Storytellersunplugged

David Niall WilsonI had about a dozen plans for what I would write this month. Some of the words and phrases were written in my mind. Some of them ended up in my journal, and one nicely ordered set became my column for http://www.chizine.com/. Then, as so often happens, inspiration came to me in the form of life, e-mail, and the pursuit of perfection.

Recently a long term goal of mine was reached. I sold a collection of short fiction to a respected publisher. To top that off, the editor/publisher selected pretty much the same stories, from a large pool of my work, that I would have selected myself. The project, thus far, has been a dream. Along the way, though, I made a fateful promise that I thought was meant to make the editor happy, and learned that – subconsciously at least – it was meant to make me happy. It is one of those things, as it turns out, that will make us both happy, though it requires a lot of work.

The promise I made was simple. I would revise every story. All thirteen tales, all 98,000 words, would be freshly gone over, poked, prodded and re-shaped. Some of these stories were written as long ago as 1995 (I think that’s the oldest) and my “voice” has changed a lot since then. My understanding and application of style and grammar has evolved. Hopefully I’m even a bit wiser and have matured somewhat, emotionally and professionally. Still, when I said I would revise the stories, what I really meant was, ‘please, please, please let me revise the stories,’ and it was a selfish request.

Over the two plus decades of my career, one thing has never changed. When my work makes it to publication, and I read it, I cringe. Often. There is always something I would change, or rearrange, or excise completely. The biggest nightmare of this sort I recall was a story titled “The Dungeon Renewal Plan,” which was published in Cemetery Dance Magazine. That story was originally written during the lat 1980s when I was studying under J. N. Williamson in the Writer’s Digest School course on writing to sell fiction. It was an assignment. I wrote a simple tale about ghosts materializing from a drainage system on the anniversary of an attempted prison break. That was how it started.

After ‘graduating,’ I began submitting the stories I’d written during the course. One editor pointed out that my story left too many unanswered questions, and that the ending was ambiguous, so I sat back down and added the second half of the story. Being a very clever fellow, I broke up sections with the pithy discourse of a DJ on the radio, sort of giving a play-by-play of the action. More on that in a moment.

I sold that story to an anthology that never appeared. It was titled H2Orrors, and the stories all had to do with water in some way. The editor held the work a long time, but never managed to land a sale. Then another editor / publisher decided he was going to do an anthology. He’d published a collection of his own short stories, and was big on branching out. The anthology, as its predecessor, died with my story still unpublished. Since Rich Chizmar was involved, somewhat, he had the story in question, and eventually he asked to publish it in Cemetery Dance Magazine. I was thrilled.

You see, I knew this was a ‘great’ story. I was convinced, in fact, that it was among my strongest work, and that it would open some eyes when it finally saw print. I’ll tell you one thing; it certainly opened mine. The very first of the cleverly inserted radio DJ snippets gave away the entire plot to the story. How I didn’t see that in all the years I had that story in my hands, I do not know, but I certainly saw it when I read it, and I was mortified (remain mortified). That was the beginning of my new attitude about the sacrosanct quality of my work, and the process of revision.

Since then, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve regretted not giving something a final going over; how many manuscripts I’ve realized were perfect for a market and shot off out of the folder where I keep them without so much as a glance. It has resulted in world-class errors, like sending a story (again to Cemetery Dance) minus the final seven pages of the manuscript, only to find that the last page I DID send ended with a suitable “ambiguous” sort of horror finale. I even got a fan letter from a grad student in California commending me on the brilliance of ending it right there and leaving the imagination so fully engaged. That story has since been published as an Amazon Short at Amazon.com under a new title, “New Leather and Old Cognac,” with the final seven pages reinserted, but that’s not why I’m here.

I’m here to explain the joy of revising 98,000 words of short fiction that will represent me to the world as my first collection, Defining Moments. I’m here in the full knowledge that I’ll miss something, or regret something, eventually, when I read the book. I’m also here grateful that I have grown to have sense enough to want very badly to read and revise every page of the work involved, and to know that it needs it. Despite the fact most of these stories have been published, and that several have even been recommended for awards, I know they need work. When I turn them in they will be cleaner, brighter offerings – dusted and polished with love and affection. I also know that for many of these tales, it’s the first time they’ve experienced this. For being a bad parent to my work, I apologize. I will try to do better. Reading what I have wrought in black and white print I can’t erase has been very therapeutic.

As evidence of this, realize I wrote this essay, revised it, posted it, and this is the THIRD TIME since posting it that I have re-opened it to fix something (sigh).

So, in conclusion, thanks go out to Robert Morgan of Sarob Press for buying my work, and for giving me the time and opportunity to make it better than it was when he first liked it.
One last note, before I go. In my personal journal / blog I’ve been conducting some interviews, and publishing some book reviews. Since most of those involved in these interviews and reviews are fellow contributors to this site, I thought readers might enjoy dropping by for an extra glimpse into the minds that create Storytellers Unplugged daily. So far I’ve interviewed Elizabeth Massie and Thomas “Sully” Sullivan (of whom it has been said after reading my interview with him,‘The man writes like silk feels’) and I have “The Scariest Book I’ve Ever Read” reviews by Elizabeth Massie and the inimitable Janet Berliner. More will follow. You can find them in THE DEEP BLUE JOURNAL– hope you enjoy.

DNW

Okay, well, better late than never. Maybe.

Since Jeff Mariotte was apparently looking over my shoulder and swiped the subject of collaborating right out from under my keyboard, I am hereby scrapping that essay (fortunately, I wasn’t far into it) and offering something altogether different. Don’t do it again, Jeff!

As most readers here probably know, I edited DEATHREALM magazine for ten years (1987-1997) and have edited (or co-edited) three anthologies — SONG OF CTHULHU, EVERMORE, and DEATHREALMS (though the latter doesn’t really count, I suppose, since all the stories came from the magazine). I’ve also written a fair amount of fiction over the last couple of decades. Many writers have an editor’s hat as well, and I imagine most of them are better writers for it. I like to think the experiences with both have worked wonders for me.

I consider every story, every novel, every piece of prose I write an exercise with a lesson to be learned somewhere in the process. Ditto for every issue of the magazine, every anthology I’ve ever edited. I look for the best lessons by reading other writers. Good ones. Great ones. Those whose work has already been through the editorial process. From these, I can get subtle pointers (and sometimes not-so-subtle) on style, on structure, on characterization, on everything associated with a work of fiction. I can learn what’s been done to death and what needs revitalizing. Little other than reading something that is on a level beyond my own better encourages me to practice and develop my own authorial voice. That, as much as plain old enjoyment of reading, keeps me looking forward to the next book in the TBR stack. Some disappointment is inevitable, of course, but in that stack, there are also plenty of lessons about what not to do.

Yes, and that last bit is taken to a whole ’nuther extreme when your TBR stack is a slush pile.

Frequently, the DEATHREALM slush pile actually consisted of two to three piles, each a foot or more high; it wasn’t just a matter of odds, it was an outright certainty that the vast majority of them would be unacceptable, if not utterly dreadful (and after several years of this, that fact becomes rather depressing). But there was plenty to be learned all the same. Needless to say, I could scarcely read beyond a few paragraphs, sometimes a few sentences, to determine whether the story might be a keeper; the ones that did lure me to the end were few and far between. Negative reinforcement came aplenty, and I certainly learned many things that were valuable to my own writing, one in particular being the aspect of characterization. Way back when, during my early development as a writer, I often wanted to humanize my characters by giving them foibles; as much as good writing was teaching me how, the slush pile taught me definitively how not.

During my tenure as DEATHREALM’s editor, I came up with a character I call Bilge. He’s the fellow who starred in countless stories from countless aspiring writers whose work reeked distinctly of bilgewater. Bilge was so prevalent that I finally added a checkbox to my rejection slip that read, “This is a Bilge story,” the detailed description of which could be found in my submission guidelines.

If the Bilge box on a writer’s rejection sheet was checked, that writer would have a pretty good idea that Mr. Deathrealm was not pleased.

Bilge’s character had a few variations, but by and large, he was a beer-swilling, misogynistic lout who almost always opened his stories by yelling “Fuck!” (sometimes followed by an objective pronoun), and who took great pleasure in the torture and mutilation of his victims — generally a woman, though occasionally a gay male. (“You F’ing whore!” was probably his most oft-blurted exclamation.) Bilge had no human traits other than the most wicked; in fact, two-dimensional is way too generous a term for him. Though once in a great while the victim in question had actually wronged him, more often than not, Bilge indulged in his maladjusted pastimes just because he was an f’ing bastard. As you might guess, at the end of the tale, the tables were always turned, and Bilge found himself in a world of hurt, inevitably at the hands of his victims, newly emerged from the grave. (As a twist, sometimes they even vampires!) In about 90 percent of his tales, poor Bilge was castrated without anesthesia. (Though I remember one where his entrails got yanked out through his mouth. I gave that one a half-point for style.)

I always wanted to feel bad for Bilge, but none of the writers ever allowed me to. Bummer, isn’t it?

Tyros (including me, back in the day) find vengeance a most compelling subject matter, and it can be, given a unique treatment that includes things such as depth, motivation, and perhaps an ounce of internal struggle. But the single-mindedness with which many approach the subject, thus birthing Bilge, is an issue that, to my mind, ought to be worked out prior to springing the story on a bunch of all-too-suspecting editors.

I haven’t read slush in several years, but based on Bilge’s continued appearance in the occasional small-press publication, I’d be willing to bet he’s still a pervasive character. (I might add that, largely because of Bilge, I learned one valuable editorial trick that I have since performed religiously: Invite-only.)

If Bilge lurks among your stable of characters, fire him. Fire him now.

And editors — if you’d like to use the “This is a Bilge story” checkbox on your rejection slip, please feel free. I’m happy to share.

–Mark Rainey

One of the hoariest cliches in writing instruction is the dreaded ‘write what you know.’ This is, of course, only the roughest of guidelines. After all, one would certainly hope that H.P. Lovecraft was not in fact writing what he knew (innumerable pastiches to the contrary), and if Terry Pratchett is writing what he knows, I want to move into his neighborhood, pronto. No, it is a guideline to be taken figuratively, an admonition to new writers to do their research and verify their voice before commencing the potentially embarrassing act of creation.

What remains hidden, however, is the flip side of the directive, which is to say ‘Write what you know, but not too much of it.’ Like it or not, we all draw at least some of what we write from our own personal experience. It may be paradigmized, allegoricized, disguised, or refried, but the essential truth comes from what we’ve seen, been, and done. And along the way we’ve picked up insights and experiences that may, if put on the page,
prove embarrassing, hurtful, or otherwise uncomfortable for those we know and love.

Or, to put it another way, let’s consider an example. The most recent novel project I finished, a southern gothic entitled Firefly Rain, hinges on some fairly intricate parent-child dynamics. There are broken promises, weird supernatural happenings, and numerous ruminations by the narrator on the nature of his relationship with his ancestral home and ancestry. Now, being a Brooklyn-born, Ellis Island-bred mongrel of a carpetbagger instead of a good ol’ southern boy, I figured that there was sufficient distance between any of my own upbringing and the contents of the novel. Sure, some
of the motivation for the book had come from my parents’ sale of the house I’d grown up in, but that was in the Philly suburbs, where two rhododendron bushes planted back-to-back passed for wilderness.

Confident I’d hewed out a work of fiction that was at least shouting distance from any of my own issues, I passed a copy off to my sister to read, just to see what she thought.

Two weeks later, I received a phone call from my mother, who said that my sister had been reading the book, and had felt compelled to call her.

“Did she like it?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” was the answer. “But she wanted to know what I’d done to you to make you write this. I mean, everybody knows that you write what you know.”

(My mother, incidentally, is a very nice lady, and I cannot think of a single horrible thing she ever did to me with the possible exception of forcing me to wear Stride Rite shoes until such time as doing so made me look like an extra on Hee Haw. But that’s neither here nor there.)

So how much of what you know do you write? Laying your soul bare, deliberately or otherwise, may provide raw and unfettered passion. It may also ensure that people you love will never speak to you again, or perhaps will come after you with a hedge trimmer and a wicked gleam in their eye.
Write too much of what you know at work and you may find yourself revealing the sorts of secrets that get you fired, or at the very least making your office a hostile work environment. At the same time, how can you walk away from stuff that inspires you, that drives the act of creation? Drawing lines is hard, but not drawing lines invites interpersonal catastrophe.

After all, as writers we are always looking for material. We may not be doing it consciously, but everything we see runs the risk of being used as grist for the mill. And once those around us realize that, they also realize that they’re part of that everything. They’re potential material, and some folks aren’t comfortable with the knowledge that stuff that they intend to exist only on an interpersonal level might end up on a literary
one as well. Some never realize it until it’s too late, and that long-forgotten argument or unkindness is sitting there on the page. And some go the other way entirely, altering the relationship in hopes of making themselves worthy of wordage.

Ultimately, I think, the key comes from self-knowledge, and a willingness to take chances. After all, it’s the things that carry emotional heft that have the potential to drive the best writing, but that also run the risk of causing the most damage. Being aware of what you’re writing and where it’s coming from, and what the risks are of putting that down on the page, is really all you can do. When we write, we absorb and transform
experience, but we do have to keep in mind that those experiences are not exclusively ours.

–
Richard E. Dansky
Writer, Game Designer, and Cad
(Not necessarily in that order)
http://www.snowbirdgothic.com

– Janet Berliner

I’ve finished a new book, SESSIONS, which will shortly be on its way to New York. It’s a collaboration with my friend and colleague Melanie Tem. I met her at my very first convention. She introduced me to Ed Bryant and I read a manuscript she had just finished and took her on as a client. (G-d help me, I ran my own agency in those days.) I thought her book was brilliant. I met her again in Denver, and then we didn’t see each other in person again until she won her first Stoker. I happened to be there and cried a lot.

That back-story is important because time has damaged both of us. She is legally blind and I, as I’ve mentioned before, am pretty much confined to quarters. So chances are, we won’t be doing too much in the way of signings. We’ve both done a lot of them and won’t feel deprived, but are we taking away from the chances of success for the book and what is our alternative?

Book plates.

They’re easy to sign and inexpensive to mail to bookstores. There’s something else in the wind, too. Margaret Atwood has invented a device that will allow us to sign at our own computers, and see our signatures being transferred onto the page in a bookstore. But that, I’m told, is down the road.

Are either of those alternatives the same for the reader? Of course not. Then again, most of us are not my buddy Kevin Anderson, who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the best-attended single-author signing in recorded history. This was at a book signing during the promotional tour for his comedy/adventure novel AI, PEDRITO! The previous records were set by Gen. Colin Powell and Howard Stern.

Anyway, thinking about the fact that there will probably be no bookstore signings for SESSIONS got me thinking about my own signing adventures, each of which fortunately taught me something.

1. There are the signings where no one shows up and you find out, to your dismay that no one advertised. From that you learn to double and triple check well ahead of time and the day before that someone, somewhere has told a few people that you’re going to be sitting there. It also teaches you not to rely on friends and relatives who rarely show up. The most important reason for doing a signing is to get to know bookstore managers and staff. Take cookies; be generous with coffee and soda, even if you think they should be buying, and smile a lot. Drop names and tell stories. It’s fun and they won’t forget you.

2. I did a signing once for a small chain (anyone remember Bookmania?) which was very kind to me. They gave me a window, which is a big deal, and they put money into advertising. So what’s the problem, you might well ask? The problem was Mother Nature who decided to send a major electrical storm. It was winter, late in the day. “We’ll close the store and you can go home,” the owner said. I had what turned out to be a much better idea.

Someone went out to buy lots of candles, cokes, and cake. We created a friendly haven from the storm, one that could be seen from the outside through the plate glass windows.

What a signing that was! We sold everything they had with my name in it and then some. Good party.

3. There are the signings where you have nothing to sign because your books did not arrive. Again, double and triple check.

4. When my first paperback came out, I went down to the loading zone with coffee and doughnuts and had a dawn breakfast party with the drivers and schleppers. They put the book on the bestseller rack and it sold and was refilled until sell-through.

5. When I signed at the (then) ABA in Chicago, four hundred people showed up. I wrote a personal message in each book. Sure was fun and got me over two hours instead of the standard twenty-minutes-and-you’re-out-of-here.

6. When I signed at the (then) ABA in Los Angeles, in tandem with Sean Derek–daughter of John, stepdaughter of Ursula, Linda, and Bo. She’s a dead ringer for Jaclyn Smith and I was pretty cute myself in those days. We had an absolute ball.

7. Remember the Rodney King riots in L.A.? I had a Barnes & Noble signing that day in San Francisco, which held sympathy riots. I was told I didn’t have to show up but I went anyway–and signed while rocks flew through the windows and sirens screamed up and down the street.

8. My favourite signing? I went to Reno for a weekend to play poker. My dealer friends surprised me with a signing in the poker room. They cleared a table, stacked up books, and there I sat, signing while the cards rose in the air.

9. Scariest signing: My first, wedged between Stephen King and Byron Preiss.

10. My least favourite signing: Seeing a co authorship for the first time and finding out that my name had been left off the cover.

11. My angriest signing: In midtown Manhattan at the Fashion Café, owned in part by David (Copperfield’s) then beloved Claudia Schiffer. She placed herself into the signing line next to David, signed the books, and left no room for me in line or on the page. Revenge: Telling everyone loudly that it was okay because I was going to sign across her face on every magazine cover I could find.

12. The only signing David (Copperfield) agreed to do in Vegas. The bookstore set up a podium with a table and two chairs and a mess of books in the centre of one of our largest malls. We had done one at the Beverley Center Mall with some of the other contributors to our anthology, including Ray Bradbury who so rarely does things like that. Here (in Vegas) people actually drove overnight to be there, while others slept on the pavement overnight to be sure to be in line early. Obviously I knew they weren’t there to see me. Sigh.

This was David’s first book signing. He was in the middle of taping his TV Special and arrived late, the first no-no, then whispered in my ear, “Berliner, I’ve got twenty minutes.” I did my usual thing, asking people their names and writing a little message in each book. He got more and more irritated. “Hurry up,” he said. “C’mon. You don’t have to write another book. Just your name. See.” He signed with an unintelligible flourish and smiled, so charming, endearing, until he stood up and left me with the furious folk who had waited outside, sleeping on cement.

Ah fame. How wonderful it must be, I thought, as I kept on signing and explaining and excusing.

Was it worth it in terms of royalties earned on the books actually sold at signings? Nah.

Was it worth it for the publicity and recognition, the ego-boo and the experiences? Abso-blooming-lutely.

by Jeffrey Thomas

I know a talented young writer who once admitted on a message board that he was not ready to write a story from the point of view of a woman. He seemed to feel he could not do so with authenticity. I thought this was odd, coming from someone who feels they can write convincingly of supernatural occurrences. How much more commonplace are women than ghosts, demons, and aliens! Though often, they are hard to distinguish from such entities…but I digress. This writer seemed to think it was presumptuous of him to even deem to write from the perspective of the opposite sex, as if he feared being called to task should he get the psychological flavor wrong.

Then I know of another writer named Stephen King, who has a healthier attitude. This young fella came out of nowhere with a novel about a teenaged female outsider with psychic abilities. Yikes, how did he pull that off? Well, aside from the fact that a male writer may have a wife or girlfriend, a daughter, sister, female friends and at the very least a mother, I guess he just drew upon his own experience from interacting with this exotic race. King grew even more ballsy (or ovariesy) as he moved along in what I predict to be a successful career (keep your eye on this guy). He wrote one short story in which an African-American woman who works in a hotel collects, um, stains from bed sheets to use in some kind of juju. When I think of this story I sometimes sit back in admiration and wonder, “How stumped for ideas was he that night? Jeesh!” But you know, it’s Stephen King, so it’s a good read. The point is, he made me believe in that woman. And King is not a woman, nor is he African-American. Now maybe if I were either of those things, I might scoff at this story, poke holes in it. But for this white male reader, at least – I bought it.

What separates a white writer writing from the perspective of a black man from a white actor of bygone times acting in black face? Aside from matters of respect and sensitivity? Well, it isn’t impossible for white actors to portray black characters (as they have done in Shakespeare plays like OTHELLO) in a work of artistic merit. For that matter, in Japanese Kabuki plays men in geisha drag traditionally played the female roles. Linda Hunt was brilliant playing a male Indonesian (neither of which she is) in the film THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. But acting and writing are different forms of art, and use different means to accomplish their ends (the actor dons physical makeup or costume; the reader dons the writer’s words and ideas). In writing, the process has to do with facts, sure. It has to do with observation. But most importantly, it has to do with empathy. Empathy will take you far as a writer (and in life in general; try putting yourself in someone else’s shoes sometime – it can do wonders in human relations). Yep, empathy can be a writer’s Swiss Army Knife.

I was very gratified when an early short story of mine called A WOMB SCORNED was accepted by the small press publication ABERRATIONS, with the praise that I had made the editor feel a woman had written the story (though I can’t recall now if that editor was a woman or not). But I was prouder still, years later, when a female friend read a story of mine in which the main character was based on my first wife Rose, who is a deaf woman (neither of which I am…but it didn’t seem like that big a stretch to me, with my empathy instrument trained at such point-blank range). This friend praised the fact that she could closely relate to the female protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. It amazed her that a man had written it. Besides a sense of accomplishment, I think I felt a bit amazed that this should have to amaze her.

I was to experience yet more flattery for my skills of empathy, for my amazing abilities as a chameleon, a Lon Chaney of the written word!

Do you know I almost became more successful as a writer of gay pornography than as a writer of fantastical fiction?

It almost happened like this. I had placed a story in a small press anthology edited by a writer who was gay. Later he became the editor of a mass market paperback collection of gay erotic western stories, and since he liked my work he invited me to contribute. I was a bit amused by this and said to my wife, “How could I ever come up with a gay erotic cowboy story?” It wasn’t so much the gay part that stumped me as the cowboy part. My wife said, “Maybe I could come up with an idea for you.” That was when I puffed up my chest and thought, “Whaaat? I am the writer in this relationship! I don’t need YOU to come up with an idea for me! I’ll plot my own damn gay erotic cowboy story!” Which I did. And thus, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was born. Oops…wrong story. Anyway, it was ironic that this editor had had me do several rewrites of a story set in my world of Punktown for his previous anthology, but he accepted this story straight off (am I then better at gay porn than SF?). In fact, my story was so arousing that he confessed he had to, er, relieve himself of said arousal after reading it. After that, he would often tease me by asking if I were truly straight. When the book came out, on its back cover it boasted of “gay literature’s brightest stars.” But the editor told me another of the “gay” authors therein was a woman writing under a male pseudonym. He went on to plan more anthologies of various genres for this publisher, and solicited more stories from me…accepted story after story. For some, I simply took an existing hot heterosexual story of mine and turned the female character into a man. (And made the appropriate anatomical adjustments in the naughtier bits.) Well…as fate would have it, I did not become a successful writer of gay porn. There was a falling out between editor and publisher and only the western-themed book made it to print. I sold one of the orphaned stories to a magazine where the editor informed me that my story had made him “hard – damn hard,” but I never heard whether or not the magazine ultimately came out. One of the stories, about gay Chinese gangsters, appeared recently in my collection THIRTEEN SPECIMENS. Anyway, I was proud to have succeeded in impressing gay writers, editors and readers with these stories. It again confirmed that I was able to put myself in the spurred boots (and nothing else, girlfriend!) of a person who was different from myself.

But really…that different? I know what warm flesh feels like against mine. Is it too far of a leap to extrapolate, then, what it would be like if that flesh were male? The leap was not in overcoming the physical facts, but the psychological barrier. But why should that be daunting? I have written about characters who were clones, aliens, mutants, devils, ghosts, androids. I even wrote a story from the perspective of a pistol (GUN METAL BLUE, in AAAIIIEEE!!!) – though the idea of the story is that every gun is the personification of a demon. Shouldn’t I be able to write from the perspective of an Asian, an elderly person, an autistic person? These creatures all have one thing in common. They are human beings, with a very similar range of feelings and needs. When you tap into the universal, it really isn’t that difficult.

I may not care to write from a certain perspective too much, though. For example: children. I used to look askance at children as protagonists in adult fiction (despite brilliant stories like LORD OF THE FLIES). That was stuff for the King wannabes, I thought. Adults are far more complex and interesting to write about than children.

And then I became a father.

I still tend not to put child characters in my stories often, but only because adults are generally more empowered to act upon their situations than children are, and thus make more dramatic protagonists – generally speaking. I can still “get into it” more if I am writing about a female protagonist, because she is more like me in being an adult. As different as the protagonist might be from me in their particulars, as I say, I like to be able to find that common ground.

I love the writer Patrick McGrath’s work, and in his collection BLOOD AND WATER he has a story told from the point of view of a fly, and another from that of a boat. And these are not, to me, silly stories, experimental fluff, but fine pieces of effective storytelling. A writer of McGrath’s stripe can even empathize with an insect, an inanimate object.

And the best part of that? He can make the reader empathize with these things, too.

Dare I say this is where writing can perhaps be most important? Not in pushing a political stance, addressing a particular issue…but simply in letting us see through the eyes of a person who is not us? In reading, we can become chameleons. We can become anyone and anything. And in becoming them, maybe find out more about ourselves in the bargain.

By Jeff Mariotte

My first (published) novel, Gen13: Netherwar, was a collaboration with Christopher Golden. Since then I’ve also collaborated on novels with Nancy Holder, Scott Ciencin, and Steve Niles (and on nonfiction with Nancy Holder and Maryelizabeth Hart, with whom I have also collaborated on children and marriage). In addition to these books, I have written dozens upon dozens of comic books, each of which—since I don’t do the pencils, inks, coloring or lettering—is an artistic collaboration of a different sort.

But then, every collaboration is of a different sort than the one before it, because no two writers work together the same way. For that matter, the same two writers can work different ways on different books. I’ve had many people ask me what it’s like to collaborate, how the process works, and since I usually give the somewhat facile answer that it’s always different, I thought I’d go into it in a bit more detail here.

I once heard Stephen King and Peter Straub talk about their collaboration on The Talisman. Steve was doing most of the talking, and he said, “I played with my big Wang at my house, and Peter stayed home playing with his big Wang, and before we knew it we had a book.” That was obviously a while ago, when there were Wang computers and people would admit to using them, but as a description of the process it’s not all that different than some of my collaborations.

That first one, Gen13: Netherwar, for instance, was written bi-coastally. Chris lives in Massachusetts, and I lived in California at the time. It was before we had fast e-mail—I still don’t—and we worked by sending diskettes back and forth. I was on a Mac, and Chris wasn’t, so we also had to worry about document format.

That’s the technical side of things, though, which is the easiest to work out in most cases. The creative side is where things get tricky. Chris had collaborated before, so had at least some background to draw on. The book was to be a novel about comic book characters that Chris and I had both written comics about. A packager hired Chris to write the book, and he generously invited me to join him. The first step was agreeing on a basic plot. Once we had that, we divided it into chapters. It turned out that Chris had way more on his plate than we did, so we agreed that the division of labor (and advance money) would be 75/25, with me doing 75% of the work and taking that proportion of the cash.

Then it was time to sit down with the little Mac and the diskettes. I wrote three chapters and sent the disk to Chris. He added a chapter and sent it back. We went on like this—days the Post Office would be thrilled to have back again.

Finally, we reached the end of the book. At this stage, I went over all the chapters one last time, then sent him that file, and he went over it again. The idea here was to smooth out the rough edges, the awkward transitions, and to disguise the fact that two different writers had their hands all over the thing. This is crucial—a successful collaboration can’t read like it was written by two writers. It should appear to be the work of a single writer who is not Writer A or Writer B, but a third individual with a different set of skills and life experiences than either of them.

My collaboration with Scott Ciencin was pretty similar, except that it was performed via e-mail and was a 50/50 split. Once again, it was on a Gen13 novel, and once again (although I was the one approached by the packager) Scott had far more experience than I, and provided the voice of sanity and reason.

I worked more often with Nancy Holder than with anyone else. We did the two nonfiction books, Angel: The Casefiles Vol. 1 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher’s Guide Vol. 2 with Maryelizabeth (Nancy had written the first Watcher’s Guide with Chris), and Nancy and I collaborated on a Buffy/Angel crossover trilogy and an epic-length Angel novel that was to be the first Angel hardcover, called Endangered Species.

The process was different in that Nancy and I lived in the same city. We didn’t have to rack up the long distance bills to hash out story points, and although we usually worked at our own houses, trading chapters by e-mail, when we needed to we could work in the same room if necessary. The basic process was similar as with the other books—come up with a detailed outline first, break it down into chapters, then divvy up the chapters in some mutually beneficial fashion. On Endangered Species, for instance, Nancy took all the chapters set in Hawaii, where she has lived, and I took the chapters set in the California desert because I was a long-time desert rat and had spent a lot of time there. Sharing the expertise of years is a good reason to consider collaboration–if, for instance, you have a brilliant idea for a medical thriller but no medical background, you might team up with a doctor who doesn’t have time to write a novel herself.

Nancy and I didn’t always keep up with one another, pace-wise, which made for some more complicated gymnastics later on. If Writer B is doing chapter 17 and Writer A hasn’t yet done 15 or 16, then, no matter how detailed the outline is, Writer B is going to have to make some guesses about what happens in those chapters, and those guesses aren’t always going to be correct.

At least in a tie-in book, both authors know who the characters are because they exist outside of the novel. Collaborating on an original, which both Chris and Nancy have done but I have not, strikes me as more difficult, and even more crucial that he work be done in order instead of piecemeal, because the characters and their world are being created from whole cloth as the story is told.

With Steve Niles, I wrote my most recent release, horror/vampire novel 30 Days of Night: Rumors of the Undead. This one broke most of the rules I’ve already laid out here. It’s a tie-in, based on a comic book series created and written by Steve. He did a fairly comprehensive outline (although I had to tweak it in spots), and then I wrote the bulk of the novel from that outline. Interspersed in the narrative are excerpts from a fictional book called 30 Days of Night that plays a major role in the comic book series (also called 30 Days of Night), and I left spaces for those excerpts, which Steve wrote after I was done with my draft of the main narrative. Steve took the narrative, did his own pass over it, and added in the “excerpts.” Since he is the originator of the characters and concepts, his is the final word on those, which is unusual in tie-in writing (one rarely has the chance to write an Angel novel with Joss Whedon or David Greenwalt, for instance).

Collaboration can be a frustrating experience because there’s another pair of hands and an independent brain working on what can be an intensely personal project. But it can also be a creative eye-opener, allowing you a rare peek into another writer’s mind, creative processes, tricks and techniques. For a beginning writer, it can be invaluable, because you can learn things there’s no other way to discover, and you can wind up with a published work, providing both income and a level of confidence that you can do it again, solo. There will be arguments and compromises, and I recommend laying out the ground rules—how do you work, how do you divide the labor, and how do you divide the money—before you start. Ideally on paper, as a written contract, however informal. I’ve heard about collaborations that have ruined friendships, but have experienced collaborations that have cemented them.

If you’re thinking about a collaboration, I recommend the experience. Be wary of the traps and look for the blessings. The result of all the work you do will be a book with your name on it that you could not have written by yourself, but also could not have been written without you. That’s a pretty cool thing.