but I wasn’t going to let that effect me. I didn’t know where I would go with it, but I knew where to start—with the viscera. I have a character, and they’re changing into a dinosaur. I’d get that process going, and see if it gave me any clues as to why it was happening, or where I could go from there. Depending on how long changing into a dinosaur took, that could be the entirety of the story.

I was a little distracted while writing, but put together a pretty reasonable first paragraph in about six minutes. Okay, I was very distracted, but I was also trying to find the character. It was a little overly-dramatic—the sort that might work, or could easily be edited out. I started getting a slight noir tinge from what I was putting down.

“It’s happening again. I can feel it, deep in my bones.”

The first line led me to things-that-you-feel-in-bones, which led me to chemo. Maybe the radiation was triggering some primal dna…I mean, it’s corny, but there’s room to run with corny, or there’s room to make it not corny if you phrase it right…maybe. But I didn’t want to go there. So I let my character ramble a little bit, and found out he (apparently male, so far) was divorced, and a down-and-out alcoholic. Suddenly, he was in an alley (in my mind, anyway, though I hadn’t described it yet, and that could change with different input).

I’d gotten a bit more description of him feeling his skin change, cold and hard, and that reminding him of his gun (which made me think noir more strongly, and I got lost trying to come up with a good noir-ish way of phrasing one line…)…and that’s when six minutes was called.

I jumped to the end, because I have a bad habit of not having ends, and it’s a little embarrassing. People seem to react better to a story that has an end but no middle than they do to a story than has a middle but no end, at least…in my experience, with my writing, most of the time. Of course, you have to actually find an end, but I figured if I focused the rest of the time on that, I’d find some end, and it’s a lot easier to change an end than to come up with one whole cloth later. I’m also more likely to find inspiration to fill out a story between a beginning and an end than I am for a beginning and a middle (that’s gone nowhere).

I pictured him as a dinosaur, whole and complete—why was this happening to him? Well, maybe the chemo was making him more receptive, maybe he was the right sort of person, but maybe it wasn’t for any particular reason, not the root of it anyway. I jumped back in time to a large crowd of dinosaurs…they were plotting to escape the pending apocalypse. They were smart, but not technological…they were going to “ascend” (to use the Stargate term). But (for some reason I’d figure out later) they were leaving one of their own behind…and it was him.

I got a few lines past that and realized if he was being left behind, then this great migration wasn’t what was causing his current jump. I could brainstorm something else, but it was easier to say it was his mate that was being left behind for some reason (some crime, I presumed, though perhaps unjustly accused, or complicated circumstances that would have to be figured out later…). And they were all “shuffling off” to now, my original protagonist being subsumed by the dinosaur soul.

And that was what I got down, basically, in the last four minutes. The end was very rushed, and painfully overwrought. It wasn’t a complete story, and it didn’t make sense on a number of levels, but it had many threads that could be picked up, followed, and fleshed out (or removed to make the tapestry simpler/more coherent). And if I’d had more time, that’s what I would have done. Hopefully.

For now it’s in a folder of “things to finish, some day”, and…maybe I will. And that’s pantsing, for me, at any rate. That’s pretty much how I approach every story I write, though I might have more of an idea, or at least more elements of an idea, to start, they tend to grow and mix and jumble until they turn into something, or nothing. 🙂

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So … summertime. I love it. As a kid, I spent summers reading. As in nonstop, around the clock reading–one wonderful summer I counted reading 125 books in two weeks. These days, I still feel like I should spend most of my summer catching up on my reading list. But I don’t dig into the serious literature reading during the summer: it’s strictly pleasure stuff. Here are the standouts on m pleasure reading so far this summer:

• No Hero, by Jonathan Wood
• Book of Shadows, by Alexandra Sokoloff
• City of the Lost, by Stephen Blackmoore

They were all fun, a little dark, and a blast to read. But now I’m hungry for more! Any book recommendations out there? What are you reading this summer?

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At the 2011 World Horror Convention, I went to a panel called Why We Write Short Stories. When people used to talk about being a short form or long form writer, I had no idea where I fell into those categories or if I had a preference or the skills for one or the other. I started off with short stories as a way to get myself back into writing and sold a few, but I have come to discover I prefer writing novels. Author Guest of Honour, Joe Hill was on the panel at the convention as well as some other great short story writers. No one claims you’ll get rich from writing short stories (not that novels will get you there either) and in a time where short story markets seem to come and go, are there still important reasons to write short stories? This was an interesting panel for me, and I thought I’d share what I learned there with you.

Suzanne Church, a Canadian author said it was a way for her to build a brand and said, “I want people to know my name.” Short stories can lead to many opportunities to do appearances, signings and readings that wouldn’t happen if you’re locked away working exclusively on novels that take a lot longer to finish, perfect, submit and publish.

Brad Sinor said short stories are a great way to teach ourselves about making a deadline. He also said the longest distance for a writer is from the brain to the page, which I thought was a fantastic line. Just get it down, he told us. He also told us that Roger Zelazny would always write a short story about his main character to get to know them. I think that’s a great reason to write a short story, to improve your novel!

Joe Hill said for him, the short story form is the “great classroom.” He told us he spent three years writing an epic fantasy that didn’t sell, and then wrote short stories because he needed to learn the skills of writing (dialogue, etc) faster. If you haven’t read Joe Hill’s short stories I highly recommend them. They are incredible.

I thought I’d written my last short story and had turned to focusing on novels, but lately I’ve gotten the bug to submit to a great anthology and I can’t seem to resist the call. I want to do it because it promises to be a lot of fun, but should I be focusing on short stories? I think perhaps I should keep an open mind and continue to work on both the long and the short form to continue to improve my craft and to keep challenging myself.

Are you a short form or long form writer? Do you write both but prefer one over the other? Are writers naturally one or the other? What are your own reasons for writing short stories?

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Today Robert Jackson Bennett returns to Inkpunks with another great post, this time about taking chances with your characters. Enjoy!

Most of my writing decisions – or the big ones, at least – are more or less the equivalent of someone standing at the top of a tall gap, and saying, “I bet I can make that jump.”

Seriously. I write for a lot of reasons, but one of the primary ones is to challenge myself. As Bradbury put it, I like to throw myself off cliffs and build my wings on the way down. This way I not only see if I can pull things off, artistically or aesthetically, but I also force myself to learn, to find out things I wouldn’t normally find out if I kept going back to the stuff I’d done before, and to discover what I think about things I don’t normally think about.

So when I started dreaming up my fourth novel, I went back and considered my last three main characters:

They were, in essence: a strongman, a fop, and a teenage prodigy.

Moreso, they were all male.

This was something I’d been thinking about for a long time. Well, not quite thinking about: I’d been growing bored with it. I had written men three times. I had done, I felt, a pretty good job of writing them. I’d done what I wanted to there: I wanted to try something new.

So while I’d like to say that my choice to write a female protagonist was completely and utterly selfless, a conscientious effort to represent the half of humanity that is wildly underrepresented in SFF… While that was part of it, it wasn’t the whole. (But, really, I feel like the same reasoning should apply to the audience: don’t you get bored of reading the same thing over and over again? Don’t you want to read about other life experiences outside of your own? Don’t we at least partially read to challenge, surprise, and startle ourselves? Isn’t boredom sometimes a moral choice?! If it is, and if I keep getting the chance to write, my intention is to eventually write about everybody, even people I hate. Boredom, when it comes right down to it, forces us to be inclusive.)

So the decision had been made without my ever having actually made it: I would write a female protagonist. But that really doesn’t describe a damn thing, of course: it doesn’t describe the story, what sort of person she would be, or what I wanted to examine with her – because I think of my characters as lenses, devices through which I can study something bigger.

Now, deep in the heart of most fantasy authors, I think, there is a desire to rewrite Alice in Wonderland: to journey through a flighty, fanciful, beautifully ornate world, as seen through the ideas of a young, naïve girl, who would encounter many surprises and, and…

But before my brain could even get started going down this direction, a voice immediately began saying, NO NO NO NO NO.

I had to actually stop and think about why I felt so much resistance to this idea. And I realized that this wasn’t terribly original at all – I mean, it had been done so many times. Just look at the recent slew of Alice-like movies.

And even if I could put an original spin on this idea, I realized that the default for female protagonists in SFF was someone extremely young, girls or adolescents or early-twenties at best. There are outliers, I’m sure, but for the most part when someone says, “Female protagonist of a modern SFF story,” for some reason the collective subconsciousness seems to revert to a feisty, spirited 15-year-old (or so), the most recent example being Merida from Brave. When it’s a male protagonist of a SFF story, their ages can be all over the place – my own writing being exemplary of this – but when it comes to female protagonists, we tend to slide toward the can’t-vote-can’t-drink ages.

(And I wonder – why is this? Do we, as a society, just assume that the Window of Adventure closes the closer a woman approaches marriageable age? Does “Settling Down” and “Growing Up,” for women, mean a complete and utter termination of exciting activity? Or do writers never write these things because they never read about them?)

So I decided that I would not do this with my fourth novel. I didn’t want this to have a YA slight to it at all – because, I do think, YA is much more open to female protagonists than some of the older SFF markets. I wanted to take the path of most resistance.

I wanted something mature – both in writing, and in the main character. Because it seemed kind of ridiculous to me that, the more I paged through titles, I didn’t see terribly many 40ish female protagonists in SFF, middle aged or even upper-middle aged. (Though it’s completely possible I just wasn’t looking in the right places.)

And that was who I decided I would write. I wanted a woman – not a girl. I wanted a woman who had reached middle age and was wondering what more she could expect out of life, after this point. I wanted someone who had really lived, who had gotten beaten up and had her scars and had, in essence, Dealt With Shit. I wanted a woman who had held a position of authority at some point in her life, someone who’d been good at her job, someone who knew how to deal with people, and someone who had chosen – or been forced – to walk away from that life.

And that was how Mona Bright of American Elsewhere was born.

Mona Bright is divorced, nearing forty, and impoverished. An ex-cop, she’s been drifting for the past few years of her life, roaming from town to town, working small jobs, and drinking a lot. She has not been living during this time; she’s been surviving – because surviving is what Mona does best. Her mother committed suicide when she was a girl, and Mona was raised by her roughneck father, a bitter, silent man who littered her childhood with guns and cheap beer and bad decisions. And though Mona feels life has disappointed her so far, when her father dies and leaves her a house she never knew he had – a house her mother owned, in the life she lived before Mona and her father – Mona starts to believe she’s getting a second chance.

Because the house turns out to be in Wink, New Mexico: a place every map and every authority insists does not exist. Yet Mona, mostly through her sheer bloodymindedness, manages to find it. And she finds that Wink is a very special place: not only is it built around a now-defunct Los Alamos-style laboratory, it’s also queerly perfect, the sort of place you dream you’d like to live in.

Wink is a place that has a lot of secrets – almost as many as Mona. And the longer she lives there, the more she feels it’s the home she never had.

Now, this isn’t to say Mona sprang into my head, Athena-like, fully conceived. My main characters are always pretty weak on my first drafts, because I won’t know they feel about the book – and how the book feels about them – until I’ve figured out how I feel about the book. This takes time, and revisions, and work. In this case, I wound up having to scratch the whole ending and rewrite about twenty or thirty thousand words.

But I do think it was worth it. Mona is one of my favorite characters out of all the ones I’ve written so far. It was so easy to write in her voice, it was almost like an addiction. And she was such a strong character that I had to change half the book for her: she just wouldn’t accept what I’d planned out for her.

American Elsewhere is set to come out in February of 2013. I’m curious to see what people will think of the book: it’s my biggest departure from my previous stuff, not just in the main character, but in setting, style, tone, ambition… There is very little that I didn’t try to do differently.

I’m tremendously pleased with it, personally. It’s big, it’s sprawling… and I think Mona is just the person to lead us through it all.

Robert Jackson Bennett‘s 2010 debut Mr. Shivers won the Shirley Jackson award as well as the Sydney J Bounds Newcomer Award. His second novel, The Company Man, won a Special Citation of Excellence for the Philip K Dick Award, as well as an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. His third novel, The Troupe, is out now to wide acclaim.

He lives in Austin with his wife and son. He can be found on Twitter at @robertjbennett.

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Chris East is a writer, editor, reviewer, bassist, and general media junkie, who grew up in western New York and gradually migrated west to Los Angeles. He has a special studies writing degree from New York University, SUNY at Fredonia, and Michigan State University and attended the Clarion and Taos Toolbox writing workshops. His fiction has been published in various genre magazines, and from 2004 to 2010 he  was the fiction editor for Futurismic. He loves science fiction, music, hockey, movies, spy fiction, coffee, video games, good friends, and far too many television shows.

Last month, I spent two weeks on a mountain learning how to write.  Or I should say, learning how to write again.

Taos Toolbox was a fantastic experience. For two weeks I got to focus on nothing but writing, reading, critiquing, learning, and getting better — all in the company of talented, insightful writers, brilliant instructors, and the gorgeous scenery of New Mexico.

It was also my first organized, intensive workshop experience in eighteen years.  I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that. Sitting down to write this post got me thinking about the years in between, and how I’ve changed.

In 1994, I went to the Clarion workshop in East Lansing.  I spent six weeks surrounded by talented, insightful writers, brilliant instructors, and…East Lansing.  It was great!  At twenty-two, I was the baby of the class, still recovering from teen angst and reality shock as I gazed cluelessly into the future.  But there was one thing I was certain about at that age:  writing.  I was going to be a writer.  That was all there was to it.  Writing was the thing I was good at, and damned if the world wasn’t going to find that out!  Like, soon!

Hee.  Well, I’ve had a lot of time since then to think about Clarion.  Believe me, I wouldn’t trade those experiences or friendships for anything — they were truly transformative.  And Clarion set me on the path; everything I’ve been able to accomplish since then has its roots in that six weeks.

But reflecting on it now — or, more importantly, on the subsequent years — I can see how I set myself up for frustration.  I think we are conditioned — especially in the U.S., but perhaps your country is similarly dysfunctional — to see our life journey in the simplest of plot terms:  you set your goal, work toward it, reach the goal, and you have succeeded.  Win!

That is a toxic way of thinking, especially when applied in contexts where it makes no sense.  Like the writing world:  where nothing makes sense.  I wasted many years after Clarion waiting for that switch to flip, for that moment when I would start to feel like I’ve made it.  But here we are, eighteen years later — and I’m still aspiring?

Then came Taos.  No longer an inexperienced, cocky, enthusiastic 22-year-old, I went into Taos a different person:  a slightly more experienced, considerably less cocky, but equally enthusiastic 40-year-old.  And I think Taos crystallized something in my mind.  Oh, it’s something people have been telling me for years, and something that, on some level, I’ve probably always known — whenever common sense managed to pierce the  forcefield of my delusional ego.  But it took a return to the workshop environment for me to really get it.

Becoming a writer isn’t a race.  And there is no finish line.

There is no set timeframe for becoming a writer.  Success comes at different times for different writers.  Some writers will publish right away.  Some will take five years.  Some will take twenty years before they find any kind of writing success.

But it doesn’t matter, because there is no finish line.  If you’re like me, you’ll probably look for one.  And occasionally you’ll think you’ve crossed one.  But in the end, “finish lines” in this business are illusions, and they only keep moving.

I don’t think of myself as a particularly successful writer, but when I put myself back to my 22-year-old brain, I realize that I’ve crossed “finish lines” without even noticing.  I’ve seen my first story into print, my first pro sale, my first honorable mention in a year’s best anthology, my first reprint.  I’ve put myself out there as a reviewer, as a fan, as a speaker at conventions.  I edited a paying fiction market for six years, where I had the unique pleasure of discovering other writers and helping them find their way into the field.

Those are achievements, and milestones, but they’re not ends.  When you pass them, you find that you’re still running.  The “finish line” has moved, it’s somewhere up ahead, and it’s completely different than the last one you passed.  And this is true for writers far more accomplished than me.  The problems change, the challenges change, but with every achievement, you find that you’re still running.

It’s taken a while, but I’m finally starting to shuck that goal-oriented mindset.  And when you stop worrying about external validation, what’s left?  Process. Writing, reading, critiquing, learning, and getting better — and, of course, having fun!

Check it out:  eighteen years, and I’m still aspiring!

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Recently I made a bet with a friend over the outcome of Euro 2012 (why? I don’t know thing about soccer, or football, if you prefer). Shockingly, I lost, and as payment, I’m required to read a book of his choosing. Assignment: Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I’ve never read a graphic novel before (I know, I know) and so quickly scanned the first page to see what I’m in for.

This is what I found:

“Rorschach’s Journal. October 12 TH, 1985.: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.”

My reaction: wow! Though I’m mid-way through two other books, I wanted to toss them aside and keep reading. And that got me thinking about first lines, whether we need to have a great one, and what makes them great. I started plucking other books from my shelf to see if they had similarly fantastic opening lines. Most didn’t. They weren’t bad, but definitely didn’t grab me in the same way this one did. But some stood out, and I’ve reproduced those below, along with my immediate reactions to them and followed by a discussion of what makes them great.

(I restricted myself to the first sentence from chapter one, not the prologue, if there was one.)

First lines from books on my shelf:

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

Reaction: In medias res, funny, modern, gritty/edgy.

“The primroses were over.” Watership Down, Richard Adams

Reaction: Foreshadowing bad things to come, cycle of life, nature, countryside, old-fashioned.

“My suffering left me sad and gloomy.” Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Reaction: What suffering? Sympathy for character.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Reaction: Literary, funny, profound, true.

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.” The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan

Reaction: High fantasy-feel, epic, broad focus.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

Reaction: Distinct voice, second person, curiosity about character, close focus (inside character’s head), run-on sentence.

“’To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die…’” The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

Reaction: Dialogue directed at me, philosophical, religious, magic realism, fable.

“I believe what separates humanity from everything else in this world – spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss and Mount McKinley – is that humanity alone has the capacity at any given moment to commit all possible sins.” Hey Nostradamus, Douglas Coupland

Reaction: Quirky, drawing relationships between seemingly diverse items, philosophical, humorous, modern.

“They’re all dead now.” Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald

“The birds saw the murder.” The Way the Crow Flies (Prologue), Ann-Marie MacDonald

“The sun came out after the war and our world went Technicolor.” The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald

Reaction: Curiosity provoking, dark, serious, weighty, cutting to the heart of things.

So what do these first lines have in common that makes them great?

First, they all capture the voice and style in which the story is told. You can tell instantly whether you’re about to read an epic fantasy, a literary classic, a charming tale, or a gritty, modern story. They also all touch on the major theme or concern of the story—whether it’s a murder, a character study, a philosophical examination of religion, or a series of drug-induced shenanigans, it’s right there in the first sentence.

And maybe that’s it: these first lines are something like elevator pitches. They accomplish a lot in a short amount of space; they’re pithy. These books have something to say, plots specific enough to be hinted at in a single sentence, and are written in a consistently strong voice, or style. In a way, it’s probably the greatness of these books that made it easy(er) for the authors to craft excellent first sentences.

So, must our novels have great first lines? While I think it’s necessary to have a great, or at least very good, first couple chapters, it probably isn’t as vital that our first lines go down in history as some of the greats. Most people will keep reading even if the first line is a bit bland, giving the author at least a chapter or two to win them over. Personally I worry my novels-in-progress don’t have strong enough central themes to birth brilliant first sentences, but that’s a topic for another post.

But whether it’s necessary or not, don’t we all want to ­­hit our readers smack between the eyes with something like, “This city is afraid of me”?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What are your favorite opening lines and why? What makes an opening line special?

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Little by little, I am teaching myself how to outline. By nature, I’m an “inchwormer” when I write (thanks to John Klima and Bradley Beaulieu for that great term!), writing a bit at a time, thinking about the developments implied by what I’ve just written and then forging ahead, clinging only to a loose scaffolding of story structure. But circumstances demand I create a really in-depth novel outline, so I’ve been working hard to become a master.

One of the toughest things about creating a detailed outline is simply wrapping your brain around the fact that you need to own your story–now! You can’t just hope to overpower the vicious novel or sneak up on it; you must approach it with supreme confidence and make it do your bidding. It’s like breaking a horse, right? You don’t just beat the crap out of the horse and hope it turns tame. Put on your Stetson and tap in to your inner Novel Whisperer.

My second difficulty was pacing myself. I’ve tried to create 2- or 3-page outlines before, and I’ve always spent about a day brainstorming and then another day hammering things out together. Those outlines have been terrible. It’s a good idea to give yourself plenty of time to develop your ideas. Every step of your outline needs to grow logically from your characters and your worldbuilding. Don’t force them to come together: encourage them. Remember the cowboy hat! Whisper, whisper.

Before you get serious about your project, try to figure out how long a project you need to create, what its audience will be, and get all your research out of the way. It definitely helps if you know what lengths you tend to structure your pieces into. Stephen King can make one scene last about 5000 words and it somehow works for him. For me, I tend to create scenes that run 1000 words long. I know this because I looked over what I’ve written this year, which includes a rough draft of a novel and seven or eight short stories, and about 80% of the scenes in each project run 1000 words. That just seems to be my natural attention span for a scene.

Step One: Generate ideas

The project I’m working on needs to be about 90,000 words long. That means I’m going to need about 90 scenes–20 to 25 scenes in each of four acts. That calls for a lot of ideas! Luckily, there are plenty of sources of inspiration for them. Here are two online resources I’ve been using:

• Alexandra Sokoloff’s Story Elements Checklist
• Great story advice from Pixar

I like Alexandra Sokoloff’s story elements checklist so much that I’ve printed a copy and keep it in my filing cabinet to use and reuse. I find it incredibly easy to generate plot points when I’ve got her guidelines urging me on.

Some of your ideas will be more important than others. Certain kind of problems and incidents lock into the bigger issues of your characters and plot, and they spin the story in new directions. I like to start with these big idea plot points: the inciting incident, the midpoint, the climaxes for each act, the end. Hammering these down will really help build structure through the piece.

The other big source for plot points–especially for those often saggy middle two acts (Acts 2a & 2b, if you prefer to think in a three act framework) is to focus on thwarting your characters’ goals and plans. I think we an all agree that the middle acts of a book are the tormenting-the-characters acts.

Step Two: Organize ideas

Some people like to generate their ideas on note cards and organize their note cards on a bulletin board. Some like to use programs like Scrivener. Because I don’t have a lot of space in my house and because I’m still working my way through the Scrivener tutorial, I generate my ideas on notepaper. I use one or two pieces of paper for each act, and while it’s not pretty, it works pretty well for me and has the advantage of being really portable. I took a picture of my workspace, but I can’t find the camera cord (hooray for moving to new house). But here’s a rendering*:

  I jot down each plot point as I think of it and give it a letter from the alphabet. Then I think about how they will be organized, and write down the letters in the story’s chronological order on the left side of the red line. (Luckily, I’m writing a book where the story’s chronology matches the flow of real time–if you’re working with a more complex interleaving of timelines, you might need to play with this part.)

Step Three: Generate scenes

I want each plot point to become the heart of its own scene. A plot point like “Discover H is evil!!!” has to turn into a real event, with actions and speech and conflict. I take my ideas and organization for each act and sit down at my computer. For each plot point, I will write a very brief description of a scene that will achieve that point. Remember, each scene needs to show your characters wanting something and working to achieve it, and it needs to be organized on the principle of conflict.

Step Four: Look over your structure

Once you’ve typed up your scenes, look over them to see if they are coming together into a powerful story arc. Look over Ian McCraig’s basic analysis of story structure. Does your story answer all of the questions Galen lists at the end of the post? Do you have a Highest High and a Lowest Low? And if not, can you adjust some of your scenes or re-order them to fit the bill? And does your character come to a wants-vs-needs discovery point at the end? This is the hallmark of character growth, so make sure you’ve nailed it!

Step Five: Proofread and party

Once you’ve adjusted your storyline to your liking, you’re done. You deserve a break! But don’t wait too long–you’ve got a first draft to write!

*This font is actually made from my own handwriting, but I lack any of the sense of spacing the computer has. There have actually been times when I couldn’t tell if a particular illegible blob was a word or a squished bug.

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About 8 years ago I started writing my epic fantasy novel. (As one does.)

I loved writing character sketches, scene ideas, doing research. But when it came to stringing it all together into, you know, an actual STORY, well that proved to be a bit tricky.  So I just kept creating character sketches, scene ideas, doing research. And no longer just for that initial epic fantasy novel, either. They ranged all over the place; through alternate histories, speculative futures, the magical here and now. But none of them ever got out the door. I didn’t know how to turn any of them into an actual story.

Life goes on. I pursue a career as an illustrator and my story starts and character ideas go on the back burner.

Last month, at the Illustration Masters Class I had the chance to sit down with Ian McCaig. In an unexpected twist of the conversation, Ian asked why I wasn’t making a comic out of one of my own stories. At my hesitation, he offered to help me take one of my ideas and outline it into complete story. (My initial response was something embarrassingly unintelligible. Once I collected my jaw off the floor I said “um, SURE.”)

The very first question Ian asked, for every character idea I pitched to him. was: “What does your character WANT”. (A bit of a tricky question, I found.) Once we had established what my character wanted Ian used a three act structure to help me nail down the plot line with pivotal steps strategically placed along the way.* He used Star Wars as his example (of course) and so I’ll do like wise.

Okay. Here we go:**

Act 1.

in the first few pages, the audience needs to know the answers to these questions:

~Who is the story about?

~What does he/she WANT?

~What are the obstacles?

Thinking of Star Wars: it’s a story about a boy who wants to save a princess from the Evil Empire.

So the next question is:

~What’s the plan?

Star Wars: Luke meets a Obi Wan who has the plan to go to Alderaan. BUT… the boy balks. the plan is outside his comfort zone.

Therefore:

~A bridge must be burned.

A point of no return. This can be a conscious choice or created from external pressures. In Star Wars, Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed by the empire. There is nothing left for him on Tatooine. He sets off with Obi Wan and his Plan.

Act 2.

Now “The Plan” is in action. Fun stuff, exciting stuff, happening stuff…. but, basically filler stuff.  Ian called this part of the story “smoke and mirrors“.  Entertaining (and important), but mostly prepping for the climax in Act 3. However, to keep the story going through all this filler stuff, there needs to be:

~ A “Flip” about halfway through act 2.

Something that alters the progress of the plan. Obi Wan dies. It doesn’t stop the plan, but requires special dealing with.

And you keep going…

Until…

Act 3.

~The highest high of the story.

Everything seems to be coming together the way it should. You THINK you are safe. Luke has saved the princess and successfully brought her to the rebel base.

Except…

Immediately following the highest high, comes:

~The lowest low.

There was a tracking device on the spaceship. Now EVERYONE is gonna die.

This was the point which Ian drove home: all the smoke and mirrors from act 2, all the filler stuff, the exciting stuff, was really only leading up to this moment. The lowest low, where we learn the whole point of the story. Where our hero has to come face to face with a decision:

~The choice between what our hero WANTS, and what our hero NEEDS.

Luke wants to save the princess. But what he needs, is to become a Jedi. (Which choice launches the next two movies in the trilogy).

So. Ian had me dust off a few of my old character sketches. Together we picked one and walked her through these questions: What does she WANT? What are the OBSTACLES? What’s the PLAN? What is the BRIDGE that needs BURNING? What is the midpoint FLIP? What is the Highest HIGH? What is the Lowest LOW? And, most importantly, the discovery revealed at the very end; What does this character NEED? Basically, Ian helped me get my character out the door. Finally.

Now I have the rough skeleton of a story line and am ready to start filling in the gaps. Fleshing out scenes. Finding the plot holes. Trying to not get bogged down in it all. (Everything seemed so clear when talking it out with Ian…) It’s still a tricky process for me, not to mention creating the sequential art for the story. But it’s a start. And I’m excited.

Thank you, Ian.

*Obviously, not the only way to structure a story. But it was a quick and convenient method for nailing out an outline in under an hour.

** Ian also made this method the subject of his lecture later in the week. What I have shown here is culled from memory and hastily scribbled notes, any mistakes and inaccuracies are mine.

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