[Link] When Your Process Isn't Working for You, Change Your Process

by Chuck Wendig

That’s it, that’s the lesson. I said it in the post headline. You can go home now.

OKAY FINE WAIT don’t go home.

So, it is once again National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo, and maybe you’re doing it, maybe you’re not, maybe you’ll succeed at the task, maybe you will be overwhelmed by holiday stress and global chaos, maybe you’ll be eaten by bears, I don’t know you, I don’t know your life.

What I know is this:

When writing, and that’s true for this month or any other month, it is entirely acceptable to blow up your process with a variety of metaphorical explosives. We all think we know how we do things. We think we know how we write. We think we know how we tell stories. Over time we super-glue ourselves to our process, and in fact that process can become a part of us in a problematic way as we mythologize and even fetishize said process. (Weirder still, we will then sometimes attempt to turn our process from mythology and fetish to straight-up cult and religion — look no further than any TEN WAYS YOU MUST WRITE, YOU FUCKING HEATHEN lists.) I’m guilty of this as anybody, to be clear! I definitely put a ring on my process and stayed married to it long beyond its value. Hell, the very start of my novel-writing career was born out of me shedding some rather foolish ideas I had about my process and the wifty head-in-clouds notions that governed it at the time.

And now I’ve used ‘process’ far too many times.

Process, process, process. Princess abcess praxis.

*clears throat, tries to escape this linguistic oubliette*

Anyway, my point is ultimately this: you’re gonna eventually hit a speedbump or even a wall where you discover that the Way You Write is simply no longer working.

Read the full article: https://terribleminds.com/ramble/2023/11/02/when-your-process-isnt-working-for-you-change-your-process/

[Link] The Eternal Question: What Should I Write?

by Chuck Wendig

One of the questions I get most frequently over email is this:

What should I write?

The question presumably meaning, what kind of thing should I write? What genre? What story? Maybe it’s the first thing you’re ever going to write. Maybe it’s just the next thing in a long line of written things.

And the answer to this question is simple.

That answer is:

How the fuck should I know?

I mean, I’m not you. At least, not until I get my SOUL TRANSPLANT HELMET working, but that’s at least five years off — maybe seven if Elon doesn’t call me back (seriously, Elon, get your shit together, gimme a ring, Musk). Because I am (presently) not you, I have no idea what you should write. Because the advice of what to write is not a thing that has an easy answer — or, really, any answer. You want the answer to be something concrete, something that is the result of plugging variables in and punching the CALCULATE STORY button, but no such thing exists. You can’t “run the numbers” and end up with the perfect answer (“Ah! I should write — let’s see, mumble mumble, carry the three, put the DNA on the slide, shake the shoebox with the cat inside of it, et voila — I should write The Terminator meets The Gilmore Girls as if written by Mary Shelley. Bestseller status, here I come.”)

It doesn’t work like that.

But what I can do is tell you how I come to terms with what I should write next. Because this isn’t a question just some writers have — it’s a question that plagues us all, I think. It plagues us at the start. It plagues us throughout our career. It plagues n00bs, midlisters, even bestsellers. It plagues traditionally-published authors and indie authors. It is a question I ask myself even as I’m writing one thing because I always need to know what’s next? And what’s next after that? If this book is successful, what else can I write in that vein? If it tanks, how do I move to an adjacent track that still makes sense? Where am I? Why am I wearing pants? Is this a curse? Did I spit in the Pants God’s eye? WHY HAS THOU FORSAKEN ME, OH PANTSLESS PANTHEON

Ahem, sorry.

Here is what I do to determine what I’m gonna write next.

Read the full article: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2018/05/08/the-eternal-question-what-should-i-write/

[Link] WHY IS HORROR SO ANATHEMA IN PUBLISHING?

by Chuck Wendig

I write horror novels, mostly.

I just don’t call them horror. They’re urban fantasy. They’re supernatural suspense. They’re near-future sci-fi thrillers. But definitely, totally, super-not-horror. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, a finger thrust up before my rubbery latex clown mask where I shush you long, low and slow, shhhhhhhhhh. Don’t worry! Not horror at all.

*squeaks clown nose to comfort you, honk-honk*

Except, psst: they’re totally horror. I don’t even necessarily mean they’re horror as a genre. Horror as a genre is a bullseye on the back of a galloping horse — sure, there are certain tropes and conventions that mark something as horror, but these usually mark it more as a subgenre of horror rather than an overarching convention. Horror, to me, is as much a mood as it is a convergence of tropes or ideas. That mood goes beyond merely invoking fright. It’s about traipsing into the dark, about shining a flickering flashlight beam on some nastiness, and probing fear and discomfort up and down the spectrum. From big stuff (surveillance state, religion, apocalypse) to little stuff (hey guess what there’s a guy in your closet covered in someone else’s skin and he has a camping hatchet covered in blood and hair). I love it. I grew up reading it. I write it. Zer0es is a wet-wired hacker thriller where the surveillance state is so intrusive it might literally be drilled into the back of your skull. Invasive is a fun thrillery Jurassic Park romp ha ha ha oh and did I mention it contains ants who will cut off your skin with their mandibles in order to farm your flesh snippets for delicious fungus? Miriam Black can literally see how you’re going to die, and people get eaten by flocks of birds and there are folks with no eyes and a guy gets chopped up in a garbage disposal. Doesn’t matter that nobody wants to call them horror — the Miriam Black books are horror novels from snoot-to-chute. Exuent will be apocalyptic in its scope, and though I’m sure it’ll be labeled a thriller, it is intentionally meant to be scary, creepy, unsettling in the same way you find The Stand or Swan Song. In other words: It’s horror.

Read the full article: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/10/26/why-is-horror-so-anathema-in-publishing/

[Link] TEN QUICK STORY TIPS TO USE OR DISCARD AT YOUR LEISURE

by Chuck Wendig

1. Story is, as I am wont to remind, the destruction of the status quo. A story begins when the expected course of events deviates — it’s like a bone breaking. Compound fracture, crack. The inciting incident is that break. High school is high school until a new teacher shows up and changes everything. The magical fantasy kingdom is doing its thing until the king is murdered by a murderous murdercorn (aka a once-innocent unicorn that turned super shitty). This isn’t hard to see in stories that exist: the original Star Wars trilogy has the Empire serving as the status quo, and then Luke, Leia and the gang provide the match-tip to the Rebellion powderkeg and boom, status quo shattered. This is true for the inciting incident and also true as the story progresses — any time the story threatens to return to a “new normal” or some kind of status quo, it is your job to once again break that bone just as it heals. Plot is born of this.

2. Plot is also born of agitation. Agitation is best served as conflict between characters — aka, drama. The drama llama is a storyteller’s best friend. Love the drama llama. Ride the drama llama. Make love to the — wait, no. Sorry! *sprays bleach on your brain* Characters with competing agendas, desires, and emotions agitate one another simply by dint of pursuing (or denying) these agendas, desires and emotions. It’s like putting a bunch of spiders and centipedes and beetles in a jar and shaking it up — they fight and crawl and try to escape or eat each other. Story basically starts to write itself once you’ve got these fundamental elements, because the characters will forever push the narrative forward. This isn’t magical, though, and you’ll still need to control the characters. Otherwise they will be literally born and you will wake up surrounded by them. They will have knives. Okay, maybe it is magic. Whatever.

Read the full article: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/10/05/ten-quick-story-tips-to-use-or-discard-at-your-leisure/