Writing Yourself Into a Corner

Once you've discovered the direction that you want to go in - often many of my writing students will start writing the story. Many times the story sort of "writes itself" from that point, appearing on the page as they type or put pencil to paper.

I love that process. It's a true merger with the Muse. It's no wonder that the ancient Greeks thought that a strange spirit injected people with creativity when they were writing or creating.

What's interesting about interacting with the Muse is that when you're in that zone, you really have no idea what's going to happen next. When all cylinders are firing, and the story is flowing out of you, often events will pop out of nowhere.

I remember one conference I had with an author and she made this great point. She was writing, and had a character who had just worked through a seriously trying time. Just at that moment, the author was surprised to find that the phone rang in the story. Indeed, she didn't even know who was on the other end of the line until she had her main character pick up the phone.

To explain how this can often work with characters I often explain it this way...

You may have a story in mind but if you have really spent time developing your characters, you may run into a situation where you say to yourself, "Wait. My character wouldn't do that. My character would really do this." And suddenly, that grand plot that you had in your head is changed. That's the reality of writing with real and living characters.

That said, this little bit of magic would often get me into trouble when writing novels. My characters would go off in random directions (like people do in real life) and end up in some place that simply made for a poor story. Imagine if we hooked a camera to the shoulder of someone really interesting and famous. Say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, about 10 to 20 percent of his life would be interesting, but then the other 80 to 90 percent would be snooze-ville as we watching Arnold take a dump, eat breakfast, or run on a treadmill.

There's also the problem that I had in that often I would get my characters into serious predicaments in which there was no escape. Obviously, in my stories, I wanted my characters to face serious odds or something that was threatening. Because my stories flowed realistically...I suddenly found that by all rights, my characters should completely lose the conflict that I set up. Which doesn't make for a very satisfying story. A character who loses in the end can be a great story, but not in the ways that I had set up.

So, when writing novels, I often found that I ended up writing myself into a corner.

Bleah.

That's why I've learned my lesson. I outline my stories now. Yep, I really do that. Keep in mind that my outlines are usually fairly loose and open. But I do it. The reason it's important for me to do that is because when I outline, I am able to see the end of the road. I'm able to keep track of where I'm going, and I can nudge my character in that direction. If the end that I hand in mind doesn't work, that's okay. I just retool the outline so that I can see where the new story is going. The main thing I try to keep in mind is maintaining my eyes on the prize and understanding where my story is going.

All for now.

Writing that Novel You've Always Wanted

So I'm prepping for DragonCon and every year, I run a panel on Horror in Gaming and DragonCon. It’s a real blast, because I rarely get to talk to people about horror, what makes us scared, and the disciple of horror.

Recently, I’ve been neglecting the blog because I’ve been pretty busy with writing material for Paradigm Concepts, and because I couldn’t come up with any more topics for blogging. However, Daniel Perez recently asked about some of my work with the Grand Tome of Adversaries, and it got me inspired to write some more.

So, what I’m going to be doing is starting a series of blog posts about writing and publishing.

Writing that Novel You’ve Always Wanted to Write



So, I’m going to start with the basics. The real basics. Like, how do you write a story anyways?

I’ve never really sat down and talked about how I come up with ideas for stories or games. I guess because the process is so close to me now that I never really think about it. So, let’s focus for a second on the whole process. Just how does one write a story or game? When it comes to writing a story, I’ve learned that everyone goes about it a different way.

Scenes



Some people get this really cool scene in their head and they want to write about it. That’s where they start. It’s sort of the situation that you have with books like Souls Raised from the Dead by Doris Betts. (By the way, this is not a horror novel, but rather a spiritual journey novel.)

She came up with her book after passing by a massive truck wreck. It just so happened that the truck that wrecked was carrying a load of live chickens. She said that the expression of the officer at the scene was both profound and hilarious at the same time. Everything was covered in feathers, blood, and chickens running around. The police officer's face was simply one of complete turmoil as he tried to make sense of a situation both awful and amusing. He was almost an symbol of how life works in general.

Just the image of that scene was the springboard for her novel.

Characters



Some people start with characters. They get a character idea in their head and they really like the idea of this person. For example, in The Great Gilly Hopkins, the author Katherine Paterson had this idea of a character who was named Galadriel...after the elven queen from Lord of the Rings – then she started to work backwards from there. For example, what kind of parents would name their kid that? Suppose further that this girl was raised by those parents. What kind of life would she have?

Concepts



Some people start with a concept or tension. For example, someone may write a historical novel where the South won Gettysburg. Or like in the novel World War Z, where Max Brooks sits down and supposes that the world really did get invaded by zombies. These sorts of projects start with a basic idea. Then, the writer takes that concept and thinks of the next logical steps in the chain of events that he or she has set up. What was genius about World War Z was that Max Brooks writes about how such a thing could be possible. For example, how could zombies take over the world if people have things like guns, and artillery, and explosives? How could it spread so widely and so fast? He writes about those things realistically in his novel.

By the way, you have to check out The World War Z website. Click on the link above! Be sure to check out the map with the dramatic readings.

Understand that there's not right or wrong way to start a novel. Also, you don't have to "pick" one of the methods I described above. Finally, many people use a combination of the techniques I just mentioned. Myself, for example....

What I Like to Do
For one, understand that writing fiction and writing games are two different disciplines for me. I'll talk about writing fiction for now.

When writing a story, I usually come up with the characters first. I think of some interesting characters and think about their lives. I think about what these characters look like, act like, etc. Then, I usually sit down and start writing a scene putting these interesting characters into that scene. I try to make sure that the scene I write about it fairly interesting. This interesting scene is usually the catalyst for my story.

For example, I might develop a character who is an adult male with a son. To make things interesting, I'll say that he has a son who is autistic. I think about his life, what that character does for a living, etc. Then, I put that character in a catalyst – like maybe he’s going to be depositing a check at the bank when it suddenly gets robbed. To make it even more interesting, let’s say his autistic son is there. While everyone is getting down on the floor, the main character’s son doesn’t want to get down on the floor. The floor feels cool and strange to the son. And he’s just refusing to get on the floor as these bank robbers are waving around their guns and screaming at him.

That is what I do to come up with a story.

Now, that was just me shooting around in the dark. If I want to really get serious and write a piece of fiction, I also do one more thing. I think about some themes.

Yep, that stupid, ridiculous concept that you learn about in 9th grade Literature Class. I literally think about themes I want to explore in the story. Now, I don’t force my story to have those themes. Instead, I think about the kinds of themes and concepts I’d like to explore with my invented characters and point them in that direction. If they don’t get there…then they don’t get there.

For example, I might think about my main character and his autistic son. I might think it would be interesting to explore the concept of fatherhood in the context of an average guy and a high-functioning, but autistic son. Or I might want to explore the idea of childhood discipline with an average father and an autistic son. To do that, I might dream up scenes wherein the father has a “moment” with his son. And these moments might be one of love, or ones where the father unfortunately has to level some kind of discipline on his son. Again, I don’t force this situations on the characters, but I start with the concept and start writing out a scene. Whatever happens next is a surprise. And I’m always surprised.

In this example, what I might do is have the father talking to the son and trying to discipline his autistic son. Maybe the scene is about how the father is trying to explain to the son that he can’t yell in public places – like the bank. Then, in the middle of the father dealing with his son, trying to teach his son a lesson about the world…bank robbers drop in. So now we have a really interesting situation.

And the best part is, I myself am not sure how the scene will unfold.

That, to me, is the most fun part of writing a story - I never know for certain what I'm going to write about next. Maybe I'll touch on that later.

Why Are Zombies Scary?

Zombies are pretty damn cool.

One of the coolest things about zombies is the fact that they answer the "open the door" problem in horror immediately. The "open the door" problem is a really hard issue to surmount in horror. And that issue is this:

Usually, in a horror movie, we might hear the monster lurking around outside. We might catch a glimpse of it through a darkened window. However, when the heroine of the movie finally opens the door, and reveals the monster...usually it's not near as bad as we thought it was.

That's because up until the moment the door is opened, our imaginations are running wild. And no matter what the movie comes up with 9 times out of 10, whatever our imaginations have cooked up is far worse.

There are a few rare occasions where this isn't true, of course. A key example would be John Carptener's The Thing. That movie continues to horrify us to tears, because we just don't know what is going to happen next. The Thing manifests itself in different forms every time and in new and more terrifying ways. We can never be truly prepared for what The Thing throws our way.

But accomplishing that perfect and pure moment of terror is pretty damn hard. It's extremely difficult to completely surprise the audience or show them something that not even their wildest imaginings would come up with. So, unfortunately, many authors and movie-makers go for a stalemate with the audience.

Take for example, The Blair Witch Project. By now, it shouldn't be a spoiler that the Blair Witch is never seen in the film. While I love the movie, and many horror fans do, it only offers a stalemate. Because we never see the Blair Witch, about 50% of the population pans the movie and hates it because it "doesn't show anything". I think that M. Night Shylaman often runs into this problem.

So...here's what's cool about zombies. They solve the open the door problem right away. In a zombie movie, we usually see the object of horror fairly soon. What's more is that usually the film's feature monsters are front and center. The Night of the Walking Dead surely doesn't waste any time showing us zombies in the film.

Even though zombie movies show the object of horror early on, even though zombie movies reveal the monster in the open light of day...we are still scared. And here's why. In a zombie movie, we aren't so much afraid of the zombies as we are of what they represent. I think this is very clear in the introduction of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Besides that great Johnny Cash song, you've also got all of the terrible fear that zombies represent to us in that opening. You have the complete and total breakdown of society. You have a mysterious plague that cannot be stopped. You are given a faceless enemy that has already been predestined to beat you.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPWrAMXGGo

In a zombie movie, we're far more afraid of being eaten alive, or being turned into a zombie, or one-hundred other horrible things that might happen to us.

Anyhow, that's why I think zombie movies are so cool.