So I said last week that I was going to make a miniature figure of one of my characters.

Guess what?

Bam. He doesn't look like much right now, I'll admit, but that's because he's all white sculpey still, at this point. I haven't even cured it yet. (By the way, I'm thinking of boiling instead of baking--any opinions?)
All in all, I think he looks pretty awesome for being the first mini I've ever made.

Can't wait to see him all painted up.

Debut

I have two stories. One is a space adventure masquerading as science fiction, dealing with aliens, monotonous space travel, kidnapping, and interplanetary ecological activism. (It’s not as interesting as it sounds, trust me.) The other is a mystery/thriller/SF/fantasy revolving around death, drugs, madness, and a doomsday clock. (A lot better than it sounds.)

The first one, Glitch, was written over the summer of 09 and is far more lighthearted than the second one, Blue Star; but in some respects Star is the superior work. They’re both good, but as an author, which one do I debut with?

First impressions are everything. This is especially true for continuing works—series in particular, but writers as well. Most writers tend to have a niche, one genre that they’re good at and stick with. This is great for marketing, because the audiences of those particular genres will find those authors and read their work and, more importantly, stick with it. Your loyal army of fans.

This can be great, fantastic, the best—if you have a niche, a genre, a place to snuggle in and let your readers chase you down. For genre-hopping authors, however, it’s not such a great thing. This is why Stephen King wrote romance novels under a pseudonym. (What, you didn’t know that?)

Do I start chronologically, with my more lighthearted tale of kidnapping in space, and alarm readers who pick up Star expecting more of the same, or do I begin with my admittedly better but far darker story of a hunt for a serialkiller and let down readers who picked up Glitch hoping for another tale of intrigue? If you can’t stay consistent for your fanbase, you might not end up having a very big one.

Readers like more of the same. It’s why people have favorite authors; so that they can follow that name, pick up a book, and get what they want and, admittedly, expect. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t experiment. Personally, I believe that exploring genres helps one grow as a writer. But if you plan on genre hopping, like I do, maybe you should use a pseudonym or be ready for your readers to be confused or betrayed when they pick up your romance novel after reading your horror one.

The End

Endings are hard. They're as hard as beginnings, and sometimes harder. With a beginning you have a blank slate, with nothing but the reader's expectations. By the end you have an entire story to deal with on top of those expectations. You can't let the reader down by just slapping an ending on there or letting them decide.

Here are a few articles I read, just to give you an idea of what research I did for this.

Sometimes you have the ending planned out--the entire story was building up to this, this one moment. Sometimes you figure out the ending as you write, and the story leads you on to a place you didn't expect but know in your heart is right. And sometimes--sometimes you have to choose.

I'm admittedly leery of using Blue Star as an example for this post, because it's a mystery, a thriller, and the ending is, well, spoilery. So I'm not going to say details, just vague stuff.

Star has a Punnett Square ending choice. (For those of you who never took biology, this is what I mean.) I had different variables, different things that could happen to the setting, the main characters, so on and so forth. There were two massive variables that would affect the entire story. I'll call them X and Y, for brevity's sake.

So now I have this.

	X HAPPENS	X DOES NOT HAPPEN
Y HAPPENS	X AND Y HAPPEN	Y HAPPENS, X DOES NOT
Y DOES NOT HAPPEN	X HAPPENS, X DOES NOT	X AND Y DO NOT HAPPEN

So which ending do I give the story? What message do I want to send? Things will be very different depending on which one I choose. Which ending does the story deserve?

It can be a tough choice, and an agonizing one. I managed to get input, and talk it over with some of my betas, getting input on which endings would sour the reader or make them feel like they got shortchanged. In the end, though, it's my story. No one else can write it for me, and I have to take these opinions and my own and pick the ending I feel is best. Don't feel you have to suddenly make the hero and heroine get together. If the story ends with the bad guy winning, then the bad guy wins, and maybe you can write a sequel. Haha. Sometimes you can give your readers the happy ending.

But sometimes, they don't live happily ever after.

Carrots for Asses

The reward system.

I love it.

I love it and I use it and I advocate it. It helps you write! (And do other stuff!)

You want that cupcake. You know it's there, and it's yours. You're gonna eat it and love it and when you're done you're gonna sit down and write--WAIT! Don't do it! Use it as a reward! Write first! When you get maybe 100 words written, or whatever arbitrary goal you set, THEN you can eat the cupcake. It's a reward for doing a good job--or at least for doing something.

(Think "positive reinforcement," if you want.)

Fine, you think. But I shouldn't eat the cupcake anyway, I'm on a diet. So now I don't have to write, ha!

But you do. And you know why? Because I'm going to dare you. I'm gonna lay a challenge at your feet and slap you with a white glove. I challenge you to a word war.

The word war is a simple thing. Anyone who's tried NaNoWriMo has probably heard of it. And it's simple as hell, so you have no excuse, really. Here's what you do.

• Get a partner. You can do it by yourself if you're dedicated, but having a fellow writer helps immensely. Plus...well, it's a war. They can be free-for-alls, too. I've been in a war with four or five other people before.
• Set a time limit. I like five minutes, personally, but that doesn't mean you have to do it. Some people go for ten minutes, or an hour. Just set a duration. (For example, :10 - :15. )
• Get ready, get set, GO! Set everything else aside and just write for the duration of the war. The aim is to get as many words down as possible. They don't have to be perfect. They shouldn't be. Turn off the inner editor and write.
• Compare. When time's up, share how many words you wrote with your partner. Whoever got the most words wins! (Note: there is typically no prize for winning, other than the satisfaction of having written more than the other guys.)

I love these. I've had days where it's just war after war after war, and I get way more written than I might have otherwise. Word wars are fantastic for people with a competitive streak.

But I have no one to write with, you complain. No one's here and the internet's out!

Fine, fine, I'll feed you, baby bird. Grab a kitchen timer, set it for ten minutes, and do nothing but write for those ten minutes. Or you can just sit there and stare at the paper/screen for ten minutes. Whatever floats your boat. The only stipulation is that you can't do anything else. At all. No internet, no phone (stop texting and turn the damn thing off!), no reading, no nothing. Either you'll get bored and start writing, or you'll sit there and sit there and sit there.

I'm just gonna sit here, you say.

Fine, I give up. I guess you'll never be a writer.

Procrastination Ain't All Bad

Okay! I'm here to tell you why procrastination can be a good thing! Yes, you heard me right. It can be a good thing.

This study, while not about writing, shows that people are more productive when they aren't agonizing over something and constantly thinking about it. This is why a lot of the time people say that they'll sleep on it. Sleeping is how the brain figures out a lot of stuff--but that's going into neuroscience and I don't know a whole lot about that, so I'll shut up about it for now. I'm sure you guys can find some more information if you need it.

Anyway!

I'm not saying procrastinate all the time. That's counterproductive and bad. I'm saying that if you've written yourself into a corner, don't sit there and torment yourself trying to figure out how to undo it. Let it sit. Sleep on it. Do something else. Then come back, and maybe now, having let your brain rest and take a break, a solution will appear!

Also, taking breaks helps ease burnout. No studies to back that one up, just personal experience. My first novel took me six years to write. Why? Because I was stupid when I started and didn't know what the hell I was doing, being a dumb teenager. Taking breaks and going at my own speed helped me grow. I was reading and writing and learning during that time, and all that time meant I had plenty of, well, time to think over how the story was going to proceed and end. And this was a good thing. A really, really good thing. At one point I was going to kill off a major character and have a downer ending--but I didn't like that, so I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, and eventually the story went "well, hey, what about this?"

And I said, BRAIN, YOU'RE A GENIUS!

I'm not entirely sure if this post makes any sense to anyone but me. I guess what I'm saying is "go at your own speed, don't force yourself if you don't want to, and allow yourself time to think things over."

Dedicated to burn half as long and twice as bright

We've all done it at some point. You're writing, chugging along happy as can be, and then one day you wake up, sit down, and think, "Damn, I don't wanna do this."

Congratulations! You've burnt out.

This is different from writer's block, if you ask me. Writer's block is 1. an excuse used by writers when they're being lazy and don't want to write or 2. when you've painted yourself into the proverbial corner. For the first one, I recommend just kicking your ass into gear. (I'll talk about that later.) For the second, I recommend thinking. Beware of the Deus Ex Machina, and think about all the ways they could get out of this mess you've put them in. Sit back and think about it for a bit. (Hang on, I'll come back to this too.)

Burning out is when you know exactly what's going to happen, exactly what you want to do, but you just don't want to do it. You don't give a damn. You simply cannot write.

Go do something else. I'm serious. Get off your ass, stop staring at the paper and/or screen, and GO AWAY. Take up a little hobby. Work in a different medium. Exercise. Let your brain rest and recuperate, recharge your batteries, and then when you feel like you can tackle it again, come back to it.

Anecdote time!

I finished writing my doorstopper in June 2010. It took me six years, mostly because of inexperience and taking breaks. But I finished it, goddammit. And then I started right in to Star. I managed to crank out about 50 pages, throwing myself headlong into the story and blazing along with all the energy of a chihuahua on crack. And then I tripped, stumbled, and burned spectacularly.

I didn't write for months. I simply had no desire to be a storyteller whatsoever. I knew I'd burned out, and I knew I'd come back to the story when I was ready. In the meantime, I read books, relaxed, sunned, biked. I held onto that little flame and I gently nursed it back to health, and then when I felt the burn I eased myself back into writing.

Go as fast as you can, if you want, but don't fear the explosion and ashes. Think of yourself as a phoenix instead.

In the Beginning...

"It was a dark and stormy night."

"I told the boys to stay quiet while I went to fetch my gun."

"It was little more than three miles from the Wall to the Old Kingdom, but that was enough."

Your first line is everything. I'm not kidding when I say that. This is literally, after the cover and perhaps the back cover, the first thing that the reader will see of your story. It's gotta pop. It's the hook. This is the thing that the reader sees and goes "huh, wait, this is interesting. Let's read more."

The summary can do a lot for bringing a reader in, but the first line is the story. It's the style. It's you. You gotta be able to pull the reader in and say "This is worth reading." It doesn't have to be big and dramatic. A Wrinkle in Time starts off playing with a cliche, and weaves it seamlessly into the story. Yeah, it's a dark and stormy night, and we chuckle seeing this line because it's the starter for every proverbial story. But we keep reading.

What about a bait and switch? Twice Shy does this. Turns out the narrator is a teacher, the boys are his class, and the gun is an airgun, being used for a demonstration. The first line makes us go "wait, what's going on?" and then we keep reading, and it's turned on us, and we laugh. Clever! Well done! It got our attention, but wasn't out of place. And yes, the gun gets fired by the third act, don't worry.

Finally, what about something mysterious? Sabriel promises a different world than we're used to, something strange and mystical. The Wall? The Old Kingdom? Why is three miles enough? We're curious at these tantalizing hints, and we want to know more.

"Oh no!" You think. My first line isn't like that!

DON'T PANIC! You don't have to have your first line be absolutely perfect the first time around. That's what editing is for. It took me three or four tries to get Blue Star's first line to something that would be intriguing and hooking, but still fit. The first time it was good, if a little wordy.

"No one knows why, one fine morning as the express was passing through, Angelica Moore took a stroll off the platform."

A good start, but it gives too much away right off the bat, and it doesn't work with the first scene. My betas didn't really like it, either. So I changed it.

"My cousin Angelica Moore killed herself."

Another good start, but it still didn't work--betas pointed out that the narrator doesn't know this at the start of the story! Dang. They suggested adding stuff ("I just didn't know it yet") but I wanted my first line to be alone. So I tweaked it again.

"I died for a living."

That's good. It gives you some insight into the story but doesn't give too much away, and makes you wonder what's going on. For now, it works. I might end up having to change it again, I don't know. But that's what editing is for.

What's your favorite first line? Why?

He who writes with monsters...

Research can be bad too. I mean, it's good to know things, but like some guy once said, "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Blue Star deals very heavily with death. Very heavily. And I want my deaths to be as accurate as possible, because that's stuff I can't make up, and I just can't allow myself to write stuff like that without doing a little research. Or a lot, as the case may be.

Cocaine is the top illegal import into the United States.

I often joke that I started writing Blue Star so that I wouldn’t have to take up a real drug habit. That shit can be real nasty, yo. Like meth? Yeah, I am never trying that—the visuals they used in middle school of people tearing their skin off with cheese graters and their fingernails and stuff really stuck with me.

Anyway. Blue Star, in the story, is the street name for this drug I made up. It’s first and foremost a hallucinogen like LSD, but it’s got these crazy other properties too. So what do I need to do? Research. As always.

To Google!

And the British have Harold Shipman.

I started Blue Star summer of 2010. There were a few things I had to research to get started.

First and foremost, serial killers, America’s most romanticized sociopaths. I needed to know as much as I possibly could until my attention span ran out. Now, I’m a big fan of murder mysteries—have been for years—so I at least had an idea of what I was getting into writing one. And I knew it was going to be gruesome. (I’m a big fan of Wire in the Blood and Criminal Minds and that sort of thing. Crime dramas are fun!) How gruesome? Gruesome. Serial killers, baby.

So I went to Google. Hey man, don’t judge me. It led me to many websites on serial killers, but the one I remember was the FBI’s website. Yeah, they’ve got one, and it was actually highly informative.

Naturally, I checked out Wikipedia as well. They put things very succinctly, and often have links you can bounce to for further information.

Things blur a little here. I think once I verified I was going to be making a serial killer, I needed to get down to the nitty-gritty and start emulating the masters.

TO WIKIPEDIA!

Yes, good ole Wikipedia. Don’t look at me like that, I’m not doing this for school, it doesn’t have to be cited or anything. Anyway, Wiki is concise and for the most part accurate.

First, I went here, to the list of unidentified serial killers. You know them—Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer, the Original Night Stalker. Well, even the more obscure ones are on here. This is what I needed. These were the guys that got away…how did they do it?

As it turns out, for the most part, they got away because technology was shit and procedures were shit. Look them over. My memory isn’t great, but if I recall correctly a lot of them were working in the times before the computer, our greatest technological boom of recent years. Before the internet, and databases, and INSTANT INSTANT INSTANT. Communication was a little harder back then and information didn’t get around as quickly, and forensics weren’t the same back then either.

Okay, how about the ones that didn’t get away with it? I’m talking big bad guys here: Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, Berkowitz. Pretty looking bunch of guys, aren’t they? (Well, Bundy, yeah, okay.) There were others I poked at, but I can’t remember them right now except for the Unabomber and Ed Gein. What was I looking for? Everything. Methodology, motives, cooldown periods. These were some bad, fucked up people, and I was going to read all about them. Had to get into the mind of the killer, right?

It was sometime around reading what Dahlmer did to his victims that the weight of their actions suddenly came crashing down. Holy shit. This was disgusting. This was disturbing. This was all kinds of wrong, and the fact that these people had ever done this was wrong, and the fact that people out there would do this was wrong. It was terrible and horrific. (Seriously, go read the articles, and try to imagine plumbing full of rotting human flesh.)

This was grim stuff, and it put me in exactly the kind of mindset I needed.

(As an amusing note, I found a book last year at Barnes and Noble about serial killers, in alphabetical order. Can’t deny I was tempted to buy it.)

One Big Melting Pot

How did I first start writing Blue Star?

Well. It was years and years of accumulating ideas. The title and basic idea actually cropped up in a roleplay I tried making in...08? Sometime around then, I think. Anyway, that was a flop, but it was an interesting idea, so I hung onto it. ALWAYS hang onto your ideas. You never know when you might be able to draw them forth from the grave and give them new life.

I didn't work at the idea, though. I had other stories to write. So I let it sit and fester and ferment. In the meantime, I accumulated other ideas.

I read an article in WIRED magazine about the Russian Doomsday Device "Dead Hand" and thought, wow, scary and cool. Maybe I can use something like that. Tossed the idea in the stewpot and moved on.
There were images--a man standing in front of a strange creature; a train traveling through a desolate snowscape; a pair of people on a bus, one of whom was a strange messenger feared by the public. There was snow, lots of snow, and strange things that people didn't understand. Necromancy, and legal uses for it. And drugs. They all got tossed into the stewpot and left to simmer.

Finally, when I'd finished telling my other two stories, I decided to give this one a whack. My mind hadn't been in the best state for a while, and I felt like writing something...unpleasant. Something dark and evil. Something with death and drugs. Lots of drugs. Weird stuff. (I can't write normal things. It's a side effect of being me.)

So I jammed my arm into the stewpot, right up to the elbow, and stirred things around a bit. They'd fermented long enough at this point that when I withdrew my arm--well, you know that gooey corn syrup-flour-whatever mix? It's soft and sticky but peels off of you? Yeah. It was kinda like that. I started pulling at stuff and poking and things just sort of came together. I grabbed the beginning of something I'd just sort of plunked out during a rewards assembly for my sister (hey, it was boring, don't look at me like that) and got started.

What about you? Do you let ideas sit?