Kill your darlings: letting go of good writing. Kill your darlings. It’s a common piece of writing advice, but what does it mean? I once thought that “kill your darlings” was strictly for storytellers. I even wrote about killing your darlings in storytelling. But this piece of wisdom has broader applications. It can be used…
by Lauren Sapala For the longest time I had major problems doing revisions on my writing. It seemed so easy for everyone else. Why was it so hard for me? Of course, I also had trouble writing. I hardly ever experienced that state of “effortless flow” everyone talked about, in which the words […]
via Stuck with Your Story? Why You Keep Hitting Walls and Dead Ends in Your Writing — A Writer’s Path
How can you tell if a story is “true”?
Part of it is the structure. If someone tells a story that they swear is true, yet that story has three-beat escalation and a clean conclusion straight out of “Save The Cat”, then I’d say that someone is embellishing. Fiction has to have a pattern for it to engage our emotions. Real Life is messy, confusing, and often has conclusions or realizations decades after key events.
This is a podcast called “Spooked”. People have contacted the producers with their experiences of the supernatural. There is some great stuff here. Some stories are obvious BS (“Time Warp Saloon” in the ep “Lost In Time”). Others have been embellished (Tale One of “Creepy Crawly”). But others have that off-key clang of truth that gets your imagination moving. Try “The Iron Gate”, the second story of “Creepy Crawly”, or any of “Borderlands”. Really, try any of these episodes and get your creep on.
Please, please, someone show me a man who can write a good female protagonist.
via Why Are Men So Terrible at Writing Female Characters? — K.L. Kranes, Writing Reading Life
Beta readers are people who read your manuscript before you polish it for publication or submission to a literary agent or publisher. Unlike editors, beta readers are unpaid volunteers who provide feedback that you can use to make improvements to your work. 1,339 more words
via How to Prepare to Work with Beta Readers — Writing Forward
I get this a lot when I tell people what I do. The path doesn’t seem obvious unless you’ve been on it.
Were your parents Monty Python fans? Mine were, and fans of Steve Martin, and Spike Jones, and that old Bloopers record, and Alan Sherman, and Mork and Mindy.
At the same time, I had a still-inexplicable attraction to the morbid. The teen next door collected “Creepy” and “Eerie” magazines, which I read. Sundays would be days of chest-tightening anxiety with the strange, dark color pallet of the ABC morning cartoons, the mind-bending appropriation of The Groovie Ghoulies, the creepy-ass music of the NBC Sunday Night Mysteries followed by Night Gallery.
I used my library card for Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, tales of the Strange But True, and through them discovered Fritz Leiber and sword-and sorcery.
The possibilities of the the supernatural being true mixed with my desire make life as funny as TV. I chased laughs and avoided free-floating dread all the way up into my 20s.
When you think about it, ’70s Humor is pretty unsettling. Drugs were a laugh riot. Pointing fingers or thumbs caused magic if you were alien enough or cool enough. Men skeeved on women on the regular. Everyone had compulsive catch phrases. Giant feet stamped on everything. All social institutions were corrupt. Giant hedgehogs persecute British criminals who nail people’s heads to the floor.
I had wanted to be a stand-up comedian. A sketch comedy group later, I decided prose was less nerve wracking.
But in the ’80s, there were only “Spy” and “Mad” magazines. I wasn’t sophisticated enough for “Spy” or sharp enough for “Mad”. I tried dark-humored horror at “Weird Tales”.
So it went for nine years. Eventually I realized I was trying to write horror through a humor lens, which is different than writing dark humor. I was writing The Groovie Ghoulies when I wanted to write Terry Southern or Roald Dahl.
Then I sold a story about energy drinks and dance crazes merging people into carnivorous new lifeforms. I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
Nowadays, there’s McSweeny’s and all sorts of boutique pubs for humor, but I dunno. McSweeny’s has a repetitive formula and the other markets are so niche, I’d have to derail to learn their culture.
How did you get here? How did you get where you are?
Here’s a guy dealing with these questions.
How to Alienate People By Telling Them You Write Horror — Drew Chial
I get around, wheeling and dealing in my hip bohemian community. I’m a man about town, getting recognized in my seasonally inappropriate dark t-shirt and jeans. 1,091 more words
via How to Alienate People By Telling Them You Write Horror — Drew Chial