Shaun's "How-To-Write" Suggestions

Last week I talked about "How-To-Write" books and how many of them are fairly bunk. I thought that this week, I would go over the main points that I would discuss if I were to write a How-To book on writing. These are based on the things I've learned since I started my little writing career back in 2013 (wow that seems like forever ago now.) So read, learn, and enjoy, completely free of charge!

1. Write what you want, but make sure that it's right.

One thing you'll probably hear a lot is "Write what you know." Throw that out the window. Write what you want. My novel Class 5 is based in Arizona. I've driven through there a few times, but I live in Washington state. My personal experience with Arizona is peripheral at best. Why did I pick Arizona to write about? Dunno, to be honest. That's where the story told me it needed to be. I picked Arizona before I wrote about scorpions, or knowing the alien creature was susceptible to dehydration.

Once the location was chosen though, I read up on it. Arizona is hot and arid, but it's not a desert wasteland. There's a huge variety of plants and animals that live there. Temperatures can have a difference of more than 35 degrees from the height of the day to the depths of night. I also made sure, since this story had a strong military presence, that I looked up everything that would pertain to the story that I wasn't familiar with, like ranks, unit formations, and specific firearms.

So, forget writing what you know, just start with writing, and if you have to, learn about it along the way. Just make sure you get as much right as you can.

2. The more eyes you can have on your work, the better.

Seriously. Get eyes on your work that aren't yours. Beta Readers, editors, proofreaders. It doesn't matter how good you think you are, you're going to screw up, and having other people read the work before it's actually published will ALWAYS help.

Beta readers will help you make sure your story is going in the right direction and point out where you go off the rails a bit. Most importantly though, they'll tell you if your story is entertaining! If your work isn't holding a reader's attention enough to get through the whole thing, that's a major problem, and without beta readers it's one that you likely won't find out until it's been published.

Likewise, find a good editor. This probably won't be cheap, but it's an indispensable part of writing, especially if you plan to self-publish. Languages can be complicated, and even if it's your birth language, you're going to get some of it wrong in writing. Punctuation, grammar, syntax, regional dialects, slang, all are going to make your life harder. Not to mention that after spending hours upon hours of staring at the words, you're not going to see them clearly. You're going to see what you meant more than what you put down. It doesn't even matter if you're an expert with a PhD in English Composition, you're going to need someone else to look it over. Don't be cheap. Pay up, and get a good editor to go through your story.

3. Luck plays a part.

Deny it all you want, but luck does play a part in your success as a writer. Luck isn't random though; luck is all those factors that you have zero control over. Things like how many other new books are released that day, how saturated the genre for your story is, how close your book's release is to people's paychecks, whether your book gets suggested among "if you liked THIS book, you may also like...". If you're trying to get an agent or in with a publisher, you may have the luck of being the seventh story of that type the agent has already been handed that day. Your script may happen to land in their inbox just as they accept their limit for the reading period.

But while luck will play a part in your writing career, you can work around it. Keep writing. Don't let a setback or rejection slip deter you. As the saying goes, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." The more you put your work out there, the more likely you are to drop it on someone's desk right when it's what they're looking for. It's the same for selling to an agent, to a publisher, or to a reader. That's the thing about luck, the more you play, the more the odds even out, and once that breaks even, it's all about you and how much work you've put in.

So, there you go, the three biggest points I would put into a "How-to-write" book. As all advice goes though, it's up to you to take it, or not. These are just the things I've learned in my time being a writer. Your mileage may vary.

~ Shaun

How-To-Write books?

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Is how the saying goes. But is it really accurate? Maybe in some cases. In writing, I don't believe it is. It seems like every self-published writer also tends to put out a book touting their success and instructing other authors how to reach that brass ring of success. Whether they're actually as successful as they claim is entirely up for debate, as just about anyone can slap a gold star on their book and there's a hundred ways of gaming the system to claim your work is a best-seller.

I'll be honest though, I've considered a few little booklets myself, collections of posts from this very blog where I've touched on how to write. I'm not actually conceited enough to think any of my advice is really worth paying for. I'm not really sure anyone else's is either.

Now, being an author isn't an easy thing. Lots more struggle through and never see any real measure of success than the ones that are making their house payments from their writing. So I can see the allure of trying to find ways to step up, and advice from the people who claim to have made it seems as good a source as any. Here's one of the things though, we can't see their finances. We don't know what bar they have set to claim success.

But I digress. I'm not here to tear down everyone who's ever written a how-to-write book. One of the reasons for this blog is to share the things I've learned on my own journey through the perils, highs, and lows of authorship.

I've read several books on how to write. I even have ones that I like and that I would gladly recommend. Stephen King's 'On Writing' is an awesome one.

But I've learned a few things about how-to-write books by reading them, and that's really what I want to share here. Completely free, you don't even have to download a separate PDF file or anything.

1. There are no hard and fast rules for writing a book.

Really. Half these how-to books contradict themselves, if not each other. Use Adverbs. Don't use Adverbs. Write out your whole plot, let the story write itself. etc. etc. If any one of these rules really held true, all these how-to books would say exactly the same thing, but they don't. All these books like to tell you if you follow everything they put forth, you'll find success, but how can that be true when not a one of these books agree on any single rule?

2. None of these how-to books are explicitly wrong or right.

Like I said, different people have different values to determine what success is. Likewise, every one of these books have different expectations for the ideas and suggestions they offer. As well, there isn't one single path to publication and different situations mean different outcomes. All this means that what works for one person might only work partially for someone else, or it might not work at all. Some of them have ideas that are worth exploring, but don't think you're going to get rich and famous following a single person's blueprint. Read them, think about what they say, but take everything with a grain (or shaker) of salt.

3. Very few of these books will talk about one of the most important aspects of finding success as an author. Luck.

I'm not trying to say that success might or might not happen no matter what you do. As the quote goes, "The harder I work, the luckier I get.", but to say that luck plays no part, or to not talk about it at all feels a little disingenuous to me. Some people get their manuscript in front of just the right eyes at just the right moment to get accepted. Some people might get their manuscript dropped on the desk of the agent who's already read several versions of that story that week. Their work might pop up in front of a very vocal critic or fan right when that person has time to read it and tell everyone about it. Why does one person's book find acclaim and success while another's languishes, even if they do everything the same?

There really is no magic formula to success as a writer. No how-to book is going to teach you everything and lead you to riches and fame, no matter what they might say or how successful the author claims to be. Read them, sure, but take everything with a grain of salt, and consider how much their advice reflects your own position and goals. In the end, everyone's journey is their own, and nobody else's, and no two journeys will be the same.

~ Shaun

Kids in Horror: Heroes

Kids pop up in Horror as victims, and as monsters, but they also can be the heroes of the story. It may seem a little far-fetched at times considering the stakes and the opponents they face, but is there anything really as cheer inducing as watching a kid or kids take down a villain that's been running around killing everyone else around them? Or maybe they don't stop the villain, maybe it's all they do to find a way to survive the horror that nobody else is escaping.

Danny Torrence from The Shining, for example. Even with his special gift, it's all he can do to escape from the evil of the Overlook Hotel, and the madness of his father. It's not that he survives just because he's a kid though. He survives because he recognizes the danger he's in, and thinks of ways to escape. Running into the hedge maze, retracing his steps in the snow; the kid is smart and is thinking of what to do. He isn't stopped by the fact that the crazed man chasing him is his father, which is what would paralyze and be the doom of most kids. He recognizes the danger and does what he has to do.

One of the things that sets children heroes apart from their adult counterparts is the fact that most people completely disregard them. Kids and their crazy imaginations, am I right? How many times could scenes of murder and mayhem just be avoided if people had listened?

How many times did little Andy Barclay in the classic Child's Play movie try to warn his mom and other adults that Chucky was evil and hurting people? In the end, Andy had to overcome his own desire to trust his only friend, and light the evil little bastard on fire.

Usually though, it takes a group of kids to face the evil, to make up for their smaller size and lack of physical ability and experience. Most recently we have the kids from the Netflix series Stranger Things, and the remake of Stephen King's IT. There's also no leaving out the older, cult classic The Monster Squad.

Why do kids make great heroes in the end though? I think it's because they win in one of two ways. They either grow up while we watch and lament the loss of innocence and the leaving behind of a simpler, easier life; or they win through the qualities that make them children, that same sense of innocence, imagination, and the stubbornness that the world should be a certain way just because we want it to be.

As I've said recently, it's all too common for their innocence and naivety to lead a child to be the victim of horror, so I think when it's that same quality that leads them to victory we cheer that much harder. We're proud of them, and we wish we could go back to that easier life, while carrying that much strength. I think there really are no better heroes than kids.

~ Shaun