Category Archives: Professional

career, outward projection of you and your works

Collaborative Novels: Like Herding Cats?

Posted on by

Troy D. Smith is from Sparta, Tennessee. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, and teaches U.S. and American Indian history at Tennessee Tech. In addition to history, he writes short stories of all stripes, has written for several magazines, published poetry (but not lately), and writes western and mystery novels.

“This is a really cool concept you guys came up with — but it must be a nightmare with so many writers on the same projects. I bet it’s like herding cats!”

I have heard different iterations of that statement many times in the last six months, since Western Fictioneers announced our Wolf Creek series of collaborative novels (announced it at this very site, I might add). And to be honest, I feared it would be just that — a logistical nightmare. But as it turned out, the whole process has been remarkably smooth. This has surprised even me. As anyone who has worked with just one co-author knows, such a venture carries with it many unique challenges. And we have, at last count, nineteen co-authors on Wolf Creek (with at least a couple more coming onboard soon).

Right after Christmas of last year, Livia Washburn tossed out a suggestion on the WF email forum — to wit, she proposed a western short story anthology made up of supernatural Christmas tales, which many of us jumped on eagerly. She also brought up the prospect of a collaborative novel, and I had a bit of an epiphany: How about a whole ongoing series of them? And somehow we went from that conversation to three full novels in print less than twelve months later.

It would have been very difficult, and in fact virtually impossible, to achieve such a feat in the years before the Internet. As I tried to reconstruct how we got from Point A to Point B, I looked back over the email record that I kept (compulsive historian that I am). Nearly a hundred emails flew back and forth from everyone concerned, making suggestions and proposals for the type of character each writer would like to use. Within a week we had much of the overall plan nailed down. Then I took a few weeks to make some maps, write up a series bible, and outline the first four books — after which we had another round of email exchanges.

The process for each individual novel has been as smooth — which, again, is surprising. There is a stereotype that authors have big egos; I’m not so sure about that, necessarily, but authors do have control issues. A project like this involves bringing together nineteen people — each of whom is used to being the god of their own fictional universe, and is therefore extremely protective of his or her own vision and point of view. (That analogy tempts me to say that what we have in Wolf Creek is a veritable pantheon — but, um, that might indicate an ego problem).

Our teams, however, have all gelled pretty well. I think it helps that so many of the authors involved are veterans of the genre, and are used to both dealing with editorial input and working on series that a lot of other writers are also participating in, if not at the same time. So when I email the novel outline to the other co-authors of a particular volume, including what is specifically expected from their own chapters, they are all eager to meet the challenge. Throughout the process, individual writers coordinate with one another one-to-one to make sure they maintain consistency from chapter to chapter.

In all, this series has been a real joy to work on. I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun on a writing project. This will betray my geekiness, but I kind of feel like a dungeonmaster running an RPG campaign — except all the players are actually professional storytellers. I look forward to each new adventure, and hopefully we are developing a readership who feels the same way.

Writing Horror (When You Didn’t Think You Could)

Posted on by

Ivan Ewert’s debut horror novel, FAMISHED: THE FARM, was released October 12, 2012 through Apocalypse Ink Productions. It has been described as “a lovely, gruesome book” and is available through Amazon.com. His work has previously appeared in the award-winning anthology Grants Pass, as well as in Human Tales and Space Tramps: Full-Throttle Space Tales. His dark supernatural novella, Idolwood, was serialized in the e-zine The Edge of Propinquity throughout the year of 2011. Ivan can be reached at www.ivanewert.com and on Twitter @IvanEwert.

 

The last horror movie I saw was the original Jaws, in 2006. I never watched it before then. I was too frightened.

Today I’m a published horror author.

I admit it doesn’t really add up.

Horror’s not something I thought was in me, and yet FAMISHED: THE FARM apparently gave a few readers nightmares. It’s  been called “super gruesome” and “disturbing,” and I suppose there are a few scenes that fit that bill. Still, I really only felt the disturbing feelings it awoke during a single scene – and that had more to do with the emotional betrayal of the characters than the horrific acts being described.

So how did I write up-front horror when I didn’t think it was part of me?

  1. Look to the ordinary and make it terrible. I’ve got a bad habit, a mild case of dermatophagia. In English? I bite at my nails and skin. I don’t even think about it most times, but when I saw the divots in the pads of my thumbs, the white moistness of the flesh? That played a big part in FAMISHED’s conception. I had friends whose parents were farmers, and saw the way beasts of burden had to be handled, saw the easy decrepitude barns can sink into. There’s terror in your household cleaning supplies, in the rotting food in the back of your fridge, in the way a glass shatters and splinters against the floor. Use it.
  2. 2.       Have sympathy for your little angels. I dislike most horror films because I empathize with the victims. Even during trailers, I find myself thinking of their families, their children, wondering if mom or dad or their baby is ever coming home again. I wonder how I would react if someone I loved went missing, and imagine the worst … and then I write it down.
  3. 3.       … and sympathy for the devil. If your villain’s just a killer – or worse, a craaaaaazy killer, man – you’re not going to be able to make things horrible enough. Everyone in fiction has to have a reason or an explanation for the things they do, bar none. My villains in the Farm alternately believe they’re saving civilization, or rebelling against laws they find unjust; but they have reasons for doing what they do. That made my scenes in the pigpen, the loft, and the punishment chair much simpler to write.
  4. 4.       Writing. Is. Exorcism. Truth. Writing the scenes was sometimes difficult, and often done in the darkness. Once it was on the computer screen, though, the worst was over. I didn’t dream about the way the knife would feel, or the heat of the blood, or the voice of the Wound. It was done, and after a week, a clinical eye could be turned on the phrases without feeling my stomach lurch.
  5. 5.       Use your fears. Fearless heroes aren’t horror heroes, they’re hardboiled. Antiseptic terror is cranked out by a formula that counts decapitations like Harlequin counts heartbeats. If something makes you frightened, that’s half the battle! Grab that fear, and swing it by its tail. Bash its head against the rocks of your story and let the worst come out. It’s not real. It can’t hurt you.

That last one’s important. I’m not mothering anyone when I say that what we write isn’t real. If you’re prone to nightmares, then do what you’re supposed to do with all your life’s dreams, and use them. Humans with words in their blood have done that since wolves howled at the edge of the firelight, silver teeth and terrible claws, trying to keep us in the darkness.

We’re storytellers. We’re dreamers. We’re writers. It’s our life’s work to take all that’s in us, the good and the bad, and bring all our dreams into the light for others to learn from, shiver at, wonder about.

Cherish your fear, and share it with us all.

I’ll be waiting.

Writing When You’re Broken

Posted on by

There would be a post here, but life got in the way.

Seriously, though, life sometimes does get in the way. Vacations, family responsibilities, illnesses, day jobs. But what about the days when you have several hours free and you sit at the computer, staring at the screen, willing the words to come?

What about when you get in the way?

I’m not talking about the distractions of social media. Everyone knows they can shut off their net connection if they have no willpower otherwise, right? I’m also not talking about writer’s block, at least not in the way you think.

What if the illness is a big one? What if the day job is suddenly gone, along with the paycheck and the health insurance? What if your partner or spouse just packed his or her bags and took a permanent vacation away from you?

How do you find the mental will to write when your brain is slowly crumbling from the stress and chaos?

The first choice is the easy one. Don’t write. Step away from the computer completely or limit your use to Twitter and Facebook. Maybe you have that luxury. Maybe writing is just a hobby.

But what if you have a deadline waiting and not writing is not an option? What if the bats in your belfry are not just lingering but swarming in a chaos of ammonia and fluttering wings?

Use your stress.

Yes, gather up those bats and channel them into your writing. Feed your words with anger, with sorrow, with hurt. Do terrible things to characters, give them the life you wish you had at the moment, or give them the life you fear most. Write dialogue that says all the things you wish you could.

Your writing may very well end up with a different, stronger, resonance. You may be able to see things from a different point of view. Strong emotions don’t have to work against you. They can be the incendiary fuel for your phoenix of words instead of immolation.

But maybe you can’t. Maybe what you feel is too big, too much. So escape from your stress. Disappear into your fiction. Use it as the buffer from the chaos. Maybe things outside the word cave are terrible but inside, you are the master. If you wallow too much in your chaos, you’ll end up spinning your wheels on a stationary bike to nowhere.

View your writing as a toy. Ever notice that kids like to play even when they’re sick? Sure, you say, they’re kids. They have that endless energy. Maybe so, but maybe those towers made out of blocks help them not pay so much attention to their illness. Use your words in the same way. Build your own tower. Slay a dragon. Banish a ghost. Break a heart.

Words can cut, they can wound, but they can also help you heal. Even when you’re not aware they’re doing so.

 

 

 

 

What You Need To Know About Writing Video Games

Posted on by

The Central Clancy Writer for Ubisoft/Red Storm, Richard Dansky  was named one of the Top Twenty Game Writers by Gamasutra in 2009. His game credits include Splinter Cell: Conviction, Outland, and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. He is also the author of five novels, including Booksense pick Firefly Rain, and his short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as The New Hero, Don’t Read This Book, and Dark Faith.

 

So here’s what you have to know about videogame writing.
Unlike just about any other form of writing, videogame writing is not about the story you’re telling the reader. It’s about the story the player is creating by inhabiting the protagonist. What separates game writing from everything else is agency—the ability of the player to choose what happens next, even if the choices in question are limited to “do I use the big gun or the really big gun?” Comics, fiction, movies, television—the audience receives the narrative as the creator chooses to present it. Videogames, the user takes what the creator has done and builds their own story. Nobody ever says “Master Chief did this cool thing” after a hot and heavy game session. It’s always in the first person— “I did this.”

In other words, you’re writing to help the player build their story, not to tell them yours. Rely too heavily on the player sitting still to hear your brilliance and you’ll lose those same players. They want to be playing, after all, not sitting there receiving your wisdom, or letting NPCs do all the cool stuff, or reading. If they want to do that, there are other media out there they could pick up instead; the point of a game, after all, is that it has a player, and that the player has choices.

That is, after all, the essence of play.

Writing for games also means you need to take gameplay systems into account in your writing and your plot structure. Sign on to write for a game that has a character advancement mechanic and you have to tell a story that reflects the player character’s growth in power. Sign on to write a game that starts with a character who doesn’t build skills and you’re writing an entirely different type of narrative. Level design, AI state changes, level load mechanics, mocap technology—all of these affect the sort of writing that you do, on a deep and fundamental level. It’s not just that the words matter, it’s how the words are delivered, and what systems exist to deliver them, and how those words interact with the systems that comprise the other elements of the player experience.

And if you can’t fit your writing into the data structures, if you can’t recognize that systemic dialog is there to be heard to provide information to the player and thus needs to be brief and to the point and willing to hold up to multiple listenings, then you’re not serving the player, and you’re not serving the game. Most of all, game writing is about writing something fun. Games are meant to be played, after all, and even the ones that carry weighty themes* —Shadow of the Colossus, for example—still must give precedence to the idea that they’re enjoyable to spend time with. If you don’t hold onto that quintessential need for joy, even in the darkest hours when you’re crunching and there are a thousand variants on “arggh he shot me in the face!” to write and a level design just changed so that you need to do a last-minute rewrite, then you’re shortchanging the player of joy as well, and that hurts the game.

So go. Play games. Have fun. And have fun when you write them, so that someone else can have fun, too.

*Obviously, there are games that are not intended to be fun per se, and many of them are remarkable creations. For commercial game writing, however, the vast majority of projects are created with the intention that the game will be fun, so lots of people will enjoy playing it, tell their friends, and get said friends to buy it as well.