The #1 Rule of Everything

I ended my last blog post with this "pro tip":

Yes, your blog is important, but your family and your fiction are more important. If you have to take time off from your blog (say, to finish long overdue revisions on a novel), don't apologize for it. Very few—if any—of your readers are going to be camping out, wondering when the next post is going to drop. If anybody gives you shit, give 'em the ol' mental middle finger. You know what you're dealing with/going through/working on—they don't. Do your work, and get back to the blog when you can. You're only human.

And boy did I take my own advice seriously.

Hello again. The revisions to the novel are finally happening in a productive way, and I have a rare moment of nothing-to-do here to catch you up on what's been going on with me. I just won the 2012 Codex Halloween Contest, so that's pretty awesome. Ken Liu and I battled it out for first place, going back and forth several times, but the voting happened to end while I was up. I admire Ken a lot, so it was a real honor. (Ken's story, by the way, was very good, and I expect we'll see it soon in the pages of a major magazine. I'm currently shopping my story around as well, and I'm finding even good horror can be hard to sell, especially at 7500 words. I'll keep you updated on my progress.)

But that's not really why I'm writing this.

First of all, let me say, there's a tendency for writers to become obsessed with rules. If you're reading my blog series "Chasing the First Sale," you know I'm the chiefest of sinners; my series is full of rules, and there's a good reason for that: rules are helpful. They give shape to good tendencies and bad. They create the illusion of objective form, so we can more easily articulate and decide whether to embrace an idea/technique/etc. or discard it. And that's fine. That's why rules are everywhere in the fiction world. If you're a beginner, you're probably choking on them right now. Choke away. It's good to let these things into your head so they can battle it out; the truly good pieces of advice will emerge shining and victorious by producing publishable fiction for you again and again. But by then I suspect they won't be rules; they'll be habits, and that's the goal.

But rules are not free. In some ways, they own the bridge between you and your success, but the tolls they level at you can be a bitch. Let me explain what I mean.

"I made that up."

"Should."

How often do you hear that word? I'm willing to bet you hear it (and use it) every day. Probably several times a day. If you're a fiction writer, you hear it all the time in relation to your craft. You're told you should show, not tell. You should write sympathetic characters. You should avoid passive voice like the plague. (Cliches too.) (You should also avoid using too many parenthetical asides.) Should, should, should. This "shoulding" is plenty annoying when it comes to issues of craft—it's merely annoying because it's easy to adapt to rules of craft. You just go, "Oh. Well, I guess I won't use adverbs in dialogue attribution anymore."—but it can become devastating in issues of the writing lifestyle.

You should write every day. You should write 500-1000 keep-able words in an hour. You should read a new book every week. You should keep up with the major magazines. You should know the names of every editor in the business, every prominent agent, every writer currently doing top notch work. You should attend conventions regularly. You should blog regularly. (Gotta build that platform!)

It doesn't stop there. The more rules you hear, the more "shoulds" you absorb, the more they can begin to crush you. You'll even start "shoulding" yourself.

You should be farther than this. You should have more sales. You should have won an award by now. You should be more visible. You should make more money.

At this point, the "shoulds" have got you running scared. You want to be a successful writer so badly, you can't bear the thought that it's slipping through your fingers. This can motivate you, especially in the short term, but chances are, if you let this kind of thinking go on long enough, you'll crash. You'll crash hard.

This is why I'm blogging today, guys—this happened to me.

No sweat.
I just won't fall and break my ass, that's all.

I don't recommend ever doing what I'm doing here. Discussing your personal life in a professional setting is generally a no-no. (This is one of the good rules, more often than not.) But I feel compelled to share this in hopes that maybe someone reading it will recognize this tendency in themselves and hopefully prevent a real crash. Because once you fall all the way down, it's a long climb back up.

A year and a month ago, I had never been to a writing convention. In the space of a year, I attended World Fantasy Convention where I got my first real look at the landscape of publishing, what it takes to make it, the scope of the competition, the sheer number of immensely talented people out there. (The truth is you're not competing, not really, but that's another topic altogether.) I attended C2E2 and learned the same things about the comics field, which I am also very passionate about. I won my first Codex contest, taking first in January's Weekend Warrior and beating many writers I look up to and enjoy reading.

This last one is weird. Winning a contest should (there's that word) be an affirmation that you're doing something right, but I didn't take it that way. To me, it meant it wasn't skill standing in my way anymore; it was me. I should've been writing more stories, submitting them more diligently, etc. It took the full weight of the "why aren't you farther along" question and dropped it squarely on my shoulders.

Now let's pause. At this point, what was actually wrong with me and my career? Well, nothing. I could have been writing more, but I was still producing some good fiction. I was blogging effectively and gaining twitter followers. My blogs were going up on SFWA as guest posts. I was even selling some stories. So what was the problem?

Just that word. Goddamn "should."

I had allowed my expectations, the rules I had heard, my fears, all of it to creep in and soil my resolve. In short, I had should my own pants.

I won't go into my personal life in detail, but suffice it to say, an unhappy person is never unhappy in just one area of their life. Like a lot of writers, I have a tendency to get depressed. And I did. Big time. My work suffered. My relationships suffered. On and on, the snowball rolled.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, my wife suggested I get some help, and in a rare moment of clarity, I heard her. I didn't want to feel like shit. I wanted to feel good, to tell my stories, to be a fantastic husband and father and friend. Not because I had to (nice try, should; I see through that disguise), but because I wanted to. Because that's what life means to me.

So I went. And I learned some things. And with the help of a low-dose of Welbutrin (SCIENCE, bitches!), I was able to put those things into practice. I learned that just because somebody else feels something, it doesn't mean I have to feel it too. I learned that each bad moment doesn't have to connect to every bad moment that came before or might come after. I learned that other people's opinions of me are none of my business. I learned that sometimes it's okay to say "fuck it." And most relevant to this post, I learned to (god, it sounds so simple) do my best, and cut myself some slack. Nobody follows all the rules all the time, so why should I expect to?

I titled this post "The #1 Rule of Everything," but that's just a title. There is no rule like that, and god, I'm glad of it. (If you must have a #1 Rule, make it "Don't let rules rule you." Or something similarly snappy that wouldn't be out of place on a church sign.) If I had to retitle this post, I would call it, "You're Only Human."

"We should be on the moon right now."

And that's okay, Blog Reader and Aspiring Writer. That's just fine. Learn what you can, collect and archive those rules we talked about, do your best to produce and improve, but when you hit a speed bump, for the love of god, don't beat yourself into the ground over it. Success is a sliding bar; it will always drift away from you. Reach one level, and you'll find the bar has moved on to the next. So rather than chasing "success," chase happiness.

Don't think about how happy you'll be when you're living on the coast in a stylish little cabin making 100k/year writing books that come easy. Instead, think about how good it feels to sit down to write, snug in your chair, fingers on the keys, realizing that there's nowhere else you're supposed to be. It's time for that familiar sense of struggle as you pull the words out, one by one, and by god, doesn't it feel great? Like hard exercise? Like skinning your knee and standing back up? This is what you are, Aspiring Writer, and you're being it, right now, in this moment.

Think that. Then move your fingers.

Chasing the First Sale (Part 3): Becoming a Student of the Job

"All artists are willing to suffer for their work, but why are so few prepared to learn to draw?" —Banksy

I grew up loving stories. Not in a normal way; I loved them so much it hurt. It wasn't enough just to enjoy them; I had to own them, imitate them, and—eventually—create some of my own. No matter what I did with my life, I knew telling stories was going to be part of it. I wanted to write for comics, for video games, for the screen. But like a would-be musician desperately wanting to "be in a band," I had to learn an instrument first. Short stories were the first instrument I picked up. If you're reading this, maybe they're your first instrument too.

WHY SHORT STORIES?

That's right. One step at a time, little guy.
Wait. Is that the new Guitar Hero controller?!
...

Because they're a good first instrument to learn. You can't make a career writing short stories—sadly, those days are gone—but they can teach you most of what you need to know to write in other capacities later on. They teach you, first and foremost, how to tell a story. They teach you how to format a manuscript, how to submit to editors, how to deal with rejection and—occasionally—success.

For example, what do you do when an editor says, "It's great, but I hate the ending. Make it better. I'm not going to tell you how, but if you're up to the challenge, I'll buy it." (Big gulps, huh? Welp. See ya later.) Aren't you glad you aren't going through that with a novel your first time out? Aren't you glad it's just a story you have to fix? Learn to fight the battles in short form so you'll know what to do when you have to fight them in long form; if you learn your lessons well, when that times comes it will be a (not-so-simple, but simpler) matter of adjusting what you already know.

Short stories are a proving ground. They let you get out there, try a bunch of things out, and make your mistakes small so you don't have to make all of them big. When I hear an unpublished writer talking about the epic fantasy trilogy they're going to write, my first thought (other than, "Man, I remember that phase.") is, "What a shame." Not because I don't believe they can someday do it, but because they're trying to play to a stadium crowd without learning a G chord first. Practice in the garage, play some local shows, then bigger shows, etc. Don't be the guy or gal with thirty unpublished novel fragments taking up hard drive space. Be realistic, even if it hurts. Look at where you are, own it, and grow from there.

So how do you grow? How do you learn that G chord?

LEARN THE BASICS

You start (I'm abandoning the music metaphor now) by making sure you've got English down. This means grammar, punctuation, the works. I can hear you groaning from here, but I'm serious. If you aren't sure where commas go, how to use a semicolon, when to write in past-perfect, what the subjunctive mood is (and why or why not to use it), learn that shit. I was fairly fortunate in that most of this stuff came easily to me. The tangles I found along the way (and the tangles I continue to find), I comb out, first by googling them to make sure I have them right, then by drilling them in my brain until they're second nature. Every time [problem x] comes up, a bell goes off in my brain, followed by a little voice that says, "That's that thing you've been doing wrong; you just did it again. Stop it. Forever this time."

Sound nuts? Welcome to life as a writer.

If you want to be a pro writer, it should bug the hell out of you when you don't know something. You should make it a point to be as technical as you can stand to be, because the industry doesn't have time for your mistakes, and there are plenty of people who are just as hungry and talented who know and follow the goddamn rules. Know them. Follow them. (Unless you need to break them for some compelling reason, in which case, for god's sake, know why you're doing it.) Don't fail on a technicality before the game even starts.

Here's how nuts I am: I don't even text in improper English. Sure, I swear like a sailor and say the kinds of stupid things we all say, but I capitalize. I put in my apostrophes and commas. I spell out my words. Whether I'm texting, Facebooking, you name it, I make sure to do these things.Why? It's not because I'm a Nazi or because I think my shit don't stink; it's because, when it's time to write something professional, I want it to be effortless, like buckling your seat belt without even realizing you're doing it. Because it's important stuff. I'm a member of a forum called Codex for pro and neo-pro writers. Guess what? It's the only forum I've seen (other than SFWA) where every member can spell, punctuate, etc. It's amazingly refreshing. Now go, and do thou likewise.

"i do it 2 sav time!!!1 itz werth it duh"

And yes, I realize I just painted a big target on my back. I'm human too, and if it'll make you feel cool to point out the typos and errors I've (no doubt) made while writing this blog, knock yourself out. But when you're done schooling teacher in front of the class, I hope you'll remember the point of the lesson. Work hard. Do your best to weed out mistakes. You'll be glad you put in the time, because we're about to get to the harder stuff.

MAKE YOUR FUN ABOUT YOUR WORK

Harder stuff? But the headline has the word "fun" in it!

Changing what you do for fun (or at least paying attention to it in a productive way) can be really difficult. We don't like being told to change our lives, not the least little bit, but that's exactly what I'm about to ask you to do. (I'm being dramatic; this will only sting a little.) Here are some ways you can tweak and transform the things you enjoy to help make you a better writer:

1) Read. For god's sake, read.

First, find some heroes. These will be a few writers you want to emulate, to idolize, to learn all you can from. My heroes are Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Scott Card; between the three of them, my awesomeness bases are more than covered. Find your heroes (I'll happily share mine), those writers you find effortless to read, who make your head spin with their brilliance, who become like old friends and teachers. Chances are, you already have some people in mind. It's usually these heroes who inspire us to take up writing in the first place. Never abandon them. Keep them nearby as a measuring stick. Don't aspire to be the best in your school or your critique group or your family. Aspire to be like your heroes. Don't settle for anything less. And, if at all possible, leave open the possibility of looking past your heroes. You may never grow to their level, but who knows? You may grow beyond it.

Once you have some writers to look up to who are doing the kinds of work you want to do, it's time to branch out. Read outside your genre. If you write horror, read westerns. If you write sci fi, read romance. If you write fantasy, read mainstream. Don't camp inside your genre and spend your career reheating Tolkien or Lovecraft. If you want to do anything of lasting value in your genre, you have to bring new things in from outside it.

Read nonfiction. (Documentaries count too.) Read books on history and science and psychology and astronomy and anything else you can get your hands on. Read books on business and marketing (believe me, you'll need 'em). Hell, read books about mathematics. Devour this stuff. Know the world you live in, and you'll have more meaningful things to say about it.

2) Listen to audio books. Wait, isn't that the same as reading? Yes and no. Audio books will teach you something that reading text on a page can't: the music of language. There is a flow to the spoken word, a kind of rhythm that just sounds right when it's done well. I've never heard of anyone being able to teach this in a class room or a workshop. It's a slippery, subjective concept, but an important one all the same. Listening to stories (even nonfiction) read aloud is the only way I know to improve your awareness of this aspect of writing. I'm not even sure you can "pay attention" to this. Just give your ears time with words. (By the way, reading your own work aloud can—almost without fail—instantly improve it. Read everything aloud. You can file that away with your other tricks.)

"These ARE the world."

3) Play roleplaying games, video or tabletop. I don't give this piece of advice lightly, and it's not without its dangers. Roleplaying games use numbers to create a model of the world, which in turn allows you to simulate anything you could possibly imagine. Kinda. This is the danger—not that you will lose your soul or become a satanist or something similarly ridiculous—that you will lose your worldview to that model, and with your worldview, you'll lose any chance you had of being a truly creative individual. You'll drop your keys and say, "Oops. Failed my Dex check." You'll wonder what level or alignment the characters in your story are.

That's a HUGE red flag. If you start rolling up character sheets for the characters in your stories, you'll know you're in too deep. I've seen this happen. I've seen smart, potentially creative people lose themselves in the false limitations of the game. Their fiction becomes rigid, like a cardboard cut-out of a story. Combat drags on. Every story is about a team, one member strong, another stealthy, another magicky, another healy.

God in heaven. Don't. Let. This. Happen to you.

But! If you're careful as hell, there is one wonderful thing roleplaying games can teach you:

The Moment.

Players always want to be doing something. They want a reason to be where they are, they want to know what the next step is, and they want a chance to do something to get there. If you can apply this mentality to your fiction—that every moment should have its own entertainment value, not because it's pretty or clever, but because it's relevant to the journey and it moves—your style (and your readers) will thank you for it. Don't have people walk into a room, say some shit, and walk out again. Put the scene in a cool place, give it some zing, and have the characters do something.

Making up a story on the fly for an audience, being able to gauge their reaction to each event in real time—there are few experiences more valuable as a storyteller. Video games can teach you this same lesson, but you don't have the benefit of sitting in the creator's chair. You have to hold the experience up to a mirror to get the full effect.

Let's say you're writing a fantasy novel about a teenage boy at a swordsmanship school. In this particular scene, your main character needs to ask a female teacher for some dating advice. You could have him go into her office, stand awkwardly by her desk while he spills his guts and talks and talks and talks. OR! You could have him trying to sneak questions in while he's taking his swordsmanship final, dueling the female teacher in the clocktower of the school, jumping between giant cogs, dodging blows, trying not to get killed, trying to land just one strike before the clock strikes twelve. That's a hell of a lot more fun. And it opens up all kinds of story opportunities. He might fail the exam he's so concerned with his girl troubles. He might get injured. He might realize during all the sweaty running around that he's actually (gasp!) attracted to the female teacher!

"I said parry, not thrust."

Mastering "The Moment" isn't just a matter of flavor. When things move in a scene, they bounce around and collide with other things. You could end up with new ideas that take your story to the next level. So don't write a dull moment. This doesn't always mean action; what it means is having an awareness of each moment's entertainment value, each moment's importance and inertia. Learn this well, and you can pick your publisher.

(I'm still working on this myself, and the biggest problem I've had is laziness. It's easy to miss opportunities when you're not putting your all into your writing, allowing yourself to be distracted by life, liberty, and the pursuit of your kids not trashing the house. But that's a whole other blog, folks, written by somebody who ain't me.)

STUDY

Once you're harnessing your free time to better your writing, it's time to learn the nitty-gritty of the craft. There are a few ways to do this well, but one of the cheapest is to read books on writing. I hear a lot of writers talking smack on writing books, saying they don't really teach you anything, that you're only ready to learn what you're ready to learn, that practice is the only way to get better. Almost true. Practice is the best way to get better, but there are some things, especially for new writers, that you shouldn't have to learn through trial and error. Sometimes, it's easier to have someone just tell you. That's what writing books can do for you: they can save you time.

I've read a stack of writing books in my time, and I can tell you, not one of them left me feeling empty. I came away from each with new tools, new perspectives, and new enthusiasm for the job. That's not nothing, ya nay-saying snobs. That's a big something, and I'd like to pass it along to you.

Here are some of the books that taught me the most (and, in many cases, continue to inspire me):

STEVE'S TOP 4 BOOKS ON WRITING
(I ain't gonna pad my list for no man!)

The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
by Jack M. Bickham

This is a great first book if you're new to writing fiction. It's short, simple, and it hits the basics. If writing were basketball, this would be the fundamentals. Dribbling. Passes. etc. I've gone back to this book over and over just to remind myself what's what.
 



The Art of War for Writers
by James Scott Bell

This is the book I pick up when I really need refreshed. It's a beautiful, slickly-designed little tome full of good advice and motivation, and it always gets me excited about making things up and writing them down. This is a fire-extinguisher (and a damn fine piece of instruction as well). In case of burn-out or depression, break glass.

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
by Orson Scott Card

If you want to write sci fi or fantasy and you haven't read this, you have to. It's an essential handbook on writing spec fic. I've found none better.

On Writing
by Stephen King

Stephen King is a rare talent. (If you don't like him, fine. But don't be a hater; the man's got chops.) He rarely outlines his books and has an amazing capacity to do things on the fly, and few, if any, of you reading this will reach your potential writing the way Stephen King does. So why is this book important for mortals like us?

First, because of King's staggering and unpretentious skill with language. The whole second half of the book is dedicated to this. If there is a book to teach you the nitty-gritty about the music of words, this is it. The first half of the book is largely biography, etc, but you skip it at your own risk. Why? That's the second thing.

This book is like having a teacher in your brain. Not a list of dos and don'ts, but a REAL human being who just happens to be the most widely-read living writer in the English language. If you skip the first half, it takes the knowledge out of its human context and greatly weakens it.

Lastly, this is a great read. Fast, engaging, personal. It's effortless. You can learn a lot just from that. If you can figure out why on God's green earth this book is so easy to read, that's something big.

STEVE'S TOP 3 SCREENWRITING BOOKS

Wait? Screenwriting books? What about all that stuff about short stories and learning to play your first instrument? I stand by all that stuff, but once you've banged out a decent prose style—through loads of study and practice—screenwriting books become just as valuable as other writing books, if not more so. They can teach you story itself better than almost anything else. Here are my favorites:

The Writer's Journey
by Christopher Vogler

The first chapter of this book will change your life. If you're looking for a perfect formula for good stories, this is probably as close as you'll ever get to finding one.

Save the Cat
by Blake Snyder

This is essential shit all around, but if nothing else, you'll learn to make your reader instantly care about your characters. I can't think of many things more important than that.

Story
by Robert McKee

Everybody I talk to who has read this book swears by it. I'm just now reading it, but I can already tell it belongs on this list. Read it with me. Let me know what you think.

There are lots of other great books on writing. The First Five Pages comes to mind. Also, the Writer's Digest's Elements of Fiction Writing books are a great go-to. Especially don't miss Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint. Avoid books on manuscript submission, querying, publishing trends, the internet, or any other topic you think might go out of date quickly; it's best stick to blogs and such for that kind of info. For example, if you want to know how to format a story for submission, just google it. (Here: I'll save you the trouble.) Better yet, read each magazine's guidelines. There are also some great books on self-editing, such as The 10% Solution and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (the chapter on dialogue beats is worth the price of the book by itself).

Gettin' ahead of myself. It's been a long night and one hell of a long, rambling blog post. Thanks for reading through to the end. I've made a mental note to keep things tighter in the future. There's a story about a famous writer who wrote a really long letter, then at the end said, "I apologize for the long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." I can relate.

Be sure to check in next time when we'll talk about what could prove to be a very important aspect of your learning to write well, becoming a part of the writing community, and getting your first toe in the publishing door (it was for me): Audition-only workshops! It's a big topic that deserves its own post, and I'm looking forward to it. We'll see you in two weeks for "Chasing the First Sale (Part 4): Attending Audition-Only Workshops."

Chasing the First Sale (Part 2): What a Pro Story Is

Today, we're going to look at what a story is and how to tell one. It's going to be the crashiest of crash courses, but I think it's important to touch on this, at least briefly. It's my opinion that no amount of networking, no reputation, no endorsement...no amount of anything will sell a story that isn't a story. There are (unfortunately) exceptions to every rule, but they are (blessedly) rare. You may be tempted to say, but Steve, what about the piles and piles of crap published every year? Fair enough. But let's hold off criticizing other writers (especially published writers) until we've done some publishing of our own. It's been my experience that the meanest, most bitter and brutal critics are the ones whose work isn't any good. A good writer knows what it takes to tell a story. They realize even if another writer only gets a story 80% right—if the story has a skeleton it can stand on, even if the skin ain't so pretty—that's still something worthy of respect. This shit is harder than it looks.

There are tons of resources on writing fiction, and I won't even attempt to repeat all that information here. What I'm going to focus on (aside from a few recommendations of books to read and resources to keep in mind—these will come next week) are the macro, big-picture things I've learned through experience. Hopefully, they can save you some time.

First of all, let's get this out of the way. The old question "How do I become a writer?" really only has the one simple (and demonically difficult) answer: "Read a lot, and write a lot." That really is it. Most of the stuff I'm going to tell you, it's the details. It's icing. It's trim. It's freakin' parsley. If you don't read and you don't write, my blog will do nothing for you—and neither will any other resource. Unless you're a genius (trust me; you'd know if you were), you have to work. Once you're writing consistently, all the pieces of information you've picked up along the way will start to click into place, one by one, like cogs in a living machine. But until you start doing the writing part of being a writer, the cogs will just lie there on the floor, looking pretty (perhaps making you sound smart when you talk about how you would have written somebody else's book), but ultimately they'll just collect dust.

"The characterization was thin."

So what is a pro-level story? It's a joke.

I don't mean stories aren't to be taken seriously—quite the opposite. And I'm not saying the concept of a professional story is elitist or outdated (blah blah self-publishing, etc). God no. I'm saying that a pro story is a complete idea that evokes an emotional response, at any length. Have you ever met someone who likes to drag their jokes out with lots of details? What about someone who just tells it, hits the important bits, and gets to the punchline? Both methods work if the joke is a good one. It can be passed along, from person to person, but the core of it remains the same. A pro story is like that. If the concept is good enough, you should be able to get people excited just by explaining it, sometimes in just a sentence or two. A pro story's concept should be so good, people want to tell their friends about it. It should get stuck in their heads. They should say, "Man, why didn't I think of that?"

"So a voice actor lands a job playing an alien actor's roles in television shows captured by SETI satellites, all the while avoiding phone messages from his estranged daughter. When he learns the alien race who made the TV shows have all died in a supernova, he has to record the speech given by the alien actor to his dying people. This painful event gives him the courage he needs to reunite with his daughter, and he learns she has had terminal cancer the whole time.

OMG. It's so hilarious, I could chew my fingers off!"

Basically, when you begin developing a story, you should begin by saying, "What is this? What am I making? What is it supposed to do?" As a writer, you're not just putting down words or expressing yourself or "being creative." You're building an intellectual property. You're turning your thoughts into words into a product you can sell. If this concept makes you uncomfortable, it could be you aren't right for commercial or genre fiction. If, on the other hand, you get excited at the sheer power implied in what I just said—that people will pay you for building a construct of thoughts and letters—then great. We're on the same page; it's a pretty crazy page to be on.

As a beginner, it can be easy to feel like you've got story down; it's just your writing that needs work. I don't know you, but I feel confident in telling you that's probably bullshit. I believed the same thing once, and I spent years trying to teach myself to "write purdy" before I realized that wasn't the important part. The important part was what is the story about and how does it happen?

"Basically, there's this guy..."

Once you know what you want your story to be, it's time to figure out what it is. These aren't always the same; in fact, usually they aren't. Stories in our heads are incorporeal clouds of emotion. They're pristine, unblemished by logic or prying eyes from the outside. Your job as a writer is to take that cloud of emotion and imagery, examine it, throw it away, then try to build something that makes people feel the way you felt when you first had the idea.

But how do you know if your idea is actually worth developing into a story? Well, try explaining it to someone. Trying writing it out in a sentence or two. If you can't do this, I can almost guarantee your story isn't a story; it's still an emotion cloud. At this point you can either abandon it, or build a skeleton to hang it on—a concept that will carry that emotion, a plot to make it move, characters to make it relate-able, and zing to make it sing.

The zing I just mentioned is the only original thing you will ever bring to a story: you. The rest has been done and done, but this is the first time anyone has ever been you, with your unique experiences and perspectives. If I had to pick a most-important piece of advice to give a brand-new writer (other than the ol' "read a lot, write a lot") , it would be this: Put as much of yourself as possible into your writing. Not your life; you. (Autobiography is, almost without exception, dishonest and boring. Avoid it.)

Don't write from your life; write from your personality. Write from your soul. It's all you've really got to offer.

But if you don't have a good story, nobody is going to give shit-one about your soul, so we're back to that. So where do writers come up with good concepts? The dreaded question: Where do you get your ideas? I'm actually going to attempt to answer it.

STEVE'S RECIPE FOR A GREAT IDEA

1) Gather ingredients by living your life and paying attention to the amazing, funny, heart-breaking things that happen all around you, every day.

2) Mix the hell out of them in every imaginable combination.

3) Keep what pops.

I mean it. Mix the shit out of stuff.

It really is that simple. And believe me, if you have any small measure of talent (or humanity), you'll know when something really, truly pops. You'll see one concept line up with another, and suddenly you'll see all the possibilities between them, the tension, the way they play off one another. That's a great feeling.

Take the concept for my first novel (which I can't claim; it was my wife's idea):

"The story is about a guy and girl who take a love potion." Did I lose you? Are you asleep yet? That's not a story, not even close.

Now try this: "The story is about a guy and girl who despise each other. They're tricked into taking a love potion that makes them fall madly in love when they're apart, but not when they're together." Now we've got something to work with. That little twist—they don't want to be in love, they didn't mean to take the potion, and it only works when they're apart—sets the whole thing off. Now they have to be together to be themselves. (Love Potion + Proximity = Neato!) I almost peed myself when Lynna shared this concept with me. The ideas for what to do with it came almost immediately, like someone had turned on a hose. (The pee and hose comments are unrelated.) That's how you should feel when you have a good idea on your hands.

4) Repeat as often as desired, forever and ever, amen. You'll never run out of ideas until the world runs out of shit to show you.

Once you have your concept, the hard (and fun) part begins. You have to make your story into something people can read. You have to manifest it, bring it into existence, give it form. You have to provide it with a world and a chronology and characters. You have to give it tone, pace, and rhythm.You have to make it, and the only way to learn to do this well is with study, love, and loads of practice. Orson Scott Card once told me during one of his workshops, "Every writer has 10,000 pages of complete crap in them. Some writers get those all out in the beginning, and some—like me—insert them a page at a time throughout their career." The other students and I laughed, but we also learned the lesson. You won't improve if you don't write.
 
This post ended up being (and taking) longer than I expected, so we'll get to the rest of it next week. I'll be recommending some of my favorite books on writing and how to use them to get better. I'll even talk about attending audition-only writing workshops, how to get in, and how to get the most out of them. So be sure to check back in next week for "Chasing the First Sale (Part 3): Becoming a Student of the Job."

Chasing the First Sale (Part 1): Wherever You're Standing

Before we begin, a story:

It was winter 2005 in Wyoming. I was dirt poor, living with my in-laws, and driving a 50 ft. bus full of coal miners to and from the mines in the most god-awful, 20-below, white-out snowstorms you could imagine.

We're there. I think.

I was 15 hours away from everyone I knew--except my newly-minted wife of just over a year--and I was depressed in a way I had never thought possible. The only escape were library audio books, mostly Stephen King, piped into my head through a dangling earbud as I drove the same Wyoming roads twice a day, back and forth, with only 7 hours of down time between runs. On my days off, cramped in our small basement living space, I was discovering alcohol, and my life had become something I didn't recognize.

It was here that I wrote my first good story.

It was a simple premise: a man trapped in a failing marriage is gifted with horrible nightmares in which he murders his wife over and over; the imagery is so awful, it prompts him to treat her well in real life, thus saving his marriage. It wasn't great, but it was passably good, the first good thing I had written, and it was the first time in my life I thought maybe I could be a writer.

I had told stories my entire life in one form or another. As a kid, I recorded fake news broadcasts with my brothers, made up superheroes whose adventures we acted out in the front yard, and blatantly ripped off Jim Davis' Garfield comics in my own series of strips, "Little Bo," about a Zebu calf and his half-water buffalo guardian. (We'll talk more about Little Bo later in my series "Owning Comics.")

We made asses up just so we could kick them.

When I was nine, I started making up my own ghost stories (blame this) and having my dad type them out in language that didn't sound so nine year-oldish. (I have the coolest Dad in the world, by the way.) Soon, though, I didn't want to write on Dad's schedule, so I struck out on my own, hunt-and-pecking out pages and pages of utter shit practice stories. I was frustrated with my limitations, but there was something about making stuff up that had me hooked. It was like everything else--school, church, chores--was in black and white, and any opportunity to be creative made the world explode with color.

But it wasn't until I was fifteen--sitting in an upstairs bedroom at my grandparents house over Christmas, fan blowing in my face, the toasty smell of the furnace from downstairs all around--that I read The Hobbit, and for the first time, I realized what I wanted to do with my life.

I told you all this for a reason. If you recognize my life because you're living your version of it, if you say, "Yes, that's me," (amen, hallelujah) then I want to help you. Maybe you're where I was after writing my first good story that winter in Wyoming, flipping through the Writer's Market, feeling totally overwhelmed and lost and small, wondering if your work will ever see print. Maybe you're where I was after reading The Hobbit, full of enthusiasm and desire, but not really sure where to start learning your craft. Maybe you know you want to create things, but you're still trying things out, searching for your medium.

Those are all great places to be, and they're all frustrating places to be. I want to help you enjoy and escape those places. I want to walk alongside you, from wherever you're standing, right to the threshold of your first professional short story sale. I want to tell you what nobody told me and--this is my hope--to save you a year or two of your writing life.

(If, on the other hand, you've sold some pro stories or a novel already, chances are this blog series won't be of much use to you, except maybe as an amusing trip down memory lane or a surprising look into another writer's process. If you're at a place where most of the advice in this blog doesn't apply to you, I hope you'll share it with someone you think might need it. We all started a zero, after all, and we've all asked for this kind of advice a time or two.)

This is not a writing course; it's an early career how-to. It's a step 1, step 2 process. I'll be getting into the craft of writing and what a pro story is (if you don't learn this, the rest won't matter), but I'll also be blogging about what markets to send to, how to learn from your idols (sometimes literally from them), how to meet other pro writers who will actually help you in your career and not hurt you (sorry Local Writing Group; if you're not helping each other create selling work, you're doing it wrong), and how to plan your career so you have the best possible chance of winning beginner/new writer awards that could mean big money and exposure. (Wish somebody would have clued me in!) We'll even take a look at that "next level" beyond the first sale, what that means, and how to reach for it.

Repeat after these jackasses:
"There's hope! Zaba-zoot-ZOW!"

Do you feel that? That's called hope. And it's fine to let yourself feel it. If you've ever thought selling a story felt impossible, like a far-off hypothetical thing, I can tell you, a day will come when you will look back on it, when it will be something you did a few years ago, and it will feel so small and so easy, you'll forget what the big deal was. When that day comes, I want to ask you a favor:

Don't forget. Remember how hard it was. Then help other people get where you are. (And don't forget to keep learning from the people who are where you want to be.)

Can't wait to get started, my friends. See you next Monday when we'll get into "Chasing the First Sale (Part 2): What a Pro Story Is."