Pyrrhic Comedy

a moodboard for a surprisingly fun week in the news aside from the sky being on fire.

How much outlining you do is totally your personal preference. I don't really outline because I write very fast and my first draft essentially is me working out live what I want the outline of the second draft to be.

As for your central question here - I mean your plot should come from your characters, right? What do these people want, and why don't they have it? What can they do to get it? Who or what will try to stop them? What will be the repercussions of their actions?

Characters who drive stories should have something they want, and something they need. Kendall from Succession wants to be CEO of Waystar; he needs to stop trying to become his father, and embrace the people he loves as a reason to live. Those two things, separately and in combination, drive everything he does in the story. Sometimes one is ascendant over the other; sometimes it seems possible that he might get both. Ultimately, because Succession is a tragedy, he gets neither.

Don't try to overcomplicate this stuff. The simpler you can state the wants vs needs of your characters, the stronger the story will be. Ellen Ripley wants to escape the aliens: she needs to confront them. Han Solo wants to get rich without being tied down; he needs to find a family and a cause to give his life meaning. Gollum wants the ring; he needs to find his way back to humanity and connection. Elizabeth Bennet wants to find a husband who won't drag her down; she needs to get over herself, and admit she can be wrong.

Sometimes what a character wants and needs are in direct contradiction (sometimes we want things that are bad for us). Sometimes they go hand-in-hand. Figuring out how to reconcile the two shapes your character's inner journey. The easier that is, the less inner conflict a character will have. That's fine, too, like don't get the impression that I'm saying that more inner conflict is inherently better. It depends on the story you're trying to tell. Alien is not a weaker story because Ellen Ripley's want and need are highly compatible (by confronting the aliens, she does escape them). Ellen Ripley doesn't need a ton of inner conflict. She's dealing with enough outer conflict to keep the story going. But even Ripley's want/need aren't the same, and her transition from fleeing to fighting the aliens is still what shapes the story.

The point is that your characters want something, and they need something, and at the beginning of the story, they have neither. The story starts when they start trying to change that, and it ends when they succeed or fail.

hey Lost sucks. like this shit does not hold up.

If that's the brief, my go-to would be to make them funny. Funny characters can give seriously bad vibes and still be party favorites.

If comedy doesn't fit the tone you're going for, my next thought is to make them pitiable. Just a poor little urchin. A sorry lil fella. They're creepy, but can you blame them? They've been through a lot, and they need help! Give them a moment of sweetness when they're shown a little kindness and the party will probably be eating out of your hand.

If that doesn't work either, I've gotta ask: off-putting how? A threatening character can also be cool and sexy. A weirdo can be sympathetic and sincere. An asshole can be noble and self-sacrificing.

When you get down to it, you're just trying to feature both the character's best and worst qualities at the same time. Like, most people can be both off-putting and likable, when you think about it, if they're put in the right circumstances, and given the right motivations.

Bastian is just like, *points at a raven* that’s my wife

*points at a wolf* that’s my brother in law

*points at an eagle* that’s a knight in my court

*points at Volo* and that’s my dog

[2]? Do you always go back and re-edit it? How do you deal with the writer’s block? Do you take notes while reading to learn from them, such as dialogues or stuff? I hope this is ok to ask - and good luck with any ongoing projects you have right now!

I'm not sure what you mean by books that are 'helpful for writing' - if you mean books about writing, I don't think I've read one since I was like, 14. If you mean books that will inspire you to write...I think inspiration is so personal. I think you should read widely, and read at or above your reading level as much as possible. Chuck Palahnuik, Kurt Vonnegut, and Shirley Jackson are probably the writers who influenced my prose style the most.

The best way to improve as a writer is to find a good editor. I mean somebody who will read your work open-mindedly and with love, but who will also take a big red pen and cross out 70% of it and explain to you, kindly but firmly, why what you wrote is garbage. I have been lucky enough to have a few editors in my life (starting with my dad, when I was like, 12) whose opinions on prose and storytelling I respected, and who were cheerfully merciless in applying them to me. I will always be grateful that they gave me enough credit as an aspiring artist who hoped to improve that they were willing to blowtorch my darlings before my eyes. It's a bracing but invaluable experience.

My process is always the same, no matter what I'm writing. I slam through a first draft as fast as possible. The first draft is shit. That's the point of the first draft. I usually don't even know what my story is about until I finish the first draft, I'm just trying to hunt down good character moments, good scenes, good lines, and a framework for a story that I can rake out of the muck later. Nobody sees the first draft but me.

Then I walk away from it and I don't look at it for a while. If it's a short story, that might be for just a day; if it's something longer, I might walk away for a week or more. Then I come back and re-read it, in a relaxed but critical mood. It's not longer "my writing" at this point: it's just a piece of writing, and I'm going to read it to find out if it's any good.

It isn't. That's fine. I take my big red pen, and I start planning out how I'd fix it, the same way I'd approach editing a stranger's work.

The second draft might bear only a passing resemblance to the first draft, but now I have a plan, and I know where I'm actually going with the material. The second draft takes much longer to write. It's a more thoughtful process. I re-read the first draft often, to keep in touch with what it was about this story in its raw form that made me want to tell it.

Then I submit the second draft to one of those priceless, merciless editors in my life. My wife is my go-to these days. She takes a turn pulling the piece apart and figuring out how she would fix it.

When I'm done re-tooling it based on that feedback, I'm usually happy with what I've got.

I don't know if I believe in writer's block. I think you either want to write or you don't. You can psyche yourself out of doing anything; writing isn't special. You can make anything stressful or unfun or a referendum on your worthiness as a person if you're anxious enough about it.

I think that if you're not getting better at something, you're either not practicing enough, not challenging yourself, not seeking honest feedback, or not applying the feedback you've received.

Writers are frequently annoying people, who think their ~craft~ has special rules that don't apply to any other human endeavor. It's just a skill, like any other skill. Take the same discipline and humility to writing as you would to learning a language, or learning to run a mile, or learning how to build a cabinet. You'll get better.