Category: Craft

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Craft

First Words Matter

First words matter!

 

Opening number one in my WIP “Red Planet Gunsmoke” goes like this:

 

“Approaching the Treaty’s new war cruiser filled Cadet Ramona Keegan with something like religious awe.”

 

This sentence works and is functional. However, it forms part of a very chunky paragraph, spanning seven lines. It’s not typical for me, but it’s a different genre, something I’m trying a little differently.

 

Given that, let’s try a different one. Here’s the opening of chapter one from the same story:

 

“Pirate Captain Ramona Keegan ran a calloused hand over her bald head, palm lingering over the crimson hourglass of a colossal black widow spider tattoo, whose tarsi ended at the corner of the captain’s ice-blue eyes.”

 

The second line follows: “‘I want that ship,’ she said to her crew, ‘and I mean to have it.’”

 

In this version, we already have two paragraphs. The first line, though long, is only three lines. By comparison, the first example is seven lines on my Word document.

 

Neither is necessarily better or worse, but there is an adage in advertising and marketing that you want to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones. The same is true of our fiction.

 

In a bookstore or on a website like Amazon, you have the benefit of a cover and blurb, which help attract readers. On a website, you might also have reviews. But most readers, whether browsing in a store or online, will look inside the book. The first thing they’ll likely see is the first page. While most readers won’t make a decision based solely on the first sentence, it’s beneficial to make that first sentence remarkable.

 

If you’re a writer seeking traditional publishing, that first sentence matters even more. An agent will only read so much, and if the first sentence doesn’t grab them, they might move on. Agents have piles of submissions, both physical and digital. You have mere seconds to capture their attention and compel them to keep reading. For book readers and purchasers, there’s a bit more leeway, but why not make that first sentence exceptional? It can make the difference in hooking your reader.

 

For example, I was working with a student who had a solid opening about a creature in the bushes. It was intriguing, but not as engaging as it could be. A few paragraphs down, the student mentioned the character imagining a gunfight with Jesse James. By moving that line to the top, the opening became much more compelling. Immediately, it created curiosity and made me want to read more. If you’re not interested in Jesse James or the Old West, you can put the book down, which is fine because it means the book isn’t for you.

 

It’s important to realize your book isn’t for everyone.

 

It might appeal to millions, thousands, or even hundreds, but it won’t appeal to everyone. Writers, particularly those pursuing traditional publishing, need to understand this. Telling an agent your book will be a bestseller because “everyone will love it is unrealistic.” Focus on finding your actual audience. Crafting an irresistible first line can help attract the right readers and repel the wrong ones.

 

For instance, starting with “Pirate Captain Ramona Keegan” grabs attention. It hints at a space opera setting without explicitly stating it. Even though the cover might show a spaceship or a woman in a spacesuit, the narrative needs to establish the genre quickly. The first sentence doesn’t need to reveal everything, but it should hook the reader and be honest about what to expect.

 

Consider the difference between the two openings: the first, “Approaching the Treaty’s new war cruiser filled Cadet Ramona Keegan with something like religious awe,” is functional but doesn’t grab you. In contrast, “Pirate Captain Ramona Keegan ran a calloused hand over her bald head, palm lingering over the crimson hourglass of a colossal black widow spider tattoo, whose tarsi ended at the corner of the captain’s ice-blue eyes,” is much more engaging.

 

Take the time to write your story, but also craft that first line, paragraph, and page meticulously. Consider paragraph breaks, word choices, and every detail. A well-crafted first page can attract the right readers and, crucially, literary agents.

 

I hope this advice is helpful. Stay in touch and take care.

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Craft

Create Memorable Characters in Writing Fiction

If you want to create a memorable character, I need you to taste them.

Hold on. Stay with me. I promise this is going somewhere.

This is just a quick little exercise to round out or give some depth to your characters, to your protagonists.

Go to the beginning of the story. It doesn’t matter if it’s a short story or a novel or a series. If you’re working in a series, then start at the beginning of the series, page one of the series, and go all the way to the end of the series. Whether you’ve gotten that far or not doesn’t really matter.

Describe your protagonist in crippling detail in that first page.

Not for the writing, not for the novel. You’re not necessarily going to put it into the book. This is just for you. This is just an exercise. Take some time and describe that protagonist in excruciating detail.

I want you to taste them.

What would they taste like if you licked their cheek or their arm? Like what? What kind of sensations? Not just what they look like. Not her long, beautiful blonde hair. What does she actually smell like at the beginning of the story? Give as many sensory details as you possibly can. Dispassionately, no judgment. This is just for you.

Go in deep with all of your senses, as much sensory stuff as you can possibly squeeze into this description for page one, where they start the story.

Then, very simply, repeat this exercise for them on the last page of the story or the book or the series.

Now what do they taste like, now what do they smell like, now what do they sound like? And of course, what do they look like? Does she have a scar on her face now that she didn’t have before? Does he have a limp now that he didn’t have before? Whatever those things were, how are they different at the end?

Those things should be different because your character has been on a journey, and every successful story has to do with the character going on a journey, right?

Let’s say we’re writing a horror story, and some terrible things are going to happen on that camping trip. How does this character look, smell, taste, feel – all those things – at the beginning of this journey, in the car, on the way to the woods; do you smell the coffee? Versus the last page of a horror story: what do they look like now, what do they smell like?

I am not necessarily advocating for you to include all of these vivid descriptions in the story. You certainly can. They are there to be used, and that’s fine. But the purpose, the goal of this particular exercise isn’t just to create new and exciting ways to describe your character.

It’s to more concretely establish in your mind, as creator of this universe, the journey that your character has been on, having those kinds of sensory details in your mind that you can call upon. “I have to remember that at the end of this book, the end of the story, the end of this series, the target goal I’m aiming for here is somebody who is stronger (or somebody who is weaker), somebody who’s been through hell, but come out on the other side.”

How can you physically indicate what they’ve been through emotionally?

It’s just an exercise. It’s not necessarily something you want to put into the book, although once you have those sensory details, maybe it is something you want to put in the, maybe just in the process of doing this sort of exercise, you’ve discovered something about the character that you hadn’t thought of before. Discoveries are so much fun, especially for those of us who are pantsers rather than plotters.

Having those sort of concrete details can really root you as a creator and show us as the reader the journey that they have taken.

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Craft

How To Deal With the Frustrations of Writing

How do you deal with some of the frustrations that come with being a writer?

We suffer beneath many frustrations. There’s the frustration writers block. There’s the frustration of not having enough time to do the work we really want to do. Of course, the ultimate frustration is not having our work published, or perhaps worse: having a published book, but no one’s buying.

I’ve dealt with, and continue to deal with, all of these frustrations (and many others). After wrestling with these frustrations myself—in my own mind, on paper, wandering around the kitchen at 2 AM speaking into my phone—there is one solution that continues to come to mind. It is great and wonderful and terrible in its simplicity:

Keep writing.

I know. That’s probably the most . . . well, frustrating answer I could I have given to you or me. There are plenty of other actionable items we could add to this list: you could take courses, or spend money on Facebook ads for your book, for example. You can read books and articles like this one, and watch YouTube videos about any topic under the sun related to your frustrations as a writer. God knows I have.

But the one solution that I keep coming back to is that I must write.

Gary Vaynerchuk points out that if you really want success with the thing you love to do, design a process you love. There are no guarantees in any pursuit, whether that’s law, medicine, creative arts, financial work, you name it. So, you’d better come up with a process that you really enjoy. I really enjoy the process of writing novels. All of those frustrations I listed at the top of this article are still true—sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis all at once. But I still love the process of writing.

If you’ve gotten this far in this article, you probably do, too.

With no guarantee of financial or emotional success, how do you deal with all of those frustrations? You keep writing. You write because, as Stephen King points out, to not write is death. More than once in the last decade, I have considered quitting altogether. I have thought about going back to school, getting a graduate degree . . . “I’m just going to work full-time at a library or somewhere.” (That’s not a bad gig by the way.)

The problem is, the thought of never writing another word of fiction chills my heart. I already know that I may never ever publish with a New York publisher ever again. But in this day and age, there is no excuse not to write the things that we love and share them with the world. The internet has utterly and forever changed publishing. Find your audience, and you will be fine.

I am not trying to diminish the size or weight of those three frustrations, or the many other frustrations I didn’t even list. They are real. They hurt sometimes. They can cause distress. But if you are a writer, the only way forward is to keep writing. Perhaps we need to try a new genre, or a new format. Maybe it’s time to take a class in poetry, or essay writing, or creative nonfiction. I have taken these classes and gotten a lot out of them. More than once, they’ve reignited my desire to continue writing. I am also not dismissing all of those videos and courses I mentioned. They can be very powerful as motivators, or to inspire us to try something new and different.

Through it all, we must write. We must not just merely suffer anxiety, but rather be anxious to set forth to tell our stories.

If we cannot or will not do that, then the frustrations have won. Let’s not give them the satisfaction.

I say this at the end of most of my articles and posts about writing, but today, it takes on a slightly more serious meaning:

Keep. Writing.

I mean it.

Categories
Craft

When You Doubt Your Story, Ask This Simple Question

There’s one simple metric to apply to all of your storytelling questions that will solve the bulk of your story-writing problems:

 

Do you have a character, who cares about other characters, facing a goal or a challenge that they will do anything to achieve?

 

If you have that, everything else is gonna work out.

 

I’m working on a project with a guy I met through Gary Vaynerchuk. I had the privilege of being on Tea with Gary Vee, and this particular artist reached out to me after the show with some ideas. We talked and hit it off, and now we’re developing a storytelling video game app—an animated “choose your own adventure” style text-based game. We’re basing the story off my novel Sick, which is already a known property; this is something I won awards for, so I know it’s a solid story.

 

But I can’t just cut and paste chapters into this game. It’s being written in such a way that there are multiple choices, not just the one ending that happens in the novel. I’ve worked on a “choose your own adventure” video game before, but in that game, no matter what choices you made, you’d still end up at the same ending. (It was based on a romance novel, and you do not mess with romance novel endings, lemme tell ya!)

 

This project based on Sick will have multiple possible endings and multiple possible storylines. (And, unlike the romance novel gig, we’re not going to charge people to get the good stuff.) You can play multiple times with different characters.

 

But as I’m working on this game, I find myself getting nervous. This is a brand new way of telling a story for me. I have to keep track of all the different characters and choices, how the story branches out. I’m starting to panic: what if this is way beyond my caliber? I’ve gotten myself into something I don’t think I’ll be able to do, because right now, in terms of marketing, we’re not doing anything new technologically. We’re not introducing a new app or a new way to play games. We’re banking on his artwork and my story. So I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out, “Oh my God, am I in over my head? What if I don’t know what I’m doing? What if I suck?” All the usual things.

 

When those questions hit it’s time to back to the basics.

 

No matter the platform, no matter the format, no matter the genre, every single story is going to come down to the same basic elements in the same basic structure.

 

Do you have a character who cares about other characters, and does she have a goal or a challenge that she will stop at nothing to obtain?

 

That’s it. If you have those two things, your story is really off to a great start.

 

Sometimes, what’s at stake is literally life or death, whether that’s the life and death of one person or an entire planet. But “life and death” still exists when we’re talking about asking a girl to prom, or confronting one’s own metaphorical demons. Those feel like life and death in the context of the setting and the story.

 

One of the tricks I’ve started using, and I’ll do the same thing with this game, is at the top of every chapter, I write myself a little note. That little note says:

 

“I’ll die if I don’t…”

 

That’s it. That’s just a little reminder that every single chapter, my character needs to want something so badly that she will (feel like she’ll) die if she doesn’t get it.

 

In my novel Zero, all she wants from page one is to go to her favorite art school. That’s the thing that she wants more than anything in the world. Other things happen on her quest to do that. She is aided and abetted by her new boyfriend Mike, and their developing relationship appears to be the story. But if you break down Zero piece by piece, you start to notice that Mike is not an obstacle, and not until like the last eighth of the book does he and their relationship become an obstacle. He’s actually, if you really want to get technical, a sidekick! He doesn’t offer obstacles for her to overcome until towards the very end, when Zero makes a choice that screws up the relationship. Instead, the backbone of the story is Zero’s relentless pursuit of the goal of getting to her favorite school.

 

She does not have to obtain that goal for the story to work. Our players won’t have to survive to feel like they’ve spent their time well interacting with the game.

 

One thing I learned from Todd McFarlane during my time working on Spawn was there’s always a “turn” in the scene. Every sequence or scene, something has to move forward. All of storytelling is about momentum, all the storytelling is about moving forward. It’s our job as writers and storytellers to excise anything that is not moving the story forward. Once you have that main goal, that “I’ll die if I don’t…” goal, it just becomes a question of moving that ball down the field.

 

That’s the thing I need to remind myself. Is it clear this character cares about something or someone, and are they determined to pursue a goal no matter what? If so, great; now do I show the character doing exactly that? If so, great.

 

Of course, there are many other techniques to talk about when it comes to developing your story, but if you’re stuck, if you’re not sure, if you’re worried, if you’re nervous…that simple question can answer a lot.

 

If you can’t answer that question, then there’s probably something else you need to work on. Without those things, the other tips and tricks and techniques and ideas about writing and storytelling don’t matter.