Why We Write

Ignoring the irony (of reading an internet article rather than actually writing), I’ve just read with interest this post on why writers write, and who they write for. As all good articles should, it got me thinking about my own processes in regard to who I write for when I sit down at the keyboard.

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that I’ve decided to write freelance full-time because as a lifestyle it suits me. A while ago (about a year and-a-half to two years ago, in fact) I completed one of those psychometric test thingies about ‘My Ideal Career’.* Notable highlights of the results include:

Autonomy / independence     

Your profile suggests that your top ingredient, or anchor, is autonomy / independence. This means that what you need most from your career is the chance to define your own work in your own way. Above else, you need a sense of freedom.

 

Pure challenge

Above all, you like the thrill of a challenge. At your best you:

Make a formidable trouble-shooter. When difficulty presents, others may tremble with fear, but you relish the challenge.

Are well suited to start-up projects. Someone needs to get a project off the ground? They don’t know where to begin? You can rise to the challenge.

Are the star performer. Whether you are the engineer who loves difficult designs, the consultants to rescue clients on the brink of bankruptcy or the professional athlete who wins for England.

Writing is, apparently, the thing I am good at, and combined with my mental make-up the independence and challenge of freelance writing ticks all of my boxes. It gives me the freedom I crave, whilst offering the rewards for recognition and achievement that give me satisfaction. While I loved the creativity of working with a talented team in the GW design studio, what really gets my boat floating these days is proving to myself (and others) that I can do it. The blank page that terrifies so many others is (to horribly mix metaphors) the red rag to my bull. It all makes a horrible sense…

This means that, as all writers claim, I do write for myself – but others need to read it. In order to give myself the buzz I need, it’s not enough just to write for the sake of it. I have a point to prove, and to prove it to myself I need to prove it to others. It’s not enough to be a good writer – nay, a great writer – others have to agree with me! This is not to say that I consider myself a great writer (yet ), but that’s the driver behind what I do, so we all understand where I’m coming from.

In short, I write to show off that I can write, if that makes sense…

When I write, I do so on two levels and with both the reader and myself in mind. On the surface I make sure I write stories that have appeal to the target audience and hopefully deliver what they want from a story. That’s still an ongoing process of developing my trade and gaining ever more experience.

Being a ’successful’ writer opens up all sorts of questions regarding the nature of success. Questions I don’t want to delve into here, other than to paraphrase a scene from the Christmas special of Extras. Andy (Ricky Gervais’ character) is having problems with his agent and is unsettled by the work he is getting. His agent tells him that very few people can be both respected and famous. Most people can either be respected or famous; which one does he want to be? Andy replies immediately that he wants to be famous – which leads him to appearing on Celebrity Big Brother and realising he’s turned into a complete git…

So, do I want to be respected or famous? Is it possible to combine commerciality with some degree of respectability? At what point does material success become a vindication in its own right? Art vs populism is another lengthy debate I’ll avoid for the moment (and perhaps for the rest of my life). To sum up my position, all the best writing in the world (on whatever scale one cares to measure it) doesn’t really count for much if nobody reads it. Unless someone else also enjoys a story I’ve written, it’s a pointless endeavour. On the flipside, just because something is popular doesn’t automatically qualify it as a success. Quantity is not a quality in itself. Not to labour the point, but while I’d love to have the success of The Da Vinci Code, I certainly wouldn’t want my name on the cover of that abysmally-written rubbish…

This means that my first port of call when devising a story or novel is not my own desires for it, but the external sensitivities of the readers. First and foremost I see writing as entertainment, and it’s my job as a writer to deliver that. It can be thought-provoking or mindless fun, I’m happy either way; it does have to make the grade on the most important check of all – will anybody want to read it?

Having come up with a story that I believe will have appeal, I then start to make things difficult for myself. Plot, characters and setting (yup, those old three friends again) are merely a vehicle for me to indulge my need for a challenge. Underneath that ’surface layer’ I have to go a bit further to satisfy myself, to provide myself with the extra challenge to overcome. I have to make things more complicated than necessary, because otherwise writing becomes a simple excercise in the formula of plot-character-setting, a literary equivalent of painting by numbers. I’ll work in subtexts and themes that only I can see – usually. It’s not only in-jokes or obscure cultural or historical references , it’s also about adding in a meaning to a scene or a thread of theme that gives me a personal enjoyment when I re-read my work. It’s unimportant whether the reader picks up on what I’ve done, and it no way detracts from their enjoyment of the story.

In the end, I write what I want to read, as many authors do. The benefit of being a writer is that I can write exactly want I want to read, and that gives me a 100% appreciation of what’s been written. The emotional connection, my state of mind and goals as I wrote a particular paragraph or line of dialogue can be revisited every time I reread that sentence or chapter. No matter how much analysis could be made, and even if I gave a running commentary in footnotes or laid out everything afterwards in an interview, the precise relationship I have with my creation can never be replicated by anyone else.

“It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious.”

*The blurb explaining it all: “Edgar Schein developed 8 life anchors that reflect our basic values, motives and needs. Of the 8 anchors there are usually one or two that we won’t give up. Knowing what these are is important because when choices have to be made our anchors come into play and become a driving force behind the decisions that we make. Our anchors evolve once we begin our working life and then generally remain stable across our adult life. Schein used the metaphor of anchor because once we know what our top two anchors are we track how these have floated with the different career paths we’ve taken throughout life. So just like an anchor we won’t forgo this basic need however we use the insight to see how we can adapt our situations to be consistent with our anchors.”

We Got Ourselves a Reader

Saturday 11th April is Black Library Live! at GW headquarters in Nottingham (I’m assured the ‘!’ is obligatory ). I’ve just been sent a list of what’s going on and it looks like it’s going to be a packed day. There’re more authors than you can shake a stick at, and for those who like to push toy soldiers around there’s plenty of gaming too. As well as getting books signed, those of a literary persuasion can attend readings by the authors, and also there are seminars/ Q+A sessions for those who would like to write for the Black Library or want to know more about the Time of Legend series.

I’ve been volunteered for two readings, both of them linked to the Time of Legends. The first will be a brief reading from the short story I’ve written for the exclusive Chapbook available at the event. Picking a ten-minute segment out of a 6,000 word short story should be pretty straightforward – and as attendees will be able to pick up the Chapbook at the event they can read the rest of the story straightaway if they want!

The second reading is giving me more pause for thought. I need to select a fairly lengthy section of Shadow King, the next companion novel to Malekith. Shadow King is not out until 2010 so this will not only be the first airing of the novel, but it’ll be quite some time before any more will be made available as a downladable extract on the Black Library website.

Choosing extracts for readings and sneak previews is a balancing act. There are several goals one wants to achieve. The primary one is to interest readers/ listeners. The segment selected has to hook them in. This means they have to engage with the character(s) quickly. One also wants to give a flavour of the overall plot, so that the section gives some idea of what the book is about. At the same time, one doesn’t want to give away too much of the plot – in others words avoid huge spoilers! There needs to be drama (well, any part of a good novel should have drama, so that’s not too difficult) and since it is a Black Library novel a bit of action wouldn’t go astray.

With that in mind, one doesn’t want to pick anything too far towards the end of the novel as it’ll give away earlier developments. I’m hesitant to use the start of a novel as well because I don’t want the first thought of the reader being, ‘I’ve read this bit already’ when they actually pick up the novel. It’s okay if the reader runs into some passages they know later on, as they’ll probably read it again in the context of what’s come before.

This leaves me looking for a self-contained segment that takes about 15-20 minutes to read; that encapsulates the character of Alith Anar (the protagonist); that contains an overview of the plot and themes; that doesn’t give away too much of the story but leaves the listeners/ readers wanting more (and hopefully have them waiting with anticpation until the book is released!).

Getting the length right is very important, and means I will have to do a few practise runs… Yes, I’ll be reading my book out aloud to myself several times! If I can, I might rope in a victim or two to listen and get some feedback. And I best start working on my elven pronunciations…

Windy Reminder: In case you missed it, I am attending AdeptiCon this weekend (3rd-5th April 2009) in Chicago, along with fellow author Chris Roberson.

Gaming: I spent most of the weekend playing Warhammer The first time in quite a while. A few folks have just kicked off a Mighty Empires campaign and jolly good fun it was too. Throbbi Drakkaz and his warriors acquitted themselves with honour for the most part to get their fledgling empire underway. Unfortunately, a notation has been made in the Clan Drakkaz Book of Grudges against my Longbeards, who ran in terror from a Lizardmen Carnosaur, which basically doomed the restof the army to a humiliating massacre… They had best make up for their shame in the next battle.

Converting the Catalyst

I have recently finished my rewrites on the Shadow King manuscript, and so I’ve plunged into my next novel – a Warhammer 40,000 offering that I can’t go into detail about just yet. I’m about 7,000 words in and have hit a hump. For several days I’ve been avoiding writing the next chapter, finding all sorts of ‘essential’ things to do (and some that are blatantly displacement activity with no excuses whatsoever).

For some the first blank page is the scariest to look upon, but I find starting a piece to be no trouble at all. The goals at the outset are quite simple – establish character and setting, put in motion the central conflict of the story and away you go. The barrier I’ve run into is not one of ignorance – not knowing what to write – but one of approach – how to write it. It’s not writer’s block in the normal sense, there’s an undercurrent of apprehension that one sometimes feels when facing an important decision. On the other hand, it may well be simple procrastination…

In simple terms, this is where the story really starts. It is the ‘catalysing event’ that propels the main character from normal life into the narrative that drives the novel. Often such a catalysing event is external – something happens that the character is forced to react to, thereby pitching them into the plot. In the case of this novel, while there is certainly an external event that forces the character to react, the manner of the reaction is utterly internal. Its affect is so profound, in fact, that it fundamentally changes who the character is.

The actions and choices of the character have to possess a certain quality of internal consistency in order for the reader to understand them, which in itself is problematic because I’m dealing with an utterly alien mindset. The balance between reader empathy and the otherworldly thought processes of the protagonist is a fine one. Too little and I’ve failed to create a character anything more than ‘human with pointy ears’; too much and the character’s response will seem nonsensical.

It is the most important part of the book, so a degree of hesitation and forethought is warranted. In any story, the reaction to the catalysing event(s) sets the character and plot into narrative motion. In a nuts-and-bolts fashion I already know what happens, but conveying that scene to the reader in an appropriate fashion is essential in bringing them onto the journey; in terms of the writer-reader relationship it’s a potential deal-breaker. If I don’t get it right, the readers are going to be left with a big, fat ‘Huh?’ and there’s a chance I will never get them back.

The solution? More ‘couch writing’ for a couple of days… That is, not staring at the screen but instead getting away from the keyboard and visualising the story without words before I can translate them into writing. I’m a bit of a ‘method’ writer – I have to get my head into a place where the character can take over and lead the story. I would guess that many writers are the same, consciously or otherwise. Once I’m there, it’s usually plain sailing, the story does write itself.

A walk in the park, perhaps? Well, it’s raining at the moment, so maybe not. Some lounging around letting my mind wander? Tempting. This could be an opportunity to do something I haven’t done for a while – paint some toy soldiers. A simple physical activity allows the mind to walk some strange paths. I may even have to resort to the ‘just write something‘ approach, knowing that I’ll have to come back and give it a good reworking later.

Cups of tea will definitely be involved.  

Event News: I’m pleased to announce (at rather short notice) that I will be attending AdeptiCon in Chicago, April 3rd-5th. I’m looking forward to returning to the Windy City, perhaps I’ll see some of you there.

Down with Doublespeak

It is with much delight that I read the following news article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7948894.stm

I despise managementspeak. Some forms of trade and academic jargon are unavoidable, encompassing complex ideas and concepts in a quick form can be essential for communication in some arenas. Management is not one of those arenas, and management jargon has become the most cliche-ridden form of communication in English. Its use seems to be at utter odds with the basics of transparent communication, designed to create an artificial management elite and reinforce the misguided image that time is so sparse in a busy manager’s life that he or she cannot spare the time to use simple English to explain what they mean. I say ‘designed’, but I don’t really credit the sort of people who use this kind of language with the forethought to consciously design anything. Even if phrases such as ‘blue sky thinking’ ‘and ‘thought showers’ were once well-intentioned, and perhaps even useful, they have long been passed into the hands of the lazy and self-referential so that they have lost all genuine meaning.

I heartily encourage others to treat it the same way I do – point and laugh at any person, manager or otherwise, who utters such nonsense as ‘360 appraisal’ and ’synergistic marketing opportunities’. For those of a more aggressive bent, might I suggest the words of Jules, from Pulp Fiction: ”English, Motherf- ! Do-you-speak-it?”*

I’ll leave you with a favourite observation:

“Process,” “structure,” “interface,” “problem”: abstract nouns like this go a long way toward establishing a modular international language, deprived of anything specific or verifiable. “Information” is a prime example of a plastic word, for it can mean anything and nothing. “The insatiable craving for more and more information,” Poerksen writes, “is not an indication of the riches to be had in this universally desired elixir, but rather of its impoverishment. It never satisfies.” We can never get enough of it. We’re so often told that we live in an information society, it’s no wonder that we’re nervous about not being well-informed.
Mark Abley, The Prodigal Tongue, quoting Uwe Poerksen, Plastic Words: The Tyranny of a Modular Language.

*On a related note, the substitution of letters or shortening of swear words is a pointless excercise, but search engines and filters being what they are, I guess I have to make some sacrifices. The oddest example of this I have come across recently came from the tv documentary series Ross Kemp: Return to Afghanistan. The soldiers in the programme can clearly be heard swearing like, well like soldiers! Yet in their wisdom, the producers have decided that it is one thing to hear swearing and another to read it, and so the subtitles appear with ‘motherf*cker’, ‘f*ck this’, ‘f*cking shoot him’ and so on… It boggles the mind, it really does.

Please do not Adjust your Internet

Profound apologies for not posting in a while. I would love to claim that the pause in transmission was due to exceedingly large amounts of work to do, but the opposite is true. I’ve had an idle couple of weeks, readying myself for the next big push and have been altogether far too lazy…

It’s not been all web-surfing and playing Call of Duty (though there has been plenty of that). Amongst the sitting-in-pants-playing-computer-games I did manage to write a short story for the BL Live! Chapbook. Entitled The Dark Path the story concerns one of the events of the Sundering, building on the life of one of the characters from Malekith.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the length of the story was a potential issue. In the end it was redrafted at 6,000 words long (a thousand longer than initially planned). The nature of the story – its content, publication and purpose – made some particular demands that strained this word count, which I’ll share with you.

First and foremost, a story is a story. It should comprise a self-contained narrative that entertains, informs and otherwise engages the reader on its own merits. As demonstrated here (thanks again to Angry Robot) it is possible to tell a story in as few as six words. Compared to that, 6,000 are plenty! The tie-in nature of the story – a spin-off from the Sundering rather than just a Warhammer tie-in – requires that the story does some other things as well.

The purpose of the Chapbook story is not only to deliver an entertaining read, but to open a window on the wider Sundering series. In short, I did not assume that readers are familiar with Malekith (and they can’t be familiar with Shadow King as it isn’t out yet!). This means that The Dark Path needs to address the larger issues involved in the series, give an overview of the characters and what has happened, and also leave a hook of interest in the reader to explore further (buy Malekith .

Each of these requirements demands time and space in the story and finding the right balance can be tricky. Too much foreshadowing and not enough delivery and the story will feel like a literary trailer. Not enough characterisation and setting and the story will be thin in itself, and thus not a commendable advert for the novels… If the story is too self-contained, it fails in its purpose to intrigue the reader into finding out more.

How does it Fit?

When planning a story, consider the wider context. Often as a writer you might not know all of the context, for example whether the story will ultimately be published in a magazine, anthology, online and so on. As a writer you can understand the story’s context within your own work and plans.

Is it a one-off? If so, does it contain everything it needs – plot, setting and character – to be complete? Is it part of an ongoing or intended series? If this is the case, where does the story fit in terms of adding something to the sum of the setting? A series does not have to involve the same characters, but it might involve the same world. Does it explain the setting to the new reader whilst adding in something to those who may have read (or will read) other stories in the series? If the story features recurring characters, how is their meta-story addressed – that is, their development not only within the story itself but also the series? Is there a chronology to be considered, and if so, how does one address previous events that the reader needs to be aware of, whilst ensuring that there still remains some appeal to reading stories earlier in the chronology? Is the story a prelude or epilogue or addition to a novel? Black Library frequently does this, with short stories setting up series to come, or created for the omnibus editions to add value to the compilation.

If the story is created for a specific context, the writer must understand the potential for it to be read outside of that context. Your reader may be right up to speed, a dedicated follower of your work, or this may be the first time they have read anything you have written. These are two opposite requirements that seem to be in conflict and a compromise might be seen as serving neither properly.

It is important to bear in mind that regular readers take comfort from the familiar. If they know the characters well, they expect them to act in a certain way and confirmation of that expectation is a reward. Often there is enjoyment simply from seeing a well-liked character behaving the way they are meant to behave – witness the enduring appeal of Jack Bauer in 24, for example, or the ongoing interest in the Hulk. Viewers want to see Jack being Jack, readers want the Hulk to smash things up. It is an affirmation to the reader that what they know is right.

All Aboard the Arc

For the first time reader the story is their initial contact with the character(s) or setting, so it isn’t wise to present them with something that may be hugely atypical, even if such a change may appeal to established readers. If something is uncharacteristic, it needs to be established as such within the story.

Consider, for example, the murder mystery. Let’s say you’ve written half a dozen detective stories, in which your protagonist catches the bad guys (or gals) and they go to jail. For a change of pace, you think it is a good idea to set up a bad guy who gets away, to return later in the series. In the context of the series this seems like a cool idea. Imagine the surprise of the reader when the detective can’t solve the murder, or the murderer gets away! Good stuff!

Then imagine the reader’s reaction if this was the first story they encounter. A detective who lets the bad guy (or gal) get away? What sort of conclusion is that? Who writes murder mysteries where the mystery isn’t solved? The denial of expectation in that context could have the opposite effect, driving away the reader.

This is something that writer’s have been juggling with for a long time, particularly writers of TV series. For many years the accepted wisdom was that readers, or viewers, can come and go at any time, and therefore every instalment of the series needs to be entirely self-contained. There is no meta-plot, nothing that happens in one instalment affects future instalments. This has the advantage that readers can drop in and out whatever they please, read the stories out of order and still understand what is happening.

It has the disadvantage that every story becomes slightly ephemeral. Outside the context of each individual story, nothing much matters. Kirk won’t have his alien girlfriend next week. Another red shirt will have been recruited for the next away party. The world doesn’t change, nothing really affects the characters. It’s a poor reflection of our life experience, because we know that things aren’t reset as soon as the end credits roll (something that has been lampshaded in the Simpsons and other comedy shows).

The story arc – a change in characters and setting that occurs from instalment to instalment – has now become a regular feature of genre fiction (and in other forms too). The loyalty of readers and viewers is rewarded over time, each story or episode contributing something to the larger picture. Many fantasy novels are now heavily influenced by story arc, to the point where the stories they tell are no longer self-contained at all – and many TV shows are the same, such as Lost. They make little or no attempt to introduce the new reader/ viewer and assume that the reader has been with the series from the outset. Quite often this is born out of practicality, the plot and sub-plots have become so involved that to reiterate them in every novel would be repetitive for regular readers and utterly boggling to new readers.

TV shows can sometimes get away with a quick ‘Previously on…’ segment at the start. It’s hard to recreate that sort of montage within the written form, so the backstory needs to be woven into the main story, in a way that doesn’t seem forced. It is too easy to fall into the trap of exposition, with characters explaining things to each other solely for the purpose of the reader. “Just how did Dr Thrombosis infect New York, Daphne?”, “Well, Nick, here’s what happened…” Avoid At All Costs.

And of course, once you have arc-driven stories, one gets into the issues of continuity. But let’s not go there for the moment..

Screech of Brakes, Train of Thought Narrowly Avoids Derailment

I’ll go back to my mantra of making conscious decisions about writing. When thinking about meta-story and context in your work, do so with a deliberate plan. Decide if you want a series to be episodic or arc-driven, and then decide how, and even if, you want to address the issue of new readers wandering in at a later date. Be careful of compromise, of desiring to do the best for everybody and ending up with something that pleases nobody. If the big story you want to tell needs to be read from the start, accept that reality and embrace it. Conversely, if you want readers to be able to enter at any point with a reasonable degree of understanding (and defining reasonable can require lots of thought) then be sure that every novel or story or episode gives as defined and as satisfying a narrative as possible.

Trilogies in particular can suffer from compromise. The second book can end up as nothing more than a bridge between the first and third instalments. Worst of all is an inconsistency across a series, as might occur when a first novel is written and is successful, and then subsequent arc-driven additions are made onto a self-contained story. If you are fortunate enough to find yourself in this position, bear in mind the original context rather than the new one. With the number of ongoing, arc-driven series that seem to dominate the genre market (particularly fantasy) it is easy to forget the appeal of the simple one-off novel, or series of one-off novels. Don’t be tempted (or pressurised) into thinking that an arc-driven series is the only way to go. Some of the most successful authors have based their careers on writing many one-off novels based in the same setting, and sometimes even using the same characters. David Gemmell, Terry Pratchett*, Iain M Banks (who spring to mind simply because they are on the closest bookcase in my line of vision) and many others have created large catalogues of works without resorting to the ’story in ten parts’ approach. Choose which one works best for you and for your stories.

*It is interesting to note that while all of Mr Pratchett’s novels are entirely self-sufficient, he has introduced an arc-like development into the Discworld. While plots in earlier novels are not directly related to the plots of later novels, their influence can be felt . This is most obvious in the many developments of Ankh-Morpork society and technology, with inventions and institutions created in earlier novels continuing to exist later in the series.