When I woke up this morning, the very first thought shouted at me by my brain was, “What if Death rented a room in your house?”
Neil Gaiman says that most of his stories start out with “What if . . . ” or “If only . . . ” so I immediately wrote down my “What if . . .”
. . . and didn’t know what to do next. Normally, when I want to write a story, I take my idea, and just start. Something like:
Dorothy Hansen sat in her living room and did The Jumble. After Loretta went mad with Alzheimer’s the previous Fall, Dorothy vowed to keep her 75 year-old mind sharp any way she could. She wasn’t going to win any Major Awards, but she completed The Jumble more often than not,
Then I get stuck, because that’s shite. But it’s good information for me to use inthe building of this character. I would almost certainly cut that stuff before I even made it to an editor’s draft.
The story really starts when I get here:
There was a knock at the front door. She pulled herself out of her chair and called out, “I’ll be right there!”
The wooden floors of her living room creaked and popped beneath her as she walked. Her steps echoed down the hallway ahead of her.
She turned the deadbolt and pulled the front door open, revealing a tall young man.
“Yes?” she said.
“Do you still have a room for rent?” he asked, pointing to a sign in her front window.
She studied him briefly. He wore a dark coat and a white shirt. His hair was to his shoulders, and he held a small bag in one hand. He smelled nice, like old spices and leather.
“I have two rooms,” she said, and motioned him into the house. “Upstairs, or down?”
“Let’s take a look,” he said, with a smile.
“The downstairs room is off the kitchen, down this hallway,” she said.
She walked into the house, and he followed. The floorboards were silent beneath his feet. His footsteps were like sand blowing across dunes.
“I’m Joseph,” he said.
“Mrs. Hansen,” she said, “pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
That took me about 45 minutes to write, and it’s still a mostly-naked skeleton . . . But there’s stuff in there that I like . . . I think maybe this guy will have all sorts of Egyptian smells and things around him, and I like the way he glides over the floors.
About halfway through that, I thought maybe it would be better to tell it from the perspective of someone who already lives in the house. Maybe a college student, or something. I also don’t know when it’s set — maybe that’s not important.
But the thing is, I don’t know what happens next. Oh, sure, he takes a room, Probably the upstairs one, so I can use the eerie silence of his walking on the staircase, but once this “scene” is done, it’s a mystery to me.
So I guess this is where that outline comes in handy, so I know where I’m going.
I think it’s interesting if a girl who lives nearby falls for him, I think he puts everyone at ease (that’s what Death would do, right?) and everyone likes him . . . but he makes them feel slightly uneasy, and they don’t know why.
Somehow, people have to start dying, and some suspicious neighbors decide that this guy is responsible. He’s not. He’s just Death, so he takes them, but —
OH! I have it!! Someone in the town is a killer. Someone respected or something, like a cop, or a priest, or something, and Death has come to town because there’s going to be a lot of souls to take care of. What if it IS the police chief, so he’s investigating himself? What if Death falls in love with someone in the town? I don’t think I’m going to let Death fall in love with anyone. I think that’s been done to . . . death.
Heh.
But I think I will let a neighborhood girl get a crush on him, and see what happens there.
What if? What if? Well, maybe I don’t have it. But that’s some stuff to build on.
Is that an outline? I still have no idea how the story ends, but now I have enough ideas to make me want to finish it.
I googled for “How to write a fiction outline,” and didn’t really find a definitive answer. However, I came across this site, where I found this very interesting and useful post:
Mileages vary, but I’m really glad I kept my day job. Writers who make their whole living from writing have a couple of problems:
- They have to write whatever comes their way, whether it’s interesting or not. On the couple of occasions when I had to write a novel for the money, it was like pulling my back molars with my fingers.
- They end up writing novels about novelists writing novels.
Still, Robert Heinlein did pretty well as a fulltime writer (until he got old and successful and self-indulgent). He also left us his five rules for writers:
- Writers write. They don’t wait until they “have enough time” or “inspiration strikes.”
- Writers finish what they write. No matter how much they hate the current project, they slog through to the last page.
- Writers never rewrite except to editorial order. Writing a novel is like building a deck or renovating a bathroom–you don’t want to rip everything up and do it all over again. So you plan carefully, do it right the first time, and don’t keep fussing with the story.
- (Kilian’s Exemption) When you’re starting out, you need your novel in progress to teach you a lot, so it’s OK to go back and revise your ms. on the basis of what you’re learning. (This is actually listed at 3a, but I’m using list tags. Sue me.)
- Writers put their work on the market. They don’t just inflict it on friends and family.
- Writers keep their work on the market until it sells. So the first 15 or 20 rejections don’t matter; you send it out again.
Heinlein argues that writers fail by breaking one or another of these rules, and he’s right. I wrote my first novel in the army in 1966, sent it to one publisher, got rejected, and never sent it out again. Bad as it was, some wretched publisher would eventually have bought it, and my career would have started a decade earlier than it did.”
I also found Something for nothing: advice for writers, and Ten Rules of Writing.
It’s a lot of interesting stuff, and I laughed out loud when I thought, “Wow, there’s useful information on the Internet, if you can get around the porn and shopping.”
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It’s a weak idea, its been done to death, and you can do better, good job getting the discussion going though.
Hope this doesn’t piss anyone off, especially you Wil, but truthfully, I don’t think you need
500 people fawning over your every thought. The thing about writing that I’m sure you’re aware of is that it takes 99 shitty ideas to come up with one great one….so keep at it, and you’ll come up with something great. I have faith.Then again, if I get blasted by 500 people who think you need sunshine blown up your ass, I’ll keep my comments (Positive or otherwise) to myself.
Happy writing !
I like the idea. So what if it’s been done? Some of the best books are a new writers take upon an old and craftworn story. You mentioned one point in that you hadn’t mentioned what period it was set in and asked if it needed to be set into a period. With a tale such as this, the best thing is to leave it for the readers imagination to place the time or space. It could be any house at any time. The victorian down the street at the turn of the centruty. A Craftsman house in California during the depression. A Brownstone in Manhattan 10 years from now. My point is that the freedom granted a mind to mold the story to it, the better for the reader and the more likely they will return for more. but you must give it structure, a juicy plot that doesn’t make the reader feel like you are feeding them pure sugar.
Please keep on writing, and thank you for the enjoyment from a fan, not just of Star Trek, but also of talented actors.
Reminds me of Stephen King’s Needful Things, except there is was a shopkeeper who moved into town. That was creepy enough. I can’t imagine having someone like that move in upstairs (or downstairs, whereever you decide)…
The writing tips I like. The point of ALL of them is to keep writing no matter what. You should know by now what we all think of your writing. If we didn’t like it, we wouldn’t all keep coming back for more…
I broke Stephen King’s first rule: write the first draft with the door closed.
Closing the door, now.
I love it!
Why can I not access wilwheaton.net anymore? I’m currently only able to do so through Google’s cache. When I type in the URL I end up at:
http://www.wilwheaton.net/error_docs/forbidden.html
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access to this document on this server.
Can someone please help!?
From a collection of his short stories, I think, since I copied it out by hand and didn’t write down from where, this is “Kurt Vonnegut’s Creative Writing 101”
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things – reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Debunking one of my childhood literary heroes isn’t going to be easy, except he kind of makes it that way. Oh, and I’m a writer.
>> 1. Writers write. They don’t wait until they “have enough time” or “inspiration strikes.”
Can’t write if you don’t have time. Writers also take crappy side jobs a lot because writing fiction, even doing it really well, is not much of a marketable skill, especially in a “jobless recovery”.
>> 2. Writers finish what they write. No matter how much they hate the current project, they slog through to the last page.
Some things sit around unfinished for a long time because a writer can have ADD just like anyone else. Only upon the writer’s death can it truly be decided that something was left unfinished.
>> 3. Writers never rewrite except to editorial order. Writing a novel is like building a deck or renovating a bathroom–you don’t want to rip everything up and do it all over again. So you plan carefully, do it right the first time, and don’t keep fussing with the story.
It is important to note that word processors were not widely used back in the day. When revising means tearing up a whole page and re-typing it, one tends not to look forward to the process.
>> 4. (Kilian’s Exemption) When you’re starting out, you need your novel in progress to teach you a lot, so it’s OK to go back and revise your ms. on the basis of what you’re learning.
I have never known quite what this means. If I am shopping a story, that means I’m already working on two others. Don’t do the math, though. It’ll make you crazy.
>> 5. Writers put their work on the market. They don’t just inflict it on friends and family.
Writers write. Agents put their work on the market. Self-selling writers exist, but would likely rather be writing. I know I would.
>> 6. Writers keep their work on the market until it sells. So the first 15 or 20 rejections don’t matter; you send it out again.
Unless you write something better, in which case you sell that instead. Do this long enough and eventually some editor somewhere will find you endearing enough to take a look at all that old stuff that didn’t used to sell.
If all you’re selling is junk, order new merch. Sell enough of the good stuff and people will buy your crap later with a smile on their faces.
Wil, I don’t know what it is but you always seem to come through with something helpful just when I need it. I was recently thinking about my blog and how much I enjoy writing and how I’d like to perfect my skills and you come through with writing rules from Heinlein… my favorite author.
You and your “narative non-fiction” were the inspiration for my starting a blog. Thank you.
two cents:
pick a spice – “old spice” is a deodorant
“His footsteps were like sand blowing across dunes.”
& she would know what this sounded like how? is this taking place in a desert town?
#3a (4) is wrong and everyone knows it. No one writes it perfectly the first time, even if you plan it correctly. Please show me ONE short story by a popular author (that doesn’t suck) that hasn’t been re-written. It is never perfect out of the box.
People who believe that re-writes are only editorial and for crappy writers that can’t do it correctly the first time do the rest of us a great dis-service. They are also delusional and probably get mad when people on the street don’t ask for their autograph.
It’s precisely why I don’t read “writing manuals”. Everyone writes differently and there is no right or wrong way to do it. For me, I write, I edit, I edit, I edit, I put it away for a few months, I pull it out and I edit some more. When I’m sick of looking at it, I submit it for publishing. I write when I can and I make as much time for it as I can. I work for a living. It would be nice to think I can drop what I’m doing to do more than jot down a few notes for later, but that’s not the reality I live in. If it makes me a “bad writer” in someone’s eyes, too-freakin-bad.
If I ever get to be a “Famous Author” and start blowing smoke up people’s asses, I want to be shot. No questions, just walk up and put me out of other people’s misery.
Hey, Wil, Nabokov and Updike also have comments about writing, too, that are notable.
I highly recommend Nabokov’s essay entitled “The Art of Literature and Commonsense,” which, though a mix of analytical and creative means, says that these asides a writer makes, like noting a rolled up sock on the floor, or anything bizarre and random that strikes a reader as ‘out of place,’ these are the asides of the spirit that make the world goodtruebeautiful, etc.
In a cute, aphoristic nugget: abandon common sense, even though Thomas Paine (Max Payne) may suggest to the contrary!
Best,
Evan.
I didn’t see mention of it before,but there was a British comedy series called ‘Mulberry’ (i think… at least it was the main character’s name). The premise was that Death’s son was serving as Butler to this old woman who Death wanted him to collect.
It was a great show. I hope I still have the tapes from when it was on PBS years ago…
You might be interested in reading the short story “Mr. Death and the Red-Headed Woman” by Helen Eustis. Even though they say you shouldn’t read stuff.