Michael Grant's Blog - Posts Tagged "michael-grant"
Monster
So, I finally did what I kept saying I wouldn't do. I wrote a sequel to the GONE series. I've been rejecting that word sequel for a couple of reasons, mostly to do with my own pride. I work in series, but once I'm done, I'm done. And I always felt if I started going backward it would be a bad sign, that it would mean I was starting to lose my fastball. I think that's the appropriate sports metaphor, I'm not sure because I know mostly nothing about sports and feel no curiosity about it. Do whatever you like with a ball, I don't care.
But I digress. The other reason I didn't think of it as a sequel is that I came at it from a different direction. I didn't start from, "So what happens next?" I started with, "I wanna make a superhero universe. Waaah." I started there which brought me immediately to the question of how I was not going to just be a YA Marvel slash DC. How was I going to do it differently?
I was more into comics as a kid, and I never got that into them later on. But even my limited exposure is pretty intimidating. Some very imaginative writers and artists have put one hell of a lot of time and talent into leaving no possible superhero universe unexplored. I didn't have a lot of room to maneuver. However, I had two cards that were mine to play: GONE and ANIMORPHS.
So round one of thinking this through was a possible connection between my new thing and one of my old things. I could sort of place things in the GONE world or the ANIMORPHS world. GONE worked best. But then it occurred to me that it would work even better with about 10% ANIMORPHS added for extra flavor.
So, with the concept starting to gel in my enormous head, it was time to look at location and character. I suppose most writers start with character or plot, but once I have my core concept I look to setting because it's the quickest way to convince yourself as the writer that there' some reality to this. As a writer one of the little challenges is to overcome the voice in your head that every so often whispers, "this is just a bunch of bullshit and no one is going to read it."
For setting I went with two former homes - the Chicago suburbs and the Bay Area. Easy, peasy, and I didn't need much detail because they were starting points; I knew we were going on the road a lot.
For my leads I knew I wanted a brand-new character, and one from the FAYZ. As occasionally happens I had the new character's name immediately. She was Shade. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. The last time that sort of instant name-character brain-pop occurred was with Dekka. And Dekka, as it happens, is the lead character I lifted from the FAYZ for the sequel. . . drumroll. . . MONSTER.
End of September, I think. Close to then anyway. Shade, Dekka, Cruz, Malik, Armo, Knightmare and more, some of whom you may already know. Others not.
MONSTER will be. . . well, if you read either GONE or ANIMORPHS, you won't be expecting Sunday dinner at Grandma's.
But I digress. The other reason I didn't think of it as a sequel is that I came at it from a different direction. I didn't start from, "So what happens next?" I started with, "I wanna make a superhero universe. Waaah." I started there which brought me immediately to the question of how I was not going to just be a YA Marvel slash DC. How was I going to do it differently?
I was more into comics as a kid, and I never got that into them later on. But even my limited exposure is pretty intimidating. Some very imaginative writers and artists have put one hell of a lot of time and talent into leaving no possible superhero universe unexplored. I didn't have a lot of room to maneuver. However, I had two cards that were mine to play: GONE and ANIMORPHS.
So round one of thinking this through was a possible connection between my new thing and one of my old things. I could sort of place things in the GONE world or the ANIMORPHS world. GONE worked best. But then it occurred to me that it would work even better with about 10% ANIMORPHS added for extra flavor.
So, with the concept starting to gel in my enormous head, it was time to look at location and character. I suppose most writers start with character or plot, but once I have my core concept I look to setting because it's the quickest way to convince yourself as the writer that there' some reality to this. As a writer one of the little challenges is to overcome the voice in your head that every so often whispers, "this is just a bunch of bullshit and no one is going to read it."
For setting I went with two former homes - the Chicago suburbs and the Bay Area. Easy, peasy, and I didn't need much detail because they were starting points; I knew we were going on the road a lot.
For my leads I knew I wanted a brand-new character, and one from the FAYZ. As occasionally happens I had the new character's name immediately. She was Shade. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. The last time that sort of instant name-character brain-pop occurred was with Dekka. And Dekka, as it happens, is the lead character I lifted from the FAYZ for the sequel. . . drumroll. . . MONSTER.
End of September, I think. Close to then anyway. Shade, Dekka, Cruz, Malik, Armo, Knightmare and more, some of whom you may already know. Others not.
MONSTER will be. . . well, if you read either GONE or ANIMORPHS, you won't be expecting Sunday dinner at Grandma's.
Bluff Your Book
I've written or co-written a big pile of books. Most of them are in series, sometimes quite long series. ANIMORPHS was about 10,000 pages. GONE about 3,000. So I'm generally involved in writing some big, long, involved narrative which is supposed to come together in each book, then make sense overall. I don't always hit that mark, but I do more often than not. So you might begin to suspect that I know what I'm doing.
I do not. At least not at any conscious level where I could sort of outline my notions of how a book or a series is constructed. I only did a semester of college and at that point life was all about getting baked and trying to get girls to like me, so, zero writing classes. Don't get me wrong, I do kinda, sorta wish I knew the theory of it all, but at the same time I'm more glad I didn't. I think you're either a person who reads the IKEA instructions or you're the kind of person who thinks 'Hell, I got this.' I always think I got this. If I were on a plane and the flight attendant announced the pilots were dead and asked for volunteers who thought they might just be able to land a 747, I'm just the kind of dumbass who would raise his hand.
And I would land the damn plane.
No, I wouldn't.
But. . . maybe.
See, that's the kind of arrogance you cannot learn from a book. My writer friend Andrew Smith applies the word 'swagger' to me with some frequency. A former girlfriend used to complain that I would always burst into any room like I expected all conversation to stop. Katherine (Applegate) says that everything I say comes out sounding like the voice of God. It's a very useful trick. Well, not to use on her, she actually knows me and whatever act I put on she's a tough, tough audience. Very low susceptibility to bullshit, that woman.
When Katherine first said we suggested we should give up our exciting careers in home and office cleaning and become writers, I immediately agreed, and immediately assumed I could do it. I was a 34 year old ex-criminal, a high school drop-out, cleaning people's toilets on Cape Cod and I thought, "Become a writer? Eh. Why not?" Some might describe that kind of thinking in polysyllabic psychological terms meant to step carefully around the word, "crazy."
But here's the thing: it worked.
The Catholics have this idea that when your faith goes through a rough patch you should continue acting as if you had faith. Fake it till you make it. I don't know of any statistics that can tell us whether more people fail while faking it, or whether more people fail because they never get the nerve to even try. But I think we all intuit that it's the latter. The two great killers of writing ambition are lack of talent and lack of confidence. If you don't have talent as a writer, well, find some other talent to exploit. Or just learn and work and be a decent human being, you know, one of the people who actually keep the world turning. But if you think you have some talent, and you want to give writing a try, and what's stopping you is lack of swagger, that's just sad.
Michael Grant's helpful advice for fear: Whatever you're afraid of, carry the narrative forward in your head. Explore the possible outcomes. Rank them by probability. Exclude the insane ones: there will be no zombies. And now look at what you have left, your list of 'what's the worst that could happen?' See that list? Is there anything on that list that's going to kill or maim you? Is everything on that list, however unpleasant, survivable? Then quit sniveling, you big baby.
Here's the worst that can happen to you if you want to write, and want to get published: they can say, "No." That's it. Publishers do not send hit squads around to your house. They say, "Nope," and you do a bit of cursing, and indulge in a cocktail of hatred and self-loathing, and then an actual cocktail or six,* and guess what? You're not in Aleppo with barrel bombs dropping on you, are you, so STFU.
If you want to do it, take the chance. If it works, excellent. If it doesn't work after giving it a good try, well, as a wise fellow waiter (yes, waiter not writer) once told me long ago, "Sometimes you just take your beating."
* a) If underage donuts work just as well and, b) if you're under age and you're already giving up, maybe just a wee bit more tenacity?
I do not. At least not at any conscious level where I could sort of outline my notions of how a book or a series is constructed. I only did a semester of college and at that point life was all about getting baked and trying to get girls to like me, so, zero writing classes. Don't get me wrong, I do kinda, sorta wish I knew the theory of it all, but at the same time I'm more glad I didn't. I think you're either a person who reads the IKEA instructions or you're the kind of person who thinks 'Hell, I got this.' I always think I got this. If I were on a plane and the flight attendant announced the pilots were dead and asked for volunteers who thought they might just be able to land a 747, I'm just the kind of dumbass who would raise his hand.
And I would land the damn plane.
No, I wouldn't.
But. . . maybe.
See, that's the kind of arrogance you cannot learn from a book. My writer friend Andrew Smith applies the word 'swagger' to me with some frequency. A former girlfriend used to complain that I would always burst into any room like I expected all conversation to stop. Katherine (Applegate) says that everything I say comes out sounding like the voice of God. It's a very useful trick. Well, not to use on her, she actually knows me and whatever act I put on she's a tough, tough audience. Very low susceptibility to bullshit, that woman.
When Katherine first said we suggested we should give up our exciting careers in home and office cleaning and become writers, I immediately agreed, and immediately assumed I could do it. I was a 34 year old ex-criminal, a high school drop-out, cleaning people's toilets on Cape Cod and I thought, "Become a writer? Eh. Why not?" Some might describe that kind of thinking in polysyllabic psychological terms meant to step carefully around the word, "crazy."
But here's the thing: it worked.
The Catholics have this idea that when your faith goes through a rough patch you should continue acting as if you had faith. Fake it till you make it. I don't know of any statistics that can tell us whether more people fail while faking it, or whether more people fail because they never get the nerve to even try. But I think we all intuit that it's the latter. The two great killers of writing ambition are lack of talent and lack of confidence. If you don't have talent as a writer, well, find some other talent to exploit. Or just learn and work and be a decent human being, you know, one of the people who actually keep the world turning. But if you think you have some talent, and you want to give writing a try, and what's stopping you is lack of swagger, that's just sad.
Michael Grant's helpful advice for fear: Whatever you're afraid of, carry the narrative forward in your head. Explore the possible outcomes. Rank them by probability. Exclude the insane ones: there will be no zombies. And now look at what you have left, your list of 'what's the worst that could happen?' See that list? Is there anything on that list that's going to kill or maim you? Is everything on that list, however unpleasant, survivable? Then quit sniveling, you big baby.
Here's the worst that can happen to you if you want to write, and want to get published: they can say, "No." That's it. Publishers do not send hit squads around to your house. They say, "Nope," and you do a bit of cursing, and indulge in a cocktail of hatred and self-loathing, and then an actual cocktail or six,* and guess what? You're not in Aleppo with barrel bombs dropping on you, are you, so STFU.
If you want to do it, take the chance. If it works, excellent. If it doesn't work after giving it a good try, well, as a wise fellow waiter (yes, waiter not writer) once told me long ago, "Sometimes you just take your beating."
* a) If underage donuts work just as well and, b) if you're under age and you're already giving up, maybe just a wee bit more tenacity?
Writing Action Scenes
I don't want to shock my fans who are reading this, but I am good at some things and not as good at others. You want experimental, challenging prose? Not gettin' it from me. You want lyrical descriptions? Not here. Metaphors? I'm not entirely sure what those are.
But I can write the hell out of an action scene. So, for those interested, here are my rules. Or suggestions. Anyway, here's what works for me:
1) Live With The Setting.
By this I mean that you should not design a setting for the sole purpose of placing an action scene there. You must not design the set to fit the action by placing convenient objects in unrealistic ways solely to create a cool scene.
This rule is seldom obeyed in action-heavy movies where cars are constantly finding conveniently-placed ramps. Or where people leap out of windows and hey, guess what, there's a dumpster full of cardboard perfectly-positioned to let you land safely. The real world is not filled with perfectly-placed cables, ropes, ramps, landing pads, doors that can be blocked with beams handily placed nearby. Basically the world is not stocked with props.
Start with a realistic setting. Then, within that realistic setting, you carry out your action scene. The frame is not the enemy of the painting, the frame defines the painting's location in space.
2) Take Your Time
Even if you hate writing action scenes, take your time with it. If you're in a hurry to get done, the reader will sense your indifference. If you don't care enough to make the scene work, if you're in a hurry to move on to writing exposition or dialog, the reader will not take the scene seriously.
Action is choreography. Each move must make sense. Walk through it second-by-second, ensuring that C follows B follows A.
3) No Convenient Discoveries
Oh my God, crocodiles? What am I going to do? Oh, wait, now I remember: ejectum crocodilus! the convenient crocodile-killing spell!
Don't do that. It's a betrayal of the reader. It's the writer treating the reader like a fool.
4) Pain is. . . Painful.
You know how heroes can take a ten minute beat-down and all they have to show for it is a dribble of blood and a stiff shoulder? In real life a punch to the face from a dude who knows how to punch can break your teeth, smash your nose and give you a concussion. A serious beating puts you in the hospital for a week, eating through a tube.
I am a firm believer that violence without consequences is comedy, not action. You can drop an anvil on Bugs Bunny. If you drop one on a human you've either committed murder or you've severely crippled someone. If you want the reader to feel the violence then your characters have to feel it.
5) Signal Seriousness.
Right at the start of BZRK I introduce a character the reader will assume to be the hero. Then I killed him. That's a message to the reader: don't think I won't do it, because I just did.
You don't always have to kill someone in Chapter One, obviously, or kill anyone at all, but you want to push the limits of the story, you want to signal that you will not make things comfortable. You don't want to be predictable. Predictable is safe, and safe is the opposite of 'in danger.' If you're writing action you want the reader to feel the danger, and you don't want them to trust you not to do anything upsetting.
You want the reader to feel fear. You can't make her fear if she thinks you won't actually pull the trigger. I am sometimes accused (by parents, generally) of 'going too far;' I am never accused of writing a shitty action scene. If the reader knows you may 'go too far' they will feel the fear.
6)Detail.
There's a fine line between too much and too little detail. Too much and you're adding excess fat that'll slow the scene. Too little detail and the setting doesn't feel real. See everything in your head, describe enough to make it granular, real, specific. It can never be 'a room,' it's a specific room. It's not 'a riverbank' it's a specific river bank, maybe muddy, maybe concrete, maybe tangled tree roots.
When it comes to describing mayhem, again, detail. Your character isn't just stabbed, she's stabbed somewhere specific. The knife goes through her blue silk blouse. The blood oozes until the knife is pulled out and then it gushes. The blood stains the silk a different color. The blood drips from the blade. Pain comes later, what comes first is shock. The character claps a hand to the wound and it comes away smeared with her own blood. Detail.
7) Distort Consciousness.
I don't know how many of you have ever been in a fight, but danger distorts your senses and screws with your memory. A character in the middle of an action scene isn't seeing everything, he's picking out details he hopes will allow him to live. See the gun. See the finger tightening on the trigger. See the eyes of the shooter. Don't check the clock. Don't notice the shooter's shoes. Do notice the ding of a text as it distracts the shooter.
Play with time. Speed it up. Slow it down. Blur some things, show others in stark detail. Slow down to talk about heartbeat or breathing. Speed the bad guy up while your character seems to be moving through molasses. Slow down to take in an incredible scene. Turn hearing on and off. Have your character's hand move of its own volition, disconnected from consciousness.
Terror and the urge to survive alter your brain. You aren't a teacher or a librarian or a writer, you're an animal using all its senses and resources to stay alive. You are more focused than you have ever been in your life. You are not recalling the wise words your mother once told you. You are not thinking about your significant other, you are a cornered rat who will do anything - anything at all - to stay alive, and everything else is far, far away.
8)The Unexpected.
Use the unexpected cautiously and sparsely. Where you might want to have a bad guy say, "I'm going to enjoy killing you," have him say, "Don't struggle. Help me to kill you and you'll barely feel it." You can drop in bits of humor. You can use weird interruptions - a phone rings, a door opens, a passerby slips on the blood, a FedEx guy walks in with a package.
This throws the reader off. The reader thinks she knows how the scene will play out, she's read or seen hundreds of action scenes, and she can feel the beats. So mess with her. Throw her a curve ball. You don't want the reader knowing what's next, that drains the emotion.
And for fun you can subvert tropes, mess with the reader's know-it-all expectations. Remember the thing about the character who jumps out of a window and lands in a convenient dumpster? Have them jump, have the dumpster there. . . and have them miss and smash their head open on the steel wall of the dumpster. Hah! Fooled you.
9)Aftermath.
Show the consequences. Are you hurt? Where? How does it feel? Is there a dead body? If so, how does it lie, how does it smell, has it loosed its bowels? If you barely survived, are you elated? Exhausted? Sad? Jazzed?
It's also a useful trick to have the character take a beat to imagine how she will feel later, how this will sit in her memory, how she will justify it. This establishes a seriousness that will carry through into subsequent action scenes. Is there a secondary character watching and reacting? How do they see you now, with blood and gore all over you? Are they repelled?
TL;DR: Play fair with the reader, make the action fit the setting, use detail, show the reader you're unpredictable, play with distortion, surprise them and show consequences.
At least that's how I try to do it.
But I can write the hell out of an action scene. So, for those interested, here are my rules. Or suggestions. Anyway, here's what works for me:
1) Live With The Setting.
By this I mean that you should not design a setting for the sole purpose of placing an action scene there. You must not design the set to fit the action by placing convenient objects in unrealistic ways solely to create a cool scene.
This rule is seldom obeyed in action-heavy movies where cars are constantly finding conveniently-placed ramps. Or where people leap out of windows and hey, guess what, there's a dumpster full of cardboard perfectly-positioned to let you land safely. The real world is not filled with perfectly-placed cables, ropes, ramps, landing pads, doors that can be blocked with beams handily placed nearby. Basically the world is not stocked with props.
Start with a realistic setting. Then, within that realistic setting, you carry out your action scene. The frame is not the enemy of the painting, the frame defines the painting's location in space.
2) Take Your Time
Even if you hate writing action scenes, take your time with it. If you're in a hurry to get done, the reader will sense your indifference. If you don't care enough to make the scene work, if you're in a hurry to move on to writing exposition or dialog, the reader will not take the scene seriously.
Action is choreography. Each move must make sense. Walk through it second-by-second, ensuring that C follows B follows A.
3) No Convenient Discoveries
Oh my God, crocodiles? What am I going to do? Oh, wait, now I remember: ejectum crocodilus! the convenient crocodile-killing spell!
Don't do that. It's a betrayal of the reader. It's the writer treating the reader like a fool.
4) Pain is. . . Painful.
You know how heroes can take a ten minute beat-down and all they have to show for it is a dribble of blood and a stiff shoulder? In real life a punch to the face from a dude who knows how to punch can break your teeth, smash your nose and give you a concussion. A serious beating puts you in the hospital for a week, eating through a tube.
I am a firm believer that violence without consequences is comedy, not action. You can drop an anvil on Bugs Bunny. If you drop one on a human you've either committed murder or you've severely crippled someone. If you want the reader to feel the violence then your characters have to feel it.
5) Signal Seriousness.
Right at the start of BZRK I introduce a character the reader will assume to be the hero. Then I killed him. That's a message to the reader: don't think I won't do it, because I just did.
You don't always have to kill someone in Chapter One, obviously, or kill anyone at all, but you want to push the limits of the story, you want to signal that you will not make things comfortable. You don't want to be predictable. Predictable is safe, and safe is the opposite of 'in danger.' If you're writing action you want the reader to feel the danger, and you don't want them to trust you not to do anything upsetting.
You want the reader to feel fear. You can't make her fear if she thinks you won't actually pull the trigger. I am sometimes accused (by parents, generally) of 'going too far;' I am never accused of writing a shitty action scene. If the reader knows you may 'go too far' they will feel the fear.
6)Detail.
There's a fine line between too much and too little detail. Too much and you're adding excess fat that'll slow the scene. Too little detail and the setting doesn't feel real. See everything in your head, describe enough to make it granular, real, specific. It can never be 'a room,' it's a specific room. It's not 'a riverbank' it's a specific river bank, maybe muddy, maybe concrete, maybe tangled tree roots.
When it comes to describing mayhem, again, detail. Your character isn't just stabbed, she's stabbed somewhere specific. The knife goes through her blue silk blouse. The blood oozes until the knife is pulled out and then it gushes. The blood stains the silk a different color. The blood drips from the blade. Pain comes later, what comes first is shock. The character claps a hand to the wound and it comes away smeared with her own blood. Detail.
7) Distort Consciousness.
I don't know how many of you have ever been in a fight, but danger distorts your senses and screws with your memory. A character in the middle of an action scene isn't seeing everything, he's picking out details he hopes will allow him to live. See the gun. See the finger tightening on the trigger. See the eyes of the shooter. Don't check the clock. Don't notice the shooter's shoes. Do notice the ding of a text as it distracts the shooter.
Play with time. Speed it up. Slow it down. Blur some things, show others in stark detail. Slow down to talk about heartbeat or breathing. Speed the bad guy up while your character seems to be moving through molasses. Slow down to take in an incredible scene. Turn hearing on and off. Have your character's hand move of its own volition, disconnected from consciousness.
Terror and the urge to survive alter your brain. You aren't a teacher or a librarian or a writer, you're an animal using all its senses and resources to stay alive. You are more focused than you have ever been in your life. You are not recalling the wise words your mother once told you. You are not thinking about your significant other, you are a cornered rat who will do anything - anything at all - to stay alive, and everything else is far, far away.
8)The Unexpected.
Use the unexpected cautiously and sparsely. Where you might want to have a bad guy say, "I'm going to enjoy killing you," have him say, "Don't struggle. Help me to kill you and you'll barely feel it." You can drop in bits of humor. You can use weird interruptions - a phone rings, a door opens, a passerby slips on the blood, a FedEx guy walks in with a package.
This throws the reader off. The reader thinks she knows how the scene will play out, she's read or seen hundreds of action scenes, and she can feel the beats. So mess with her. Throw her a curve ball. You don't want the reader knowing what's next, that drains the emotion.
And for fun you can subvert tropes, mess with the reader's know-it-all expectations. Remember the thing about the character who jumps out of a window and lands in a convenient dumpster? Have them jump, have the dumpster there. . . and have them miss and smash their head open on the steel wall of the dumpster. Hah! Fooled you.
9)Aftermath.
Show the consequences. Are you hurt? Where? How does it feel? Is there a dead body? If so, how does it lie, how does it smell, has it loosed its bowels? If you barely survived, are you elated? Exhausted? Sad? Jazzed?
It's also a useful trick to have the character take a beat to imagine how she will feel later, how this will sit in her memory, how she will justify it. This establishes a seriousness that will carry through into subsequent action scenes. Is there a secondary character watching and reacting? How do they see you now, with blood and gore all over you? Are they repelled?
TL;DR: Play fair with the reader, make the action fit the setting, use detail, show the reader you're unpredictable, play with distortion, surprise them and show consequences.
At least that's how I try to do it.
