Describe My Process

Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 13

Aaron LeMay, one of the most interesting people you will ever meet and probably my coolest friend in the world, recently asked me, "Tell me about your writing process." To put this in context, Aaron and I are working together to complete his book, "The Gamer's Way," which is a self-help philosophy based on treating life as a game that you are playing, complete with pause and save-game functions you can use to help you analyze your "game of life" as you play to make better decisions. 

This book and concept are very zen, which makes sense because Aaron has studied Buddhist teachings and many other Eastern philosophies. He also has worked on some of the biggest games you've ever heard of, including HALO and Saints Row. Did I mention that Aaron is one of the most interesting people you will ever meet? I had the honor to work with him at En Masse Entertainment, and not only is he a fascinating fellow, he is one of the best bosses I've ever worked for.

Now, you may be asking me, Will, what the hell does all this have to do with making Chili? I mean, that is a pot full of Chili up there in the corner, right?

Okay, let me get right down to it. When Aaron asked me about my process, I didn't have a great answer for him. You see, even though I am a strong proponent of outlines, when it comes to actually writing scenes and chapters and entire novels, I am more of a "seat of the pants" writer. To be totally honest, I don't fully understand my process. 

A few days after I tried my hardest to convey to Aaron how scenes form in my head and how inspiration for some small detail that occurs to me to place in one scene often burgeons into some huge plot or character point a few chapters later, I was making chili for the family. 

Now, I haven't made chili in months. It's just not a meal that most people want during the summer. So, when I started making the chili, I realized that my chili-making experience is very similar to my writing experience. 

Let me explain.

I've been making chili for a couple of decades now. The basics of it are mostly unchanged. I brown some meat, I add crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes (for texture), tomato sauce, beans, maybe some onions, peppers, garlic, and/or mushrooms, and spices. Then I simmer for many hours, tasting periodically to determine what more it needs to get it right.

This is also the basics of my writing. I come up with an idea and write some level of outline (from a rough couple of paragraphs listing the main plot points to a multi-page, chapter-by-chapter, outline detailing all the rising and falling action over three acts. After that, I sit down to write. 

With the basics of the plot (like the basics of the chili recipe) in my head, I begin adding action and character moments and dialog that move from plot point to plot point, adding things in here and there as I realize it needs some spicing up here or there and go back to add something or take out something (which you can never do in cooking, so bear that difference in mind).

Now, over the years as I have gotten better at both cooking and writing, my recipes have changed and evolved. I now sear the onions, peppers and garlic in a pan and then add a little crushed tomato and oil and blend it all into a paste, which I add to the meat and beans (an idea I got by watching videos from Binging with Babish).

I still add diced tomatoes, onions (and sometimes mushrooms) to the pot (again for the added texture and flavor). But, where I once relied on chili powder, salt and garlic for most of my flavor, I now use much less to get the flavors right. This provides much more depth of flavor over my earlier, more amateur attempts.

In my writing, I now look for more character moments and delve deeper into their motivations instead of just driving my way through the plot like I once did. Again, this adds more depth of flavor, more depth to the characters and their connection to the plot, which one hopes helps draw readers in and provide some emotional connection to the story and the characters. 

But here's the thing. I still don't know ahead of time how it's all going to turn out. I have NEVER made a pot of chili that tasted exactly like any of my other pots of chili. I am not following a strict recipe of exactly this many ounces of onions to this many ounces of peppers to this many cans of tomato sauce, etc. That's why I taste as I go along. If it is too tame, I add more spice. If it is too spicy, I add more sauce (although that rarely happens). 

The same thing goes for my writing. Even when I have a full outline, I never know when I start a scene if it will go exactly the way I envision it will go. Sometimes the characters want to say or do things differently and I follow them along to see how it all turns out. Sometimes a piece of description will catch my eye and send a scene in a completely different direction than I had envisioned.

Let me give you an example from the new Kolchak novel I am writing. Kolchak is investigating a haunted hotel and needs to speak to the hotel manager. As I'm writing the scene, the manager accosts Kolchak verbally and he responds in kind. This initial meeting, which I had never envisioned when I began writing the scene, colored the entire conversation. It became even more adversarial than I had ever intended, but it provided some great insight into who the manager was and what she thought of Kolchak, which I will be able to use later on.

But I also know I have to hit the points in the plot that I have written down in my plot, so when scenes go in different directions (and sometimes take the plot in a different direction after more scenes continue down that new path, I know I must nudge the characters and the story back toward the plot. This is like adding a dash of salt or garlic to the chili. 

The interesting thing is that like the seasoning, I know the story needs something to get it where it needs to go, but I'm never certain which small bits of dialog or action or character moments will get it back on track, so I have to keep tasting and changing as I go until I get the result I desire. I can't push it too far too fast or it will leave a bitter taste in the readers' mouths, just like a pot of chili with too much salt in it.

The fun part of all this is when something unexpected happens and it turns out to be the exact thing I needed to really make the story come together. Here is a small example of what I mean. I was writing a short prequel to flesh out the back story of one of the characters in another short story I had written. Lobo is a young star ship pilot. When the ship runs into trouble, he ends up sprawled beneath the berth of a crew mate after everyone else has gone off to battle stations. 

For an extra bit of flavor, I added the name of the crew mate instead of leaving it vague. Now that this crew mate had a name, though, she became a character in my mind with a backstory of her own. She had just been promoted to lieutenant but still berthed with the ensigns (a bit of Lower Decks playing in my head at the time). 

Later, when I decided the emergency was going to cost the ship its entire bridge crew, this brand new character became the acting captain, and it turns out she knows Lobo's value far better than the now-dead officers because she had worked beside him (and even been saved by his piloting skills). This sets up the finale of the story (and the main plot point of this prequel) when this new character I had not even known existed until I named her, relies on Lobo to save the day. 

I often find these small tidbits of flavor in my writing that I have added to a scene come back later and become far more important than I originally intended. I don't claim I can see the future and know these will become important — that I am adding them as some sort of almost as prescient foreshadowing. I think it all comes down to taking the time to add bits of spice that I know will add to the overall flavor of the story and then as I am tasting it later on, seeing how I can use that spicy bit to add some extra depth to the story.

So, yes, my writing process is a lot like my chili-making process. I have a vague recipe I am following that has evolved over time into a more complex process, but in the end, it all comes down to playing with the flavors as I go and tasting it all the way along to make sure the flavors all meld together and provide some depth to the experience.

Penning a Myth

Turning the Tied with Words

Loki Tricks Hodr into Slaying Baldur

I thought I would take a break from my "Nexus of Writing and Cooking" series to talk about my contribution to a wonderful charity anthology titled Turning the Tied (available from Amazon in both Kindle and paperback). Published by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (IAMTW), this wonderful anthology is raising funds for the World Literacy Foundation, a global non-profit organization working to ensure every child has access to books and the right to acquire literacy skills from an early age.

More than that, though, Turning the Tied is a showcase of some of the best media-based novel writers working in the industry today, including Greg Cox (Star Trek, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, DC), Tim Waggoner (Supernatural, Resident Evil, Alien), Max Allan Collins (CSI, Dick Tracy, Mickey Spillane), Nancy Holder (Buffy, Angel, Smallville), Jonathan Mayberry, (X-Files), Jennifer Brozek (Shadowrun, BattleTech), Keith R.A. DeCandido (Marvel, Doctor Who, Leverage), and many others, including yours truly (Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, Kolchak: The Night Stalker).

In this anthology, all of these authors, noted for writing in some of the most popular shared worlds from recent movies, TV shows, and games, have taken a stab at writing stories for some of their favorite public domain characters of all time. These include Sherlock Holmes, John Carter of Mars, Hopalong Cassidy, Mulan, the Three Musketeers, Cyrano de Bergerac, Baron Munchausen Frankenstein's creature, and in my case, the Norse gods Baludr and Loki.

Note that all 24 authors and both editors (all members of the IAMTW) donated their stories and time to make this anthology happen and maximize the proceeds to the World Literacy Foundation. For more information about this wonderful charity anthology, check out the Turning the Tied page on the IAMTW website dedicated to the anthology. If you want to read blogs about the anthology by the other authors, check out this page! 

But for today, I want to talk about my contribution — The Trials of Baldur.

Genesis of a Heroic Myth

When I agreed to submit a story for Turning the Tied (which took zero arm-twisting, believe me), I knew immediately that I wanted to pen a mythological story written in the same style as the stories that have been handed down from ancient times (verbally for centuries until they were finally recorded by ancient scholars. One reason for this goes all the way back to college when I took Science Fiction Literature with Professor Thompson.

This class was probably one of the first of its kind (definitely the first at Purdue University in the mid-1980s). We read and analyzed such seminal works as Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, John Gardner's Grendl, Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos, and Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness. For one project that semester in lieu of writing an essay about one of the novels, we could write a new chapter for Left Hand of Darkness, creating a new Gethenian myth for Estrevan to tell Ai during their trek across the frozen wastes of Gethen.

My new story detailed the Gethenian apocalypse, which was oddly missing from LeGuin's novel. It came in at somewhere less than 800 words (well below the minimum wordcount), and yet not only did I get an A on the assignment, I received a long, glowing note from my professor that began with "Wow!" and ended with "May I have a copy?" This was some of the first real praise I ever received for a piece of fiction I had written. It truly made me believe that I could become an author.

Since that class and that assignment, I've often thought about writing other myths, legends, and/or fairy tales, but never had the perfect opportunity to do so — until now. the only other question was which mythology to use as setting. This choice also was obvious. I've loved the Norse mythos since reading Reading Kevin Crossley-Holland's retelling of them based on the 13th Century Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. I believe I read Holland's The Norse Myths as part of another English class (Possibly high school based on the date of the book), and I still have the original 1980 imprint in my library.

The Loki/Baldur Prequel

So, with "writing a new Norse myth" set in my head, I began reading through the stories in Holland's book. I had always been drawn to Baldur, so I started there. What struck me was that there were only two stories about Baldur (and one or two other mentions in passing). 

 

Both of these stories deal with Baldur's death. In the first, he has foreboding nightmares that Odin finds upon a trip to the Underworld are premonitions of the god's death. The second details the efforst of Freya to get all things in the nine realms to swear they will not kill Baldur (only to skip Mistletoe), and Loki's efforts to get Baldur's blind brother Hodr to shoot the supposedly death-immune god with a Mistletoe tipped arrow.

 

The other thing that struck me about the Baldur stories were the odd, almost cameo appearances of several characters that are mostly unexplained. During the preparations for Baldur's funeral, much is made about hos deeply all things love the god. In fact, Hela decrees that if all things swear their love to Baldur, she will allow him to return to Asgard alive. Only one creature in the nine realms refuses — a giantess named Thokk, whom most believe is Loki in disguise.

Then, at the funeral, another giantess named Hyrrokin must be summoned to shift Baldur pyre boat off the shore. She arrives riding a wold using snakes as reins. Near the end of the funeral, a dawrf (dark elf) name Lit wails and wails as the boat burns in the water until Thor kicks the dwarf into the boat, where he dies.

So, an idea began to form. Baldur is seen as the fairest and best of the gods, but the only stories about him that have survived detail his death. This is not completely out of bounds as his death brings about the beginnings of Ragnarok, so it is a vitally important event. But what if there were other stories that told the tales of Baldur while alive, that depicted why he was so beloved by all. I realized that Baldur needed a Hero's Journey. 

 

My story shows Baldur in his prime working to bring Mistletoe to the Druids of Midgard who are pining for any sign of spring in the middle of a harsh winter. Along the way, he defeats a serpent, defeats a giant, and rips a mighty oak tree from the ground.But I also wanted to tie in the other characters who appear in the later stories. So, along the way he meets Thokk, Hyrrokin, and Lit and their interactions help explain their reactions in the Death of Baldur tale. 

And, because this is a story about Baldur and Mistletoe, you know the mischievous Loki plays a vital role in the tale. Loki hates Baldur because the shining god is the antithesis of the Dark Lord. Baldur is everything Loki is not and he cannot abide Baldur's continuing existence. To see how it all works out, you'll have to purchase a copy of Turning the Tied (which is also available from Barnes and Noble).

 

Gadgets and Gimmicks

 The Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 12

Way back in Part 2 ("The Tools of the Trade") I discussed some of the essential items you need in your cooking and writing arsenal if you want to be successful. Today, I want to look at some of the gimmicks and gadgets you can use to make your life easier in the kitchen and add some pizzazz to your writing.

Let's get right to it with a list of cool things I have in my kitchen that I simply couldn't do without anymore.

Kitchen Gadgets

Shot Glass Measuring Cup. You need a lot of measuring cups and spoons in your kitchen so you can add precise amounts of spices, flour, sugar, milk, wine, or broth at the exact moment called for in the recipe.A shot glass measuring cup helps you add small amounts of liquid (an ounce or teaspoon or tablespoon) precisely. I use mine for honey and brown sugar when I make my own teriyaki sauce.

High Wall Baking Sheet. We all have baking sheets that we use for baking cookies, heating up fries in the oven and placing under pie tins when we fear they may bubble over. But a high-walled baking sheet is the best way to cook large pieces of meat like a turkey or a ham or a couple racks of ribs. The high walls keep the juices in but are low enough to allow the heat to circulate around the meat for more even cooking.

Baking Rack. Add this to your high-wall baking sheet to raise your meat out of the juices and allow the heat circulate beneath as well as completely around as you bake.

Silicone Baking Mat. The last piece you need for your baking sheet. Silicone mats are amazing. Easy to clean AND keep your baking sheet shiny no matter how many times you use them.

Wooden Tongs. A good set of wooden tongs are a must if you are cooking in a high-temp, non-stick skillet that might melt your silicone-tipped tongs. I use mine for bacon or sausages mostly, but they come in handy any time you need to turn or flip meat in a skillet (steaks, chicken breasts, etc.).

Silicone Cast-Iron Skillet Handle. Speaking of high-heat, I love the silicone handle cover I got for my cast-iron skillet. Sometimes, you just can't beat an old-fashioned cast-iron skillet (absolutely necessary for Yorkshire pudding). Unlike modern skillets that use non-conducting materials for the handles, all the heat transfers to the handle on a cast-iron skillet. Thus the silicone sleeve.

Spatula Thermometer. I have a couple instant-read thermometers, which are absolutely necessary for getting meat heated through to the correct internal temperature. The spatula version of this essential tool is great for sauces, bread-making (to check the temp of the water you're adding to the yeast) and whenever you're deep-frying and need to keep a constant temperature in your oil. 

Writing Gimmicks

Unlike cooking gadgets, you can't just go out and buy these items (other than the thesaurus; although you still need skill to use one correctly). Instead, you must develop these techniques over time through practice and research. Here are a few of my favorites.

Simile and Metaphor. As a writer, the most important thing you do is to describe the world your characters travel through. For fantasy and science fiction writers, especially, those worlds can be so strange and alien that it can be tough to describe them in ways that readers can understand. That's where a good metaphor or simile comes in handy. These help you relate what the characters see to something the readers will understand. Just be careful not to break the illusion of the story. Saying a strange large rock formation looks like a football balancing on a golf tee won't make sense if your character lives in a world without those two sports.

Thesaurus. I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Choosing the strongest nouns and verbs you can find to describe actions and items in your world is far superior to stringing together a bunch of adjectives or adverbs. It makes your writing stronger, tighter, and less cluttered, which are all good things. A good thesaurus will help you find the best words to use whenever you get stuck in your writing. Most word processors come with one, but I find them to be too limited. I use Rhymezone, a website created for poets that you can use to find synonyms as well as rhymes. You can even go down the rabbit hole of  looking at related words "grouped by relation" which can be a lot of fun.

Foreshadowing. There is an old saying in murder mysteries: "Don't put a gun on the mantle in act one unless you plan to use it in act three." This is foreshadowing, and it is a tricky gimmick to use. You often want to give your readers a peak at what's to come later on so they don't feel completely blindsided by some major plot development. For example, if readers don't know a character is an astrophysicist when they first meet them, when that character starts spouting some quantum mechanics integral to the plot later on, it will feel odd and forced (and just a little too convenient). 

You have to be careful with foreshadowing, though. If you are too obvious when you mention it (or mention it too often), readers may see your plot twists coming a mile away. If you are too oblique (or don't mention it often enough), you risk losing some readers when the revelation becomes important. Make sure you integrate the foreshadowing into the narrative so it feels natural and not forced and then reinforce it once or twice again during the story to make sure all readers catch the reference.

Plot Structure. I have discussed this before, so I won't go into a lot of detail here, but having a plot structure in mind as you write can help keep you on the rails as you move through your story. I often use the three-act structure where action intensifies through act one as things fall apart, the characters try to find ways to combat the obstacles in act two, and then everything falls apart again at the end of the act, forcing the characters to change gears in act three to find a new solution to the main problem. This structure helps readers as well, because they understand where they are in the story, but the rising and falling action of this structure also maintains reader interest as the action builds toward multiple climaxes as reader move through the story.

Analogy and Allegory. Similar to simile and metaphor, analogies and allegories help writers convey information to the reader through comparison. These two gimmicks work at higher and larger levels, however — more at the plot structure level than the word, sentence, or paragraph level. An analogy is simply comparing one thing to another that makes people assume additional similarities in other aspects. So, you might write a story where two character who are going to fall in love must fight each other in a fencing match (or tennis or whatever). The sporting competition becomes analogous to the development of their relationship (turning it into a contest).

Allegories plot structures where the story being told is directly comparable to other stories that have deeper meanings. These are often used by science fiction writers (especially) to delve into topics that are tough to discuss straight on (religion, politics, race relations, etc.) without bringing all the baggage those sensitive topics carried by both writers and readers. The original series Star Trek episode "Let that Be Your Last Battlefield" was an allegory about race relations set on a planet where people were half-black and half-white, with right-half-white people hating left-half-white people and vice-versa. Silly? Today, maybe. But still insightful and depressing as we see what has happened in America since this episode first aired more than 50 years ago.

Finding the “Hook”

The Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 11

In most forms of storytelling, from novels and short stories to television programs and movies, creators constantly search for the right hook to hang their story on. We all want to find the perfect, innovative element that will make our manuscripts stand out from the crowd, attract attention from readers (and, often more importantly, editors or agents), and give our stories a unique perspective that sets them apart from every other variation on a theme ever written. 

Take the fascinating Netflix series, Russian Doll, which premiered in early 2019. The hook in this "Groundhog Day" story is that the main character's time loop always occurs at the moment of her death. This not only gives her ample reason to break the loop, but provides for some incredibly dramatic character moments. This same idea is utilized in the 2020 Oscar-winning short, Two Distant Strangers, with the hook that the main character (a black man just trying to get home to his dog) dies at the hands of police every time, making it a powerful statement on policing and race relations today. Seriously, watch this short movie. It is important and moving.

The Need for Hooks

For many writers, hooks are a way to characterize their story when describing it to an interested party (another author, a reader, an editor or agent or, if they are lucky, a Hollywood producer). It's that piece of the story you insert into your "elevator pitch" to differentiate it from another story the person may be more familiar with. For example, my first novel, Judgment, is Apocalypse Now, but set on Dominaria (one of the worlds of Magic: The Gathering) with a barbarian mage named Kamal standing in for Martin Sheen's weathered military officer forced to travel into the jungle to face his destiny.

I would argue, however, that a more important facet of the hook is that it helps authors find the spark in their own stories. Like most authors, I have plenty of story ideas, but I often find I don't pursue any particular story until I find the hook that draws ME into writing it. I think I speak for most writers when I say that I don't want to just write the same story everyone else is writing. And I don't want to write the same story I've written before. To get me interested in spending time writing a story, there has to be something in there that sets it apart, something that intrigues me, something that gets my blood pumping with excitement.

This thought occurred to me while I was preparing to cook dinner last week. As I have mentioned in this space before, I often look for some piece (often a side dish) to hang an entire meal upon. Sure, I have prepared lots of meals that were nearly identical to every other version of the same meal. I mean, taco salad is always going to be taco salad (although even my staple meals have evolved and become more complex over time). But, sometimes I want to be inspired and I flail for ideas for a meal until I find that one piece that pulls it all together.

This night, last week, I was planning to make pork chops, which I have cooked a thousand times. I was less than enthused about the prospect, but also had very little energy (or time) to find a new recipe and try something completely different. That's when I remembered I had picked up some fun, take-and-bake garlic rolls from the store that morning. I pulled those out and added them to some other staple side dishes and suddenly (for me anyway) that meal transformed into something new and fun and creative. I had my inspiration, which drove me forward into meal prep.

I realized at that point that I do the same thing with my writing. Sometimes, I am not inspired and the writing feels labored. But when I have the hook in place, it pulls me through the writing and it almost feels like I can't stop until the entire story is down on paper. This happened to me recently when I wrote a 9,000-word short story in four days. It's an adventure story about a small group of aliens working behind enemy lines to pull off a caper. 

The original idea came to me when I began thinking about how cool it would be to take the concept of Hogan's Heroes and set it in space in the far future. Now, the story evolved from there and bears little resemblance to that 1960s sitcom, but that hook got me so excited, the story practically gushed out of me.

This is what a good hook does for a writer. Hooks inspire us to write just as much as they inspire readers to read and viewers to watch.So, the question becomes, where do you find the right hooks for your own writing (or for your meal prep if that's more your thing).

Searching for Hooks

Hooks, like ideas, can come from  anywhere. But like ideas, just about every hook has already been used by someone somewhere in some story. We are all just writing variations on the same old tales about love and hate, life and death, friendship and betrayal, growth and decay. The trick is to find a unique angle — perhaps something from  your own experiences — that provides a fresh take on an old story. Here are a few ways to help jump-start that process.

Thematic Juxtaposition. I touched on this in the preceding paragraph. What is the theme of your story? Is it all about living a good life? Then perhaps adding a hook related to death will spark ideas for the story. Perhaps the death of a loved one or a cherished pet (or even just a random death reported in the news) is enough to make your character re-evaluate her life well lived. Blade Runner is a story about a human detective sent to take down killer replicants, but those same replicants know more about living than the dead-inside human sent to kill them. Thematic juxtaposition can turn your story on its head and make it memorable.

Variation on a Theme. You don't always have to turn your story upside-down to make it memorable, however. Varying a single piece of your story from a tried-and-true plot can make it stand out from the rest of the crowd in that particular trope. For example, I recently wrote a story about the Norse god Baldur for the Turning the Tied anthology that I wanted to feel like an actual legend straight out of the Norse myths. The plot of the story was a simple hero's journey akin to Prometheus bringing fire to man. The variation I added was that the entire journey was a trick by Loki to try to trip up Baldur. This took this simple story idea and twisted it to the side a little and added an edge to it.

Random Research (Rabbit Holing). I often start out my search for a new idea with online research into the subject I want to write about. For example, when coming up with the proposal for my Kolchak novel, Strangled by Death, I spent days researching supernatural legends, looking for some monster that hadn't been used over and over in popular media. I eventually happened on stories about "Hands of Death," which were, according to the stories, used by thieves to put entire households to sleep so they could rob them. Before I got there, however, I had gone deep down many Wikipedia rabbit holes. 

What I love about this method is that it allows your brain to lead you to places you might not have gone before. One link leads to many others. You follow one over another because it appears more interesting, which then leads you further down the rabbit hole into more and more things that jump out at you for whatever reason your brain find them interesting. It's like a spark generator that just keeps firing until you have immersed yourself in a series of hooks that are making the synapses in your brain fire like a gatling gun. That's when you know you're hooked on the idea you've found at the bottom of that hole.

Bypass the Easy Answer 

Obviously, there are other ways to find your hook. Things like listing random ideas on a board and then grouping them together thematically, studying an image and visually identifying relationships between them and your problem (VIR). Honestly, any good brainstorming process will help you find that piece of inspiration you need to raise your story idea up a notch. Google, VIR, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and SCAMPER (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other use, eliminate, rearrange) for other interesting techniques.

But, before I am done today, let me just talk a little about rejecting the first and easy ideas that pop into your head. This is just good advice for many aspects of writing. In fact, it is one of the best (and oldest) pieces of advice I was ever given about writing. 

When you are contemplating your hook (or some obstacle in front of your characters or a plot twist or a character growth moment), it is almost always a bad idea to go with the very first idea that pops into your head. Why is this? Because that first idea is invariably the easy answer. It is also the idea that every other author will think of first (or has thought of before many times) as well. It will almost invariably lack originality.

So, dig deeper. Go past that first idea and find one that will challenge you (or your character). Find one that will change your story in ways you can't even imagine, which will make the writing fresh as you try to keep up and get ahead of the mess your new idea makes of your plot line. It's amazing where rejecting the easy answer can take you.

In Soulless Fury, my most recent Necromunda novel, both main characters (who are adversaries) have incredibly powerful pet companions that just made every fight easier for them. At one point, I realized I needed to remove the pets from the story to make life harder for the characters. 

That change colored much of the rest of the book because both characters had to deal with those loses in their own ways, which forced them to grow and gave them some common ground when they eventually were forced to team up. This really helped turn what was a simple chase plot into a story about loss and growth and change. It helped me dig deeper into the story of two powerful and complicated women trying to find their way in (very male dominated) brutal world.

The Art of the Appetizer

The Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 10

This week, I want to write about small plates and short stories. Both serve similar audience niches in their respective settings. Small plates (or appetizers in most American restaurants) give you a taste of a particular dish or meal without filling you up. They also can provide a wonderful complement to the subsequent main dish. Likewise, good short stories give readers everything a novel provides — plots, perhaps a subplot or two, character growth, and a satisfying or thought-provoking conclusion.

Another similarity small plates and short stories share is that my skill in both suffers from an aggravatingly similar issue: I try to put too much into them, which makes them just a bit messier than I'd like.

A good appetizer is packed with flavor from some non-singular number of different elements but is bite-sized so all that flavor explodes in your mouth at once. Bacon-wrapped prawns and crab-stuffed mushrooms are good examples. For fancier gatherings, spring and summer rolls filled with all sorts of meats and herbs and mini tostadas topped with cheese and fruit or seasoned meats are wonderful and can literally explode in your mouth when done right. 

A good short story can weave an intricate tale with fully-developed characters that transports you to another world in just a few thousand words and makes you feel deep emotions when those characters ultimately succeed or fail. One of my favorite short stories of all time was 

Where I Go Wrong

I believe the problem I have with both small plates and short stories stems from how I learned to cook and to write. I started cooking on a regular basis when I became a stay-at-home dad and freelance writer. At the time, I was cooking for a family of five with three growing, school-age children. I cooked large, easy (often ready-to-make) meals at first, which eventually transformed into large, slightly more complicated (more often from scratch) meals as I became more skilled in my cooking. 

The common element in all of the meals I have made in the past 20 years was that they were large. I am well-known within our family for loading the table down with too much food, and not just on Thanksgiving day. Likewise, when I started writing fiction, early in my writing career, I was tasked with writing novels. Sure, I sought out and wrote short stories at the same time, but it was the novels that really sparked my interest.

A typical novel runs anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 words. I have written shorter novels (sometimes called novellas, but not always), and big-name authors have written numerous 300,000-word novels. The point here is that novels are large. The typical short story you find in magazines or anthologies, on the other hand, run between 3,000 and 7,000 words. I've seen great 1,500 word short stories and there is a category of shorts called "Flash Fiction" that run no more than about 500 words.

My short stories probably average somewhere around 9,000 words. The reason, I have often thought, is that I write short stories like I write novels. In a novel, you have time to explore the setting and the minor characters, and space to allow the plot to meander a bit as it works its way through the 3-act structure toward the culmination of the final conflict.

Short stories, like small plates, require the author/chef to be frugal with their elements/ingredients and maximize the impact from every piece added to the mix. A good hors d'oeuvre has a small piece of meat and/or cheese topped with a sprinkling of fresh herbs or a dollop of seasoned stuffing spooned into a perfectly cooked mushroom cap topped with a few shred of melted cheese.

I tend to be more of a dumper when I cook. I keep adding crab flakes or crumbled bacon to my stuffing mixture until I have too much to comfortably stuff into the available mushrooms. I cut my slices of meat or fish too large because I worry there won't be enough there to bring out the flavors. I over-stuff and I overfeed, again most likely because I am used to making large meals instead of small plate. I have never mastered the art of getting big flavor from finely-balanced combinations of smaller portions. 

Build Smaller or Cut Back

I long ago accepted my shortcomings with short stories and small plates and have a developed a few tricks to help me deal with my tendency to  cook and write big. For my small plates, I have learned to make my dollops smaller. I use a melon-baller or a small spoon to fill my mushrooms. I try to worry less about what to do with extra filling or meat and either put it away for another time or find some other small plate where I can incorporate the extras.

When it comes to short stories, I have a different tactic. Instead of forcing myself to write small, I allow my expansive nature to control the first draft. But, when I go back through that initial first draft, I try to trim a good ten percent of my words. I seek out overly complex passages and tighten the prose. I look for spots where the plot has gotten a little out of hand and see if I can get those plot points across in less space (or drop them entirely if they are not adding to the flavor of the whole). If I have two or three sentences of description, I cut back to just the best bits of all of them. 

When I am writing a first draft, I try to keep my scenes short so the story moves along more quickly. Where I like to write 1,000- or 1,500-word scenes in a novel, I try for 500 words max in a short story. This helps constrain my wordiness and give me enough scenes to fit in all the plot. 

The one piece I can still do better on is to not try to pack quite so much plot into my short stories. In my two most recent short stories (one in the Turning the Tied anthology and another that will appear in a Renegade Legion digital anthology from Budgie Smuggler games), I definitely created plots that were too intricate and expansive for the story-size requested. Even after trimming and tightening, both of these stories ran a bit long.

Don't get me wrong. I am proud of both of these stories. I think they are well-paced well and believe they read as easily and quickly as shorter efforts from other authors. I just have never mastered the skill of telling a deep, compelling story in a small space and maybe that's okay. I happen to like a little more meat in my meals and my stories.

 

It's All in the Timing

The Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 9

I've been thinking a lot about pacing this past week. In any narrative piece of entertainment, pacing is the speed at which things happen in relation to other things. Sometimes this means how fast the action driving the story forward occurs in comparison to other elements of the story, like plot and character development. It can also mean how quickly the main plot progresses in comparison to elements of the subplots.

Getting the pacing right in a story is a difficult balance between keeping readers interested in the story by moving the plot along at a good clip while spending time to build thematic depth to provide meaning to the plot and developing the characters into something more than 2-dimensional plot movers.

In the somewhat distant past, authors had more time to develop this depth because entertainment moved at a slower pace. Don't believe me? Look at a movie from the 1940s and compare it to a move from the 2010s. Books are the same. Whenever I reread a favorite book from my childhood, I am amazed at how slow the story moves. I mean, Tolkien literally spends four pages of the first chapter of The Hobbit having Thorin orate an exhaustive history of his forefathers accumulation of wealth in the mines of Moria and their eventual defeat at the hands of Smaug.

A modern author likely would sprinkle the pieces of that story throughout the first third of the book instead of dumping it all at once in chapter one. The pacing of stories changed forever with the advent of television, which told shorter stories that moved through the three-act structure in 22 minutes for comedies and 42 minutes for hour-long dramas. 

Today, many mainstream movies follow the same formula for pacing: Within ten minutes you must introduce the main characters and their salient backgrounds and issues because the "inciting incident" ( the first crisis that drives the plot forward) must occur by minute 10 (page 10 of the script). Because so many movies move at this quick pace, that films that don't follow this formula (often indie movies) are often labeled as "slow."

Inciting Pacing Examples

I'm not immune to this feeling either. In the past week, I watched two different pieces of streaming entertainment that brought all of this to the forefront for me. First was the season finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I had not realized until after episode five that this season was going to end with episode six. 

Up to that point, I hadn't understood the pacing of the plot. The subplots introduced in episode one had lain fallow for a couple of episodes and I had wondered at the time why we weren't seeing more of the two main characters' home lives (which were introduced in depth in the first episode). But with only six episodes, it began to make sense to me. 

The subplots reared their heads in each of the two-episode "act" of the season plot structure, and then came to the fore again in the final third of the story to bring everything together. The pacing, which seemed odd when I was expecting eight to ten episodes made a lot more sense in a six-episode story arc.

The other streamed show I watched this past week was an indie movie called The Vast of Night on Prime. This 90-minute movie tells a Twilight-Zone-esque story set in the American heartland in the 1950s. I kid you not, this movie spent at least 20 minutes (more than one-quarter) of the movie introducing the relationship between the two main characters as they moved through the parking lot of the local high school talking to families arriving for a big basketball game. It felt to me (as I said) s-l-o-w! 

Now, I love indie movies and I appreciate a well-made film that takes its time to tell the story. Also this past week, I watched Nomadland, the Academy-award winning movie about transient elderly people living in vans and traveling around the West from part-time job to part-time job. It was wonderful. Even though the pacing wasn't Fast and Furious, it maintained my interest because it invested me in the characters and their lives immediately.

But Vast of Night didn't work for me. I think, in part, because each of the interactions the two main characters had with different people in the parking lot didn't differ enough to stand out. They just became this long, walking tour of sameness (which maybe was the point; this was white, middle-class America in the 1950s after all, which was about to be turned upside down by some strange, Twilight Zone happenings. But it lost me before I got to the inciting incident. The movie didn't give me enough reason to wade through the parade of blandness.

What does all this have to do with cooking?

Okay. Thanks for bearing with me through this long intro. I know, ironic, isn't it? The final piece of the pacing puzzle occurred to me while I was cooking a big meal for a Sunday family dinner honoring my daughter-in-law's birthday. I had decided to make a butterflied leg of lamb using a wonderful recipe I found a couple years ago. 

This recipe is pretty fiddly. After butterflying the leg, you spread a pasty herb rub all over the meat and then let it sit for an hour. You then broil both sides for 8 minutes (turning at least once on each side for even cooking) and then let it rest again for another 10 minutes before popping it into the oven to bake for about 50 minutes (until it reaches 140 degrees internal temp).

Now, this particular night, I decided to make a couple of easy side dishes that I knew I could put together in that last 50 minutes of cooking time to make sure that everything was ready at the same time to be put onto the table. We had crispy-baked potatoes wedges and steamed broccoli. I've made both of these dishes many times so know how long each takes to prepare, preheat, and cook. 

I also wanted to bake cheesy-garlic biscuits (you know, Red Robin biscuits), which I mixed so I could bake in the bottom oven while the lamb was broiling in the top oven.  Then, after the biscuits were done and the lamb rested, I could put the lamb down in the lower oven with the meat probe, and then start on the sides.

This constant moving from main dish to side dish, from one oven to another (plus the toaster oven for the potatoes and the stove top for the steamed veggies) is what the pacing of cooking is all about. (Plus, don't forget the prep time to get to the cooking stage at the right time.) It's a balancing act that requires precise timing. How long does each dish need to cook? How much prep time is needed? Does the meat need to rest afterward? Can a dish be kept warm without losing its flavor and visual appeal? 

These are all questions a cook must answer before starting a meal if they want everything to be ready in time for everyone to sit down to a multi-course meal and absolutely analogous to the pacing in a story. (See part 3 of this series for more on the connections between subplots and side dishes.)

When I write a novel, I must balance the necessary points of the main plot alongside the required development of the main character so that the events driving the story along reach the critical point at the same moment the character has the major breakthrough in their development that allows them to be in the right place (both physically and mentally) to handle that final crisis.

In addition, if I am weaving subplots throughout the novel that will interact with the main plot at that same critical juncture (perhaps bringing a secondary character to the point of crisis at the same moment as the main character but through a completely different story line), the pacing of that subplot must be carefully manipulated so that everything comes to a boil at the same moment during the climax. This was the issue I had with Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I didn't understand the pacing because I didn't expect the climax to occur after only six episodes.

So, just like when I am juggling the preparation of different side dishes so they are ready at the same time as the main dish, when I am writing, I must juggle all the parts of the subplots and all the character and theme development alongside moving the elements of the main plot along so everything comes to fruition at the same time during the last act. Plus, I must do all of this while not losing the reader's interest.

 

Make a (Three-Course) Meal of Your Story

 The Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 8

I've discussed this topic tangentially a couple of times during this series (see part 1 and part 3), but I wanted to spend a full blog talking about how to construct both a full meal and a complete story.

There is a reason why the "three-course meal" and the "three-act structure" are important concepts in their respective arts. 

For one thing, the number three has mythical power in the world. Both Christianity and the ancient Egyptian mythos have a holy trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost and Osiris, Isis, and Horus). Greek mythology has Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the underworld. The Norse — and most mythologies — break the world into three realms (Asgard or heaven, Midgard or Earth, and Nilfheim or the underworld or hell). 

Humans often break sequences of life into threes. We are born, we live, we die. We go through adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Thousands of years ago, the Greeks believed in the Fates who governed the three phases of life. Today, modern feminine philosophies have rediscovered the trinity of maiden, mother, and crone, who lend their particular strengths to women at certain phases of their lives.

This concept of beginning, middle, and end is powerful and ubiquitous, which is why chefs and writers use it in their art. Any piece of fiction or fine meal can feel incomplete without all three concepts present, which can send patrons away from the experience feeling unfulfilled. 

So, let's take a look at the three phases (courses or acts) of both and see what they provide and why they are important to complete the experience.

Act One — Salad / Appetizer

A salad course or a set of appetizers served before the entrée often set the tone for the entire dining experience, but they also help "wake up" the taste buds of the diners and prepare them for the flavors that will be presented during the main course. This course should be light and refreshing and should never weigh down or fill up the diner. You want this course to whet the appetite of your patron so they move on to the main dish with relish and gusto.

In stories, the first act serves the same purpose. As a writer you are introducing the readers to the tastes and themes of the story. This is where you introduce your characters and set the stage for the main  conflict those characters will face. You want to give readers a little taste of what's to come and make them hungry for more.

A light touch is critical in both of these settings. The flavors in the salad or appetizers should complement and provide a preview of what's to come in the next course. If you go too bold or spicy, you will shock the diner's palate, which can make the rest of the meal taste bland or, worse, sour, stale, or just wrong in comparison.If you disclose too much information in act one, you may accidentally disclose vital plot points that can make readers lose interest in the story during act two as everything becomes too obvious.

A good first act or course entices people to continue on to the next part. It sets the stage for what's to come, but also makes the patron hungry for more. It whets the appetite but never sates the hunger.

Act Two —Entrée

The entrée should build on the themes introduced in the first act or course, but also develop deeper and more complex flavors. For example, if you are serving a lemon fish main dish, you might introduce some citrus to the salad course. But if you don't add something more to the fish than just some lemon juice and zest — say some garlic or paprika or even pesto to add some zing, then the fish is just going to sit there, not adding anything to the light, fruity salad that you introduced to set the stage.

In your story, this is where your character begin to develop and become 3-dimensional people with real problems, past issues that impact how they react to present situations, and complex relationships with the other characters in the story. This is also where you deepen the plot with some pressing dangers or interpersonal conflicts that drive the story forward. 

Act two is also where you introduce the subplots, which as we've discussed, are analogous to a meal's side dishes (see Part 3, Of Side Dishes and Sub Plots). As mentioned in that post, both side dishes and subplots help you deepen the tastes or themes that you are presenting in your meal or story. They can provide important counterpoints to the main dish or theme or complement that main piece to provide a point of comparison that helps reinforce that theme and bring it to the forefront from a different angle.

Let me give you example. I have a novel in development where the main characters are chasing another character who has betrayed them several times in the past. Throughout the novel, the leader of the "heroes" keeps lashing out at his companions because he personally went through a completely different betrayal recently. He doesn't blame his companions, but that past event keeps coloring his decisions. In the end, this subplot must resolve — the character needs to learn to trust again — before the main plot can resolve.

Act Three — Dessert

Think about how you feel when you eat dessert. You feel happy and, hopefully, sated — without feeling over full. That is exactly what most writers are going for in act three of their stories. They try to bring all the strands of the story together in a satisfying conclusion that sends reader away happy that they read the story and satisfied in how it concluded.

As with the first course, you want to keep a light hand here. A heavy dessert can weigh down the rest of the meal in the diner's stomach, making them feel uncomfortable. It's also vitally important to get your flavors just right. Too sweet and the patron may not be able to finish the dessert. Not sweet enough and you run the risk of not satisfying that particular appetite the often puts a smile on people's faces.

The same goes for your writing. Outside of Lifetime or Hallmark movies, most people aren't looking for a highly saccharine ending to a story. Too sweet is often seen as "unbelievable" by readers because life just doesn't work that way. On the other hand, if you end the story on a down note, readers may feel cheated out the victory they were hoping to see for the protagonists that they have been rooting for all along.

When I am writing (and also when I am watching some movies), I often hear the words of the sick grandson (played by a young Fred Savage) in the classic movie, The Princess Bride, when his grandfather tells him that the bad guy in the story — Prince Humperdinck — won't be killed at the end of the book: "Jesus, Grandpa! What did you read me this thing for?"

It turns out, the writer (the wonderful storyteller William Goldman) knew exactly what he was doing. The good guys win and the Prince gets exactly what he deserves, which, for a bully like him, is not to be killed, but to be shown just how cowardly he truly is and then left to live with that knowledge. This is what a great dessert or final act does. It completes the meal or story with the perfect capper, the sweetest taste you can leave in the the diner's mouth without going too far or being too heavy-handed. 

Then, if you've done your job by setting the stage for the main meal with a light, enticing appetizer, deepened the flavors you introduced in the first course with a rich, full, filling main course, and then topped it all off with a perfectly balanced dessert, your diners and readers will leave the table satisfied but also craving your next offering