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.

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

Eating Your Experiments

The Nexus of Writing and Cooking, Part 7

Over the years, my family has enjoyed some wonderful meals — but also suffered through some, let's say, less than appetizing results — from my culinary experiments. Still, when they ask "what's for supper?" and I reply, "An experiment," they don't immediately groan, which means, I hope, that my success rate when trying new things in the kitchen is reasonably high.

Of course, my "kitchen experiments" are generally not revolutionary, totally-from-scratch, three-course dinners. Most of the time, these fresh culinary creations are adaptations of tried-and-true meals or variations on a recipe I found online that I decided to put my own spin on.

Take, for example, the stuffed peppers in the image. I made these the other night. I had baked stuffed peppers once previously (in a bit of a failed experiment because they fell over and didn't cook thoroughly). In addition, I filled these with a seafood stuffing I've made a ton of times instead of the standard spicy meat concoction. I even looked up a recipe for stuffed peppers to get some tips on cooking time and oven temp. I learned two tricks from this research to help correct my earlier mistakes: (1) cut a slice off the bottom to make them stand straight, and (2) par-boil the peppers before stuffing them to make sure they cook through.

This par-boiling trick (something I knew about for other baked vegetable dishes, but often forget to use) might have made my last experiment previous to the peppers work out better. I tried to use thin-sliced butternut squash as noodles in an alfredo-seafood lasagna (we've been eating a lot more seafood lately). What we ended up with was cheesy seafood soup with under-cooked squash. After a little more cooking, we still ate it. But it could have worked better, and I will remember that trick next time.

The basic reason one of these experiments worked perfectly while the other had some serious structural issues was that for the peppers, I was building on skills I had already practiced (and researched the parts I needed help with), while with the squash lasagna, I went out on a limb and tried something I hadn't tried using a technique that I didn't fully understand.

Building a Foundation

This is a lesson I learned early on in my writing career. You need to learn the basics and practice using them correctly until they become second nature to you. Only then can you break the rules and get away with it. There really is no short cut to this. There is an old adage that goes something like this: "Even Picasso learned the rules of perspective before he started to break those rules intentionally." 

Breaking the rules by accident generally leads to "accidents" whether you are typing a story on your computer or preparing a meal in the kitchen (thus, the uncooked squash noodles). This goes beyond basic spelling, grammar, and sentence construction. As a writer, you need to learn a number of tricks of the trade to help your prose flow, make your points clearly, and engage the reader with your sparkling writing. 

Here are a few lessons to learn and practice:

• Choose the best word for every situation. Nouns and verbs are the backbone of strong writing. Don't settle for variations of the verb "to be" when you can put a more evocative verb in its place, and avoid adjectives and adverbs if possible. A strong noun can stand on its own. Using an adjective often means you haven't found the best noun for the situation.

• Vary sentence length to control the pace of your writing. Many young writers fall in love with long, complicated sentences with plenty of commas, semi-colons, and dashes (I was one of them). There is a place for long sentences in fiction. They help slow down the pace, make the reader pay more attention, and give you time to explain complicated issues. Short sentences move the story along. They make action scenes feel frenetic. They are easy to read. The create a quick pace that drives stories forward. 
  

• Use rising and falling action to create tension. There is a reason most authors write stories grounded in a three-act structure. Not only are readers accustomed to this structure, but it helps provide real tension in the plot. You want the tension in a story to rise and fall in arcs. If it is all action all the time, you have no time to delve into character motivations and thematic elements. If your characters face no tension — no obstacles — the story can become bland and grind to a halt under its own weight. (A future blog in this series will dive deeper into the three-act structure.)
  

• Adhere strictly to your point of view. Most fiction today is written in either first-person or third-person POV (point of view). First-person is mostly used in hard-boiled detective novels (especially those with a "film noir" flare). My new Kolchak novel (due out soon) is written first-person. Almost every other novel these days is written in third-person. The value of third person is that you can switch POV between characters at chapter breaks and even scene breaks. But, once you are in one character's POV, you must stay there. You cannot tell the reader what a non-POV character is thinking. If you want to go inside their head, end the scene and start a new one. This is a tough skill to master, but it is essential for clarity.
  

These are not all of the basic writing skills of fiction, but these are ones I find essential to master and ones I have had to learn through practice, which involve years of writing and re-writing a lot of stories. There is no easy way, no shortcut, for getting to the point where these skills are ingrained into your writing psyche so you can use them correctly without even thinking about — and then, intentionally, break them to do something interesting with your story.

Breaking Rules and Taking Chances

Once you master the building blocks of writing (or cooking), your experiments will begin to succeed more often than they fail. Over the past 20+ years of cooking for my family (and writing fiction, both of which began in earnest around the same time), I have built a decent foundation of skills and knowledge. 

I have a good idea what herbs and spices to use (and in what proportion) to make a dish savory without going overboard and making it too spicy, too salty, unpalatable. In my fiction, I have a good feel for tone and dialog to keep a story believable even when set in a fantastical setting. I know how much time and space to spend on description, narration, dialog, and action to keep readers grounded in the story while driving the plot forward at a good pace.

But all of that will still not make you a great writer. The best writers take chances. Almost anyone with some talent can weave together a compelling story that will keep readers turning pages. The memorable stories are the ones where the author did something new, something incredible that you weren't expecting. Some examples of this from movies include Memento and Inception, which both turned the forward-moving three-act plot structure on its head. I also loved the HBO series, Watchmen, which played with our perception of good and evil, heroes and villains, and time itself.

All that being said, it is still important to follow some rules when you are breaking the rules. Here are three I have learned over the years:

Take a chance on inspiration

When an idea pops into your head, take some time to follow it down the path before you jump in and use it. For example, what happens when your strict outline dictates that character needs to go left but you suddenly realize that character doesn't want to go left, that the way you have written them, they would never go left in this situation. What do you do?

It's almost always a good idea to follow the lead of your characters. If you have done a good enough job to make them believable, they can come to life in your head, and you will just get a feel for how they will react in most situations. However, before you jump in and head blindly down that path, you want to take some time to determine how that decision will affect your outline, and how you can gently move the character back into the path of the plot later on.

I recently got inspired by a box of Roasted Red Pepper soup I found hidden in the back of my pantry. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it at the time, but I kept thinking about that box of soup. A few days later, while looking through the freezer, I realized we had a lot of various types of seafood and suddenly the entire path of the dinner came together in my head and that night, I made an improvised Cioppino using that red pepper bisque as the basis.

Don't take the first (easy) answer

 This is a rule I was taught a long time ago and I come back to it again and again. When characters face obstacles or enemies and you are looking for ways for them to overcome those obstacles or defeat those enemies, don't always use the first idea that comes to you. This will be the easy answer, the one that probably comes to mind for a lot of people. 

Stretch your imagination to find alternative, more interesting, answers. And, sometimes, the best answer is to let your characters fail. Not only does this make the character more believable (no one wins every time), but sometimes even better ideas come from handing your character a setback that forces them (and you) to come up with an even more inventive way to move forward.

I did this recently for one of our dinners. While looking at some hamburger patties in the freezer, I thought we might do Salisbury Steaks (which we have done dozens of times and I can cook them without much thought). But I wanted to do something different that night, so I kept thinking until I came up with  new idea. Instead of using beef gravy, I made some shawarma marinade and cooked the hamburgers in that sauce. It was pretty amazing and will be something we will do again.

Turn a rule on its head

Finally, don't be afraid to turn any of the rules I have mentioned on its head as you write. I am not saying to ignore the rule. I am saying to turn it around for a specific reason in a specific circumstance. Do it intentionally. Do it purposefully.

Let me give you an example. Every writer and fiction editor will tell you the initial chapter of your novel should be written from the POV of your main character. Subsequent chapters can then switch to other POVs in relative order of importance of the characters involved. But in my most recent Necromunda novel, Soulless Fury, I began the first chapter from the POV of a relatively minor character. I did this for several specific reasons. 

First, this character had special insight into the nature of the world and, especially, the specific setting I was using for the initial scenes. Starting with him gave me the ability to describe the setting and some of the themes of the novel more directly. Second, the main character was searching for something and I wanted to keep that something a secret for as long as possible. Third, and most importantly, the main character is crazy, mad, insane. She is described in the lore of the world I was writing in as a "force of nature." I wanted her first appearance to be described from the outside, as she swept into town like a tornado destroying everything in her path. 

Finding Your Own path

There is so much more I could say on this subject, but at this point, I think the best way to help you master these techniques is to set you loose to do the work yourself. As I mentioned earlier, the best way to learn the skills you need to become a better writer or cook (or, actually, any creative endeavor) is to go practice. 

The absolute best advice I ever received about writing was this: If you want to be a writer, then write (and read) a lot! But you have to do both of those with a critical eye. See what works (and doesn't work) in both your own writing and in the writing of other authors (both good and bad). Sometimes you have to eat your mistakes so you can learn how to not make those same mistakes again.