The Author's Gift List

Let's get in the gift-giving mood this year with our first December holidays roundtable.

What would be the top item on your wish list for this year to help you become a better writer? 

Lainey Kennedy: A good dedicated group of fellow writers to keep me accountable and to talk through ideas with. All my friends who used to do this in real life are now super busy.

Scott Roche: Sponsorship to go to a GOOD workshop.

HC Playa: Hmm, more hours in a day 😂. More realistically, using some vacation time for writing days.

John L. Taylor: A new laptop (NOT a Chromebook, those are trash for word processing).

Danielle Procter Piper: Time. I lost a tremendous amount of personal time after the auto accident I was in back in January. I need things to settle so I can work on my craft again. 

Jason Bullock: A "Thank You." So many times we as writers are supporting ourselves, our families, aspiring creatives, all of those around us but often never get a simple "Thank You." This simple positive social convention fills each of us with a feeling of love and community. I try to say "Thank You" to everyone who has given me their support in all that I do. I also would gladly say "Your Welcome" to anyone whose simple gift of thanks fills up both our lives with positive energy.

David Wright: Time.

Sean Taylor: Energy. I need energy to write all the stuff that keeps popping into my story-making-machine (my brain, I hope). So many ideas. So little time. I'm a special ed teacher as well as a writer, and when I get home, I'm pretty much emotionally and mentally wiped out, so writing becomes more of a chore than the adventure it used to be. So, yeah, energy... particularly emotional and mental energy.

Krystal Rollins: Time, discipline and a role model

If you could give anything to a beginning writer to help them on their path, what would it be?

Jason Bullock: A strong sharpened pencil and a lined notebook. Every one of us needs to connect to the origins of all those imaginings, aspirations, and illuminations that we want to share in our storytelling. No matter how technical we become in our mediums to tell those stories, analog, digital, virtual, or even neural, everything begins with putting pencil to paper to ignite the spark we hope to share with everyone around us.

Scott Roche: The book on how to write a novel using the snowflake method.

Krystal Rollins: For a new writer? Journal all the time. 

Danielle Procter Piper: Help them figure out what their ultimate goal is. Do you just want to share your stories, are you expecting movies and merchandising? Something in the middle or something else entirely? If you just want to share, would you consider sites that allow readers to access your work for free without pressure on you? If you want movies would you consider learning screenwriting instead of how to format a short story or novel? Once you know your goal, you can aim for it and save a lot of time. By the way, yes you DO actually have to know how to write well no matter if it's a comic book script, TV commercials, teleplays, poetry, whatever. Most editors and agents will not waste their time on you if you cannot spell and don't comprehend basic grammar or lack cohesion. It is NOT someone else's job to take your splatter of misspelled words and clean it up into a polished masterpiece. You DO need to know how to translate your ideas into comprehensible reading material and prove you're dedicated to improving yourself as a writer. 

David Wright: Marketing support.

Lainey Kennedy: A journal and the idea that you should journal about your projects from a personal/emotional standpoint as much as working directly on the story.

Sean Taylor: I would wish all authors, beginning or old-timers, a renewed vigor for the work. To me, that's the most important thing, you have to want to put your butt in a chair and churn out the words. 

John L. Taylor: A subscription to Writer's Digest and a creative writing correspondence course. I started that way. 

HC Playa: A tutorial on grammar and punctuation and a guide on creative writing (like On Writing by King or any number of similar books). Heck, maybe even this one: Giddy and Euphoric.

Now, just for fun, what's your favorite holiday-themed story or novel? Why?

David Wright: The Santa monster hunter story by James Palmer. 

HC Playa: I have to admit that other than Dickens' A Christmas Carol I can't say I have read that many holiday-themed stories.

That said, a few of the series I have read have done holiday-themed short stories.

One that comes to mind takes place in Sherrilyn McQueen's Dark Hunter universe. You have all these badass, scary, often solitary folks that have survived all kinds of trauma, deal with the worst kinds of evil, and a few maybe made a pact with a certain red-headed goddess to serve her for eternity in exchange for their soul and a single act of vengeance.

In spite of all that you get this glimpse of people creating joy and family, giving to each other b/c they know what it's like to have nothing.

A lot of the holiday shorts authors do can feel a bit cheesy or feel like they don't quite fit the world that has been built. This one (and to be honest I read it years ago and while I can tell you it takes place in Sanctuary before the dragon upstairs found his mate, and possibly before or around the time the wolves found theirs, I honestly can't recall the name of the short story, only that it felt a natural extension of the universe while simultaneously conveying both the loneliness people can feel at the holidays and the joy that can happen when we include others and give selflessly. That, IMO is what the season is about.

Lainey Kennedy: I’m a sucker for A Christmas Carol!

Danielle Procter Piper: I don't know what my favorite holiday story is...but I remain haunted by "The Little Match Girl" which is a sad and painfully brief moment from the life of an innocent child forced to work in abysmal conditions while longing for something better.

John L. Taylor: Roads by Seabury Quinn. It's an origin story for Santa Claus and is surprisingly original for the era (written in the 1930s) yet totally relevant to the religious aspect of Christmas.

Krystal Rollins: I do have a favorite Christmas carol: "O Holy Night."

Sean Taylor: I'm with you on this one, Danielle. "The Little Match Girl" is my favorite holiday story in spite of it's tragic-ness. Something about it is simply haunting, as you said. I'm also a sucker for How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which I've always considered the second greatest redemptive holiday story. "Maybe Christmas,' he thought, 'doesn't come from a store -- Maybe Christmas -- perhaps -- means a little bit more.'" And I recently discovered a fun haunted house story by Charles Dickens called "The Haunted House" (how original, right?) It was part of his "scary ghost stories" tales as referenced in the Christmas song "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year."

Jason Bullock: I don't really have a favorite holiday-themed story or novel. So many of the stories that I have read bleed across the months in character's lives that eventually if you follow their story all the special moments of their lives are laid bare for the reader to see.

Scott Roche: Christmas With the Kranks.

Best Dialog Advice You Ever Received

 

I posted an open question on my various social profiles. I asked this: "What's the best advice you ever got for writing dialog?" Here are the results. 

Josh Nealis: Dialogue is tough. Generally, on my first draft, the dialogue is more or less kind of a placeholder for kind of what I want the character to say. Once the entire story is written and I know the Arc of the character on the second and third passes you can go back and fix the dialogue to Trend in the way you want it to. Always think about what the character is trying to accomplish in that moment or 

Anthony Taylor: This: ", he said."

Cully Perlman: Stick as best as you can to “he said” and “she said” for dialogue tags. Be sparse with anything else. Especially adverbs.

Ef Deal: Tags are not always necessary. Intersperse dialogue with action instead.

Shannon Luchies: Say it aloud. If it sounds wrong, rethink it.

Lucy Blue: If you’re not sure, try reading it out loud. Would you say it? If somebody said it to you, would it get the reaction you intended? Remember, people tend not to talk in long, complex sentences even when they “monologue.” You ain’t Shakespeare; you’re writing conversation, not poetry. Dialogue is my favorite thing to write; it comes most easily to me. It’s descriptions that hang me up.

Susan H. Roddey: It should always sound natural when spoken aloud.

Lainey Kennedy: Read it out loud. You will catch more weirdness from hearing it than reading it on the page.

Devin Hylton: Dialogue is not actual conversation.

David Wright: Find the rhythm in the speech. Don't overburden with tags. Let word choice be governed by character and setting.

John Morgan Neal: As has been said by many already, read it aloud. But I would add to try and read in character. That way avoids all characters 'sounding ' the same.

Angela Hope: Death to adverbs!! (via Stephen King)

John French: (from my high school freshman English class) When writing dialogue, the rules of grammar do not have to be strictly followed.

Jessica Hodges: To help the verbal exchange between characters feel more organic, replace repetitive dialogue tags with action beats.

Jesse Baruffi: Don't spell words differently based on characters' accents. Let word choice make their accents come out.

Characters should not be constantly setting each other up for clever wordplay. Such things occasionally happen, but it is best when it's surprising, and doesn't feel like the author's hand at work.

If all the characters sound the same, it's your voice, not theirs.

Let your characters listen poorly and talk past each other, so only the reader often hears them.

Characters, even honest ones, should usually hold back their feelings and intentions as much as they can until there's no choice but to reveal them.

Also, don't have the characters tell each other things the audience already knows.

Kay Iscah: I disagree with this to a point. Some authors do a fantastic job of conveying accent with dialogue, and it creates a richer experience. But it requires really knowing and understanding the accent.

Don't use an accent to mock a character, but there is a place for regional flavor. I think A Secret Garden is a book in which this works well. But it is extra grating if done badly, so if the accent is slight or unimportant to the story, probably best not to try to imitate it.

I used a very heavy, almost unintelligible accent for one of my fantasy novels, but it was done with purpose, not to mock anyone. But I had to craft rules for it to keep it consistent.

Listen to how people speak, but dialogue can be the characters saying the things you wish you had said an hour later. Unless you need to show nervousness, minimize the "um" and rambles that often come in real conversation. And this does vary a bit by genre, so understand if you're writing an adventure or screenplay dialogue should be very tight. If you're doing a leisurely slice-of-life novel, then you can meander more.

Taylor Mosbey: Read more Mark Twain.

Anna Salazar: I go to a coffee shop and eavesdrop.

Gordon Dymowski: Make a point of focusing on how a person speaks - what vocabulary are they using? Is that person's vocal rhythm unique? Thinking of dialogue like music is one of my key go-to strategies when writing dialogue.

Ali Marceau: Write the conversation that's in your head first...actions and reactions will come to you the more you "study the lines" and you're less likely to forget the feelings of the scene.

Bobby Nash: Walk around the house reading dialogue aloud.

Scott Rogers: Give each character their own way of sayin’ something so their personality comes through. Read what you have written aloud after you have written it.

Ruth de Jauregui: Read it out loud in the cadence and accents of your characters. Words too. So if the Latino across the street says oh my god, it’s in Spanish, then continues in English with his accent. And words spelled differently to mimic the accent, ok, maybe sometimes, but if the book is filled with it, it’s hard to edit and honestly distracts from the story.

Robby Hilliard: Read it out loud. Listen to someone else read it out loud.

Eliseu Gouveia: I usually use movie actors as proxies. I had a dialogue scene where a guy was trying to convince his pissed-off girlfriend to quit smoking. So, in my mind, I projected The Shoveler (Mistery Men) for the guy role, and Morticia Addams/Anjelica Huston as the girlfriend. The results were... unexpected. 😊

John Hartness: Read David Mamet.

Jessica Nettles: Watch Aaron Sorken shows. Read Neal Simon. Listen to real conversations and language. Understand that every person has their own language music and patter.

Nancy Hansen: If I can see the character in my mind's eye, I'll figure out the background, and then the dialogue comes more naturally. Sometimes I'll hunt for the right look online, and either find it in a celebrity or other recognizable person, or maybe some random picture I stumble across. Ethnicity and local/period slang and phrasing will figure in, but as Ruth said, in small doses. Like adding spice to a dish, it gets overwhelming if you add too much. For example, in the Jezebel Johnston pirate series, which takes place in the mid/late 1600s I decided from the outset to not use the 'thees and thous' sort of parlance that was popular in the day. It's hard to do well and gets tiresome to read after a while. I do my share of pirate talk though, just not the theatrical stuff. I also dump in the occasional phrase in French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, etc to remind readers that seafaring was a melting pot affair.

Charles Santino: Less is more. Clever is bad.

Jamais Jochim: Be passionate.

Allen Hammack: Ninety-nine percent of dialog lines should use "said." The very rare substitution should emphasize something important.

Michael McIlvain: Keep it understandable. Eliminate any possible question in the reader’s mind.

Pj Lozito: Don't let any character give a speech...

B. Clay Moore: Don't work to emulate the way people "actually speak." Work to make the way your characters speak seem believable. Also, dialogue comes easily for me once I can "hear" a character's voice in my head. That comes from *knowing* who my characters are. Everything follows from there.

Michael Woods: Dialogue isn't what they say, but how they say it.

Sorella Smith: Writing dialogue and how you tag it are not the same thing. for me, simply saying 'said' can often understate the intent of the dialogue. For others, adding a descriptor devalues the dialogue, gives too much weight to the narrative. Figuring that balance out is separate from writing good dialogue. Dialogue should be suited to the character. Dialogue isn't what should define the character, but it should inform the character and everything about the character should inform it.

Hilaire C Smith: Not really advice for writing so much as personal insight... I learned I am a wordy b**** 😂 and use $5 words regularly... the "would YOU say it like that" doesn't help me. 😂

Also, most of my characters are Southern precisely because I cannot excise my Southern roots from my grammar/vocabulary. Along those lines, some advice: avoid regional dialects as it can be done badly and come off as bigoted if badly done. Ie, it's fine to toss in a "y'all," but making a character sound like Boomhauer might not go over well and will be tiresome to read.

Aaron Rosenberg: Listen to how people speak. Hear your characters speak in your head. Read what they say out loud. Then go listen to people more. 

James P. Nettles III: I’ve been known to dictate, poorly acting out the character voices to get the first draft. And also, listen to old radio shows - very tight dialogue.

James Tuck: if you are having a conversation between two people, once you establish who's talking trust your audience to keep up. You do not have to he said she said that shit all the way down the page.

Jen Mulvihill: I listen to other people interact in dialogue and take note of how they communicate then I play it out in my head with my dialogue then I listen to what I have written in audio playback.

Shannon Murphy: Don't worry about grammar. Nobody speaks in perfect grammar. Write dialog the way people actually speak. That is, if your book is contemporary. If you're writing of another time, you'll have to research how they spoke then. No one in Victorian England is going to say, "Hey, dude!"

Swords, Magic, and the Armor of Author David Wright

A Georgia Bulldog and Atlanta United fan living in Middle Tennessee, David Wright grew up on comic books and Swords & Sorcery novels, where he gained an early passion for storytelling. Ever since he read Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman in 1984, he knew he wanted to write an epic medieval fantasy series. He's also a friend, and I think you should get to know him too!

What prompted you to start this series?

David: Well, I've had a lifelong love for swords & sorcery fantasy and Arthurian legends. This includes playing 1st Ed. AD&D and Red Box/Keep on the Borderlands Basic D&D in the early 80s at the very height of the "Satanic Panic" media scare surrounding the game at the time. I found all the hoopla ridiculous because as a player I knew how innocent and fun the game was.

Now fast forward 20 years and the Lord of the Rings movies are being praised for their (alleged) Christian themes by some of the same type of conservative watchdog groups that once condemned Dungeons & Dragons. I found that hilariously ironic and also as equally ridiculous as the early 80s scare.

In other words, I didn't see the Devil in D&D and I didn't see Jesus in Lord of the Rings. Now, I know it's possible to play a very dark campaign, but I also know it is not intrinsic to the game and there's room for something quite the opposite. I've always seen D&D as an exercise in collaborative improv storytelling and that always appealed to me.

Now I should make it clear that I am a professing Christian and I do my best every day to live accordingly (with full acknowledgment that I fail often and sometimes spectacularly so), but it is quite interesting to me that so many conservative groups and a subset of Christians have such discomfort with the entire genre of Fantasy. I've spent time pondering that. How is a fantastic story blasphemous or threatening to the Faith? It's interesting how quickly the conversation then turns to the idea of religion or the common use in Fantasy of a polytheistic pantheon. There just seemed to be *something* that intertwines the subjects of Fantasy and spirituality in people's minds, for whatever reason that I can't explain.

I simply felt like this disconnect and this discomfort was where the dramatic conflict could be. I wanted to lean into the idea of Christianity existing in a fantasy world where magic is real. I wanted to set out to disprove the Satanic Panic of the early 80s while knowing full well the Bible warns us strongly against witchcraft and divination.

By the mid-80s I was an assistant DM and helped develop the original campaign setting that we used. In 1984, the original Dragonlance Chronicles came out and I knew right away that I wanted to one day adapt D&D adventures into a novel. Now, it was in no way a Christian-themed campaign. It wasn't until the LOTR movies that I started considering writing a novel, but once I did hit upon the idea of that central dramatic conflict, I remembered our old campaign setting.

So very quickly I had a theme and a setting. And I even brought in three characters that were PCs in our mid-80s campaign. The rest of the cast (including the main character) and all of the plot were created after I started developing the novel series. This included role-playing sessions with just me and a single player, a friend of mine who helped me develop the main character. And through our game sessions, many of the series' action set pieces were devised and improvised.

I developed story ideas throughout the first half of the 2000s, spending all of that time not thinking it was very realistic to actually put out a novel. That all changed with Van Allen Plexico launching White Rocket Books and publishing his Sentinels series, beginning (I believe) in 2006. Suddenly, a novel seemed very realistic and that really lit my fire and I finally got serious about it all. I ended up getting a tremendous amount of support and encouragement from Van, and it is likely none of these books would have ever seen the light of day without him. So big shout out to Van!

Is there something in particular about knights and the genre that draws you to it? What is that?

David: There must be, but I'm not sure I can articulate it. I saw a production of Camelot at a young age and my Dad raised me on Errol Flynn's Adventures of Robin Hood and the Robert Taylor Ivanhoe film. I just always loved that romanticized idea of the Age of Chivalry. I was particularly drawn to the King Arthur and Robin Hood stories. But then you add in fantasy elements like wizards, dragons, and magic swords and how can anyone resist? Having a great D&D group at the right impressionable age probably really cemented things for me.

It's rich ground for themes revolving around duty and honor and other heroic ideals. It also lends itself easily to epic stories with the fates of entire kingdoms often at stake. What's not to like? Knights are cool.

You have said before that you wanted to write something that talked about faith but not as a direct allegory, such as Lewis, or to a lesser degree, Tolkien. Why did you want to avoid that and what did you want to say about the life of faith?

David: Well, to clarify, while I do not think I've written in allegory, I've also not done anything to hide the idea that this story very much is set in a world that has had Christianity introduced to it. The backstory is that at the fall of Camelot, Merlin cast the final act of magic our world would ever see to send Sir Galahad away. Galahad is the knight of the round table that found the Holy Grail and in my version of the story, Mordred was after it in that final battle at Camelot that saw him kill King Arthur. Honoring Arthur's final wish, Merlin kept the Grail safe by sending it with Galahad through a hastily summoned portal.  That portal took the knight to the world of Lanis and he happened to have his Bible with him.

My story opens several hundred years after that and we see that Galahad spent the rest of his days traveling and spreading the Word and now there is some form of his religion from the World of Adam that has taken root and grown prevalent. Before he died, he was given a vision of basically a global reboot, similar to the Great Flood account in Genesis in which the world is all but destroyed for the purpose of starting over. This prophecy of his became known as Galahad's Doom.

But I did write the story to not be preachy, to not be some kid-friendly, contrite Sunday School lesson. I very much was concerned with writing an epic-scale action-adventure that would appeal to everyone regardless of their beliefs, or absence of beliefs. Partially to that end, the names God and Jesus never appear in the books. The words Christianity and Bible never appear in the books. It's not that these ideas are avoided, but that different nomenclature has taken root in this world of Lanis.

This is a cool action adventure first, albeit one that just happens to be informed by my personal faith. This is not written at a juvenile level; I wrote for me. The story I wanted to read didn't exist, so I wrote it. There's a large cast, a complex plot with multiple subplots, and shades-of-gray characters. Not every good guy is a believer, and not every believer is a good guy.

Think of it like this: Krynn -- the world featured in the Dragonlance series-- includes gods such as Paladine and Reorx that I do not actually believe in. Yet, I'm able to accept that they are the gods of that story and I'm still able to very much enjoy it. If someone out there believes in Jesus about as much as they believe in Paladine then they can still enjoy my story, just like we all do with Dragonlance. It doesn't have to be any different than that and, by the way, the story is awesome. I'm especially proud of the third book in the trilogy, The Armor of God, that just came out. If you'll come along for the ride, I promise you'll be blown away. I'm just so extremely pleased with how the final book turned out and how the whole series ends. It is so worth the investment of reading the first two books to get to it. The best part is I am 100 percent convinced that every single member of my large cast got exactly the right ending. I can't wait to hear back from readers.

As for what I want to say about the life of faith, my themes are universal, dealing with duty, honor, temptation, corruption, and redemption. And in Galen Griffon, I have a protagonist who struggles with feelings of unworthiness and is forced to choose between serving his god or his king. Church or State.

His arc in the first book, My Brother's Keeper, is very much a metaphor for my own journey. (Even though I've never had a magic sword. As far as I know.)

What is your work schedule during the time you bust out a novel the length of these?

David: Ha! Well, for anyone who's been following along, it's no secret that years and years have gone by between each of my novels. That's one reason I'm so happy to have completed the trilogy: now, all the delays are behind me and people can start the series and not be left hanging.

I wrote the first book in just under a year during a time when I was traveling a lot for my job. Hours and days spent in airports and hotels, away from my family, gave me plenty of time to work rather quickly.

By the time of the second book, I had a different job and had a regular life of coming home to a family every day who needed me for the boring real-life stuff.  So I just wrote when I could and never really figured out a good writing schedule.

With this third book, I developed an idea for a new workflow approach that I think could have helped me a lot, but as it turned out I didn't need it, so I haven't tested this idea yet. So my biggest challenge with sitting down to write is having the time to go back over my notes and what has been written before and just needing a long ramp to tap back into that creative vibe to be able to start knocking out scenes again. I came up with an approach to minimize or possibly eliminate that long ramp. Maybe detailing that idea could be a subject for a different interview, but suffice it to say that the third book came to me so easily that "ramping up" was never an issue.

While this third book has come out several years after the previous one, it was actually written in a trio of 60-day bursts. I first cracked the story in 2018 and wrote about 30k words in just a couple of months. Then a bunch of Real Life happened. I got a new job which involved a big move to a different state and I also lost my laptop. I knew I had backed up my work to Dropbox but I couldn't restore access to that account so for a long time I thought my work was lost. Luckily, that got resolved. Then in early 2020, I opened up the project again and it all just started pouring out of me. I couldn't type fast enough. It all came to me so fully realized that I just had to get it all down... until I got to the end of the second act.

Then I came to a screeching halt. I had two ways in my head for possible endings, but I also didn't know what role my large supporting cast could have in the final act. So I walked away and trusted my characters to solve it for me. I was not the creator of this story, I have been merely the reporter. All this stuff has really happened, it has just been my job to discover it and present it in the coolest way possible. Eventually, a character whispered the answer in my ear one night and I was off to the races again.

I've never had writing go so easily for me as with the writing of The Armor of God. As the third installment, it was just a race to the finish line and the pace of the book is exactly that. It's just relentless with the only levity coming from my bard character's storyline. I'm proud of that one. A true bard's adventure where winning the day requires writing the perfect song. (If it all lent itself to dozens of hidden Beach Boys references, well, I just can't help that. I'm just the reporter, after all.)

What are the books and who are the authors who influenced you in your growth as a writer?

David: My four main inspirations for the Galahad's Doom series are: L'morte d'Artur by Sir Thomas Malory, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and The Dragonlance Chronicles by Weis and Hickman.

(I pay homage to all of these with a quartet of redshirts named Malory, Lewis, Reuel, and Krynn).

I also owe a huge debt to Van Allen Plexico and all the New Pulp and indie authors I know.

I have studied Joseph Campbell and also found studying short stories to be an easy way to discern story structure. To that end, I read a lot of Poe and O Henry.

Tell us about your other work too.

David: The books in my Galahad's Doom trilogy (My Brother's Keeper, Marching As To War, and The Armor of God) are my first three novels. In addition to those, I have had short stories included in The Sentinels: Alternate Visions and Gideon Cain: Demon Hunter by White Rocket books and in Hero's Best Friend from Seventh Star Press.

We'll see what's next. I have both Untold Tale-style short story ideas and prequel novel ideas for the world of Galahad's Doom. I'm also definitely open to the idea of inviting other writers into my sandbox for an anthology. So if that sounds good to any writers out there (including you, Sean!) then reach out and let me know.

In addition to my writing, I have a YouTube channel called American Soccer Quick Kicks where I discuss the Men's National Team, MLS, and the rules of the game to casual fans of the sport, or just soccer-curious sports fans. It's all short-form content: no deep dives, usually just ten minutes or so to keep you updated and then get you back to your day.

Where can we find out more about you and your work?

David: My website is http://www.galahadsdoom.com

My YouTube is http://www.youtube.com/@americansoccerquickkicks

On Twitter, I am @defdave

Now that the series is complete, I hope to devote more time and effort to marketing. I thank you for this interview. I'm open to other bloggers and podcasters out there and I'll be looking at getting into whatever library shows, lit fairs, and retailer expos I can manage to find regionally.

What's the best advice you ever received about writing?

David: Observe life. Our world is too rich to ever have boring characters.

Also, make sure writing stays fun. Take pleasure in language. Relish it, savor it. Wield it like a scalpel... or maybe a Sword +2.

But what really unlocked me as a writer was understanding story structure. Take that seriously. Understand what makes stories work. Once I got my head around structure, the rest came easy for me.

Not So Famous Last (and First) Words

All writers tend to have their favorite opening sentences (or paragraphs) and closing lines from stories they've read. They tend to be so well know they end up on mugs and shirts and all kinds of what-nots and doodads. 

You probably know the lines so well, I won't even have to list the sources. Go ahead. Try it.

• It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
• So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
• It would be pretty to think so. 
• Call me Ishmael.
• It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
• As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
• The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
• After all, tomorrow is another day.
• Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
• But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.
• It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
• He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
• The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
• I am haunted by humans.
• There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.

But what about your favorite opening and closing lines from your work? Lay 'em on us. We want to know. 

Elizabeth Donald: ​

Sara Harvey thought she was doing pretty well until the corpse started in with the puns. -- Blackfire

It really was a dark and stormy night. -- A More Perfect Union

Ernest Russell: 

1st line; Orland squinted as he tilted the bottle.-- From an unpublished short story

Last line; As he hit the river, his hand closed on liquid nothing. -- From an unpublished short story

Larry Young:

 It's been so long I forgot how much I hate sportin' the aluminum underwear. -- One Shot, One Beer

Anna Grace Carpenter: 

Opening -- On a hot July day Mama went cracked, locked my sisters and me in the tool shed, and lit us up like a Christmas tree. - Of Lips and Tongue

Opening -- Opening: During my last days on Malachee, I told Diamondback Jack it didn't matter how many souls I sent to an early grave, I could only die once for my sins. -- A Fistful of Dust

Van Allen Plexico: 

Down rained the night, cloaked all in fire and brimstone. -- First line of Lucian

Hawk awoke naked and screaming in the heart of a shattered galaxy. -- First line of Hawk

My father burned. -- First line of Barnak

The ghost of a god stood on a dead world and screamed his frustration at the shattered stars. First line of Kings of Oblivion

John Linwood Grant: 

Private Carter failed to die tonight. -- opening line of Songs of the Burning Men

David Wright: 

Everything you know about Genghis Khan is wrong. -- unreferenced

Allan Kemp: 

Nell cradled the semi-automatic assault rifle like a baby, keeping it close to her body and giving it plenty of support with both arms. -- unreferenced

Lucy Blue: 

To make the black cat bone, you have to boil the cat alive. -- The opening line from a horror/romance story in Eat the Peach, "Black Cat Bone"

Guess what, he told her, whispering in his mind, knowing she would hear him. I can do magic, too. -- My favorite closing, from The Devil Makes Three: 

Marian Allen: 

My wife and Lonnie's wife leant against the back door with their arms crossed over their chests and that blank look they always get when they're trying to decide whether to laugh or rip us new ones. --First line of "Lonnie, Me, and the Hound of Hell"

“You make me sick,” said Tartarus. -- Last line of Silver and Iron

Bobby Nash: 

Abraham Snow knew he was about to die -- and the thought of it pissed him off to no end. -- Snow Falls

Ef Deal: 

When a guy like Czesko says he wants to get baptized, you know it's gonna be weird night. --  "Czesko," F&SF March 2006

Mari Hersh-Tudor: 

She was alien, and she was going to die before he could find out where she came from. -- The War Dogs

The backflow regulator exploded in a shower of hot metal and sparks and this time it definitely, absolutely, was not Arin Riobi’s fault. Starfly lurched and threw Arin across the cramped compartment as it dropped out of hyperspace. Unintentionally. -- How Not To Hire A Mechanic

Danielle Palli:

So you see, my darling. You're not the only one with secrets. -- Between the Layers, Book #3 in The Data Collectors trilogy 

Sean Taylor:  

The woman across the table from me wasn’t really a woman at all. -- -- From "It's Christmas, Baby, Please Come Home," Show Me A Hero

The man who killed me wore a tattoo of Santa Claus across his chest. -- From "Sin and Error Pining," Show Me A Hero

The woman’s accent was just German enough to get his attention, all dripping with sexy gutturals and thick vowels, just exotic enough to trick a man’s ears into thinking he was having a drink with Marlene Dietrich instead of some two-bit nightclub singer in a no-account New York dive like Belle’s, but the comparison stopped cold at the woman’s voice. -- Opening from "Die Giftige Lilie,” The Ruby Files Volume 1

 “Oh boy. I should’ve tried harder to get killed.” “Like I’d let you get off that easy.” -- Closing from "Die Giftige Lilie,” The Ruby Files Volume 1

Romancing the Genre (With Apologies to the Stone)

This week, we're going to look at working romance into your other genres. What is the appeal of having romantic subplots in stories that are more typically focused on action, adventure, or even horror? We turned to the jury to get their verdict. 

Have you found a romantic subplot in your action and adventure (whatever genre you're actioning in) stories to be a helpful extra layer or not? Why?

Corrina Lawson: To be specific on questions, my own work straddles the line between romance and other genres. It's a terrific layer because it should (ideally) key into the growth of the character. A character has to undergo a sort of transformation to their best self in the story--and sometimes it's only the romantic interest who can see through the chaff to that best self. (Witness, say, Romancing the Stone, where Kathleen Turner basically forces Michael Douglas to take a hard look at who he wants to be.) 

Selah Janel: I haven’t written a lot of romance, but I’ve done a few things and a lot of what I write has romantic subplots. For me, I really like exploring relationships and interactions between characters. I really like playing with circumstance and tension, and getting under the surface to explore how characters relate and grow together. 

HC Playa: I write adventures with sex and love because I cannot for the life of me write actual romance.

Lucy Blue: Why do I write romance? Because I think human connection is the most interesting, most valuable reward any protagonist can achieve. It’s what we fight for. It’s what we survive for. And we can portray that by putting in a generic hot chick or dude to fridge and forget while we get on with the kung fu fighting. Or we can be brave and let that relationship be real. In movies, that works all the time. But in books, a real relationship equals romance, and romance equals Hallmark. And yeah, that makes me tired.

Emily Leverett: I've got a romantic subplot in my Eisteddfod Chronicles. The two MC have an affair. It's as much about the political implications as the personal, and both will continue to matter as the story comes to a close. Sometimes (all the time?) it's not possible to separate the personal and political. 

Sean Taylor: I almost always have a romantic element in my stories. I think it makes a fantastic B-plot or even C-plot depending on the length of the work, and it allows me to showcase more characteristics of my characters rather than just their ability to punch or exorcise horrors. 

David Wright: I tend to let the characters decide.

Mike Hintze: I go with the flow. The story tells me what happens

What is the appeal to readers to find a romantic story squirreled away inside other genres?

Lucy Blue: I have never written about rose petals in my life. I write action-packed, gory, hard-edged horror and fantasy stories with real conflict and peril that just happen to have a romantic relationship at their center. But as soon as I say I write romance, other horror and fantasy writers think rose petals and emotional melodrama. (This is me not talking about it.

Sean Taylor: As a reader myself, I always love to find them, as long as they don't overpower the A-plot. But they can get as close as they want to without bothering me. I look to the greats like Rebecca or even Haunting at Hill House. Without the romantic subplots, even those stories (one to a great degree obviously) would have been far more "one note" stories.

Emily Leverett: A romance can make a good backdrop for those explorations, because little is more personal than who you're having sex with.

Selah Janel: I think people tend to simplify what romance is and why people read it. I think it’s another way of seeking catharsis and when a person sees themselves or their personality reflected in a character, it gives hope that things can work out for them and they’re worthy of love, too. There’s a whole gamut of situations and emotions to explore - is a feeling required, unrequited, is there loss involved or baggage that might be an obstacle, how they see themselves and others - just all sorts of things that factor into how people relate to each other. It makes that moment when two characters do connect or reconnect that much more interesting and sweeter.

Corrina Lawson: The appeal to readers is more insight into characters, I would guess. Less so than in novels, but in movies, the romance part often seems tackled on because the love interest is only there to be rescued or in peril. *Even today.* I think romance gets a bad rep because of those types of movies. Most of the time, the movies would be better without them because they're not central to the character's story.

Or do you feel that romantic subplots just get in the way of your main plots?

Mark Holmes: I love a good romantic subplot! The problem is in 8 to 10 pages of a comic script I usually don't have any space to tell one other than a quick smooch at the end of the story.

Nik Stanosheck: The romance can be a way to get to know the characters and to help them grow and develop more.

Corrina Lawson: Romance is a type of relationship. I find authors who write relationships well tend to also write romance well, and it adds character and depth to a story. I should clarify, that in the genres I write, characters try to find their best selves. Obviously not true of other genres where tragic endings are fine. But romances there can also underscore character faults and bad choices.

Sean Taylor: At least the way I try to write them, they add to the main story rather than getting in the way, at least I sure hope so. That's the plan when I start to write anyway. 

David Wright -- Maybe His Brother's Keeper After All

Tell us a bit about your latest work. 

My first novel has just been published by White Rocket Books. It is called My Brother’s Keeper and it is the first in a planned three-part series called Galahad’s Doom. It is Swords & Sorcery fantasy adventure with a spiritual theme. It is primarily a story about two brothers, Galen and Lucas Griffon, and the different paths their lives take, but I also weave a bunch of other story threads, as well.

I remember as kid growing up in the 80s, all the controversy surrounding Dungeons & Dragons and how it was an occult practice. Yet in the early 2000s, a lot of the same type of conservative groups that had condemned D&D were now praising the Lord of the Rings movies for their Christian message.  Both instances confused me. I didn’t see the Devil in D&D and I didn’t see Jesus in Lord of the Rings, and I found it very interesting that there seemed to be a contradiction there.

It occurred to me that, in a day of Harry Potter stories that seemed to grow increasingly darker and draw increasing concern from watchdog groups, perhaps there was room within the fantasy genre to demonstrate a lighter sensibility. So I ended up with a spiritual theme to my book.

Galen is a young soldier who finds himself torn between duties to church and state; he must choose if he will serve his king or his god. Where Galen’s crisis is spiritual in nature, Lucas struggles with the physical and the emotional. He routinely makes bad choices and finds himself fighting for survival and acceptance. Meanwhile, there are wizards and demons secretly vying to control the fate of the world and war is brewing.

The backstory is that a religion called The Way was originally brought to this world by Saint Galahad from the World of Adam. Before he died, the Saint received a vision of a cataclysmic future. Not so much End-of-the-World Armageddon, but more like The Great Flood, where the whole world was wiped out for the purposes of basically starting over. But will this coming disaster end with all evil removed from the world, or all good? That is what is at stake in the Saint’s prophecy, which is known as Galahad’s Doom.

And, of course, Galen may just find himself at the heart of the prophecy as events begin to unfold.

I’m very excited about the book, very pleased with how it came out. I hope folks will check it out.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work? 

I don’t have a large body of work. I work during the day as a mild-mannered video producer. I began writing fiction in 2007. Since then, I have had a total of four short stories published and now this novel.

I had two stories appear in The Sentinels: Alternate Visions (White Rocket Books), a story and a poem in Gideon Cain: Demon Hunter (Airship 27) and then earlier this year Seventh Star Pressed published a story of mine in Hero’s Best Friend.

So I don’t know if I have a large enough body of work to recognize any threads. Although both Galen and Gideon Cain are spiritual, I suppose. And racial tensions are present in two of my short stories as well as My Brother’s Keeper.

My Hero’s Best Friend story, “Wind of Change”, is set in the same world as my novel and features two of my favorite supporting characters. It’s basically an origin story, telling how these two characters—one of which is a hawk—first meet each other.

Galen’s story is a planned trilogy and I have all kinds of ideas for short stories set in the same world, so I imagine all of those will end up sharing common themes.

What would be your dream project? 

Well, my dream would be that somehow this novel catches on with the general public and is successful enough to allow me to write future installments on a full-time basis. I have been developing this setting and these characters for years and I’m full of story ideas. I live with a constant anxiety that I will never get these stories told before I die.

Or maybe I should say I’d love to one day serve as producer and creative consultant of the feature film adaptation of my book series.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do? 

My only regret is that I waited until 2007 to start writing. I wonder what I would have accomplished by now as a writer if I had just decided to pursue this wonderful hobby much earlier in life.

My father actually passed away in the middle of the writing of My Brother’s Keeper. And I ended up drawing on that experience towards the end of the book when Galen found himself with questions about this father.

My dad gave me my joy of reading and he and I enjoyed the same types of stories. He would have loved this book. So if I had a do-over, I’d only wish I had started in time to allow him to read the finished product.

What inspires you to write? 

I’m not so much inspired as driven. As I said, I’m filled with anxiety that I might not ever tell all the stories I want to tell. There’s a constant, gnawing urgency that I often must ignore because of more pressing concerns.

It’s not so much that I want to write, as it is I must write.  Does that make sense?

What writers have influenced your style and technique? 

The obvious influences on this book are JRR Tolkien, Sir Thomas Malory and Howard Pyle. And probably Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I’m also influenced by my peers such as yourself, Van Plexico, Ian Watson and a bunch of others.

I’m also influenced by my own sense of visual storytelling. I’m a 20-year veteran in the world of video production and through that I’ve developed my own sense of how to build a scene and convey the action in an interesting way.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug? 

Right now, I’m just trying to promote My Brother’s Keeper. It will be debuting at the Alabama Phoenix Festival in Birmingham, May 30-June 1st.   I am more than halfway through writing the sequel, which will be called “Marching As To War”.

There are Amazon links on my page at www.whiterocketbooks.com and I’d love for everyone to follow my blog at galengriffon.blogspot.com. More than anything, I crave conversation and discussion with readers of my book. I encourage everyone to talk to me after they’ve read the book.

Thank you, Sean. I appreciate you giving me the chance to talk about my book.