I like interviewing other writers, to find out how they do what I do: write! This idea came after too much coffee, I’m sure, but I thought what if I ask five authors the same five questions and see what kind of patterns emerge or don’t. Surely we can break the secret code to writing. For starters, I picked five random writers from my writing group.

My victims for these first rounds are: Luc Reid, Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan. My thanks to them for taking part!

#

How do you begin a story? Does it start with the idea, a character, an image, a line of dialogue, or are all stories different?

LR: A story idea that grabs me usually has a character getting mixed up in something strange or difficult, and I write the story to find out more about that. For instance, my most recent story came from the idea of a stick figure who was in love with a cartoon–someone who was completely out of his league because the object of his affections was drawn so much better than he was. The world of the story emerged because it had to exist in order for that character to have that problem. For another example: my novel Family Skulls is about a teenager whose family can’t get help from anyone with anything, which doesn’t seem like such a bad curse until you break your leg at work, miss the bus back from a field trip an hour away from your house, or pass out on the street in winter. So: characters in strange and difficult situations. If the situation piques my interest and pushes my emotional buttons, I’m there.

KHL: Every story is different. Has a different inspiration, or spark. The challenge is how to kindle each spark into the best possible story. I like to sneak the theme in as early as possible, as that tends to lead to the most cohesive stories. I also find it helpful to think of the first paragraph as similar to a job interview. Lead with your strengths, and have the confidence that this particular story is the story that will change the reader’s life.

DM: I often start with dialogue—sometimes unattributed dialogue, which drives some people nuts though it’s worked for me quite well. I like to swing for the fences on the very first sentence. It’s not for everybody, but if I can get an editor to turn to the next page, I’ve broken through a barrier. I don’t want them to turn the page in mild interest or a sense of obligation, mind you. They have to want to know what happens next.

JH: All of the above which is another way of saying every story is different, which is also another way of saying by staring at my computer screen and mumbling to myself until something happens. Often the beginning, that arresting image, dialogue, nugget, or whatever you want to call it, will emerge only after a certain amount of drafting has occurred. It’s like that Steven Wright joke where he says he drinks at least three cups of coffee before his first cup of coffee every morning.

VK: All stories are different. Very generally speaking, the first line of a story should be a sentence that means one thing on first read, and something deeper or entirely new on second read (after the reader has finished the story). For example, an innocent-sounding line will take on a darker tone, or a play on words becomes clear.

How do you start a story? Leave us a comment. Next time, we’ll talk about story titles.

When you first begin writing, it’s hard to know what’s new and what’s worn out. People tell you to read broadly and this is one reason why. If you know what’s current in your preferred genre and beyond, you have a better chance of not stepping in the same puddle. If you fully intend to step into that puddle, at least you know how it has been done before and can attempt a new path through it.

Similar ideas to tend to collide and coalesce in the slush pile; some weeks, the slush seems to be of one distinct flavor, wherein everyone has decided to write about one topic, be it birth, death, or deals with the devil. It’s the genre hive mind hard at work–what power might we harness from that mind?

Some days, one has to groan when another story about Death rises to the top of the reading stack. I would pay good money to never read another story where one’s spouse turns out to be Death. Deals with the devil or the devil in disguise? That sweet old lady the protag helped across the street–the devil? You don’t say! I would like to never again see a story wherein it was all a dream; where the two characters in the story are the last two on Earth; where the heroine is a mermaid trying to live in the human world.

And yet, some stories do succeed in giving old ideas a new twist. Shimmer has published more than a few, but here are some recent examples:

Gutted, by L.L. Hannett (Shimmer 13)

“Erl  doesn’t believe in selkies.

The only skins women in his village discard are covered in scales, separated from juicy white flesh at the points of their gutting knives. Twice a day, fisherwives make short work of the fleet’s catch. Dawn and dusk see them straddling mermaids’ torsos, cleaning plump tails with efficient, intuitive slices. Thigh-length fillets slap into piles on the jetty while bloodless heads, grey shoulders and breasts splash back into the ocean. Waters churn as surviving merfolk wrestle to feed on the scraps.”

With the opening line, the story has already caught my interest because of two things. Thing one: selkies. Selkie stories, much like mermaid stories, are a dime a dozen in the slush pile. They are very common. This story had to work to gain my trust–which it did with thing two: “doesn’t believe.” This already gives a standard idea a subtle twist. I’m already curious about Erl and where his disbelief will take him and me, the reader. It takes us to a dark land, where mermaids are killed for their flesh, and where the interior landscape of one fisherman is stranger than any coastline you may find.

A Window, As Clear as a Mirror, by Ferrett Steinmetz (Shimmer 13)

“Malcolm Gebrowski returned from his job at the stamp factory to discover his wife had left him for a magic portal. He stared numbly at the linoleum floor of his apartment, all scuffed up with hoofprints, the smell of lilacs gradually being overpowered by the mildewy stink of the paper plant next door. All that was left of eight years of marriage was a scribbled note on the back of the telephone bill.”

Magic portals and elves and unicorns. For me what makes a story is its characters. This story quickly endears a reader to Malcolm–standing on the scuffed linoleum kitchen floor to read his wife’s devastating letter–she’s leaving him for a magic portal, but has left him lasagna in the oven. What could be a story full of classic fantasy trappings (unicorns! princes! fairies!) turns into a tender tale about an eight-year marriage and what happens when one partner bolts for the hills.

Red and Grandma Inside the Wolf, by Carmen Lau (Shimmer 12)

“What fabulous fur you have,” I said.

He really did. It was sleek, the color of snow and ash. And what quantity of it! Imagine my delight upon opening Grandma’s bedroom door and finding him, lying on his side with his head propped up with one sturdy leg, as if posing for a portrait. Veritable hillocks of fat and fur, this wolf had, roll upon roll, all spilling one over the other. One small shift and his entire body trembled. His fur glistened like metal in the lamplight. Looking at him made me hungry.”

Little Red Riding Hood was a staple in the slush pile for a good while, though she seems to have faded some in recent weeks. As with any fairy tale retelling, the author may have to work a little harder to provide a new twist, especially for readers well-schooled in this genre. This story starts with the title itself–how could that not capture a person’s attention? The title immediately anchors the reader, the first paragraphs sucking the reader inside with Red’s attraction to the wolf. She shouldn’t find him lovely, should she? Why is she hungry for him? Curious, curious, and the pace keeps on, until the last haunting line.

As you commit words to paper, be aware of what has come before. Read broadly, especially of the publications you submit to. If someone tells you stories about Death are cliché, you can thumb your nose at them. Blaze a new path. You don’t have to obliterate the old with your new twist–if you can twine your story alongside the original, giving new depth to a classic, so much the better.

My writing group is always coming up with new ways to egg each other on: contests and challenges, awards and speakers to inspire us.

One of our strategies is to pass around a sheet every week where we write down what stories we’ve submitted to markets. Knowing how many stories we have in the mail, seeing the group statistics of submissions vs. sales, bemoaning rejections, it keeps us accountable and makes us want to write more, and submit more.

That is, except for Anne.

Anne joined our group for just a little while. During her short stay, every week she’d scrawl on our submission sheet in all caps:

Which wasn’t the question, really, but okay. Needless to say that got old after a few months. Eventually she quit, never having submitted a story.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had writer’s block. It sucks. Sometimes it seems like every time I get into a solid writing groove, something comes out of left field and knocks my feet out from under me.

Here come the Life Rolls

Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith have an analogy for our writing careers they call The Game. They literally set up a board and have writers move along their career, try to get by, writing stuff, getting it out to markets, maybe even someday *gasp* making a living from writing. The Game chugs along and you roll dice to emulate good and bad stuff that happens. Life Rolls.

Unexpected, unplanned bad stuff that happens. Stuff like getting a divorce or your grandma  dying. It derails you, demands your attention,  possibly leaves you too wrecked to even think about writing.

Wonderful, delightful things can kill your writing dead too: getting your dream job, selling a story, winning an award. When I got into Clarion, it was a dream come true. The six weeks I spent there was one of the most powerful times of my life.

Then it ended and I didn’t write for a year.

Life Rolls are pretty much anything that drag focus away from your writing and career.

Learning to surf

Life’s going to throw stuff at you. I guarantee it.

Life is kind of like the ocean, it’s huge and can seriously knock you for a loop. You can try to stand tough against it, but it’s going to hit you hard. When dealing with life, we need to be flexible. We can make all the solid plans we like, but something is going to go wrong sometime, count on it. If we’re going to keep writing through our Life Rolls, we have to learn how to surf.

Strategizing

Life surfing takes a little planning. Sure, there’s no way you’ll be ready for when someone plows into your car or your lover pops the question, but you can make your writing strategy realistic and modular. You can break your plans into small pieces that can be moved around inconveniences and put on hold when things get crappy (or awesome). Set reasonable goals and break them down into little steps. (More about that in a minute.)

But you know what? You don’t swing with cancer. Okay, I know one guy who just pushed through it and kept writing, but most of us need to give ourselves time to mourn and reflect and just plain feel sorry for ourselves. Another writing friend who had cancer kept trying to make herself finish her damn novel until she was even more sick and miserable. It wasn’t until she let herself stop that she really started to heal.

Sometimes the very best thing we can do is let it go. I have a friend who needed to say, “I’m just not a writer anymore.” He cried, moved on to other things, and eventually felt better … and then he picked up writing again, stronger than ever.

It might help to give yourself vacations, sick days, whatever allows you to recharge and get back to it. You could set a date to check back in with your writing self. Set up a small, reasonable project to start with. In the meantime, do things that make you happy, things that feed your soul and give your life meaning.

Personally, I have A.D.D, and it keeps me sane. When I look on my current artistic plate, I see that I have a novel in the works, two others on the back-burner, and about thirty short stories I need to finish. When I just can’t look at the novel, I pull  out some short fiction. When writing feels too hard I record music, or  bind books or draw. Something. Anything.

That way, when I’m procrastinating, I’m still doing something. I’m doing things that feel good and get my artistic juices flowing.

But sometimes nothing helps.

Asking for support

You’re not in this alone.

Pretending you are isn’t doing yourself any favors. I’m blessed with friends and family and peers and if I don’t reach out to them, I’m just hurting myself. Even if I didn’t have people around me, there are thousands of people out there who understand what it’s like to feel stuck and blocked. Look for local writing groups. Go online, find forums and blogs. Find support.

Writer’s block

Anne was right: it sucks, it really does, but it can be dealt with.

My friend Ray pushes himself to the one page rule. He has to write 250 words every day. One page, every day. My sister does this in her own writing, but she lets herself write anything she wants, even just to rant about how much she hates writing in that moment. Sometimes that clears the way for fiction writing. My friend Damon’s rule is one sentence. Even on the worst day, he can still write one sentence. And on a lot of days he just keeps writing.

Some people write in the company of other writers. Some folks get energized by challenging other writers to see who can write the most.

Try different things. Some things will work for you, others won’t. Some things will work sometimes and not others or work for awhile and then stop. If you keep a toolbox full of tools to help you write, there’s a better chance that something will work.

A series of very small goals

So what do you do when you’re immobilized by fear or sadness or overwhelm?

My friend Bruce’s idea is atomizing: Break every task down into a series of tiny digestible pieces. Goals so small that they can’t possibly overwhelm you.

For example, you are never at one single moment writing a novel.

You’re writing a bunch of scenes. Wait, no, you’re writing one scene at a time.

But you’re not, you’re writing paragraphs that make up scenes. Or  actually sentences that make paragraphs.

Actually, all you’re ever doing at any one moment is writing words that make sentences, and, you know, any of us can do that, right?

Maybe your goals should always be very small. Oh, sure, they should fit together to make something glorious and huge, but maybe the focus should always be something like, “for the next twenty-five minutes I’m going to write a number of words.”

Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird:

Often when you sit down to write…it’s like trying to scale a glacier. It’s hard to get your footing, and your fingertips get all red and frozen and torn up. … panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I’m going to have to get a job … I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I … remember that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.

I suggested working in twenty-five minute increments intentionally. There’s a whole system called the Pomodoro Method that creates structure to break any goal down into twenty-five minute chunks. It’s off and on done wonders for me.

Try this with your writing. You could also spend small chunks of time planning the larger structure for those words. (Or if you’re not into planning ahead, maybe use small chunks of time to smooth those words into something larger, or a little of each.)

I wish I had thought to say all this to Anne, because obviously writing was making her miserable. Hopefully she’s found her own set of tools to deal with what life throws at her writing.

Maybe a system like this will work for you, maybe another will. The point is, when life tries to kill your writing, go ahead and feel crappy, go ahead and mourn. But if you plan ahead a little, if you let yourself be flexible and cut yourself some slack, you can get through life rolls and writer’s block.

And don’t forget, we’ve all been there (and probably will be again). You’re not in this alone.

Shimmer author Eric Del Carlo imparts words of wisdom unto thee! His story, “Bad Moon Risen,” is slated for Shimmer #14.

#

If you have ever talked with an aspiring writer, you’ve had this conversation:  she or he wants to tell you about a great story idea.

There is nothing wrong with being an aspiring writer.  Every writer has been one, no matter how early success arrived.  Neither is there anything indisputably awry with sounding off about one’s story ideas. (Although I, personally, prefer not to talk about works in progress; not ever.)

But if you encounter this same would-be author months or years later, and find she or he still talking about the same story concept, you can roughly bet on one of two things:

1.  The story idea was never any great shakes to start with.

2.  This grand concept has held back the writer.

Science fiction and fantasy differ from other fields.  Ideas are given a great deal of weight.  An author must, after all, concoct something well outside the trappings of familiar reality.  With fantasy this might start with a world-building notion (a king must balance his power against a magic cult sweeping the land), just as with s-f it might begin with a technological innovation (the rich are transplanted into immortal robot bodies, while the poor still suffer and die).  Part of the allure of these two genres is that they sort of look easy, especially to someone who has spent a lifetime reading s-f and fantasy.  One learns the tropes.  You see stories play out in recognizable ways.  Maybe more than that, you see the dressings of these stories and novels, the lingo and the invented cultures.

If you are of a bent to become an author yourself, you inevitably start with imitation.  Nothing wrong with that either.  Somewhere some professional writer feels flattered.  But if you persist, you will eventually come upon your first original story idea.

Now, of course, it’s probably not going to be terribly original.  It may be derivative as all get-out, in fact.  But it will feel new to you because you did put it together in your own head.  It will also feel like a precious jewel as you lovingly caress it, stunned by its beauty.  You might be tempted to think:  This is it!  The idea that will launch my career!  Hugos and World Fantasy Awards glimmer mirage-like on the horizon.

That is not a bad feeling.  Enjoy it.  In a very real sense, you’ve earned it.

But then, after a respectful interval, go ahead and PUT THAT IDEA INTO A STORY.  Do it now.  Many hopeful writers start out with book-length aspirations or, really, triology and series amibitions.  Probably not wise.  Probably–I’m just saying–you won’t finish any of those projects.  Try a short story, even if that isn’t going to ultimately be the form in which you plan to work.  Short fiction is a great way to exercise the creative muscles you will need.  It is also the most expedient means to put forth your ideas.  Get them onto paper or onto a screen where you can take a good long hard judgmental look at them.

Very likely you will find that your concept isn’t quite what you thought.  That’s okay.  You’ve still accomplished something.  You have set your personal creative apparatus in motion.  Another idea will come, even if you find yourself using some minor or unconsidered aspect from your earlier concept.  And while you’re doing that, still another story tangent might well spring up.

It comes down to this:  the more you write, the more story ideas you are liable to generate.  The very act of writing leads to this.  You start out cranking an unwieldy intimating generator; and after a period of struggle and strain you find the handle turning more easily, and at some point after that the sparks are flying willy-nilly and the whole thing is humming like a dynamo.

BUT:  if you hoard that original idea, and never get around to committing it to anything, you will never get past that early primitive stage of writing.  You’re just that guy who talks endlessly about his or her “greatest–idea–ever.”

Don’t be that guy.