Ask the Author: David Wong
Answered Questions (208)
David Wong
With The Suicide Squad (the second one!), which I loved, I think that was a unique situation where they totally left James Gunn alone because 1) he'd just been fired off of the MCU (he'd temporarily been canceled over some old tweets) and they were desperate to have him on board and 2) the rocky success of the DCU meant they were more willing to just let him do his thing. Marvel has this assembly line approach because it has made them an ocean of money, DC/Warner was ironically more in a position to take risks because they've never settled into that rhythm.
That said, it does appear that The Suicide Squad is a box office disaster so what do I know? Here's the first ep of the podcast we're referencing BTW:
https://soundcloud.com/david-bell-381...
That said, it does appear that The Suicide Squad is a box office disaster so what do I know? Here's the first ep of the podcast we're referencing BTW:
https://soundcloud.com/david-bell-381...
David Wong
Good question! They're all different!
Spiders - This has an essay about why this is my favorite of my novels and digs into my fascination with Dunbar's Number and how the human brain processes empathy.
What the Hell - This has an essay about why this is my favorite of my novels and digs into the concept of "Umwelt" and the horror of knowing every single person is perceiving a completely different universe.
Futuristic Violence - This has an essay about why this is my favorite of my novels and digs into the unintentional parallels between Arthur Livingston and Donald Trump, and how I hope the future doesn't see this as some kind of convoluted metaphor for the Trump years.
Zoey Punches - this includes the first several pages of the upcoming John and Dave book, the fourth in the series that does not yet have an official title.
JDATE - This has no new afterword, since we just did the 10th anniversary edition with all the tons of new material at the back so only the cover will change.
Spiders - This has an essay about why this is my favorite of my novels and digs into my fascination with Dunbar's Number and how the human brain processes empathy.
What the Hell - This has an essay about why this is my favorite of my novels and digs into the concept of "Umwelt" and the horror of knowing every single person is perceiving a completely different universe.
Futuristic Violence - This has an essay about why this is my favorite of my novels and digs into the unintentional parallels between Arthur Livingston and Donald Trump, and how I hope the future doesn't see this as some kind of convoluted metaphor for the Trump years.
Zoey Punches - this includes the first several pages of the upcoming John and Dave book, the fourth in the series that does not yet have an official title.
JDATE - This has no new afterword, since we just did the 10th anniversary edition with all the tons of new material at the back so only the cover will change.
David Wong
Probably Ghostbusters, only I'd get rid of the angle of them having sci-fi technology to fight the ghosts since it never made sense for them to have it with their limited resources (it was probably left over from an earlier version of Aykroyd's script, which took place in outer space, believe it or not) and it creates this weird theme of "private technology versus evil environmental regulators" which doesn't belong there anyway. I also don't know anything about New York so I guess I'd have to change the setting to someplace more like where I'm from.
David Wong
Thank you! I'll send you a signed copy of one if you email me your address at dwong187@gmail.com
Assuming you're in the USA or Canada I guess, it's a little harder to ship international.
Assuming you're in the USA or Canada I guess, it's a little harder to ship international.
David Wong
Thanks! I do think someone who doesn't have a personal connection to addiction could still find truth in it, because that feeling of having someone you love not be in total control of their personality is terrifying whether it's due to drugs, joining a cult, mental illness or whatever. Not because they turn into mindless monsters, but the opposite - you can still see the person there, it's just that you never know which decisions are truly "them" versus ones they'd later say they had no control over. It's the struggle of trying to find where the person stops and some malignant influence starts and the urge to stop treating them like a person at all.
To people who haven't read the book: It's not as depressing as I'm making it sound
To people who haven't read the book: It's not as depressing as I'm making it sound
David Wong
There's a separate word doc with an overall story outline and a third doc with notes (lines/jokes/factoids/ideas) to store all of that stuff as it hits me. As for how do you keep straight what has happened in the previous books, those are pasted into another, single Word doc which is of course searchable if I need to go back and check something. I don't know how old authors did it, I guess they just had tons of notebooks sitting around.
David Wong
To pick just one aspect, I grew up in the word processor era, so the concept of endless rewriting/editing being super easy was there from the start (where writing with a typewriter is more straight through, then marking changes and doing it straight through again). There are paragraphs in my books that have been rewritten 50 times, there are scenes that have been moved, cut, put back, moved, then moved again. A work-in-progress looks like a somewhat coherent string of text and then a bunch of pasted in lines/conversations/scenes that I've just moved out of the way knowing I want them in later. I write scenes out of order, I jump around and do whatever part I feel like messing with that day. All of that is due to technology that makes the writing process far more fluid and malleable. The dense comedy style you saw in the early 2000s that taught me was also born from that - every sentence is a punchline, because the writer can just keep punching it up over and over until they're satisfied. It just changes how your brain thinks of text.
There were a bunch of other elements at play but that's one that rarely gets discussed so here you go!
There were a bunch of other elements at play but that's one that rarely gets discussed so here you go!
David Wong
I actually think it makes it funnier! Especially in an era when anyone can google a reference and be delighted by what they discover. It adds layers to the work!
David Wong
There are a few tricks I used that will become obvious once you know about them, but one thing that separates real talking from fictional dialogue is that the former is messy - people interrupt, they don't answer the question, they evade, they don't hear what was asked or choose to ignore it, they rarely clearly state their intentions, motivations or desires. Everything is cloaked in jokes or sarcasm or deflections.
Those imperfections are what (I think) makes it feel more natural to a reader versus people delivering plot points to one another. BUT there is a high degree of difficulty here, because the dialogue still has to serve the same purpose - you come into a scene knowing, "Here is where Bob finds out his boss suspects he's behind the missing documents" and you know that you have to get there before the scene is over. But you have to write it knowing that in a natural-sounding exchange, it's not going to be as simple as one guy making an accusation and the other guy trying to refute it, humans rarely approach things that directly and there are a lot of tangents etc along the way.
Doing it like this isn't easy and, in fact, lots of blockbuster movies and bestselling novels don't even bother. So I may not know what I'm talking about.
Those imperfections are what (I think) makes it feel more natural to a reader versus people delivering plot points to one another. BUT there is a high degree of difficulty here, because the dialogue still has to serve the same purpose - you come into a scene knowing, "Here is where Bob finds out his boss suspects he's behind the missing documents" and you know that you have to get there before the scene is over. But you have to write it knowing that in a natural-sounding exchange, it's not going to be as simple as one guy making an accusation and the other guy trying to refute it, humans rarely approach things that directly and there are a lot of tangents etc along the way.
Doing it like this isn't easy and, in fact, lots of blockbuster movies and bestselling novels don't even bother. So I may not know what I'm talking about.
David Wong
Not yet but I should ask about that
David Wong
So many people ask me this that I think I might be doing it wrong? But I didn't think you could ever just put real people into a story, otherwise you'd get sued. Or, at least, make things weird if you like want that character to die or have them turn out to be a serial killer or something. But no I'm nothing like David, for example I have never drank alcohol or done any drugs, that's just not my thing. But David can't relax unless he's intoxicated.
David Wong
I always worry that my answers to questions like this just leave people disappointed, like I should be citing a lot of groundbreaking literature for inspiring Zoey instead of "RoboCop" or "I wondered what would happen if the cast of Mad Men had to use crime to fight supervillains." It's the same for the favorite character question (or favorite book/scene/line), I always worry that it comes off like I'm saying the reader is wrong ("Wait, THAT'S your favorite? But that character is a jerk!")
I feel like other creators come up with really good-sounding answers they can give to questions like this but I have so far failed to
I feel like other creators come up with really good-sounding answers they can give to questions like this but I have so far failed to
David Wong
NO! All of my books can be read by a person totally unfamiliar with the series, it's more set up like a Rick and Morty situation (new adventure every time) than a Game of Thrones situation (one big adventure across episodes). Each book is a complete story, no book ends on a cliffhanger or "Buy the next book to find out how it ends!" and no book is merely the resumption of a previous storyline.
I mean, there is another level of enjoyment for people who are existing fans, same as with any episodic show (like Rick and Morty has little references and inside jokes for people who've seen previous episodes) but these are intentionally written to welcome an unfamiliar reader.
I mean, there is another level of enjoyment for people who are existing fans, same as with any episodic show (like Rick and Morty has little references and inside jokes for people who've seen previous episodes) but these are intentionally written to welcome an unfamiliar reader.
David Wong
The most recent book that absolutely floored me was Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell by Nathan Ballingrud. It has a story called The Butcher's Table about a crew of sailors who journey to Hell as part of an operation to smuggle out condemned souls that has so much rich world-building that it could be spun off into a series of a dozen books. And that's just one story.
David Wong
This is the kind of question that I'm always afraid to answer because I feel like people will try to extrapolate something about my personality, so I feel pressured to offer something really interesting ("There is a little hole-in-the-wall place in Barcelona that serves the most amazing brine kelp kebabs") but the answer is Cheesecake Factory. Their menu has 600 items on it and every single one of them is really good. Nothing interesting has ever happened there.
David Wong
I personally think that an author should always know the answer to something that is left ambiguous or unknown in the story, I almost feel like it's an ethical obligation (because you are implying that an answer exists, but that it is being withheld for effect, as you say). I guess I don't want to come off as criticizing authors who don't have an answer in mind, I'm sure they could argue their side, it's just something that bothers me. Like when they toss out a mystery that they themselves don't know the answer to, it almost comes off as false advertising. But I may be literally the only person who feels this way and I'm not like some moral authority here. I'm just a regular guy who got a book deal. No one has any reason to listen to me about anything.
David Wong
I should do a tour at some point, I could never find the time in the past and I don't know how to decide what cities to hit if I do it, I assume it'd be places somewhat close to me, around the midwest maybe? But there are no specific plans.
David Wong
I worry that this is another answer that is less exciting than you might be expecting, but 95% of the edit notes are things I can't really argue with, purely structural stuff like, "You have them talking to Steve here, but Steve died on page 122" or "They're talking about this character like the reader already know who they are, we should have something that introduces them or reminds us."
In other words it's not like artistic differences, but continuity stuff that's pretty black-and-white ("Why does this get such an angry reaction from Dave? Isn't this good news?" "Why would Amy respond like she knows all about this, isn't she hearing about it for the first time?")
The other 5% are offered as opinions or suggestions ("It feels like there should be something here to add a little background on the characters, otherwise there's no breather in between the two action scenes") and if I disagree usually there's some compromise. We don't argue or anything, but I know other writers have had very different experiences with their editors!
In other words it's not like artistic differences, but continuity stuff that's pretty black-and-white ("Why does this get such an angry reaction from Dave? Isn't this good news?" "Why would Amy respond like she knows all about this, isn't she hearing about it for the first time?")
The other 5% are offered as opinions or suggestions ("It feels like there should be something here to add a little background on the characters, otherwise there's no breather in between the two action scenes") and if I disagree usually there's some compromise. We don't argue or anything, but I know other writers have had very different experiences with their editors!
David Wong
This is another kind of disappointing answer, but remember I'm not forced to write sequentially. I just have the whole thing open in a Word doc. So if you put the characters in jeopardy and think, "Boy the really fun way to get out of this involves John having a knife hidden in his boot" then I just grab my mouse and scroll up to earlier in the book and add a scene where he talks about the knife in his boot. I'm like a time traveler! Then to hide what I'm doing (so you don't know I'm setting up a way to get out of a jam later) I turn it into a joke - that he has a ridiculous reason for having the boot knife (say, he's paranoid about a really stupid and unlikely scenario) so that the reader thinks the joke is the point of the scene.
So if you want an actual useful writer tip, the trick is in hiding the setup as something else, so that it's out of mind when it pays off.
So if you want an actual useful writer tip, the trick is in hiding the setup as something else, so that it's out of mind when it pays off.
David Wong
The sequel to Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (the non-John and Dave series) titled Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick is written and will come out next year. Now I'm writing the next John and Dave book which will come out two years after that (it takes me two years to write a book as long as I'm also working full time). Otherwise I continue to crank out a column every month or so at Cracked.com, and edit most of the columns you see there.
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