Nine Questions Every Writer Needs to Ask – Over and Over Again

[Here's a post I wrote for a nice book review blog called Scookie Reviews back in December. I figured it was finally time to cross-post it here. Enjoy! And check out the blog!]

Many beginning writers struggle with doubt, uncertainty, and confusion about mastering their craft: how to build a plot, how to develop rich characters, how to make dialogue ring true or sparkle with wit and humor. If you’re one of those writers ... congratulations! Your worries, your insecurity, and your occasional bafflement do not represent weaknesses on your part – in fact, they are your greatest friends.

Why? Because writing is a process of discovery.

In school, we learn to write as a means of expressing ourselves – of capturing ideas in language in order to relay them to others. But fiction doesn’t work that way. Fiction is not about constructing the right phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to say something. It’s about finding the world inside your head, the mystery and its solution, the key to the lovers’ hearts, the life-experiences that make a hero or a villain tick.

You can’t do any of that without doubting and wondering and repeatedly rethinking yourself. So here are some questions you may find useful in honing your doubt and uncertainty into tools of discovery.

1. Why am I doing this?

This question trumps all others. Do you have a deep need to turn one of your personal experiences into a narrative that could help others or help you achieve a sense of closure? Is your goal fame and fortune and occasional appearances on late-night talk shows? Does writing simply provide you an enjoyable means of escape from daily hum-drummery?

If you lack a clear understanding of your own motives for writing, you won’t know how hard to push yourself when answering the rest of these questions. And because your motives may change and flow over time –especially as your understanding of the writing process deepens – you can’t just ask this once and assume that a single sense of purpose will always carry you through.

2. Who are these people?

Stories are about human beings. (Or maybe aliens or elves or robots or personified animals – but even in those cases, they’re ultimately about human beings despite outward appearances to the contrary.) Without an understanding of where your characters come from, what drives them, and how their personalities and emotional reactions differ from one character to the next, you can’t create a personal focus to carry the reader through your story. No matter how intricate the plot, how shocking or awe-inspiring the concept, how beautiful your prose, if the characters don’t live and breathe for the reader, everything else suffers or even collapses.

3. What would he or she say next?

Once you know your characters and how they react to things, you must stay true to their personalities when they speak to one another. Sometimes I’ll skip ahead and write scenes out of sequence because I’ve come up with dialogue or a soliloquy that perfectly captures my intent. But when I get to those pre-written scenes, I often find that the characters have grown and shifted in the meantime. I understand them better or even just differently, and therefore I have to throw out words that were going to be the linchpin of the scene or even of the book’s climax because they no longer fit with how the characters have developed.

Just wanting a character to say something isn’t enough, regardless of how cleverly sarcastic or worldly wise or heart-warmingly romantic the words might be. Unless a line of dialogue arises naturally from the character’s response to events or to the words of others, the reader isn’t going to buy it, and you need to either change the character’s dialogue or rework the stimulus that provokes the line until they fit together seamlessly.

4. What is the logical repercussion of the action my character just took?

We perceive the world in terms of cause and effect, behavior and response, action and consequence. Fiction works and seems real only if it mirrors the patterns that we know occur in the real world. If a murder suspect flees from police, jumps in a car, and drives off, the police are going to immediately muster all available resources to pursue and halt the vehicle. Taking a couple of quick turns through an alleyway isn’t going to throw them off. If you want such a suspect to escape, you need to fully understand the resources available to the police – roadblocks, communications with dispatchers, helicopters, etc. – and then you need to figure out a genuinely plausible hole through which the killer (or alleged killer) can get away. People and organizations and objects react predictably to our interactions with them, and if your reader can make real-world predictions that your story overlooks or ignores, the result will be eye-rolling at best and the book being put down unfinished at worst.

5. Why did or didn’t my character anticipate that repercussion?

If your reader can spot the killer or predict the words needed to win the heart of the tall, dark-haired stranger, then you need to have a good explanation for the protagonist failing to do so. The creation of drama or conflict is never sufficient reason for a character to overlook the obvious – or even the not-so-obvious, if we’re supposed to believe the person is highly competent. When characters make bad decisions simply because a good decision wouldn’t move the plot in the direction you want, you risk alienating readers who have high standards for heroes (or villains).

6. What detail can I use to give this scene or setting its own reality?

Reality is composed of small things. If an artist paints a picture of a room and includes nothing smaller than a square yard, that room is not going to look like someone lives in it, or even like it’s a real room, since there won’t be any doorknobs or hinges or wood grain. When I pick up a wineglass, I can pick it up by the stem or by the bowl or by the rim. I can hold it between my thumb and fingers or cradle it with the stem hanging between my ring finger and middle finger. When I set the glass down and leave the room, it might be empty or it might have a finger’s breadth of wine left in the bottom. How I pick it up, how I hold it, and whether there’s any wine left when I set it down are all small atmospheric details that can be interspersed with dialogue or action to create a richer scene than simply writing, “He drank from a wineglass during the conversation, then set it on the table and left the room.”

7. What happened earlier in the story that I can use now?

The details with which you build your story’s moment-by-moment reality can easily play a larger role as well. If I drink wine in several scenes, holding the glass the same way each time, a sense of consistency is created. If I leave a half-inch of wine in the glass, that wine could be tested for DNA or for poison later. If I habitually hold the glass by the rim, a detective may be foiled in trying to get my fingerprints from the surface, since I’ll leave only partials at the very lip of the bowl. These things need not be pre-planned, as long as the writer is constantly mindful of details from previous scenes that can be exploited as the story evolves. Perhaps you need character X to communicate something wordlessly to character Y. You think back to earlier in the book and remember that characters X and Z exchanged business cards when they met. That means X has Z’s business card and could use it to write a note because there’s no other paper available. Later, you need character Y to be suspicious of character Z, or to connect Z to X. Voilá, character Y can happen across the business card when emptying her pockets at the end of the day.

8. Is now the right time to be asking these questions?

The answer to this one is usually going to be “Yes.” The worst writing occurs when a writer blazes heedlessly along under the assumption that everything they’re writing is terrific. However, that’s also the mode in which some people are most productive, and the last thing you want is to hit a roadblock because you don’t know the answer to a question. The answers to some questions may need to wait until the second draft (when you need to be asking even more questions!) so that you can get the first draft done. Don’t be afraid to write an unresolved question down in a word-processing comment and then push onward.

9. Why am I doing this, again?

Questions without answers may lead to frustration and to insecurity about whether the effort is even worth it. In those moments, take a deep breath, and remind yourself of your ultimate purpose. You’re a writer. The answers will come.

Self-Publishing: Illegitimate Boondoggle or Canker on the Posterior of All Literature?

I'm about 16 months into my career as a self-publisher, and let me tell you, the luster has been agonizingly sandpapered away in those 16 months.

On the plus side, I had a brief burst of sales at the end of March, with four copies each of The Sharp Edge of Memory and The Ingressionist being sold on Amazon in about a week's time. If that rate sustained itself, I'd be looking at a dependable source of pizza money, which is certainly not something I would turn down.

Also on the plus side, The Last Tragedy received its tenth review that same week. By my count, that's seven complete strangers who liked the book well enough to give it four or five stars.

So I can't say the experience of self-publishing is entirely thankless. Clearly, at least a few people really like my work and are willing to buy it. That bodes well for the dream of eventually attaining some kind of wider readership.

But the downside is that I have no idea why those eight copies of the sequel books sold. Did one of my free promotional periods for The Last Tragedy finally start paying off, with several readers getting through the free ebook and deciding to buy the sequels? Or has my recent investment of time posting in the discussion forums on BookCountry.com resulted in a handful of fellow writers being curious enough to plunk down a few bucks for my writing?

I've encountered a number of fellow self-publishers in the past year. Several have attained dramatically greater success than I have, despite having prose that (in my judgment) is markedly inferior to my own. What are these folks doing right that I'm doing wrong? (Cover art in at least one case, I think.)

I'm torn between the competing notions that (A) I should pull down all my ebooks and give the traditional publishing grind at least one more chance or (B) I should replace the covers with more graphically pristine ones focused on typography and design instead of my own inadequate painting skills.

None of this turmoil is helped any by the company I'm keeping. Self-publishers are becoming notorious as under-talented spam artists who hijack forum threads with their desperate pleas for attention and readership. The desire to avoid being seen as one of those people is pretty overwhelming.

At the moment, my response has been a head-in-the-sand approach, with most of my time going into writing on my new book instead of trying to do something with the old ones. But I know that's a mistake. The new book feels pretty good so far, but if I can't break through to a readership on the strength of the four books I've written so far, I can't see how this latest one is going to make any difference.

All of which leaves me on the fence.

But which way to get down?

The Avengers and the Writer's Curse

I spent large chunks of "The Avengers" geeking out over scenes I've waited my whole life to see on the big screen. A partial list (including mild spoilers): The SHIELD Heli-carrier, Thor and Hulk going toe-to-toe, Hawkeye using his grappling-hook arrows, and, of course, the Black Widow constantly kicking all kinds of ass.

I also spent large chunks of the movie admiring Joss Whedon's abilities as a screenwriter -- including the way he managed to (1) include the old Marvel trope of heroes constantly getting into fights with each other while (2) avoiding the film super-hero trope of people being needlessly stupid to advance the plot. The characters sometimes react (or over-react) impulsively based on their emotions, but whenever they're given time to think, they use their brains effectively. The dialogue was razor sharp in virtually every scene, and also included moments of genuine emotion and character development that came across as fresh and new, in spite of the fact that these characters have appeared in thousands of comic-book issues over the last 50 years. Whedon understands the fundamental pathos of Bruce Banner, the absolute conviction of Steve Rogers, the constant tension between Tony Stark's self-absorption, personal drive, and sense of conscience. He also gets the fact that (another spoiler) Natasha Romanov is such a good spy that she can allow herself to be manipulated in a way that manipulates the person who is manipulating her. And he knows that the relationship between Loki and Thor is an archetype of familial love too strong to be broken regardless of the depths of betrayal to which one of the brothers might sink.

But here is where the writer's curse arrives for me. What Joss Whedon understands about Hawkeye is ... that Hawkeye can shoot arrows really well.

You know, it's not every super-hero movie that manages to present a compelling version of even a single super-hero. In "The Avengers," Joss Whedon pulls off five out of six -- or six out of seven if you count Nick Fury. Or maybe even 9 out of 10 if you count various SHIELD agents and Pepper Potts.

But I still end up stuck on the fact that I wasn't satisfied with Hawkeye.

And what is it that dissatisfies me?

Hawkeye didn't get the chance to be The Hero.

The fact of the matter is, for me, Hawkeye IS the Avengers. In the stretch of the comic that I read from the late '70s into the '80s, Hawkeye was pretty much the only Avenger who stayed in the roster the whole time. At various points, he was the leader of the team, if only because his dogged insistence on sticking to the group gave him seniority. Here was a guy who really was just a guy. No super-soldier serum, no suit of invincible armor, no magical hammer, no gamma-ray-induced strength. He had a few gizmo arrows, his brains, a whole lot of skill, and an absolute, never-quit determination.

Hawkeye was the ultimate Avenger.

So what happens to him in this movie? (FYI: here come the biggest spoilers of the post.) He gets zapped into being Loki's puppet for most of the film, and then in the final action he gets to play about the least important role of any team member. He's not unimportant -- he just doesn't get to shine as brightly as most of the others.

And that's a shame, because if he'd been given a chance to redeem himself from Loki's puppeteering, the climax of the film could have had a lot more emotional resonance.

Imagine if, instead of Hulk being the one to take Loki down, Hawkeye appears on the balcony of Stark Tower, an arrow pointed straight at Loki's heart. Loki just laughs and says, "We've already seen how pitifully inadequate your little arrows are against me." He sends a bolt of energy to blast Hawkeye -- but it goes right through the archer, revealing him to be a hologram projected by a gizmo arrow lodged in the balcony railing. At the same moment, the real Hawkeye shoots Loki from behind, badly injuring him and making him drop his scepter. Now the Hulk can show up and prevent Loki from retrieving the scepter, and with Loki out of the way, Hawkeye (not the Black Widow) can be the one to close the portal. For good measure, you could have the energy shield around the Tesseract send nasty tendrils of energy up Hawkeye's arms while he's shutting it down, giving us a very clear understanding of how much grit it takes to pull the action off.

That ending redeems Hawkeye and also gives Loki an ironic comeuppance for his earlier bragging about always being able to trick Thor with illusions. It does require you to find something else for the Black Widow to do during the finale, but come on. She's the Black Widow, and she's already run away with the movie at several points earlier on, so that shouldn't be too big a deal.

Because I'm a writer, I can't help but see these things and think about them and then be frustrated at the fact that the actual screenwriter didn't think of them. It's all the more frustrating because I think of Joss Whedon as a much better writer than I am, and if I could come up with this stuff, why couldn't he?

The writer's curse.

Even so, "The Avengers" was a pretty damn fine film. Go see it, if you haven't already!