Tag Archives: writing advice

Blog, Multimedia, Music, Video Shorts, Writing

New Welcome Video

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Readers, writers, and fellow bloggers, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Drew Chial, horror author, advice giver, and humorist.

My blogging philosophy spits in the face of conventional wisdom: I don’t do lists, cut posts short at 500 words, or limit myself to one lone topic. Shunning stock photos, I design my own images. For those threatened by big walls of text, I record audio versions of my posts.

Now I’m moving into another medium. This video explains how my wide range of writings tie together, and why they’re worthy of your time.

If you’re interested in reading my novella Terms and Conditions check it out here.

Blog, Writing

Why Joe Everyman is A Terrible Lead

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Insert self here
Insert self here

Who is Joe Everyman?

You see him everywhere, with his crewcut, t-shirts, jeans, and vintage motorcycle jacket; this white, clean shaven, hetrosexual, twenty to thirty something rules the summer movie season. A de-socialized soldier in civilian clothes, he goes wherever the screenwriters order, not because of a strong desire, but because the plot needs him to be there.

He doesn’t waste screen time illustrating his motivations, those frames are better served with explosions. When there’s a 120 page script with 250 scenes, he’ll be there. When it feels like you’re watching a two hour montage, he’ll be there. When a set piece passes before you can figure out its dimensions, he’ll be there sprinting onto the next one. While other films take time to reveal their characters, Joe Everyman races to the closing credits.

When the premise is the selling point Joe doesn’t slow things down with character development. Every second he needs to evolve, comes at the expense of giant robots knocking over skyscrapers. He keeps things consistent so we can get back to super-sized dinosaurs fighting on beach front property, and UFOs blasting through landmarks.

In screenwriting, there’s a rule: enter a scene late, leave it early. Joe Everyman exploits this rule, to seem like more than what we see. As a cheat, the screenwriter implies Joe is a dynamic three-dimensional character, whenever he’s not there.

Joe can make his wife laugh, though we’ll never hear his joke. She’s swooning over a romantic gesture he performed off screen. They’re deeply in love, see they’re kissing, in a nice warm lit room shown through a shaky camera, so you know its intimate. As for the rest of their relationship, we’ll just have to take the movie’s word for it.

The screenwriter didn’t have time to fill in Joe’s personality, they left you to do it for them. Joe is a mannequin, hanging from train cars, leaping across buildings. A blank template for the viewer to project themselves onto, a surrogate, an empty vessel, a pod person. He’s a cardboard cutout with flat character traits and an empty face, ‘insert self here.’ He has a Madlib in place of a personality.

In this by the numbers story telling equation, the hero is the least important variable.

Without a call to action, Joe Everyman would languish behind a desk for the rest of his life. Stuck in a go nowhere 9 to 5, he’d have his 2.5 kids, and wait for his 401k to come. Coincidence has elevated him to the role of the chosen one, the one who will bring balance to the force, lead our armies against Skynet, and free us from the Matrix. If only there was a mentor figure to tell the rest of us how special we were.

Cardboard Man 2

The Alternative is Always more Attractive

There’s a reason everyone likes Han Solo over Luke Skywalker, Wolverine over Cyclops, Michaelangelo over Leonardo, Hit Girl over Kick Ass, Captain Jack Sparrow over Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann over Will Turner, Captain Barbossa over Will Turner (you see where I’m going with this).

Personality is appealing. Every saga has its vanilla individuals, fine, safe, and boring, then there are the players with some flavor.

Choosing between ‘interesting’ and ‘identifiable’ character attributes, I go with interesting every time. The character’s drive, goals, and failings should make them identifiable, not their broad appeal.

Beige just isn’t my color.

While erratic villains lead the plot in interesting directions, Joe Everyman takes orders between locations. Walking off the set of War of the Worlds, Joe shows up in Godzilla in the exact same outfit. Sam Worthington’s character from Terminator Salvation wondered through Avatar, then onto the set of Clash of the Titans. These were different time periods and places, but the exact same person. Not to make fun of Worthington as an actor, he’s good in everything I’ve seen him in, it’s just these parts were all underwritten.

Joe Everyman makes the supporting cast look cool by accident. He’s always upstaged by misfits whose plots we’d rather follow.

I can’t help but imagine a Matrix movie with Morpheus as the lead, a Thor title starring Loki, or a Godzilla film staring Bryan Cranston (for those of you saying “Don’t we already have one of those?” No, no we don’t).

Cardboard Man 3

Joe Everyman must come into His Own

Joe Everyman is a portrait of the audience, painted in broad strokes, a bad boardwalk caricature. His psych profile is all encompassing. He’s the one size fits all of storytelling. He communicates with all the grace of an advertisement, a Frankenstein Monster stitched together from market research. As authentic as a politician, he’s something for everyone, and everything to no one.

He’s so hyper-average that he threatens the suspension of disbelief.

Plenty of stories start with a pessimistic protagonist. A person who’s been railroaded by life, a victim of a series of accidents who learns to take control of their situation. A passive presence who changes the moment they decide they truly want something. This is when Joe Everyman works best, when he becomes Joe Individual.

In The Matrix, Neo decides he’s not ‘the one.’ Realizing his life is expendable, he sets out to save his mentor. Rather than let the Oracle tell him what he is, he makes a defiant decision (which I know, was her plan all along). Regardless of the existentialist determinist debate, Neo believes he’s made this choice on his own. Killing his Mr. Anderson persona, he evolves into his avatar.

A storytelling crime happens when Joe Everyman is introduced only to stay blank until the very end. He may have gone through an adventure, but made no choices, personal changes, and learned no lessons. Taking orders without making decisions, he’s still just a victim of circumstance.

If a screenwriter wants our empathy, they shouldn’t expect it from the character’s presentation. Sure the guy on screen might look like me, but he has to earn my empathy. Get me invested in his plight, until his goals become my goals, his change becomes my change, and his outcome becomes my outcome. Then, and only then, will I see myself in him.

Do this well and it won’t matter what age, gender, color, or sexual orientation this character comes in, we’ll still see ourselves in them.

When you create a slate for people to project themselves on, take care not to leave it blank. If the vessel stays empty, it will feel hollow to the audience. Average Joe Everyman should end up Exceptional Joe Individual, or at the very least Tragic Joe Anti-Hero.

Blog, Writing

Clarity is Cool

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1. Lifting the Blur

In college, I had a creative writing course that almost turned me off of the pursuit.

Safeguarding my 4.0 grade point average, I read the assigned short story collection before class began. These were award winning pieces; charming, clever, and oozing with emotion. When the professor saw my paperback copy, with it’s folded pages and well worn spine, my “A” would be a foregone conclusion, that was until he told us to ignore the syllabus. He was going off book, bringing in photocopies of stories from his personal collection. He felt they were better representations of what we should aspire to be writing.

As thick as these shorts were, they were uneventful, over stuffed with poetic language. If they were interpreted as films they’d be five minutes of awkward silences. If they were turned into plays, the director would have nothing to block out. The cast would stare off in opposite directions, while the audience waited for something to happen. The characters rarely moved, they made small talk to conceal larger conversations. The stories rarely came to conclusions, they just sort of ended.

Believing the absence of entertainment value signified some deeper meaning, I found myself rereading. It all went over my head. I felt illiterate. I kept looking, but I couldn’t see what the professor saw in these clips. I hoped our discussions would shed some light on his reasoning.

Rather than dwell on characters or plot points, we discussed the stories like we were interpreting dreams. Our conversations began with questions like:

“What did the color of the drapes represent?”

“How does the spiral staircase parallel the couple’s relationship?”

“When Gerald says, ‘The tree should have blossomed by now,’ what does he really mean?”

The professor preferred narratives that read like portraits. Paintings of couples frozen in time. These weren’t stories about changes, but explorations in the characters’ routines. If we wanted signs of development, we’d have to search for hints.

We were told to look for the iconography in the scenery, to search for symbolism in the humdrum, to find mosaics in the prosaic. It felt like we were learning valuable skills for critiquing another medium.

While I struggled to understand these stories, the rest of the class set out to find the invisible hand of the author, and they saw it everywhere. They were in on a joke that I didn’t get. They observed the feelings evoked by the sight of blue, red, and yellow, while I felt colorblind. Their fine toothed combs were finer than mine. Their enigma machines were in perfect working order, while I tried to break these codes with a crayon and a piece of paper.

This is not an exaggeration: I considered the possibility that I had an attention deficiency. I couldn’t focus long enough to read between the lines. I kept thinking, if I can’t see the value in these stories, who’s going to see the value in mine?

I thought that I might have poor taste, that Stephen King was what we peasants drank, with our beer bottle pockets, and these shorts were the Champagne of the literary world. My palate wasn’t refined enough to appreciate the difference.

2. Blur Man

When it came time for peer revue, our intentions were lost in translation. The authors were told they couldn’t chime in until the end, they had to soak in their audience’s confusion. Each short was an inkblot, open to interpretation. Every observation said more about the reader than the author of the words.

Scanning flat surfaces for signs of dimension, we saw sexual tension where there was none. We saw plot threads as thin as fishing lines, that told us the players were on borrowed time. Our subliminal searches led us to better stories than the author’s intended.

Relying on the Socratic method, the professor tried to direct us to conclusions using questions. This only added to the confusion. We came away with the wrong lessons.

The students got defensive. It wasn’t their fault that we lost the plot, we should’ve seen the signs. It wasn’t that they weren’t writing well, it was that we didn’t know how to read it right.

Imagine being told you didn’t get the job only to counter with, “You just didn’t get the symbolism in my cover letter.”

I couldn’t see the point of interjecting dual meanings, of making everything Freudian. I had a story to tell that involved police corruption, crooked lawyers, and demons. I couldn’t waste time languishing in any one location.

When I turned in my noir thriller, the professor was not a fan, but my peers had a different reaction. In their written feedback, they kept calling it “Fun.” There was a word we weren’t slinging around in our quest for deeper meaning, but “fun” was my intention.

I wanted to put something enticing on the surface before drawing my readers in. My popcorn prose weren’t completely on the nose. I didn’t prefer telling to showing, but it was clear what was happening.

I used symbols, but I took care not to make them the stars of the show. Clever characters, and an original premise were my big draws. Students thanked me for bringing action to my fiction. What I lacked in hidden meanings I made up in entertainment value.

I learned that symbols can be fascinating, tools to add layers to your writing, but you have to have a compelling story before anyone will feel the need to open it to interpretation.

3. Looking at the Blur

Blog, Pitches, Writing

What to do with too much Inspiration

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Drewper Man has no shame
Drewper Man has no shame

In pursuit of Idea Man

When I first started writing fiction, my scenes had long intermissions, ellipses in place of dialogue, holes in place of plot. I’d skip chapters, write out of sequence. My ideas didn’t have legs because they weren’t fleshed out. They lacked focus because they weren’t developed. It was hard to keep my tone consistent, when I wrote in fractured moments. It was hard to keep track of who said what, when my characters had yet to be named.

Idea Man flew so far away, I couldn’t decide if he was a bird or a plain. Soaring through the thought clouds, he was neck deep in inspiration. If anyone could break my writer’s block, it was him. I realized I’d have to devise a scheme to bring him down to my level.

Coming from a poetry background, where stanzas can be made from lists, I tried the technique in the long form. Rather than dive into the action, I over described my locations. I’d log the evidence of an event, until I realized my police reports weren’t drawing down Idea Man. He wouldn’t make an appearance for atmosphere alone.

Mouthing both sides of a conversation, I’d come up with clever bits of banter. My subconscious did the talking, while my fingers went a-walking. Rather than direct my dialogue, I’d play stenographer, honoring the first words that came to mind, occasionally shoehorning in one-liners. My muse wouldn’t stop speaking long enough to draw breath, my fingers tripped across the keyboard. It felt like I’d finally channeled my hero until I realized it was his evil twin: Mediocrity Man.

I thought I’d written radio plays that were just waiting for visual accompaniment, but they were too conversational. They had nowhere to go. It turned out, the best dramatic discussions didn’t follow real speech patterns. They revealed character details while serving the plot at the same time.

2. Rick Roll

Luring Idea Man into an Outline

Using my talent for writing lists, I decided to outline everything. I didn’t stop at “Character drives” and “goals,” my ideation was all encompassing.

I fired a chain of bullet points at my background research. I knew how my hero’s public habits contrasted their private peculiarities, even if the audience never got to make this discovery. I knew how their psychological profile effected their clothing style. I knew how their sense of humor showed in their posture.

Not only did I know my characters’ names, I knew their upbringing, economic backgrounds, education, religious beliefs, professions, and political leanings. It didn’t matter if their parents didn’t get any screen time, they had their own paragraphs on my outline. It didn’t matter if we never saw their humble abode, I’d still describe it down to the last pillow.

My dogmatic draft predicted the page number I wanted every plot point to happen on. It was a map that refused to acknowledge shifting terrains. Assuming character motivations would always make sense, the plot dictated their actions. They entered a scene, not because of their powerful drive, but because the story needed them to.

When I finally started writing, Idea Man came, but his contributions lacked passion. I’d already introduced him to all the characters, I’d already scouted all the locations, we knew the timeline for every situation. Without the thrill of discovery, Idea Man was just going through the motions. I hadn’t given him any wiggle room, I hadn’t left him space to make a contribution. He shuffled his way through a draft, before flying off, never to return to the story again.

3. Die Hard

Idea Man Unleashed

It took me years to realize, the more I drafted the less I finished. The more I edited as I went, the less likely I was to get to the end. So I tried a different approach. I wrote my stories without a net. I developed the cast on the page. I came up with interesting situations, in the hope that the rest of the story would tell itself:

A dead body is found in a locked room. The killer used a timed poison and special appearing ink to leave his mark. His next victim may already be doomed.
A drunken lawyer staggers into the woods, interrupts a trial for a man’s soul, represents him and wins.
A teenager finds messages from his future self in his journal, only to discover that his future self is sabotaging his life.

Idea Man dragged a trail of thought clouds from the heavens, interrupting my work in progress with a slew of better ones. I was walking through a smog of thought clouds, not so much a daydreamer but a sleepwalker lost in a brainstorm.

This is what I got for writing commando, like Stephen King without a tight binding outline.

Idea Man kept making deliveries, but I was running out of places to put them.

4. Too Many

Drowning in Thought Clouds

The sheetrock was cracking, the oven tilting, my back burner was filled with too many things. The refrigerator door hung off its hinge, weighed down by post-it notes, IOUs for material I’d yet to get to. There was a ceramic dust pattern on the table, an outline of a plate with one too many things put on it.

The exits to my memory palace were blocked. There were too many big ideas in the way, I was wading through them. The dam had broken, my writer’s block had flooded my brain. I was drowning in thought clouds.

I needed to sort through the backlog, to find my focus, to pick a project, but Idea Man kept the deliveries coming.

In the maze of my mental map the paths forked into all directions. I walked into a short story, hoping it would spit me out in the middle of my novel. I ran through a journal entry, hoping it came out as an article. I ventured down one path, praying it could get me to my career goals.

It was hard to see the light when I had so many bright ideas. Each bulb orbited my head demanding to be acknowledged. It was hard to hear my thoughts when they made so much noise. The toys in the attic were all wound up, they were having a parade.

I used to wait for Idea Man to breach my fortress of solitude, now I was waiting for him to leave me a moment of clarity.

I needed away to harness him without taking every thought cloud he had to offer. I needed to hold his attention without trapping him in a kryptonite cage. Idea Man needed an outline that allowed him the freedom of discovery.

5. I could write about

The Hybrid Outline

Knowing the fundamentals of plot structure, I shouldn’t spend too much time at the drawing board. All I need to get a story started are the bare bones of a good summary, like:

Character: Who’s the lead? What is their drive?
Break in the Routine: What pulls the rug out from under them? What goal do they acquire? Does the conflict with their drive set them on the path to a personal change?
Situation: What’s the premise? Where does it take place?
Conflict: Who’s the antagonist? How does their goal interfere with the hero’s?
Plot Point 1: When is it too late for the hero to turn back?
Mid Point: Do the alliances shift? Does the hero learn a lesson that signals the beginning of a change?
Plot Point 2: What’s the hero’s lowest possible moment? When they acquire their goal, do they discover it wasn’t what they wanted? Do they seek a new one?
Climax: How does their personal change prepare them for the final battle?
Resolution: When the dust settles, has the hero grown as a person?

6. Bad Idea

Starting a story, I keep these plot points in mind, while leaving everything else open for discovery. Even these points aren’t set in stone. If Idea Man delivers a thought cloud that suits the story, I’ll use it, if it’s out of place, I can cast it away without feeling like I’m losing something (I’ve made a habit of storing these ideas in other documents).

To paraphrase some words of wisdom from Trey Parker: this plot point happens therefore this plot point happens, but then this one happens, therefore so does this one. His stories are collections of “therefores” and “but thens.” Each scene comes with a reason, you have to pop all the extraneous thought clouds that start with “and then.” Everything better be connected or it’s out of place.

I can avoid referring to a draft by linking all these plot points in my head. I cover this process in great detail in my blog on How to Build a Memory Palace Pitch. The trick is to make the essential connections early on, then you’ll have an idea of where everything should be heading.

7. America

It’s this combination of outline and free form strategies that’s kept Idea Man on task and interested at the same time.

Blog, Writing

Take Back Your Imagination

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Evil

Trying to write with pent up stress is like walking onto the set of your imagination to find someone else has taken over the production. While you stewed in your own juices the project was stolen by the producers. Succumbing to scrutiny, you left yourself open to a mutiny. Dwelling on the past, you lost half your cast. Undermining your authority, your self doubt took control of this movie.

Apprehension tilted the lights a few degrees in the wrong direction, just enough for your wit to get dim, just enough to cloud your vision, just enough to let the darkness in. It’s got you focusing on the wrong thing. You’re lost in the shadows while the daylight is burning.

Wardrobe’s carefully crafted costumes lay scattered on the floor. Throwing it’s weight around, Anger fills in for the star. Hamming it up, it gives a speech that never ends, it’s ranting and raving. Your lead watches from the sidelines with your Ambition, reduced to understudies by Anger’s show stealing.

Taking over casting, Rejection opens the doors to all its favorite players: employers, publishers, message-board commenters, ex-lovers, number forgetters, and head duckers from the bar. Anyone who can make you question the value of who you are.

Putting in an over the top performance, Doubt crushes the props, and tears down the backdrops. It leaves footprints on the set. Chewing the scenery, it picks cardboard from its teeth. Refusing to be ignored, Doubt leaves a lasting impression on everyone.

Filling in for the cinematographer, Fear staggers onto the scene drunk, keen to replace your choreographed long takes with a shaky cam. He’s seeing double. He wants to share the experience with world. Filling your mind’s eye with lens flare, he blots out the picture. Trying to pick apart the streaks, your brain gets scattered. Blinded by it, you loose the plot.

Pages blow across the ruins. Your script has undergone last minute revisions. Depression has ordered rewrites, it’s been picking you apart all night. It cut the subtext from your internal monologue. These new lines are very direct. They’re so on-the-nose they just might break it.

Reading it’s revision aloud, Depressions says, “It’s too late for your aspirations to come to fruition. Learn your place at the bottom, settle in.”

If morale was any lower it would be buried beneath the floorboards.

Stress doesn’t want to let you sit in the director’s chair. Pushing you out of your own picture, it wants to lock you in your trailer. It wants script approval. It wants creative control. Your bad habits are its passion project. It’s got a bullhorn for all of it’s defeatist rhetoric.

If storytelling is your career aspiration, you can’t wait for better weather conditions. You can’t wait for support or validation. You need to start shooting if you’re going to make your release date on time.

When you can’t use the first idea that comes to mind you need to give direction. Be a dictator. If you can’t call for quiet on the set, you’re going to have to record around the noise, you’re going to have to shoot around the clutter. You’re going to have to tell your story louder than any of your other stressors. It doesn’t matter if your head is clear, get something down on paper, you can fix it in post later.

This is your production. The show must go on. When Stress is out of good ideas, you need take back your imagination.

Good

Blog, Writing

Jack of All Trades: Defier of Convention

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As a blogger you’re warned not to be a Jack of All Trades. You’re told that writing about a diverse set of interests will confuse your audience. Social media gurus say, “Keep it simple stupid. Find a pigeonhole that suits you, find a basket to put all your eggs in. Repetition is the mother of a solid brand.”

I say, too much consistency can be a bad thing. If this is something you’re already feeling, dare I ask:

Is Your Blog Haunted by Your Brand?

Blogging your heart can be a tug of war with your brand.
Blogging can be a tug of war with your brand.

Bloggers, when you venture into uncharted waters, does a siren call steer you back to shore? When you go outside the lines, do you feel a push from an invisible hand? When you sit down to write, are you haunted by your brand?

The ghost of entries past tells you to stay on message, not to upstage your previous pages, but to maintain a constant image. Framing your sightline in its claws, it gives you tunnel vision. It’s on a mission to build recognition. It eats at your inspiration. It cuts down on confusion.

While you want the world to know you’re a complex person, your band is the red-eyed shadow that stands in your place. Perception is its passion. Consistency is its conviction. Recollection is its religion.

It hammers your multi-facets into the same round hole. It chops the branches off your skill tree, leaving you with just a pole. It values your parts greater than your whole.

Lost is the tug of war for control of your keyboard. Possessing your fingers, your brand has automated your writing. It toils on an spell to charm your target audience, a formula to fulfill their desires, to keep them coming back for more.

Consistent to a fault, your brand does the same thing over and over, expecting better results. It chants its slogan until it loses all meaning. It paraphrases past works, playing off their success, diluting your statements with each iteration. It’s a one trick pony galloping down a one track mind, a broken record playing the same one note joke. It took a big a idea and rationed it out into several little ones. They’re getting smaller all the time.

There’s a difference between being dependably good and giving your readers a sense of déjà vu. If they have to look at the date your article was published to know if it’s new, you have a problem. Having a recognizable brand can be great for drawing people in, but if it comes at the expense of interesting writing, it’s time to consider an exorcism.

Repossessing your Inspiration

The Triforce of accomplishment
The Triforce of accomplishment

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

So is mediocrity. After all, there are bad habits too.

If an article is a burden to write, it’s going to read like one. If your brand is giving you writer’s block, give it some wiggle room. Expand it to encompass other things on your mind. Just because you’re an authority on one subject, doesn’t mean you should deny yourself the thrill of discovery.

Bloggers specializing in writing advice should share excerpts from their fiction. What better way to establish your authority, than to show the proof in your pudding? This opens the door to other ways you can bring your audience behind the scenes. Introduce them to types of writing they’re not used to seeing. What better way to teach us how to write a treatment, than to show us the pitch for what you’re working on? What better way to inspire others, than by revealing the bag of tricks you draw from?

Your topic need not be so specific that it’s dogmatic. You should have the freedom to dip your foot in the waters bordering it. If you’re an author who likes video games, why not write a piece that deconstructs the plot devices they use? Why not challenge game developers to improve characterization (especially of women)?

Who says artists should be limited to one medium?

If you’re a writer with a background in photography, give us something cool to see. Good text is served by good imagery. Frame your words with good design. If you can’t come up with a context for your pictures, call them “writing prompts” to inspire your readers. Be a Jack of all mediums, a master of creation.

Once you’ve established your brand, let it branch out into other directions. If you’re afraid an entry will cause confusion, add an explanation that ties it in.

3. Mediums Enlarged

Explore other Genres

Hot on the heels of adapting The Chronicles of Narnia for the big screen, screenwriter Stephen Mcfeely gave a talk for my class. He mentioned how he and his writing partner were offered every fantasy script under the suns (plural), and why they rejected every single one. They didn’t want to be known as the children’s fantasy guys. So they passed on a dozen projects until Captain America: The First Avenger landed in their laps. They wanted their brand to be about more than one thing (granted they went on to work on Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but you get where I was going).

My screenwriting professor said agents prefer writers with at least three screenplays under their belts: one that’s personal, one that’s funny, and one with broad appeal. The theory is everyone has a journal entry in screenplay format kicking around in them, agents need to know that you can write something more. They have to be able to sell your versatility, which is hard if you’re married to just one category.

Writers shouldn’t feel like they’re bound to one shelf in the book store. They need to explore. Their cover models need to be able to swap their trench coats for armor, their helmets for veils, their flowing gowns for mud slicked rags. Put them through the entire wardrobe.

Be a Jack of all genres, a master of fiction. Take two tones and make a warped combination. If your fear of the dark is less than inspiring, why not let your sense of romance in? If your detectives are just going through the motions, why not contaminate their crimes scene with buckets of ectoplasm? If your world is overrun with vampires, isn’t it about time they get a visit from aliens? (If this concept is already a novel someone please point me in its direction)

4. Genre Enlarged

Stretch Your Brand to Fit other Interests

If you’re an author blogging to raise awareness of your fiction, you have a lot more freedom than you might think. Your brand might whisper, “Stick to posts regarding writing,” but you’d be surprised how many of your interests can be made to fit that description. Your brand need not shut you out of these topics, you just need to invite it in.

Pursue a range of passions and write them off as research. Every first hand account is something to draw from.

I’ve written how urban exploration can improve your writing, how memory palaces can play into your pitch sessions, and how the right music can contribute to the tone of your text. These are interests I have outside of my medium, but I found a way to fit them in.

Authors can talk about how their Yoga routine directly impacts their writing. There are connections between exercise and higher brain activity, this isn’t such a stretch (so to speak). Teach your brand to be flexible. Be a Jack of all interests, a master of fun.

My interests could stand to be more diverse, but these were the first ones that came to mind.
My interests could stand to be more diverse, but these were the first ones that came to mind.

Be Your Target Audience

Bloggers are told to have a target audience in mind. This is a good idea when you’re promoting your work, not when you’re composing it. The last thing you need when you’re staring at the blank page is performance anxiety. Writing with an awareness of your audience is like trying to pee at a trough urinal, looking to the ceiling waiting for something to flow. Sure, it can be done, but it’s not going to be your best work.

Write what you want to read first. Be your target audience. If you have eclectic tastes don’t let them go to waste. Sometimes this means mixing mediums, sometimes it means crossing genres, and sometimes it means bringing other interests into the conversation. Variety is the spice of life, consistency is the oatmeal of the internet. Be a taste maker, broaden your audience’s palate.

My brand strikes again
My brand strikes again
Blog, Writing

In Art We Trust: Writing for more than money

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Ever been asked why you write if there’s no money in it?

In Art We Trust

A Writer’s Intervention

There is such a thing as a stupid question. I get asked the same one all the time.

“Why waste your time writing fiction? Don’t you know there’s no money in it anymore?”

There’s no mockery in this well-wisher’s tone, only concern. They ask with all the sincerity of, “Can’t you see, you’re drinking is killing you?”

The well-wisher holds an impromptu intervention challenging my life decisions. They put me through the Socratic method, pulling apart my reasons like Russian dolls, dismissing every one that could be open to interpretation. They keep looking for a motivation they can understand.

“Why not take all the skills you learned building your author’s platform and go into marketing?”

The well-wisher thinks the move from writing narratives to writing copy is a vertical transition, that coming up with a story and a content strategy are the exact same thing, that dialogue written for dramas and advertisements are equally engaging.

They see writing across genres as a diversity of brand voice. They see putting in your 2k a day as a clear workflow. They see editing as back end development.

They think that intensely personal memoirs and top ten lists are created equally, that the words are interchangeable, that all writing should have the same goal: get the reader to open their hearts by way of their billfold.

If your thought cloud doesn’t have a dollar sign on it, the well-wisher brushes it away. Having pursued financial incentives long enough, they forgot why people do things for any other reason. They only understand you if you’re trying to get paid, laid, or famous.

Conjuring up a smile, I rub my hands together. “Yeah but, there’s this story I have to tell…” I give them my pitch like my dignity depends on it. When their eyes roll, I warp my story to fit their sightline.

The well-wisher gives my life’s work a wishy-washy hand gesture. “Tell it in your free time. Trust me, I know people who’ve been published. They’re dirt poor. The printed word has no future.”

Their anecdote about a small publisher releasing a book with no promotion has become the best case scenario they tell everyone. They warn me about going down the same road, for they have found the dead end.

I try to tell them that they found a dead end, that their are brand new avenues for authors to pursue.

Shaking their head, they give that look that’s both a smile and a frown. Signing their tab, they calculate for tip. “If you ever want to eat again, you need to apply this talent of yours to digital content creation.”

I see flashes of headlines on a thumbnail grid, over pictures of movie stars, kittens, and kids. They’re all some variation of “AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.” Feeling ill, my inner punk persona wants to bubble to the service. I want to Hulk out, flip the table, and quote Bill Hicks. Instead, I just sit there and take it. In the absence of a rebuttal, the well-wisher believes my argument has been defeated.

Inspiration

Childish Things

When it comes to finger painting, parents nurture their children’s creativity. When the time comes to purchase an easel, they suggest an alternate activity.

I imagine this reaction transcends artistic mediums. The well-wishers of the world see your sketchpads and think you’re hoarding. They hear your demo tape and think it’s a cry for help. They watch your monologue and wonder why you’re talking to yourself.

The well-wishers want to help with your recovery, and the first step is to figure how to fit your artistic pursuits into a job with a suit. Do you like to draw? Get a job in design. Do you make music? Get a job writing jingles for commercials. Do you like to act? Get in front of a white backdrop and shill.

It’s not about living your dream, it’s about defining your brand. It’s not about getting your message out there, it’s about establishing a presence. It’s not about inspiring people, it’s about making sales.

To them, the highest form of human communication is a dollar exchanging hands.

When I was young, it was easier to get away with doing things just to do them. While I thought I was bringing something to life, the well-wishers thought I was killing time. It didn’t matter if I was writing pros or playing Super Mario, I was being quiet and I wasn’t breaking anything. When the well-wishers saw a division of labor between my art and homework, they saw cause for concern. When I was filling notebooks with poems while my peers filled out college applications, the well-wishers confronted me about my addictions. The time had come to put away childish things.

When I went off on my own, my actions suddenly required an explanation.

Roommates would ask, “Why are you smashing frozen vegetables in the bath tub?”

Prying my hammer out of the bunch of celery, I hit the pause button on my cassette recorder. “Because I needed something that sounds like bones snapping.”

Bystanders would ask, “Why do you keep stopping every few steps to set up your tripod in the middle of the sidewalk?”

Taking a snapshot, I glanced up from the viewfinder. “I’m making a stop-motion music video by walking the length of Hennepin Avenue.”

Park patrons would ask, “Why does your football have a power screwdriver sticking out the back?”

Mounting the contraption beneath my telephoto lens, I flicked the switch, letting the ball spin. “So I can show the world what a groin hit looks like from the football’s point of view.”

I got accustomed to their look of confusion.

Creativity

My Relationship with Money

At family gatherings, I let the well-wishers define my blogging as some form of training. On Thanksgiving, they went around the table giving suggestions.

“You like movies, right? You could write reviews for a living.”

“You like giving advice, have you looked into life coaching?”

“You like technology, I just saw an ad looking for someone to write code for smartphone apps.”

I rub my forehead, “‘Write’ is a verb with many meanings, literature and programming languages are not the same thing.”

Any time I mention I’ve had a successful article they point out the black hole at the end of my rainbow.

“Now if there was only a way you could turn that into a paycheck.”

Money and I are spending some time apart. We were never madly in love. I was never rolling in it. It played hard to get and I got tired of pursuing it. It didn’t leave me broke, we’re just on a break. Of course my parents don’t understand. They thought we were good for each other, but really I’m just no good with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for things to work out between us. I’d love to write a novel that woos the riches out of the world. I’d love for my debut to dispense with all my debts, for release date riches to release me from rent, for premiere profits to payback my parents.

I just can’t have money be the focus in my writing room. It makes a terrible muse. It never has an original idea. The unfamiliar scares it. Its notes suggest I change my story to resemble a young adult film franchise. Money talks, it prattles on and on.

Money can be sweet when it wants to. It’s always so much more attractive in someone else’s embrace. It’s hard to call its suitors “sellouts” with a straight face. Every writer wants love. Every writer wants to get paid.

Revelations

Why Write, if not for the Money?

Because my mind is a frontier worth exploring, a genome worth mapping, a record of all my findings. I need to show my evidence, to externalize my emotions, to share my experience with someone, with everyone. It would be such a shame for this vision to go to waste, for this spark to fade before anyone can see it, for this brainstorm to run down the gutter into a puddle of pipe dreams.

Inspiration is my incentive. Creativity is my currency. Revelations are my restitution.

I do this because I have a hypothesis to test, a hunch to lay to rest, an experiment in artistic inventiveness. Every canvas comes with its own discovery, every study piques my curiosity, and every brush stroke an epiphany.

Brainchildren are my benefactors. Daydreams are my directors. Ideas are my investors.

I do this because I enjoy experiencing the fruits of my labor as I’m tending to them. In this result driven world, sometimes the process is the payment. Sometimes mastering a new medium feels like an accomplishment, even if I don’t show it to anyone.

The world needs disruptive innovators if it’s ever going to change. Franchises have turned into dynasties with simultaneous sequels, reboots, and spinoffs veering into their own realities. Hollywood keeps trying to sell our old action figures back to us. Actors who’ve played the same role are stepping on each others toes. I want to put my disgust to use.

I do this because I’m not satisfied with the offerings on the billboard, bestseller, or box office list. I don’t hear myself in their lyrics. I don’t find myself on their pages. I don’t see myself on their screens. I imagine I’m not the only one looking for something worth relating to. Something that took the words right out of our mouths, said what we all were thinking, and told it like it was.

I will pursue my foolish endeavor, until I’m wise for my efforts. I will write until I’ve written the book I’ve been waiting to read. Life is short. Art is long. Writing is telepathy, and my thoughts will be my legacy.

Why do I do what I do, if not for money? If you still have to ask, then you’ll never know.

Art is long

Audio Shorts, Blog, Multimedia, Music, Writing

Eavesdropping Advisory (Audio Blog)

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Eavesdropping

(If SoundCloud is down, download the track)
(Download the instrumental version here)

Writers feed off of rude people. Their grinding gears are music to our ears. We serve their words to hungry paper. We steal their souls with our typing fingers. When we’re around, they ought to keep their behavior in check, because there’s always an eavesdropping advisory in effect.

Who needs to shadow interesting subjects, when there’s the general public to draw from? Who needs to research villains, when we can just go out and cast one? Why fret over the words that break our hero’s routine, when there are so many rude people giving away free dialogue?

Crowdsourcing scenes, we set our buckets beneath brainstorms. Derailing conversations, we guide trains of thought into our stations. They want to give us a piece of their mind, they don’t care how we use it. They’re never going to demand creative control. Delivering line after line, they’ll never ask for script approval.

Charity begins at the checkout counter. We’ve gone out into the world to find ourselves some donors. We know that wherever the staffing is short, they’ll be there. Wherever the wait times are over an hour, they’ll be there. Wherever there are captive audiences in uniforms, they’ll be there.

When they cut us off in traffic with a harsh gesture, we get to play interpreter. When they emit hot air into our atmosphere, we get to play dehumidifier. When they sling vulgarities, we get to play catcher.

When they ask to speak with a manager, we’re tempted to step up, even if we don’t work there. When we can’t get close enough to hear anymore, we’ll lip read from across the store. Their subtitles are in caps lock, all we have to do is highlight, copy, and paste.

Eavesdropping Advisory is my most liked and commented on entry to date (it doesn’t hurt that it was featured on WordPress’s Freshly Pressed page). Many writers have confessed to sharing my process, a process I’ve put to use several times since.

For the audio version I wanted to harness that same aggressive attitude. Laying down a driving hip-hop beat, I mixed an collage of angry voices, and topped it off with a distorted melody that occasionally goes full dubstep. Despite the song’s bombastic push, it maintains a subtle creepy undercurrent. Check it out.

Blog, Writing

On Sherlocking

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Writers, are you looking for a crutch to improve your characterization, a trick for easy subtext, and a way to enshroud what you’re foreshadowing? What if you could learn all of this as part of a game? Interested? Then let me ask a few more questions.

Clark Kenting

On Sherlocking: How to Use the Deduction Game to Improve Your Writing

Do you find yourself mirroring movements? Have you walked into a pedestrian’s path, pivoted in the same direction, and paused to break the connection? At the bar, do you find yourself raising your drink in unison with other patrons? In conversation, do you cross your legs at the same time as your friends? Do you scratch your cheek when someone else starts itching? At the end of the night, do you finish other people’s yawns?

Are you so in tune with your surroundings that you can see bathroom breaks coming?

Do you bless sneezes before they happen? Anticipating farts, do you switch seats before you’re caught down wind? Do you look up in time to make eye contact with people pretending not to look? Are you a social psychic?

Can you read reactions? When you watch someone lean back in their chair, do you see relaxation in your runes, or withdrawal in your crystal ball?

Can you eavesdrop from across the room? Are you a telephoto lip reader, or do you have a fluency in body language? Watch the couple across from you, can you tell if this is their first date or their anniversary? From their posture, can you tell if this is going to be an early night, or a late one?

If this foreknowledge sounds familiar, then you’re ready to play the game. It’s called Sherlocking; the game of deductions. Once honed, this skill will greatly improve your writing.

Pointing

Let’s set the board. This is an open world game, not in that you can do whatever you want, but that you have to play it in public. Coffee shops are good, as are campuses, clubs, or wherever else people congregate. Stake out a position with a view. We’re going to give you something to do with all your excess intuition.

Eavesdropping is a skill worth developing, but for the sake of this exercise I recommend going at it with headphones on. We’re refining one sense at a time. The aim is not to confirm our suspicions, it’s to keep us looking.

Absorb what you observe. We’re gathering points of reference to be used later. We’re researching the human animal. Ignore the extreme examples: the tell-offs speeches, the overtly rude people. Today we’re looking for something a little more subtle. This is advanced people watching. We’re reading between the lines of faces, keeping a log of nonverbal cues, gathering tells for our readers to peruse.

Eating

Over my shoulder, I watch a middle aged man buzz around a college girl’s table without landing. His hips can’t find a position to settle in. His fingers keep trying to find his waistband. She takes off one headphone. Nods a couple of times, slips it back on. He says one last thing. She slips her headphone off, but he’s already spun around. Turtling up, she gets back to typing.

On the far side of the counter, a man sits with no accessories besides his tea; no newspaper, paperback, memo pad, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. Laying his hands on the counter, he rests his eyes and bobs his head. For two hours, he says nothing to anyone. He never checks his watch, never looks to the door for anyone. He nurses his tea and moves on.

Take a close look at the variables. Make your covert calculations, show your work. Draw a connection between what you see and what you think you know. Solve for X. There may be more than one solution.

The guy to my right is tracking an iPhone on his computer. Compulsively refreshing his browser, he watches it move across the Mississippi through downtown Minneapolis. Nibbling his nails to nubs, he shifts in his seat. His movements can be felt along the bar. Clicking on his tabs, he checks a Facebook page. The user’s name is the same one attached to the phone in the map tab.

Recognize the patterns? Make your deductions.

A girl on the couch watches a man in a tattered jacket enter the coffee house. His beard does little to conceal the frost bite at his cheeks. Weaving through the customers at the counter, he makes a beeline for the men’s room. She moves her computer up her lap. When she has to go to the ladies room, she brings her laptop with her.

Don’t default to stereotypes, flex your imagination. There’s the obvious reason this happened, but what if there was another one? Play with your audience’s prejudice, turn it into a red herring. Gather up these visual cues and toy with their expectations.

Burnt

Sometimes the cure for writer’s block is a little risk. Sherlocking adds danger to the process. It puts the spark back into the romance.

I’m recording a first date from my front row seat, documenting deep sighs, and nervous ticks. Hanging on long pauses, my fingers tread the air before they resume typing. I’m live-tweeting a missed connection as it happens, catching more out of the corner of my eye than either of the participants.

The boy hovers over his seat before committing to standing. He’s in a sweater, dress shirt, and jeans. His date has a cocktail dress on. Opting for the hand shake instead of the hug, she smiles with her cheeks, but not her crow’s feet. Setting her phone on the table, her fingers walk toward it during lulls in conversation, a game of red light green light played with just one hand.

I know where this Match.com meet up is going before the couple can pronounce each other’s names. Neither of them have caught me rubber necking.

Close Up

There’s a line between reality and the game. Not everyone is roleplaying, they’re actions can’t always be explained. There might be a science to deduction, but for our purposes we’re treating it like an art form.

You’ll find your powers limited when you go out looking for affection, even more so if you’re trying to catch someone cheating. This isn’t about calling out liars, taking tells to task, or hurling accusations at lovers. If polygraphs are a junk science, you’re not about to break any cases with your ability to read faces. Your formula for recognizing patterns isn’t as strong as sodium thiopental.

You’ll never know exactly what anyone is thinking, so just chronicle the things they’re doing.

This is a game, if you add stakes, you’re playing it wrong. It’s about collecting mannerisms to be used later. If you can reverse engineer these deductions, then you know how to build subtext into your scenarios.

Let people give you character description that goes beyond clothing, traits to help your readers with their imaginary casting. They’ll give you actions to replace “said” before dialogue. They’ll give you expressions that contrast their words. Good characters aren’t what they say, they’re what they do. Great characters betray banter with bad behavior. Jumping from scene to scene, you can juxtapose their cool exterior around company with their burnt interior when they’re alone. Plant your setups in their awkward moments. Their expression can be the last notes for your chapters to go out on.

If you want your words to feel authentic plagiarize from real life. This doesn’t mean copying and pasting your journal into your work in progress, finding and replacing your name with that of your protagonist. It means replicating these little things, the observations that infer meaning.

The truth is only fun when it’s subjective. Good writing invites readers to sit in the jury box. It gives them all the evidence, but doesn’t draw their attention to the right exhibit until just before it becomes relevant. It deceives them by making appeals to their emotions, lining up a collection of red-herrings. Exposition is a bad witness, their testimony is hearsay, robbing the reader of their epiphany. Planting payoffs, good writing gives the reader several opportunities to have their own “Ah-ha!” moment.

By the time the author makes their closing remarks, the reader should feel validated for what they knew all along.

Blog

10 Statements

2 Comments

portrait

I wrote 10 Statements for Karen Oberlaender’s author interview series. My answers are as quirky as anyone who follows this blog might expect. They’re up on her site now. Check them out and follow her on Twitter @okiewashere.