#BADWRITINGTIPS

It took me a good while to find a use for Twitter. My vampire-sponge-mind bounced from hint to hint until I landed on something called #badwritingtips. People and robots from across existence gathered to impart this wisdom. I couldn’t resist. Here are a few bad writing tips. I hesitate over some of them, as I could get mileage from more than a few. Oh, the irony.

#badwritingtips. Type with your tongue.

#badwritingtips. Insert K and/or V in a name to provide an air of villainy.

Let’s do a few #badwritingtips. Never start your character on an aeroplane. That’s a bad tip if you’re writing a book about Charles Lindbergh.

#badwritingtips. Give away the plot in the opening sentence. It saves time.

#badwritingtips. Hunch as you type.

#badwritingtips. Use the first person for thoughts, the third person for actions, and the second person for a Last Will and Testament.

#badwritingtips. Always heroically sacrifice the most boring character in a story. Your readers will NEVER see that coming.

#badwritingtips. Give the best advice through the worst character, and have that character fail to follow the advice. Works in the movies.

#badwritingtips. Open a major shootout with a character you killed in a previous chapter. Continuity is for pussies and dicks.

#badwritingtips. Don’t laugh as you type bad writing tips. Maybe I meant DO laugh…

#badwritingtips. Copy the same tips to #goodwritingtips. Yes, with a straight face.

#badwritingtips. Name characters Agnes Day, Lingua Franca, Eve Adam…

#badwritingtips. Admittedly, that last entry’s pretty rich coming from the creator of Albert Crabbe: Jet-Powered Investigator…

#badwritingtips. Okay, just take your character names from classic literature. No one will know that Ahab Dracula was a knock-off.

#badwritingtips. Switch from science fiction drama to comedy western halfway through.

#badwritingtips. Base a novel on your own messy divorce and tell yourself it’s cathartic.

#badwritingtips. Generate plots from the backs of cereal packets.

#badwritingtips. Always begin with the middle, and make that the end too.

#badwritingtips. Just invent all the diseases in your medical dramas.

#badwritingtips. It’s a sobering thought that #badwritingtips has finally made me see a use for Twitter.

#badwritingtips. Follow every piece of advice on writing you can find. No. EVERY piece.

#badwritingtips. Publish posthumously for greater acclaim.

#badwritingtips. Write a plot-twist that negates the previous hundred pages. Logic is overrated.

#badwritingtips. Avoid clutter. Leave the villain out of your thriller.

#badwritingtips. Build to a finish in which hero and villain have a knife-fight over the girl. No one has tried that ploy yet.

#badwritingtips. Don’t waste time inventing indestructible clothes for your indestructible superheroes.

#badwritingtips. If the action isn’t sexy enough, throw in a penguin.

#badwritingtips. Always have two spy characters discuss the plot as they walk through a park. This will never be done to death.

#badwritingtips. Allow the tough guy to dash away a manly tear once in every book – and always while thinking of football.

#badwritingtips. Always and/or never base steamy scenes on porn you’ve watched and/or starred in.

#badwritingtips. Allow magic to solve every structural problem. Even when writing non-fiction.

#badwritingtips. Set up your files to allow right-to-left text on alternate pages.

#badwritingtips. Use black text on a black background when writing mysteries.

#badwritingtips. Invent new names for everything. That takes effort, so don’t waste time explaining the changes.

#badwritingtips. Create bold heroes. Serial-killing dog-shagger with a heart of gold. Wait. Been done. Jack Russell Terrier the Ripper.

#badwritingtips. Explain it all away with ghosts.

#badwritingtips. Switch IT WAS JUST A DREAM with the phrase IT WAS JUST A DRAM.

#badwritingtips. Write that Jane Austen/Third Reich mash-up you’ve been hankering after. A little less pride, and a lot more prejudice.

#badwritingtips. Your novel is nothing without a scene featuring Elvis.

#badwritingtips. Do obvious sequels. THE FORTY STEPS. 1985. Off the Road. Vegetable Farm.

#badwritingtips. Research your book in the real world. The serial killing of prostitutes? Just go for authenticity.

#badwritingtips. Nazis for the plot. Commies for the plot-twist. Yanks for the villains.

#badwritingtips. Hate a political figure via inclusion in a western/vampire tale/brothel saga. I didn’t mean those 3 in combination…

#badwritingtips. Switch the last chapter for chapter four.

#badwritingtips. Your hero and villain should meet at hotel check-in, with identical suitcases and last names.

#badwritingtips. Interrupt every attempted explanation of the plot with a car-chase. Even in Ancient Rome.

#badwritingtips. Mimic titles. Planet of the Japes. Dragula.

#badwritingtips. Remove everything not central to the plot – including doing words.

#badwritingtips. Kill the villain six times in each book.

#badwritingtips. Only edit punctuation.

#badwritingtips. Write the first eight pages in French. Provide no explanation for that.

#badwritingtips. Eat and drink at the keyboard.

#badwritingtips. Improve your writing by marrying an editor solely for that purpose.

#badwritingtips. Place a character under an EXIT sign to indicate impending doom. Works in the movies.

#badwritingtips. Have your hero ignore fifteen pages of exposition and let the guy just play a hunch.

#badwritingtips. Lone maverick cops with war-zone love-lives are in. You write that bad boy into your porno.

#badwritingtips. Give your female lead a rather androgynous name to show she has a pair of balls.

#badwritingtips. Swipe the plot of a fairy tale.

#badwritingtips. Write one-page paragraphs.

#badwritingtips. Have the villain reveal his scheme in Latin.

#badwritingtips. Open a major fight with a musical number.

#badwritingtips. Have your main character spend his free time reading your books.

#badwritingtips. Squeeze as many songs into casual conversation as is physically possible.

#badwritingtips. Bring an obviously-dead character back from the grave via that little-used literary standby, a magic lamp.

#badwritingtips. Throw a frantic dash to the airport into your romance. Works in the movies.

#badwritingtips. Kill off a supporting character who is about to retire.

#badwritingtips. When all else fails, have your near-destitute hero win the lottery.

#badwritingtips. Turn your tale of natural disaster into an allegory about your least-favourite political party.

#badwritingtips. Having trouble raising laughs in that comedy you’re writing? Throw in a character who farts cyanide gas.

#badwritingtips. Liven a stodgy political thriller with the introduction of zombies.

#badwritingtips. Have the city’s top forensic investigator develop psychic powers to cover the moments when the science doesn’t stack up.

#badwritingtips. Pace a zombie epic with the introduction of stodgy politicians.

#badwritingtips. Nothing screams sex-comedy like some gerbil action.

#badwritingtips. Develop a tinder-dry sense of humour in your comedies by removing all jokes.

#badwritingtips. Base your plot on a banana, leprechauns, a fiery sombrero, three types of sauce, a random aeroplane, and seaweed.

#badwritingtips. WRITE THE ENTIRE BOOK IN CAPITALS6 WITH NUMBERS STANDING IN FOR PUNCTUATION7

#badwritingtips. Use gloves while typing. Reverse in sentence second every construct.

#badwritingtips. Keep the plot secret from the readers. Just black that sucker out.

#badwritingtips. Invent three-dozen major characters.

#badwritingtips. Set your Victorian melodrama on a moon made from cheese.

#badwritingtips. Have the heroes miss their last-minute rescue by 61 seconds, killing everyone in the process though somehow leaving scope for a sequel.

#badwritingtips. That last one was a bad tip, as it couldn’t actually fit on Twitter. I started out with a few of these on Twitter, but I knew I’d end up doing this on the blog. This one wouldn’t fit on Twitter either. Have your hero fall for the cat he rescued. Make the plot all about bringing in new legislation for, er, cat-lovers.

#badwritingtips. Have your hero die suddenly in the flashback. NO ONE ever sees that twist coming.

#badwritingtips. Invent a new writing style. The eighth person.

#badwritingtips. Have the chick marry her wardrobe instead of the chunky hero.

#badwritingtips. Use the American spellchecker on every third page.

#badwritingtips. Save effort by using the same character names in every single book, even though you aren’t writing a series.

#badwritingtips. Start your trilogy with book two.

#badwritingtips. Simpering women must clash with brooding men, or else you just aren’t writing a decent war novel.

#badwritingtips. Determine final page-count by multiplying two random numbers.

#badwritingtips. Pad out your story by using very broad page margins and large type.

#badwritingtips. Pace your courtroom drama by opening with the verdict.

#badwritingtips. Is her metal armour boob-shaped? If not, you aren’t writing heroic fantasy.

#badwritingtips. Have your all-powerful wizardy villain die of DVT on a long-haul dragon flight.

#badwritingtips. Give away the villain’s identity by making him a smoker.

#badwritingtips. Have your villain’s victorious monologue interrupted by the surprise arrival of an even more powerful villain spouting his own victorious monologue.

#badwritingtips. Allow your villain to spout a Victorian monologue, preferably in the style of a witty after-dinner verse.

#badwritingtips. Threaten downtown Tokyo with polystyrene. Hasn’t been done. Much.

#badwritingtips. Have the villain call the hero by name, even though they’ve only just met, no names were mentioned in the lead-up, and the villain couldn’t possibly have been in a position to find out.

#badwritingtips. Remember the golden rule of terrorism plots. Bombs without timer displays are for pussies and dicks.

#badwritingtips. For your smuggling epic, invent a new designer drug known only as THE PRODUCT. Never allude to its actual chemical composition. Make sure it is bad, and kills those crazy young kids who should know better than to get mixed up in the shady world of…whatever drug that is.

#badwritingtips. End a car-chase with a wedding. Start a firefight with a divorce. Repeat as needed.

#badwritingtips. Use pastel colours and jolly typography for the cover of your biowarfare thriller.

#badwritingtips. Chicken out of having the hero just kill the villain. Let the guy develop a crisis of conscience and go off on a ten-page toot moralising about declining standards in stories for kids.

#badwritingtips. Start every sentence with the phrase IT WAS.

#badwritingtips. Write a gnome into the odd-numbered chapters.

#badwritingtips. Base the main investigator on yourself and have dozens of beautiful women fall at his feet in a pyramid of writhing limbs. Develop the plot around this phenomenon.

#badwritingtips. End your vampire story with the phrase THE END?

#badwritingtips. Give your werewolf a peanut allergy. Silver just isn’t cutting it these days.

#badwritingtips. Always have a major character mentally consider a forthcoming plot-twist from two angles, as though you yourself haven’t quite decided which way the story is going.

NEXT BLOG: DARTH SINISTER VERSUS DR ANTON PHIBES.

MY PERSONAL COLD WAR/THE DIAL.

Gave myself some breathing-space in the wake of the World Trade Centre post. This blog was written weeks ago. Posts are currently automated. I will do a follow-up comment soon. Meanwhile…

Without question, my digital office door remains open. Saying so feels as though I am, in reality, saying goodbye. I can’t believe how torn I am, over this private Cold War I’ve been fighting behind the scenes. No one sees it…that’s the point.

   On one side. Democracy. Radio Free Europe. Freedom of speech and expression. A grand experiment in social networking, authorly contact, and the support network of fellow penny scribblers. All welcome. No category barred.

   And on the other side of the wall? The monolithic state. Siberian exile. One voice, indivisible. The author, and the blank page. None welcome. All categories barred.

   Here I stand, on the reconstituted Glienicke Bridge. The link from East to West. Where the spy prisoner exchanges were made. Our man for their man. Yet I can’t quite see, standing in the middle of the bridge, which side I should head for. In this case, there’s only one prisoner – me.

   I was in THE COLD. Didn’t know any different. Certainly never expected any different. Until I crossed over, on a spying mission. There is the temptation to defect. Not knowing where that will lead. The uncertainty led me through so many unexpected twists and turns that I grew dizzy from the journey. A journey of few steps.

   Felt like clearing my head. Found myself writing thousands of words to fellow authors. Good writing exercises. Learned more than I taught – for I taught nothing. The exchange of ideas felt sound. Solid. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of stumbling over shifting sand dunes.

   Breaking with tradition. With the order of things. The core. These immovable items aren’t meant to blow away on the wind of a new outlook. Surely, that being the case, I would welcome the new. But I have struggled to welcome the new.

   So I must go and struggle some more. Have a think. Walk around. Consider options. From the moment I accepted that I had to blog, I kept a plan in reserve – kill the blog. It’s not easy to kill the blog, and it’s not easy to prolong its life. MY PERSONAL COLD WAR.

   Advice? From those on the warm side of the wall? Really? Is anyone on that side of the divide going to tell me to quit the experiment? Hell no. So there’s little point in their outlining that advice. I feel cold. And long for it to be colder. The way things were. You flip a coin in the air, and the chances are that it will not land on its edge. But I’m on edge.

   Blogging just to flog books is not my thing. Questions, questions, questions. Without answers, answers, answers. On deciding to self-publish, I never considered blogging. What would I have to discuss with an audience?

   The tired old tale of a writer, writing on writing. Oh come on, audience. That was old even when it was young. A blog in which I constantly asked unanswered questions wouldn’t go down too well. Of even less interest? Setting out my writerly stall with notes carved in primal rock. I’m not here to tell you how to do things. Even when I’m telling, I’m asking.

   I never considered being interviewed, until the offer was made. A non-interview. In which I was determined to say little of myself. My ruthless editing of Karen Woodward’s prompt set the tone. Please tell me a bit about yourself and your book. That had to go. Please tell me a bit about your book. That was permitted. Painting myself into a narcissistic corner was just not on.

   Doubleplusungood.

   Karen’s version went into the furnace. This is how I repaid the woman responsible for my blogging career? By refusing to list the question I was refusing to answer. What difference does it make to the audience, in knowing more about the scribbler? Yes. Sometimes it matters. I’ve written those pointless questions. Where do you get your ideas? What are your sources of inspiration?

   Old songs, those.

   I stumble across the grey chipped landscape. Looking for a rendezvous with no one in particular. Spy games. Setting up a network of unlikeminded individuals. I’m dragged in for questioning by Special Agent Woodward. She lets the first question slip, and I think I’ve made it past the checkpoint.

   Just as I near the corner, Officer Biozarre and Officer Vanderkarr detain me. They play bad cops to my world-weary traveller persona. There’s a lot of fear in the air. I give up my unbloggable story. Again, I think I’ve made it past the checkpoint.

   Officer Biozarre calls me back for questioning. I get the light in the face. Days in the cells. Nights in the bare room with the light. Officer Vanderkarr weaves in and out, playing good cop from a script. I wonder how things will be, when I’m released from the cells.

   That’s the dangerous time. When I’m tailed through the crowds of readers who start asking even more awkward questions. With the light in my face and Officer Biozarre making witty asides, I skip ahead to the questions the readers must ask.

   I prepare my cover-story for the day on which I’m asked THAT question. Maybe that day won’t come. There’s always the plan. Kill the blog. I can’t bring myself to do that. The network took gold to construct.

   Should have used iron. It rusts as though corrosion is going out of fashion.

   I’ve invested heavily in letting go of detail, through my words. Some of the material I cast into the light was trivial, as viewed through the eyes of readers. But it’s never that way for the figure under the spotlight. Every trivial syllable is platinum-priced.

   Of course that day will come. I’ll be pinned to a wall by barely-leashed dogs, and the interrogation will start with the first thing on the opposition’s list and the last thing on my secret list that is at least three lists beyond anything I expect the interrogators to know about.

   They want a report. From a fugitive.

   So they ask questions designed to uncover answers when those questions go unanswered. There is one question that goes unasked by colleagues. Doesn’t mean the readers want to know, or don’t want to know. I think the worst. In my mind’s eye, I see others forming the words. Inevitably, I am asked THAT question.

   How did you become a writer?

   I can answer in a sentence. Cryptic. Startling. The answer means nothing. Gives little away. May be interpreted literally or figuratively. Is more likely to be interpreted figuratively. Far easier to imagine a dial…

   Instead of giving anything away, I invent the dial. It’s my way of answering unanswerable questions. Misdirection. Deflection. Obstinate refusal to talk. I hide behind songs playing in someone else’s head, on the off-chance that telepaths are tuning in to my own private radio show.

   The dial runs from 0 to 10. (Not 11 – no Spinal Tap references here.) There is nothing wrong in setting the strength to a low number. And you shouldn’t think badly of anyone who sets the dial to a high one. Ask the question. How did you become a writer? Set the dial, in answer.

   At 0 on the dial are people who do not become writers.

   We love these people – they are readers.

   Clicking to 1 on the dial we have someone who thinks…I read a book, and felt I could string a few paragraphs together. How hard was that? The next thing I knew, I’d written stories…

   And if that’s all it takes to get you there, the number 1 on the dial is as valid as the number 10.

   At 10 on the dial, the answer goes like this…our family fled Nazi Germany to start a new life. We moved to the Netherlands. When war broke out and our new home was occupied, we hid in the attic behind a secret door. I kept a diary. My name is Anne Frank.

   Clicking 2 on the dial…I was a bookworm, and wanted to write.

   At 9 on the dial, we hear this. My skanky mother was murdered when I was ten years old. To make it up to me, my Hollywoodised dad intro’ed me to true crime rags. I became a peeper and a creeper. Did dipshit jail-time. Joined and left the army, avoiding Vietnam. Caddied, sold golf balls, and wrote books. I am the Demon Dawg of US literature, and the undisputed King of Crime Fiction. My name is James Ellroy, woof woof. Down, Barko. Go hump some other hepcat’s brothel-creepers.

   And so the list goes. Add bonus points for inspirational figures in the background. More, if those are famous authors. Dial higher, adding detail like that. It’s not a competition. That’s a good thing. There are no bonus prizes for high scores. Any value over 0 is a winning value for every writer.

   All you are looking to find, in dialling a number, is a sense of scale. This is a game you can play at home inside your mind. So, writers reading this, add it all up and pick a number. Answer in silence – uttering the digit mentally. How did you become a writer? Be as honest with yourself as you can. No one need ever know. A simple number, avoiding the need for interminable explanation.

   Some people feel the need to talk about the literary journey. Talking about it only goes so far. The basics. You never get the whole story. I suppose that’s why I came up with the image of the dial. A lone sentence, cryptic, startling, says as much or as little as the number I have in mind. In my case, we know the value is above 0.

NEXT BLOG: DARTH SINISTER PAINTS IT BLACK.