Archive for the ‘Speculative Fiction’ Category

Don’t Damage Your Brand as a Marketing Twhore

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Twitter is fast becom­ing a pim­ple on the back­side of my social net­work­ing life. It’s always been an odd thing, under attack by spam­mers of the tra­di­tional sort as well as non­tra­di­tional. I block social media experts, SEO experts, and porn stars on a daily basis. They don’t care what I have to say, they just want to sell me stuff. Twitter’s a great way to share things, but straight-​​up prod­uct pitch­ing has been really get­ting on my nerves.

But in the past month, I’ve noticed an even more unset­tling trend on Twitter. I am not going to be polite about how I describe this. I’m call­ing this twhor­ing. A lot of other activ­ity on twit­ter has been assigned this term, but this is a bet­ter sub­ject for that descriptor.

What is Twhoring and Twimping?

Twhoring is hap­pily advertising/​spamming prod­uct names as hash tags to your entire fol­low­ers list for the off-​​chance that you might win some piece of tech. Twhoring ranks lower than actu­ally adver­tis­ing or pros­ti­tu­tion because adver­tis­ers and pros­ti­tutes actu­ally get paid for what they do. Twhores tweet away with a slim chance of get­ting any­thing for their pub­lic­ity efforts.

The same sort of peo­ple who will com­plain about ads on a web­site or on a TV show seem to lose their senses when pre­sented with an easy oppor­tu­nity to “win” a Apple prod­uct. You might think you’re clever and start tag­ging the hash­tag to every one of your tweets. This is what the twimps like Boxyspace and Moonballz want you to do. Strut their stuff, spread their brand­ing far and wide. Maybe if you’re lucky they’ll give you a snack cake. A Twinkie perhaps?

It doesn’t help that I loathe both com­pa­nies involved in twimp­ing out their prod­ucts with twhores. “Build your own web­site” com­pa­nies gen­er­ally offer shoddy prod­ucts and com­pete with pro­fes­sional designer/​developers such as myself. No drag and drop sys­tem is going to build you a bet­ter web­site than some­one who has done it for years. And if it does, then you’re prob­a­bly a designer your­self and you didn’t need their soft­ware any­way. But that’s beside the point.

You may think that tag­ging your posts once and a while doesn’t do any harm, but when every­one on Twitter is doing it, it becomes old real quick. There for a while this week, I’d say 30% of the tweets I saw had MoonBallz attached to it. It’s like a twitterly-​​transmitted dis­ease. It spreads rapidly, and it makes you ooze mar­ket­ing pus.

Disinfect your­self, my friends. Stop being a twhore and start hold­ing out for some­thing of real value, at the very least. This isn’t a con­test you’re par­tic­i­pat­ing in, it’s a unnat­ural viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign that makes the par­tic­i­pants look gullible.

Too many peo­ple I respect have fallen prey to this. You are giv­ing it away, folks. Value your brand. It’s worth more than a laptop.

Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor Day

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am declar­ing today one of those non-​​holiday hol­i­day days.  You must all put this day in your cal­en­dar, and spread the word far and wide.

We all con­sume a tremen­dous amount of media these days, whether it be books, tv, mag­a­zines, or blogs.  But how often do we really express our grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion to the cre­ators of these things?

I’ve long tried to make a point of writ­ing notes to writ­ers in my own field when I read a piece of work that I really enjoy.  I know how great it feels to receive such notes.  When you don’t make a lot of money in your cre­ative pur­suits, the appre­ci­a­tion from other human beings can really make it all worthwhile.

So, I declare today “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” Day.  Has some­one done a won­der­ful job with a story, or putting together an issue of a zine?  Tell them.  You’ll feel good, they will feel good, and a lit­tle more hap­pi­ness in these dark times can only be a good thing.

So how often should “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” day come about?  I’m think­ing weekly…  Hey, it’s not like Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day where you have to buy gifts.  This is just a few min­utes of your time to dig up an e-​​mail address and send a mes­sage to it.

The peo­ples of the inter­nets are so quick to say when we don’t like some­thing.  Let’s try to bal­ance that out a lit­tle bit.  Who’s with me?

An Editor’s Perspective on Rejection

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Since I’ve taken on the gig of man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, I’ve been relearn­ing a lot of things about being an edi­tor that I had for­got­ten in the time since clos­ing th Fortean Bureau. I’ve been think­ing a lot about rejec­tion let­ters, and rejec­tion in gen­eral, but not from my usual per­spec­tive as a writer, but now as an edi­tor. It’s inform­ing the way I think about rejec­tions as a writer as well.

It’s Not Personal

Rejection let­ters aren’t per­sonal. I find it very hard not to take them per­son­ally because by god, I wrote the story, I poured my self onto the page, and so it hurts to see that rejec­tion come in most of the time. My sto­ries are like the mind-​​prosthesies I never really asked for. And they trans­mit pain like any real limb. Er, so to speak.

Doling out rejec­tions, many to fine writ­ers whose work I love in a gen­eral sense, it’s really hit home. The rejec­tion is always for the story at hand, and it’s not about you. Great writ­ers get rejected. You will too.

I walk a very fine line in try­ing to avoid offense with my rejec­tion let­ters. How much detail does a Hugo-​​nominated writer need when you bounce his or her story? Do they need a rea­son other than, just didn’t sync up with my inven­tory needs at this time? I don’t want to be in the busi­ness of hand­ing out writ­ing advice in my rejec­tion let­ters. I tend to err on the side of less, rather than more, infor­ma­tion. Which brings me to my next point.

My Rejection is not Writing Advice

Most of the time, my rejec­tion let­ter says the same sim­ple line: “didn’t grab me.” I stole this one from F&SF, because it’s suc­cinct and a polite way of putting the truth. When I write this, it means that I did not fin­ish your story because I got bored with it. Sorry, but that’s the truth. And that’s why I don’t write what I lit­er­ally mean in the rejec­tion let­ter, because I am not a cal­lous mon­ster. When I do pro­vide feed­back as to why I am not buy­ing a story, it’s just based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence of read­ing the story. Every edi­tor brings their own pecu­liar biases and inter­ests to the table. There are some ideas that always grab me more than oth­ers. Biological SF will win out over aster­oid min­ing every time, until you write that aster­oid min­ing story that proves me wrong.

New writ­ers should most def­i­nitely not be look­ing for writ­ing advice in their rejec­tion let­ters. Other writ­ers, and a cri­tique group, are the best way to gain this insight. It’s not the (short fic­tion) editor’s job, espe­cially not today, to cul­ti­vate the writer’s tal­ent. We sup­port your tal­ent, but we don’t have the time to fer­til­ize it. You need to turn to other sources for advice.

I can under­stand the impulse to seek feed­back from edi­tors. Writing is a soli­tary game, and it’s hard to find meth­ods with which to mea­sure your progress. How do you know if you’re get­ting close?

Again, time to be blunt. You’ll know you’re get­ting close because the edi­tor will tell you. When your rejec­tion let­ter asks for more of your work, that’s not just being polite. That’s because we think you have the chops and we’re just look­ing for the right story. When rejec­tion let­ters turn from “didn’t grab” to “didn’t work for me, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons” that’s a step up.

Trust me, the pain is only begin­ning when you’ve made those first cou­ple of sales. You’ll want more, and if light­ing has struck a lit­tle early, it can be painful to go quite a while afterwards.

At the same time, if you go from encour­ag­ing rejec­tions to a non-​​encouraging one, it doesn’t mean you’ve back­slid. It prob­a­bly just means the edi­tor has got­ten a bit too busy to give you spe­cial attention.

I Liked It, but I Didn’t Love It

I get to buy 52-​​ish sto­ries a year, and I prob­a­bly select those from ten times that many at least. This means I am not only look­ing for good sto­ries, but I’m look­ing for sto­ries that leave an impact on me. I reject a decent num­ber of good sto­ries, because I can’t use up all my slots buy­ing just good sto­ries. They have to be good, plus some. That spark is the most elu­sive thing you’ll seek as you develop as a writer.

I per­son­ally haven’t bro­ken past this phase. My rejec­tions are very often in the “this is a good story, but I didn’t like it enough to buy it” vari­ety. I sell oca­sion­ally, but this is my career wall at the moment. I think I’m close to under­stand­ing why, but I may never know, and I may never take the step for­ward. Especially if I don’t write more than I have been these past few years.

Doesn’t Fit My Needs at This Time

This is very sim­il­iar to the “like it, didn’t love it” rejec­tion let­ter. Under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, I might have, prob­a­bly would have, bought this story. But maybe it’s a bit dark in tone, and I’ve been buy­ing way too many of those lately. Maybe at the moment, I need more light-​​hearted pieces. Maybe I bought an aster­oid min­ing story shortly before you sub­mit­ted yours, and they’re too sim­i­lar in sub­ject matter.

This is the “shit hap­pens” rejec­tion let­ter. I find they’re the hard­est and eas­i­est to take at the same time. They’re frus­trat­ing, but at least you can put these to the capri­cious­ness of fate, rather than your own per­sonal skills. It helps.

So that’s a lit­tle bit of the think­ing I’ve been explor­ing regard­ing rejec­tion as I work to select sto­ries for Escape Pod. It’s def­i­nitely given me a bet­ter per­spec­tive on my own rejec­tions. If it were pos­si­ble, I would rec­om­mend every seri­ous writer find a way to read slush some day. Not only do you learn to spot the most com­mon mis­takes, you start to get a lit­tle empa­thy for that poor soul on the other side of the transom.

On Writing Motivation

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Quaero_​verum asks:

You’ve prob­a­bly already writ­ten about 1,000 posts on it already, but moti­va­tion is my sore spot at the moment. As in, “sit thy butt down and just write!”

Also, when I do write, I sit and stare at the blank white screen for a lonnnng time. I am find­ing it hard to even churn out “free-​​writes”.…

My advice to you is sim­ple. Don’t force it. If you’re going through a period of low moti­va­tion, you may need to recharge your cre­ative bat­ter­ies. This is some­thing that I’ve had to learn the hard way.

Creative energy is a very poorly under­stood topic in my expe­ri­ence. Some man­age it very well and are able to be con­sis­tently, highly pro­duc­tive. See Jay Lake write a novel in a hand­ful of weeks. Others strug­gle for a decade. The prod­uct isn’t nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter in either case.

It’s very impor­tant to give your self oppor­tu­nity to write. But if you don’t write, it’s not nec­es­sar­ily because you’re lazy. Your energy could be low. You might not have any­thing to say right now. Maybe you’d rather draw, or take a pho­to­graph to express what you’re feel­ing. Who knows. The impor­tant thing is not to beat your­self up.

Lastly, I’d like you to go watch this pre­sen­ta­tion by Amy Tan from the TED Talks recently. She talks about how we per­cieve cre­ativ­ity, and she makes some very inter­est­ing points.

Watch the Amy Tan talk here.

Do any of you have any fur­ther advice on the sub­ject? I’m really curi­ous to hear what oth­ers think about cre­ative energy. It’s a topic that I’m only just start­ing to develop some the­o­ries about, espe­cially as it per­tains to my own work.

What Is a Podcastable Story?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Greg Van Eekhout asks:

Thoughts on what kinds of sto­ries trans­late well to pod­casts and what kinds don’t?

First of all, full dis­claimer. I am the man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, the sci­ence fic­tion audio pod­cast. I’ve been doing this job for about 3 or 4 months now, and I am by no means an expert on to topic. I can only com­ment as to my per­sonal tastes here. I reserve the right to change my opin­ion as I learn more about my job and what seems to work.

I can talk much more eas­ily about what does not work well in pod­casts. Here are a few things:

  • Typographic weird­ness, of the sort you would see in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
  • Fiction that plays with for­mat­ting in some way–fake news report, branch­ing dia­logue, and so on. This would be great if we pro­duced audio dra­mas, but Escape Pod approaches pro­duc­tion in a very straigh­for­ward nar­ra­tive fash­ion. I’d love to do more radio-​​drama style read­ings, and we have one com­ing up that was recorded live by Steve Eley at a con­ven­tion. But the pro­duc­tion that goes into a reg­u­lar episode is dif­fi­cult enough.
  • Stories that have a lot of very short scenes and lots of jump­ing around in time.

The last one is the one I’m least cer­tain about, but I find that sto­ries that go back and forth in time can be a bit more con­fus­ing in audio for­mat. On the page, it seems eas­ier to orga­nize the events into a chrono­log­i­cal order, but when lis­ten­ing to a story, it is harder to do this. I’m not say­ing it’s impos­si­ble, but it’s def­i­nitely some­thing I pay atten­tion to.

Okay, so what works par­tic­u­larly well? Here are some gen­eral ideas:

  • A strong, unique per­spec­tive or voice. It’s my expe­ri­ence that some of the most pop­u­lar EP episodes have been from a very unique char­ac­ter, such as a bomb dog or the AI that resides in a soldier’s hel­met. These sto­ries are often in first per­son per­spec­tive. That’s not to say that I find first per­son bet­ter than third per­son. First per­son cou­pled with a really unique and orginal voice stands out very well. Like it does in reg­u­lar fiction.
  • All the other, usual things that make a story good.

Other than the few things I think don’t work that are spe­cific to the audio for­mat, I use basi­cally the same cri­te­ria for select­ing a story in audio that I would for select­ing in print. I have some restric­tions unique to Escape Pod, such as length. I can’t tell you how many times I remem­ber what I think would be a great story fo rthe pod­cast, only to look it up and find out that it was a novella. It’s some­thing I’d like to see us do more of in the future, but I’d want to pay more for them and pos­si­bly seri­al­ize them over the course of two or more episodes. It’s some­thing I think about a lit­tle when I have time.

If you lis­ten to pod­cast fic­tion, what do you think? What kinds of sto­ries really work well for you in audio? Try to focus on the things you think work par­tic­u­larly well, and cite spe­cific exam­ples if you like. This will make up for my rather under­de­vel­oped list. If you have some­thing crit­i­cal to say about a par­tic­u­lar pod­cast story, share it on the forums over at the ‘cast or send it to our feed­back email, as a favor to me, please.

Reader Questions: How Do I Decide How Much Work to (Self) Publish Online?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Let’s kick off reader ques­tion answer week with a real doozy. CDThomas asks:

I don’t have a web­site or blog. And I don’t know if I want one.

I under­stand if I’d cre­ate a blog for nat­ter­ing on, but most of that itch gets scratched by Twitter. I’m not much of an essay writer, because I think I find oth­ers who say what I’m think­ing bet­ter than I would.

That leaves self-​​promotion, pos­si­bly, of my fic­tion (plays, poems, short sto­ries). If I don’t want to go the full Doctorow and Creative-​​Commons license every­thing, then how do I decide how much of my work to pub­lish online?

I’m not going to be the type of writer who obses­sively searches for online theft, but I need to find a way of talk­ing about what I’m doing before I’m pub­lished reg­u­larly by mag­a­zines, online or oth­er­wise — learn­ing how to be part of a writ­ing SF/​F/​H com­mu­nity, I guess, but with­out my ques­tions get­ting lost on web boards.

First of all, I don’t think every writer needs a web­site or a blog. Anyone who says they do is prob­a­bly sell­ing some­thing (to para­phrase The Princess Bride). Now, I sell web design ser­vices, but I would never try to sell a writer on a blog/​website if they didn’t have any inter­est in main­tain­ing or updat­ing it. It sounds like you know what you like, and that’s Twitter. That’s great! You can do a lot to build a rep­u­ta­tion and an audi­ence with just that ser­vice. I tend to rec­om­mend a more com­pre­hen­sive strat­egy. I think of it as being like fish­ing. You can fish all day in one spot if you want, and you’ll catch fish. You’ll catch fish if you change up your lure and move around too. Now, read­ers aren’t fish, but poten­tial readers/​fans can be found in a lot of dif­fer­ent places. Unlike fish­ing, you can be in mul­ti­ple places at one time. So it’s more like hav­ing a cou­ple of poles in the water.

Okay, that metaphor is stretched to the break­ing point. Moving on.

I used to blog rarely, think­ing basi­cally that I didn’t have any­thing unique to say. But I don’t think that’s true of any­one, espe­cially any­one who writes. Why do we write if we’re not com­pelled do to do so by a need to share some­thing we feel is unique? Everyone has some­thing unique to say. Maybe not on every topic or issue, but every­one has within them, in my opin­ion, the poten­tial to write a great and grip­ping blog. Sometimes this involves liv­ing a very pub­lic life, shar­ing your deep­est embar­rass­ments. Sometimes, it means shar­ing the lit­tle bit of knowl­edge about writ­ing you’ve gar­nered. But if you’re sure, no big deal. You don’t need to have one. Nobody’s going to order you to have one.

Now, how do you decide what fic­tion to release online if you don’t want to go the full Creative Commons route and release absolutely every­thing? My opin­ion is, unless you’re really, really cer­tain of it, don’t release it online unless it’s been pub­lished some­where. I’ve writ­ten pos­si­bly a hun­dred short sto­ries. But only about a dozen are avail­able for any­one to read out­side of my close friends and fam­ily, and only one of those was self-​​published online.

It’s hard to build authen­tic­ity as a self-​​publisher. It’s not impos­si­ble, but the thing is, there is a lot of stuff to read online. People are look­ing for rea­sons to key in on things to read, and just throw­ing your writ­ing out there all on its own can be a very hard way of build­ing authen­tic­ity. I’m not say­ing it’s impos­si­ble, but I per­son­ally wouldn’t want to go that route.

Now, say you’ve sold a cou­ple of sto­ries. You might want to release some of them online, but let’s back­track and remem­ber that we don’t have a web­site. How do we release fic­tion online and get it out there to be read if we don’t have a web­site? Well, you can throw up a quick free web­site with a ser­vice like Blogger or LiveJournal. Or you can sell your fic­tion as down­loads with Fictionwise. Or you could upload it to Scribd and take your chances. There are a lot of ways to put your work out there with­out hav­ing a web­site, but you take your chances with each one of them. It’s really, really hard to get peo­ple to pay atten­tion to you online.

I find that it’s best to try online reprint sales first.  Might as well get some money from it, right?  That’s more respectabil­ity than just pub­lish­ing it online your­self.  Most sites will archive it for a long time.  The pod­casts like Escape Pod, Drabblecast, and Starship Sofa  are another great way to get your fic­tion online in basi­cally a per­ma­nent fash­ion.  The main dif­fer­ence here is that some­one else is lend­ing cred­i­bil­ity to your work by select­ing it for their pub­li­ca­tion, as opposed to you putting it up on your per­sonal web­site.  If one place lik­ing a story gives cred, imag­ine that two places means even more cred.  Same prin­ci­ple behind the Year’s Best antholo­gies, I think.

As to how much of your work should you get online?  That’s up to you and I can’t give you a sat­is­fac­tory answer.  I per­son­ally try to get every sin­gle story online via the ways I’ve listed above.  If I can’t sell some­thing as a reprint or pod­cast, I’ll for­mat it nicely on my web­site and throw it up myself.  Especially if I want to do a cool illus­tra­tion to go along with it.  Once you’ve made all the money you can from a story, why not put it out there for free?  Stories are dis­pos­able most of the time.  If you write a story so great that you can resell it dozens of times, then, well, some­one will post it online for you whether you want them to or not.  Try Googling the title of a clas­sic SF short story, and you’re likely to find a boot­leg copy online on some poorly policed .edu site as much as any­thing else.  Might as well be the per­son to be in con­trol of it, right?

The last aspect of the ques­tion above deals with how to become a part of the com­mu­nity and take part in a con­ver­sa­tion with­out being lost amongst the noise. This is very easy. I’ll break it out in bul­let points.

  • Pick four or five blogs or forums and haunt them. Check them every day if you can.
  • Provide help­ful answers to ques­tions. Key word here is help­ful. Don’t be neg­a­tive or crit­i­cal unless it’s asked for. Talk about your­self and your work only if it relates directly to the topic at hand. Be pos­i­tive. Try to find a unique per­spec­tive on the posts you com­ment on.
  • Do that over and over again. You’ll get a rep­u­ta­tion quickly.

There are other ways, but I think this is the eas­i­est way. It involves putting in a lot of time, but being a part of a com­mu­nity isn’t easy. I have a really hard time keep­ing up with all the writer blogs and forums I would like to read in an ideal world. I try to stay on top of a few spe­cific ones as best I can. I’m not very good about my sec­ond point of advice, so bear that in mind, but I think if I could do things over again, that’s how I would approach it.

I hope some of these answers prove help­ful. If any­one else has any advice for CDThomas, please share it in the comments.

Revising Short Fiction is for Suckers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve heard a lot of dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the sub­ject of revi­sion over the years. The one that has stuck with me was the opin­ion of, I think it was Heinlein. This author wrote one draft, dropped it in the mail, and never looked back. I don’t know what his rea­sons for this were, but I know what a mod­ern writer’s rea­sons would be, espe­cially when it comes to short fiction.

It’s all about time man­age­ment and cost/​benefit analy­sis. Because sto­ries are pur­chased not based on the time it took to write them but how many words they con­tain, the actual hourly wage you make varies depend­ing on how much time you spend on a story. And the more time you spend, the less money you’re making.

For exam­ple, I gen­er­ally write first drafts at a speed of 1000–2000 words an hour. At a mod­er­ately decent payrate of 5 cents a word, that puts me at $50 an hour, if I were to sell my first draft. That’s a very nice hourly wage. Each draft you do, and each hour you spend rework­ing your draft, is reduc­ing your poten­tial hourly income. Spend as much time revis­ing as you did writ­ing the story, and now you’ve cut your hourly in half. Spend three times as long revis­ing the story as you did writ­ing it and now we’re talk­ing work­ing at McDonalds wages. I guess it’s bet­ter than dig­ging ditches.

However, I per­son­ally am not a writer who can churn out a sell­able first draft. I find the story in revi­sion, much like Pixar does. Partly this is because I often start writ­ing a story before the idea has fully fer­mented. Partly this is because I write so fast when I am on the first draft that I miss good oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s only in sub­se­quent drafts that I can tweak the machin­ery of story into a form that actu­ally runs.

When I first started out writ­ing, I was with Heinlein all the way. One draft, and be done with it. And I sold a cou­ple. I also never sold dozens. When you think about it, was that really mak­ing me any more money as a writer? Almost cer­tainly not. It’s prob­a­bly a wash, if I sat down to fig­ure it out.

These days, I not only redraft and redraft, I also sit on sto­ries for months or years. Yesterday, I broke out a story that I wrote almost 2 years ago and began revis­ing. It’s prob­a­bly now on draft 5 or 6. And it’s most likely still not there.

These days, I’m much more con­cerned with mak­ing money from my writ­ing than I was before. That’s because I have no reg­u­lar source of income. So I’m look­ing at the Heinlein way again. It’s wish­ful think­ing though. I’m not a first draft writer, and that’s okay. Even if my hourly wage works out to be some­thing akin to min­i­mum wage, it’s still bet­ter work than just about any job that actu­ally pays min­i­mum wage. Unless that job has health insurance.

What’s your approach to revis­ing? What’s the longest you’ve ever tin­kered with a piece before send­ing it out?

New Client Site: JAPitts​.net

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

J.A. Pitts is an upcom­ing author with Tor Books. The first book in Pitts’ series will hit book­shelves in sum­mer of 2010. Black Blade Blues is an urban fan­tasy about a black­smith in Portland who smiths by day and moon­lights as a prop mas­ter in the inde­pen­dent movie scene by night. Pretty soon, the black­smith finds out that a sword she owns may be a very impor­tant sword of myth and leg­end. Then all hell breaks loose. Also, dragons.

The idea with this design was to evoke the feel of the book, which has the black­smithing ele­ments, as well as a Norse mythol­ogy ele­ment. The scarred wood is rem­i­nis­cent of a well-​​used work­bench, and the mast­head includes the sword and a blacksmith’s ham­mer, mak­ing the con­nec­tion very implicit.

If you are inter­ested in dis­cussing free­lance work with me, con­tact me through the Clockpunk Studios site. Or drop me an email. I’m always look­ing for more projects.

5 Writing Lessons Learned from Land of the Lost

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This past week­end, I spent my hard-​​earned money to see the new Land of the Lost movie. In terms of enter­tain­ment, I do not feel that I got my money’s worth out of it. So here I sit, try­ing milk­ing a blog post out of the film in order to get some writ­ing lessons from the thing. I’ll be damned if I am going to actu­ally waste money in these hard eco­nomic times!

I guess my child­hood appre­ci­a­tion of the orig­i­nal series col­ored my expec­ta­tions for the film. No wor­ries, it won’t hap­pen again. At least, until G.I. Joe comes out. And Transformers 2. Ahem.

This post is going to be rife with spoil­ers, but hey, if you don’t want to see the film (which you shouldn’t), or god for­bid, saw it already, then those won’t bother you. Lessons behind the cut. Oh, and yes. I’m dis­card­ing my usual “don’t say it if you can’t say some­thing nice” ethos here, because, well, some­times you wake up on Monday morn­ing and want to tear apart a bad film. Onward!

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5 Writing Lessons I Learned from Pixar

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

It’s my per­sonal opin­ion that some of the absolute best sto­ry­tellers on the planet today work for Pixar. Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is eas­ily my favorite tra­di­tion­ally ani­mated film. And now, I think Up, the lat­est Pixar mas­ter­piece, has man­aged to top all the films that came before it.

I’m rarely as touched and thrilled by an expe­ri­ence as I am by watch­ing their movies.

  1. Writing doesn’t have to be YA, or for Adults. It can be both.

    The book world may have sto­ries divided down lines based on age and level of matu­rity, but the line between enter­tain­ment for adults and enter­tain­ment for younger chil­dren has never been as blurred as it has been by Pixar’s films. It’s indis­putable that their films are pop­u­lar with chil­dren. The sheer vol­ume of Nemo mer­chan­dise I see to this day backs up that asser­tion. At the aquar­ium, no kid could see the fish from that film with­out shout­ing out their names. “Look mommy, Dory!” I lis­tend to vari­a­tions of this for two hours.

    I think Pixar is the very model of fam­ily entertainment–films that can be enjoyed by every­one. And the more I think about it, the more I real­ize that much of chil­dren or YA lit­er­a­ture is the same way. There’s a kind of sub­con­cious stigma for adults read­ing YA fic­tion in my expe­ri­ence. I saw this often when Harry Potter was pop­u­lar. Some could not get past the idea that “Harry Potter is for kids.” It’s not. It’s for peo­ple who enjoy sto­ries. Just like Pixar’s films. I have a lot of respect for some­one who can tell a story so broadly appeal­ing, and per­son­ally, I want to learn how to do it too.

  2. Don’t Be Afraid to Put Heavy Stuff in a Light-​​Hearted Story

    This les­son has never been dri­ven home so well as by Up. The pro­tag­o­nist is a wid­ower, and we spend the first 20 min­utes get­ting to know his free-​​spirited wife. We see their lives pass before our eyes, and when she passes, we feel it deeply. I had a hard time keep­ing my eyes dry, I admit it.

    Funny with­out bite is like a fluffy cake. It lacks sub­stance and grav­ity. The under­tones cre­ated by the loss of a loved one, absen­tee fathers, and lifes not lived, those are the things that take an enjoy­able story from being fun but for­get­table to being great and unfor­get­table. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us laugh and cry in the same breath. If Pixar can do it, we can do it in our sto­ries and nov­els too.

  3. A character’s first inter­ac­tions can often tell you every­thing you need to know about them.

    In Wall-​​E, the first inter­ac­tions with another crea­ture we see are between the robot and a cock­roach. Does Wall-​​E smash the bug, dis­gusted? Of course not. He befriends it. The essence of his char­ac­ter is revealed in that sim­ple scene, and we fall for him.

    Pixar’s char­ac­ters appear­ances often reflect their per­son­al­ity, some­thing that can­not so eas­ily be done in fic­tion itself. But it’s not just their appear­ance. Watch each one of the films. In a few brief moments, we learn that Marlin will do any­thing for Nemo, that Woody is a leader and likes help­ing other toys, that Mr. Incredible is a bit full of him­self and dis­mis­sive of oth­ers, but loves his wife, and then, his fam­ily, very much, and that Remy loves food. Often, the cen­tral con­flict of the story arises from this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as well. Wall-​​E needs to love some­one, and fol­lows EVE into space itself. Woody butts heads with Buzz. Mr. Incredible makes his own arch-​​nemesis because of his rude­ness. And so on.

  4. The work is found in the process of rewrit­ing. Also, write for yourself.

    In this inter­view with some of Pixar’s writ­ers, a cou­ple of com­ments really struck home with me, align­ing with things I had noticed from watch­ing the Behind-​​the-​​Scenes extras on their DVDs. Pixar doesn’t do focus groups. They write what they love. And they rewrite and rewrite until they get it the way they want. The story often changes dra­mat­i­cally in the course of revi­sions. Sometimes, we get obsessed with our first drafts, and our hopes rise or sink with the rel­a­tive suc­cess of it. I am par­tic­u­larly guilty of giv­ing up on sto­ries when the first draft doesn’t turn out as well as I imag­ined it.

  5. Amazing char­ac­ters can be born from the sim­plest of ideas.

    The gen­e­sis of the pro­tag­o­nist Walter in Up was a sim­ple sketch of a grumpy old man hold­ing a bal­loon. “Grumpy old man” is a hoary stereo­type, but stereo­types in and of them­selves aren’t wrong. It’s stop­ping with a stereo­type is a mis­take. From that sim­ple sketch, Pixar build a fully real­ized and appeal­ing char­ac­ter. They took some­one and made him both unpleas­ant and lov­able at the same time.

    Russell, seen right, is designed as a char­ac­ter to coun­ter­point every­thing about Walter. He’s round where Walter is angles. He’s kind and inno­cent and youth­ful. The con­tra­dic­tion of the essence of these two char­ac­ters gen­er­ates much of the humor and the con­flict to drive the story.