Writing Tips: Conflict

OK – so you have the high concept. Now what? Well, you have to have conflict. For me, I created a moral dilemma between the protagonist, the ‘monster’ Cheslov, and a local politician who thinks he has a direct connect with God.

Next – ratchet up the tension at every opportunity. I made my protagonist an ex-Navy seal so he could pretty much deal with anything. Made Cheslov part wolf, paranormal. Then went into detail explaining how screwed up the politician is, he’s hooked on drugs due to his wife’s death, etc. Keep ratcheting up.

Then create an outline – and write, write, write to fill in the outline. Don’t worry about adjectives or effect or the best dialogue or even grammar/punctuation.

Writing Tips: Confidence is Key

Just know that if you get in front of the keyboard at the right time of day for you, then you’ll write. Think about your characters, where the story is going to go. You don’t have to have it all planned out. It doesn’t have to be the next Da Vinci Code in terms of plot development. It just has to flow, to take on a life of it’s own.

Don’t start off thinking about how the hell you’re going to write a 300 page novel. Just start off and let the journey occur. Think about it and make your characters come alive and write their thoughts and lives and then let the interactions occur and you’ll be amazed and surprised and hopefully delighted by the results.

Writing Tips: Character driven plot - rare gems

They make the best TV and movies too. Think about Breaking Bad – hell yes the story is outstanding. But the cast, the cast! Walter, Jessie – sure. But also Hank, Skylar, the various villains. So you don’t mind when they switch scenes because the cast is great so all of the subplots are intriguing.

Writing Tips: Characters make a great story

For me, anyway, it’s all about the characters. I’ll give a book 50 to 100 pages. By then if I haven’t connected with at least some of the characters then I generally won’t finish the book. Unless, maybe, the plot is just a killer, like The Da vinci Code, or something like that. Preferably, I’m looking for the protagonist to blow me away because most of the time you are reading from his/her point of view.

But occasionally it’s enough if the antagonist is blowing me away, such as the Hannibal series by Thomas Harris.

Now, you put together a novel that has two or three characters that I can identify with? Or more? That’s a novel I’m not going to put down.

Writing tips: Getting Started

Think of a high concept. For me, that’s the ability to tap into the internet with your mind. So you can surf the internet the way you peruse your own memory today.

Try to remember the lyrics to a song. Might take a few seconds, then you remember. You find that information in your brain, obviously. Sort of a local hard drive, to use computer terms.

Now imagine you’re transparently tapped into the Global internet 24x7. Try to remember the lyrics to a song. They’re there instantly. Feels like you found them in your brain, just like before. But you didn’t. You found the words on a server in Germany. Doesn’t matter, all transparent to you.

Even further back in time...

And what of the ten years before that? Now we’re talking twenty years. But I can conceive it, I can feel it. I can hold it in my mind.

And what of twenty years before that? I was around, walking and breathing and always looking up. It was the early sixties and my parents and all of their friends were at the top and then my brother and his friends were up there too and I was at the bottom. Looking up to the people in my life and also looking up to the culture, always looking up and observing and accepting everything as reality, my reality, the reality.

Now I’m holding forty years in my mind. I know what its like to live through that passage of time.

And what of forty years before that?

Now I know what it’s like to be in the nineteen thirties. I can feel it.

And what of 80 years before that?

Now I’m in the eighteen fifties. And it seems impossible, that’s so long ago. Everyone is dead. And everyone who knew them is dead and its all just distant names. I mean, how many of us even know any of our great, great, great, great grandparents names? I don’t. But they all lived. Way back then. Just like we live now. Days were long and twenty times a day something really pissed you off, something that seemed so important at the time but seems so trivial today. Beyond trivial. Less than trivial. Meaningless.

And what of one hundred a sixty years before that? And three hundred and sixty years before that?

In moments I’m back to ancient Rome and they had lives exactly like ours today. They thought they were in a post modern error with unbelievable technology capable of aqueducts and coliseums and cement and all the other conveniences of what seemed to be a modern life. It always seems modern. Until you look back.

I’ve probably lost you by now, I think I’ve lost myself. It’s tough to play this game with someone else. I’m not a writer, if I were a writer I could probably play the game better with you.

10 years after

I like to play this little game in my mind. I think about something that happened, I don’t know, ten years ago. Something real. Vivid. I shut my eyes and there it is, there I am. Everything’s the same but different. It doesn’t have to be anything special. Maybe lying in a bed, looking at the paint on a window and thinking, realizing at that moment that time is just a weird bitch of a thing. You hold a worn black and white photo, turn it over and see a faded stamped date and it seems impossibly distant, unreal. A prop to support present reality but not something that actually happened, not people who actually lived and breathed and had twenty four hours in every day and considered their world, their reality to be an actual present. Merely a prelude to a future present that is all about the now.

Some say the world couldn’t possibly have been the same back then. Something’s been lost. I say the world couldn’t really have even existed, right? I mean, where was I?

But right then, right there, in my decade long memory I remember, I mean I was there and I remember everything was the same. The cool feel of the air on my skin, the softness of the flannel sheets against my back, my eyes resting on brush marks of paint on the window sill it was all the same and I knew in the future I question the reality so I stared, ten years ago, to indelibly imprint everything and it worked.

So ten years have gone by but I can connect the dots seamlessly from one present to another.