Nick Bryan

writing about writing

Anthologies, both JukePop and Comic Book (WriteBlog #10)

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Me and my thumb in the Jukepop anthology!

Those of you who see my updates on any form of social media are probably familiar with the photograph on the right of me (and my thumb) in the Jukepop Serials anthology, as I posted it more or less everywhere on Tuesday night.

Now, for anyone who fancies some context, here it is: Jukepop Serials, the publishers of Hobson & Choi, have produced a print collection of their ten “best” serials.

I have no idea what magical algorithms were used to reach this list, but nonetheless, I was on it, and the first five chapters of Hobson & Choi can now be found on pages 43-68 of the book. I stress, these are not improved or “director’s cut” versions, so if you’re not a H&C completist (do we have those yet?), you don’t have to rush out and buy it, but if you want a Christmas present for someone who enjoys serialised genre fiction, this could work.

Whatever the algorithm, they’ve ended up choosing some good stories. No, this isn’t a published novel, but at this early point in my writing career, part of my brain still spikes with joy whenever I see my own name in print, so good fun nonetheless.

Elsewhere in Nick In Anthologies news, the comic script I was working on last week had its first encounter with a genuine editor, and happily all went well. Got interesting notes, no spelling mistakes found. In short, I didn’t get an email back saying “What in the good fuck is this, have you even read a comic?”, so good result. Next, this afternoon in fact, I shall go sit in my cafe and attempt to enact said notes.

In short, it’s been a good few days on the writing, so you’re spared the stream of introspection that sometimes emerges in these posts. There may or may not be another WriteBlog next week, because my schedule of festive prep/booze is starting to squeeze the writing time. In fact, we’re reaching the calendar point where bloggers everywhere pad out their schedule with Best of [YEAR] lists, so might do that instead. Regardless, hope your own Christmas shopping and/or drinking is going well.

Comic scripting – Invisible words? Too many words? Words? (WriteBlog #9)

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And now, a change of pace: a blog not about NaNoWriMo. About six blogs ago, I wrote about a bunch of short pitches I was putting together for some comic stories. Well, while I busied myself with bashing out a novel-third in Nov, I also heard that two of those had been accepted. So, yes, if all goes well, two shorts by me will appear in GreyHaven anthologies in the future. Good times.

Now, since I only had to write paragraph-long summaries originally, this news also means I must now write the scripts for both these stories. So, that’s been my project since NaNo finished. How’s that gone?

I haven’t written any comic script since my failed Script Frenzy effort of 2012 (Remember Script Frenzy? Remember the awful portmanteau “screnzy” which used to send a shiver up my spine?) so these muscles have needed to creak back into life. I’ve read a lot of comics lately at least, so remember how the storytelling works, but describing stuff? In detail? To an actual collaborator? New territory.

Lots of words no-one will ever get to read. Lots of trying to get across what needs to be there without imposing too hard on the artist’s freedom to do something interesting with the page. Lots of reading comic scripts and script notes by comics writers online to see if it helps. I don’t yet know who the artists will be, so I’m trying to make the script as everyone-friendly as possible.

Trying to also avoid the rookie comics writer’s mistake of overloading panels with text, because even if it seems like nothing to me on the script, count up the words and compare them to an existing comics panel and I suddenly realise that, yeah, put those bad boys down in word balloons and the art may as well be a blank space. Which, at least, saves a lot of work by the artist.

So, hard work, new skills. Nonetheless, I still love comics as an art form and the idea of seeing my stories in arted and printed form makes it all seem worthwhile. So I’ve gotta finish the first one, start the second one… maybe buy some Christmas presents or something too? It’s strange new territory, but after burning the candle at both ends prose-wise during NaNo, it’s kinda nice to be working in this different structure for a while.

NaNoWriMo Week One – Uh-huh? (WriteBlog #5)

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You wouldn’t think I’d have time to dash off mid-length blogs about my writing process in the heart of the NaNoWriMo maelstrom, but I’m trying to treat this piece as a short warm-up for later greatness. However, if it seems slightly more rushed or badly spelt than usual, the month-long writing bender is my entire excuse.

So, I’ve been on the NaNo gravy train for nearly a whole week, I’ve written just under seven thousand words (so yes, I am pretty behind) – how is it going? Can I describe my experiences? Well.

I’ve been trying not to worry about word count too much, whilst simultaneously not ignoring it, and that doesn’t make a vast amount of sense. Basically, if I ignore the NaNo word-churning ethos, I just won’t produce anything, which isn’t helpful – but on the other hand, I also don’t want to churn out shite.

There have been a couple of days where I’ve thought – even as I’m writing something – “Fuck, I’m clearly just rattling that off to hit word count.” Case in point: I’m 99% sure that once I sit down to do today’s NaNo words, I’ll be deleting the final section of yesterday’s scene and rewriting it. This is arguably against the Sacred NaNo Spirit, but having worked on this novel all year and been surprisingly happy with it, I don’t really want to spend November grafting some kind of rotting tail onto it. Yet again, I’m trying to use the NaNo Spirit but only when it’s useful to me.

The good news is that despite my angst about quality, I’m just about on track to finish the book (if not the required 50K) by the end of the month, which will mean I’ve at least won my own personal battle. I’ve also been distracted repeatedly by my various other projects – Hobson & Choi will continue, of course, but if you’re a huge fan of my TV reviews, you may see a dip in those as the month goes on. Sorry about that.

Yesterday, I got the good news that H&C was #9 in the Jukepop charts for October, which is yet another personal best and one I might struggle to replicate/beat in future months, to be honest. Nonetheless, good to know people are enjoying it – the even more gratifying part is that I didn’t badger that many personal friends into voting during Oct, so those votes could be from real human interest. Score.

And #39 of H&C will be with you in a few hours, so that’s exciting. Right now, I’ve got to plug a blog post on Twitter (not just this one) and record H&C Podcast #11, then publish #39 – and only after all that can I get back to work on NaNoWriMo. Busy life but I like it a lot. See you all next week.

Pre-NaNoWriMo WriteBlog #4 PlanStraVaGanZa

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Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo starts and as I’ve said before, I’ll be working on the final third of my current novel in progress. This will probably not be fifty thousand words, although once I add on four Hobson & Choi chapters for the month and maybe improvise a short story about a man taking his dog for a walk, I might make it over the top.

But, regardless, that isn’t the point. I’m pleased with the opening 66.6% of this novel (even if it still has no title), so it would be a shame to bolt a load of slapdash verbal diarrhoea onto the end and quadruple my editing time.

So, with that in mind, I spent four hours (or three full plays of the new Arcade Fire album) in my regular writing-cafe this afternoon trying to produce a decent plan to keep myself on track.

Seriously, it took ages. I know a lot of people who are trying to write/start whole novels in NaNo, and that must be an epic planning task. Then again, they may not have tried to break them down scene-by-scene like I did. In the eternal NaNoWriMo debate of planning vs making it up (or “plotting vs pantsing”, if you like pants), I’m definitely a plotter. Writing the actual chapters is just fleshing out a skeleton.

Said skeleton is constructed using a tree of folders and documents in Scrivener, if you’re curious. Scrivener might not be for everyone, but for those of us who enjoy imposing a sense of order on the universe, it’s great. If you tweet using Tweetdeck, give writing with Scrivener a try.

Considering I’ve known where I was going with this story for a while, I was surprised how bloody long planinng took. All the cool scenes I’d imagined for the future were a bitch to engineer into place. That’s the problem with writing sci-fi/fantasy – you have to make up your own rules, than actually follow them.

I thought I’d have time to do this blog a bit earlier, but no, here I am at 8PM, just tapping it out before going for a few restful hours not thinking about NaNo.

And then start writing at midnight, obviously. Cleverly, I’ve planned myself into opening with the most depressing scene possible, featuring grim terminal illness goodbyes. On the plus side, the rest of November will be a merry treat in comparison. I considered writing scenes out of order to avoid this downbeat debut, but decided to just swallow it. At least my first real November daytime writing session will have that already done.

And on that note, going to go do something else. Good luck if you’re reading this and also attempting NaNo, feel free to share any angst below or buddy me up on the NaNoWriMo site if that’s your bag. Another writing post next week, unless I hit my head and forget I have a blog.

WriteBlog #3 – The Short Pitch And Me

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As promised in the last one of these, I’ve been doing a few small projects in the buffer between finishing Part Two of my current novel last week and starting Part Three for NaNoWriMo. The main one I’ve found is submitting a few ideas for short comic stories.

In this case, they’re not looking for complete scripts, just short pitches describing your story. Now, some of you might be thinking this: “Great! Less work for you!” And although there was an element of that, it’s been harder than I expected too.

Because, to be honest, I’m pretty much used to sending in full scripts (or in prose submissions, full stories or substantial chunks of them) and knowing I’d be ultimately judged on my pacing, turn of phrase, etc – the brief description in the cover email is just there to get their attention.

Not that my story ideas suck, it’s just a different, more pressuring sensation trying to explain why your idea is brilliant in two paragraphs or less and knowing that’s all there is, rather than simply having to hook them enough to read the manuscript itself. After all, there’s not much time for immersion here – even two reasonably long paragraphs can be read in about a minute.

But it’s definitely a skill worth learning – after all, if I ever end up in the situation of trying to pitch my ideas to an editor one-to-one, I may not even get two long paragraphs worth of words to explain it in. Not to mention, I tend to be naturally over-wordy and it rarely hurts to cut down.

Mostly, I’ve ended up doing one paragraph in which I try and capture the mood of the story, then another where I explain how it unfolds. That seemed like the best use of space – we’ll see how it goes. If I can pull this off, it’s definitely going on the List Of Skills I’ve Totally Mastered.

All of which means that in the last week, I’ve spent almost a whole day on this project and produced… about seven paragraphs. By my usual standards, that isn’t much – hell, it’s probably less words than this blog post, which has taken about twenty minutes. But hopefully I’ll end up with individual paragraph-pitches that are so polished and shiny, you can see your face in them.

Should probably get back to them, really. If anyone has any time-honoured words of wisdom about the art of pitching in two paragraphs, definitely leave them in the comments.

WriteBlog #2 – Two thirds and working in the vacuum

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Today, the oft-hinted Satan novel hit exactly two thirds done, and even though I’m well aware it needs a lot of editing, this makes me immensely happy, because it’s the least troubled novel I’ve ever worked on. No huge gaps, no stumbles, nothing I’m convinced is shit. I live in hope that this is something I can either sell to agents/publishers or persuade myself is worth the effort of self-publishing.

Also, I haven’t hit the wall of telling myself I have no talent, because thanks to the reasonably successful antics of Hobson & Choi over at Jukepop, I’ve got a good strong round of positive affirmation coming in for my fiction. One of the big problems with working on a novel is that you get stuck in this inner world where you only have yourself and your book and the inner walls covered in your own dark scrawl.

The internet can help with this, as can a writer’s group if you’re so inclined, wherein you read them your work and they give you feedback, in return for your returning the favour. Yes, it’s terrifying at first, because exposing your work to other people always is – it might be less intimidating to just expose yourself, to be honest – but once I got past that initial fear, it became infinitely preferable to just slashing onwards and hoping it works out. Even listening and mulling over other people’s scribblings can help bring ideas out

.For more on why writing groups are a good idea, the excellent Chris Brosnahan (organiser of the group I attend) has written a blog post.

Otherwise, as I say, there is always the internet for affirmation via likes/retweets/votes/magic stars/whatever the kids are using nowadays.

Anyway: point being, even though it isn’t finished yet, two thirds seems like a lot of novel to me so I’m allowing myself this small celebration. The final glorious chunk, as I mentioned last week, I aim to write during NaNoWriMo – more on that in future blog posts.

But before that particular mega-storm kicks off, I get a couple of weeks in which I can work on some non-novel projects more intensively than usual, plus do some hard planning for the final third. Score.