The Pecman

The key, I think, is to pull back from overuse, but not be afraid to use curse words when the story (or characters) dictate it. For example, one of the absolute funniest moments in the classic 1980s film A Christmas Story is when Ralphie, the little boy, drops a bolt and says the F word (which is bleeped in the movie). His narration calls it "the mother of all curse words." There's a shocked reaction by his parents, and then a quick cut to Ralphie sitting in front of the bathroom mirror with a large bar of soap in his mouth. Hilarious. "Darn" would not have garnered the same reaction.

And an update: I'm pleased to say that, after a six-year struggle to complete this novel, I have finally finished the first draft of all 16 chapters of my time-travel story, Pieces of Destiny. With luck, chapter 15 and the finale, Chapter 16, will be up on AD in the next few days. I have to thank my friends and advisers, Cole, VWL, and The Dude, for providing lots of feedback and behind-the-scenes criticism that helped shape some of the story's fine points. This was a very daunting experience, partly because of the relatively large amount of research I had to do in order to understand the world of 1864, but also to find a way to get a fairly complex story down on paper. I think I had writers' block for a solid two years just because I was overwhelmed at the sheer amount of detail I had to cover in the final four chapters. (That, plus a career change and some personal setbacks, none of which were simple or easy.) My friend and fellow author Luz Rojo, along with my partner Roddy, were instrumental in prodding me at every opportunity for me to complete the story, and I'm glad to say we finally crossed that finish line. All of it is told through the eyes of a gay 2013 teenager, so this is not so much a historical novel as a combination romance, coming-of-age story, and also a mystery with several (I hope) surprising twists and turns. The ending gets fairly dark and violent, but I always knew we were headed in this direction. And I think I've taken care of every loose plot end -- and there were quite a few, plus some I'll deal with in the next book. I am planning at least a second book, which will continue the adventures and I think will finish the time-travel side (for the lead character, anyway), and will veer far away from rural America and go out West, and eventually to the East coast of 1865 America right after the Civil War. But... I say no more. We'll see if and when the sequel happens.

Nothing's worse than getting an email from a reader who says, "hey! You got such-and-such fact wrong in your story! You don't know shit!" That's rough. All you can do is sigh, admit they're right, fix the problem, thank them, and move on.

Prude! The kids in my neighborhood were using the F word when I was 8, and we're talking 1962. Four-letter language is nothing new. I think you can use (and not use) curse words as a way to distinguish characters' dialogue. I've written stories where one character never curses, while another curses like a sailor. And others where they only curse very, very rarely, under duress. I just finished a novel I've been working on for six years, and a quick check reveals I used the F word a grand total of 16 times. Given that we're talking 125,000 words, I think that's not a bad average, roughly .7%. In real life, trust me, one 20-minute drive on the LA freeways, and I'm already well-past 16 F's. I agree that there's a time and a place for foul language, but I would never dream of suggesting to a fellow writer that they add more. But at the same time, I think self-censure in 2013 is insane. I have no problem turning the F-word into something tamer, particularly if it's a script for broadcast television or something, because that's the necessity of the beast. But there are no such rules for novels. On a related note: I chuckled at what J.K. Rowling did in her Harry Potter series as the characters got older. Rather than spell out the curse word, she'd just say something, "Harry spat out a curse. Hermione cringed, 'Oh, Harry -- you shouldn't call Snape that!'" Stuff like that. And it worked fine for a YA audience.

When it is! How high is up? How far is far? Use your gut instinct. To me, the key is to try to engage all the senses: make the reader taste, smell, and feel the environment. It's not just about how everything looks. Putting a sense of time in there is important, too; is it late in the day? Is is high noon? Is it March 17th? To me, all of these things add to the verisimilitude of the piece, and without it, it becomes just a character sketch of people and dialogue. I agree that it can go overboard. I can recall one of the Anne Rice Vampire Lestat stories where she spent 3 solid pages getting one character from the gate of a house to inside the house, the prose filled with flowery phrases detailing the temperature, the moisture in the air, the smell of the dirt on the ground, the feel of the rusty doorknobs, the peeling paint, the broken glass, and so on. In the hands of a master writer, I think this can be beautiful. Could it have been done in three paragraphs instead of three pages? Maybe. In her case, I didn't mind it too much. I think the key is to establish the mood at every scene change and location change. And if you're leading up to some pivotal moment, maybe communicate the lead character's mood: maybe he or she is uncertain, maybe they're fearful, maybe they're filled with anticipation. All of this can be expressed with description: the crack of a twig in the forest, the howl of a distant dog, an unfamiliar shadow to one side. Monica Wood's book Description (from Writers Digest Press) helped me a lot, but so did merely reading my favorite authors and dissecting what they did. Sometimes, you want to jump into a scene quickly; other times, you need to spend time establishing the setting and mood with prose. I think the key is to find a balance that's not too much, but also not too little. And I agree: the "ly" words can be deadly.

Yep, and don't forget to send back a thank you, even if it's a quick form letter. I think readers like the personal touch, provided you're not getting swamped by dozens of emails a day.

Maybe roll out the flashback in pieces. Something happens, and it forces him to remember just a moment, like a page or two. Do that a few times, and it might cover the whole situation, spread out over several chapters. But I agree, flashbacks are dangerous, because to me they're a little too "showy." The moment you go too far, to me, it reveals too much of the technique, which should be invisible to the reader.

Hey, J.K. Rowling wrote all seven Harry Potter novels in a modest coffee shop in Edinburgh, and she wound up making over $1 billion dollars. So maybe there is something to this. Me, I can't write with vocal music playing -- it interferes with the dialogue. I have no problem writing with innocuous instrumental music like jazz or light classical (no opera), provided there's no spoken interruptions. But I don't like being around people talking, not when I'm deep in a chapter.

I think sometimes, writing about what you don't know can also force you to stretch your muscles and widen your horizons. The first novel I wrote was semi-autobiographical, stretching the truth at times but certainly about a time and a place I knew very well. The second time, I decided to write about characters I knew nothing about: a privileged closeted teen athlete in a wealthy family who winds up getting blackmailed at a contemporary private school. All of it wound up forcing me to do a lot of research, but I got the vast majority of the details right. My current main project is a time-travel/sci-fi piece about a contemporary teenager who's out, reasonably happy with his life, who falls through a time portal and winds up back in 1864 and falls in love. Again, it's required tons of research to get the little subtle details right (for example: who knew there were no shoelaces in 1864, and no zippers until the turn of the century), but it's been an interesting ride. Finding a way to make this believable has been a constant struggle, but since we see the experience through the contemporary kid's eyes, that handles the exposition without making it too heavy-handed or obvious. So I think sometimes, this is a rule that can be broken. Or at least, if you can't write what you know... then learn about what you don't know and then write about it!

I don't give a crap. My feeling is the story itself is its own gift, and I don't necessarily owe the readers anything but to do my best at my job. If the story is incomplete... oh, well. My take is that posting stories online is the internet version of allowing somebody to read over the writer's shoulder during the writing process, and that covers both good and bad. You never know when you read a final, published book whether it took 10 weeks or 10 years to write. A big issue for me is that we're generally doing this for free, so I think the reader has to accept that caveat going in that we offer no guarantees, no warranties, no promises, and (potentially) no conclusion for a story in progress. If they were paying, then I think it only makes sense to produce a finished story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Yes, I thought Book 5 (Order of the Phoenix) was the best book overall, and I was floored that the movie completely eliminated Harry's terrible outburst where he pretty much destroyed Dumbledore's office after finding out that he would have to die in order to defeat Voldemort. It was a powerful moment that never happened in the movie. I thought one of the greatest character flaws revealed in the Harry Potter stories was the revelation that Harry's own father was a jerk, and had tormented teenage Snape (hanging him upside down and pulling off his pants, if memory serves). I think these shadings showed that many of the characters were more well-rounded than we initially expected -- even the discovery that Snape was pitiable and very human. Twilight doesn't do much for me. To me, it's just a modern spin on the Anne Rice books, many of which I think were very well done. I particularly dislike Stephenie Meyer's breaking of all known vampire rules: having them walk in the sun, seen by mirrors, crosses having no effect, vampires having sex, and so on. To me, it's just ludicrous -- but clearly, there's a huge audience for this crap. Hunger Games at least makes some kind of vague logical sense to me.

Changing POVs is a pet peeve of mine. I'm not saying it can't be done or never should be done, but I think a much wiser course is just to write the story in 3rd person omniscient, using an "unseen narrator" to tell the story logically, getting inside the thoughts of only one character at a time. To me, the moment you waver back and forth between two different characters on the same page, using 1st person POV, it's just hammy and contrived and artificial. Going back and forth between descriptive prose and dialogue is a skill like anything else. In some cases, if the description reflects the attitude and sensibilities of the protagonist, then I think it can reflect his or her mood to some extent. In other cases, the description might remain neutral (as in 3rd person), yet still find a way to describe the emotions and mood of the lead character. Nancy Kress' book Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint (from Writers Digest Press) goes into this in great detail, with examples on how it can be done well, and how it's sometimes done badly.

I've always been of the opinion that changing POVs is very dangerous, and often fails because (to me) it reveals too much technique to the reader. Flashbacks can work in small doses, but I think even that has to be done from one point of view -- or possibly 3rd person omniscient, which can get inside the head of any character -- to avoid becoming confusing. There's also the choice of simply telling the story in chronological order, so that the flashback becomes its own self-contained chapter that precedes what follows. I think once you get beyond a few pages, there's a danger of confusing the reader and just becoming too contrived. There are always exceptions, and there have been some fantastic movies and novels written that were filled with multiple flashbacks; Citizen Kane is one of my favorites, one that even sometimes shows the same scene later on from a different point of view, revealing things of which the original narrator wasn't aware. But I think it takes considerable skill to pull this stuff off.

To me, the general rules of good story telling always apply, even with Fantasy and to SF. One of the best that I've used over the years is: the central characters have to want something. For example, Harry Potter wants to stop Voldemort and avenge his parents' deaths. To me, this is pretty straightforward. Everything else is just window-dressing, whether the characters have powers or there's some other fantastic element. I like the fact that in J.K. Rowling's case, she spent almost a year setting down rules and limitations of the characters' power, and religiously stuck to them throughout the novels. For example, the wizards' power could not bring somebody back from the dead, nor could it create a living thing (particularly something as basic as food). Without the limitations, you wind up with characters who have no weaknesses, and it doesn't make for a very interesting story. I find that often, the characters' weaknesses and flaws can be pivotal, particularly when they find ways to overcome them (or wind up with enormous problems because of them). In some cases, the solutions are not magical at all, but boil down to something as simple as friendship, loyalty, courage, even love. Tolkien's work is filled with stuff like this, where the adventure of the story boiled down to bravery, not necessarily any special powers. Sometimes, when the hero's power fails is when they're tested the most: Superman facing Kryptonite, a vampire threatened by the blinding sun, Harry Potter having a duel with Voldemort. I think the magic is often in the emotion of the character, and how they change over time.

Terrific novella, and Harlan Ellison broke a lot of the rules on that one. He's a brilliant writer. The movie was very good and well-done, though it wasn't very successful commercially. I've worked on a lot of bad SF movies in my time, and believe me, pretty much everybody behind the scenes knows the movies are bad. Only the director and producers are convinced they're creating a classic, and they're just operating in some kind of bizarre reality-distortion-field delusion. The science fiction and fantasy works that have impressed me the most have been where the writers set up specific limitations and rules on what works and what doesn't, then write the story to fit those boundaries. Annie Rice's Vampire Chronicles is a good example, as is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. With science fiction, I think there are different rules for different plot lines. Time-travel, for example, can be particularly hairy, particularly when the past is altered and chaos strikes. Bob Gale & Bob Zemeckis' Back to the Future series did this very well, and I think it covered the whole problem of time-travel paradoxes and existential issues very well. In novels, one of my favorites is David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself (which also has some intriguing gay overtones). The key to me is to take care of plot threads and small details. Otherwise, you wind up with a mess like Lost, where almost nothing is revealed and the whole thing is kind of a cheat. (And I liked a lot of the show -- just not the ending.)

To me, the only two important rules are 1) surprise the reader and 2) make them want to read more. The best novels I've ever read have done both, in spades. I could also add a third: don't be boring. I see an awful lot of online fiction that has page after page of dialogue scenes that could've been cut down to one paragraph of description, particularly when not much is happening. "Don't bore us; get to the chorus" is often good advice. Everything else boils down the usual stuff of having a plot that makes sense, creating characters that people can understand (if not empathize with), and stir in as much conflict as you can in every chapter. To me, these are the most important rules that really matter -- after the basics of spelling, grammar, and style.

Bah. I just use MS Word and keep a whole bunch of files open at once: multiple chapters, timelines, character lists, plot synopsis, and story notes. Not that big a deal to switch back and forth. It doesn't have to be all that complicated.

Yeah, I think that's the key. I'm a big Oxford Comma guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma And yet, I've seen quite a few books on writing that steadfastly warn against the perils of using semi-colons. (I think there's a famous book that warns, "The road to hell is paved with semicolons," but I can't for the life of me remember the title.) I keep them to an absolute minimum. I'm baffled by the number of published books out there that eschew standard rules of style, particularly with run-on sentences. I think a lot of this stuff is kind of falling by the wayside, due to cutbacks at publishing companies and the dearth of good proofreaders.

I think one of the cores of the dreaded Writers Block is the inability to write something that's terribly flawed. I think there's two solutions: 1) write it anyway, flaws and all, with the understanding that nobody else will read it and you can fix it in the edit 2) write a later chapter first. If I have a general outline of where I'm going to go, in some cases, I've been able to jump ahead and knock out a forthcoming chapter, then write the prior chapters leading up to it later on. Nothing wrong with that. What I generally feel like when writing is that I'm watching a movie and writing down the dialogue and the action that I see and hear. If the movie ain't happening, I ain't writing. But if I have a fairly vivid picture of what's going on, then it almost becomes a compulsion to get it down on paper (or the computer screen, as it were).

Chapter 14 is now up. Took me a while, but we'll eventually get there. Lots of meat in this one -- never a dull moment. As I'm sure other authors will attest, sometimes the twists and turns of life get in the way of allowing us time to write. In my case, at least the story is done in my head, so it's just a matter of sitting down and getting it all out on paper. I have another novel in addition to Destiny, Jagged Angel, which goes in a radically different direction. A fourth novel, Project Cerulean Blue, is kind of a weird sci-fi thing I threw together for laughs, but that one's on the back burner for the moment.

More people should do stuff like this. The world would be a much better place if people would do what's right, rather than worry about the consequences. Congrats!

I'm completely confused, but that's par for the course.

Thanks sincerely, Dom. That means a lot, coming from an author whose work I admire very much. This has definitely been the most difficult story I've ever attempted, partly because of the amount of research it's taken, and partly because I've had some trying times personally. One hopes the worst is over, and now it's just a question of finding the time to "keep it movin', movin'," as the song goes. Graham is right -- technically, this is more a historical novel than it is time-travel, because the SF elements only enter in in chapter 1, and then again at the very end of the story. No science in this story. In fact, at some point, we may start to wonder if what's happening to Jason is real at all; perhaps he's still unconscious in the cave, and all of this is a dream. You never know.

And Chapter 9 is now up on Awesomedude and Nifty: http://www.awesomedude.com/pecman/pieces_o...stiny/index.htm I had hoped this would end this particular section of the novel, but it looks like we have at least one more chapter, maybe two. Lots of changes coming, so hang on. Things will definitely get cranked up a notch in Chapter 10. With luck, that might be done just after new year's, maybe sooner. And my sincere thanks to Dom Luka for his praise elsewhere. Thanks also to VWL and Cole Parker for behind-the-scenes advice and much-needed proofing. Happy Festivus (for the rest of us), folks!

Gee, thanks (I think). You'll have to let me know in eMail how I might earn another 3 points for the writing. (I draw the line at sexual favors, but bribery is always a possibility.) On the other hand, elsewhere you call the story "amazing." I hesitate to think what accolades I'd get if I made it to, say, 7.5 or even (dare I hope) 8.5... I think you might change the rating (much higher or much lower) after Chapter 10. Let's just say if this were a movie, it'd cost about $200 million to shoot.