The Secret To Writing Great Cliffhangers Is…

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One of the greatest feelings I get from writing is when a reader finishes my book and demands I give them answers. And I don’t mean questions like “Why did you name this sex offender character after me?” or “How is a book about 17th century fur trappers going to make enough so you can repay the sixty grand you owe me?” No, I’m talking more along the line of questions like “What happens next?” or “Is the character going to survive?”

Authors need to find ways to get their audience involved in the story. For example, in my promotion for Order of Operations, I set up a worldwide scavenger hunt where readers used clues from the book to find a $10,000 grand prize. This backfired when at least four readers were buried alive when an abandoned mine collapsed in the Nevada wilderness.

So instead, you can try using cliffhangers. This is something TV shows have used for decades and they can be incredibly effective. Audiences obsessed for whole summers about who shot JR, or if Riker was going to shave his beard or not, or if David Hasselhoff would ever turn his career around.

What you have to remember is that reading is a chore for most people. When you put cliffhangers at the ends of your chapters and at the ends of your books, you make it more fun and engaging. Think of your reader as a dog and the cliffhangers are the treats you give them for shitting in their neighbor’s pool after he leaves for work. We’ll manipulate people for personal profit on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now there’s some debate about who first invented the cliffhanger. Some people think it was Thomas Hardy. Others say it comes from 1001 Nights. I always thought it was Melville, who ended Moby Dick with Ishmael starting the Whalers Initiative and going around to recruit the best whalers on the planet to defeat the White Whale. But apparently, that doesn’t happen in the book at all.

In any case, cliffhangers are when a scene, chapter or book ends abruptly without a resolution. Cliffhangers are meant to be shocking. But you need to be careful how you use them. When I wrote Chair, I ended with the main character defeating the villain by throwing her into a tar pit. However, the last scene ended with a hand reaching up out of the tar pit. In the poorly-received sequel Sofa, however, it turned out that arm belonged to a Neanderthal who’d been dead for millennia and had been forced to the surface by tectonic activity. Common mistakes like this are best avoided.

So let’s look at some tips to improve our cliffhangers:

Tip 1 – Give Readers Room to Speculate

A good cliffhanger should hint at a world of possibilities. What you reveal to your reader is just the tip of the ice cube poking out of the surface of your morning glass of scotch. If there’s a surprise death, make sure you’ve got at least half a dozen plausible suspects.

One of the chapters in my sci-fi novel Destination Earth ends with a spaceship signaling red alert. But this could be for many reasons. Maybe space debris hit the lightspeed core, maybe their enemy, the Cormolites, finally honed in on their location, maybe the Alliance has come to arrest them for sex trafficking humans. These are exactly the ideas you want your audience thinking of.

Tip 2 – Brainstorm a Huge List of Problems Specific to Your Character

I suggest making a huge list of potential problems your character will have throughout the story. You don’t need to use or even mention them, but doing so will help you flesh out your character, and then when you get to a point in the narrative that would benefit from a cliffhanger, you’re spoiled for choice. For example, when I wrote Minge, here’s just a fraction of what I wrote:

  • Minge’s former high school bestie wants to kill her.
  • Minge’s is addicted to blackjack.
  • Minge has a narrow windpipe which makes her more susceptible to choking.
  • Minge is addicted to roulette.
  • Minge owes thousands to several organized crime syndicates.
  • Minge’s mother left home before she was born. And then again a few years later.
  • Minge is addicted to scratch off tickets.
  • Minge doesn’t know how to read.

Tip 3 – Use Foreshadowing

A great cliffhanger, especially early in your book, won’t just create suspense but also hint at something further down the line. Chapter Five in Ode to Adelay ends this way:

 “ ‘Cough… cough… cough cough cough.’ I knew I had to stop coughing before Deardra got home. And then I heard the garage door open.” So you can see, not only are we wondering whether or not his wife will catch him smoking weed, this also foreshadows Adelay’s eventual death from choking on a chunk of melon.  

Tip 4 – Resolve the conflict, but not all of it

So often, you want to end a chapter with a big climax, a death riddled with pathos, a key resolution. The key though, is to always have something in the background that’s not settled. You can really take your reader off guard here. If you kill off the main villain, readers might forget about the henchman, and that’s the perfect time have her cut the cable of their funicular. If the characters survive a wild storm, we’re so happy we forget about the bag of drugs they need to survive and we end with the cliffhanger of them realizing they have lost it.  

But really, when you’re writing a cliffhanger there’s one method that never fails to work…

Common Writing Questions Answered By An Expert

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Getting published is a bit like having sex for the first time: you’ve spent years dreaming about it and after it finally happens, you know you did it wrong and are pretty sure you’re being laughed at.

I set up this channel to help young writers through the process of breaking their writing hymen, so to speak. I’ll answer some of your questions on this mailbag installment of Stories’ Matter.

Our first question comes from Xander from Pripyat, Ukraine. He writes:

Hey John. Your books are often filled with interesting facts and information. For example, when I read Bride of Prejudice, I learned that drowning in a bog was the leading cause of death for young women in the 18th century. What is something surprising you learned when writing one of your books?

Great question, Xander. Because I tend to write one book a month, I can’t devote as much time to research as I’d like. But when I was writing The Ones Who Walked (my first book set in the Pleistocene) I learned that of all 100 billion humans to ever be born, almost 50 percent never made it to their first birthday.

Our next question comes from Valerie from Bhopal, India. She writes:

What up, John? I’m trying to get a start in writing, but all my friends and coworkers tell me I should focus on my true talent: being a cashier at Walmart.  Anyway, it would be nice to get some positive feedback. What’s the most inspiring feedback you’ve ever received from a reader?

Thanks for the question, Valerie. Well, actually the best feedback I’ve ever gotten from a fan was regarding my erotica written under my JD Salinger alias. But because this is a family channel, I can’t share the specifics about what she did with her mouth. Instead, I remember another young reviewer telling me that The House on Pain Avenue was “a worse experience than his cancer treatment.” That made me happy because that was exactly what I was going for.

The next question comes from Simon from Guadalajara, Mexico. He writes: 

Hi John. I’m a new writer who has written a few novels. But I find I’m running out of ideas. The amount of books you’ve written is astounding. If it weren’t true, I’d think you were just making it up to be funny. Anyway, where do you find inspiration? Do you ever get inspiration from dreams?

Great question, Simon. Actually, one of the side effects of a drug I use to quell my sexual urges prevents me from having dreams. I, however, find inspiration can come from anywhere: paying attention to the news, being well-versed in history, closely watching fights at the weddings you attend, reading your neighbor’s mail and so on.

Next, we have Grace from Hamlet, North Carolina. She asks:

Yo John. I’ve tried publishing a book. But I’ve gotten nothing but form rejections. And my beta readers keep asking if English is my second language, even though I was born in Jacksonville and went to community college for four years before dropping out. My question is, how do you handle criticism?

Excellent question, Grace. A lot of people assume creatives are just supposed to ignore criticism. But ask yourself: Do other types of workers just let themselves be openly criticized? Of course not. NBA players get hecklers thrown out of games. Cops will use any criticism as a chance to steal your phone and shoot your dog. And politicians will use criticism as fuel to stack the Supreme Court with right wing lunatics and liars to overthrow American democracy. So… be more like them.

This one comes from Nearl of Karachi, Pakistan. He writes:

G’day John. I’m just about to publish my first book, but my editor says the publisher wants me to remove a twenty-page scene depicting a horse circumcision. What’s your favorite scene you’ve had to edit out of a book?

Thanks for that one, Nearl. When I wrote Dawson, a young adult cozy murder mystery set in rural New England, I included a long scene where one character gives another a tour of the town in which it is set, including much of its true history. Unfortunately, my editor told me that town wanted nothing to do with me and would burn every single copy that entered city limits if I kept the scene.

And now we have Watley from Fukushima, Japan. He writes:

Howdy John. I have trouble getting erections and don’t even attempt to pleasure my wife sexually. She claims it’s because I spend seven to eight hours a day writing at my computer. So my question is, does your family also not support your career as a writer?

Thank you, Watley. This is a story I know all too well. Not the no erections part, obviously. But I think three ex-wives and at least seven children, four from whom I’m estranged, speaks for itself.  

Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Choose writing. Don’t try to convince yourself you can do both. Even if you remove all other distractions, and, for example, go to a remote hotel in the Rockies, you’ll just go crazy from the disruptions and try to murder them.

Next question comes from Darcelle from Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. She asks:

Greetings John. Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer?

Well, Darcelle, my suggestion would be to watch some of the fifty odd videos on this channel first. Maybe then you’ll at least learn not to ask stupid questions.

Finally, we have a question from Fat Mike from Benxi, China. He says:

Aloha John. As your agent and former next-door neighbor, I’d like to know: What book are you working on right now? I will remind you that you are contractually obligated to write three more books by the end of this year.

Thanks for that question, Fat Mike. There’s a few in the pipeline, but my next book is a century-spanning family drama set in the age of Westward Expansion, centered on two sisters, one who decides to become a nun the Aleutian Islands and the other who marries an abusive oil prospector. It’s called Family Feud.

Don’t Die Sad and Alone… Relationship Advice for Writers

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We’re going to step away from the page today and explore this key question:

“Do writers deserve to be loved?”

Now you may be thinking, what an absurd question, John, of course I deserve love. In fact, the whole reason I’m writing is so that I can get strangers to love me and fill the void left by my abusive parents who bet away my college fund on a racehorse named “Always a Winner.”

But writers also know that when the writing is going good, nothing else matters. Aside from food, water and oxygen, writing fills every other need. I can’t tell how many loads I’ve spilled just from the satisfaction I got from creating a tragic backstory or thinking of a twist ending that would make M. Night Shaymalan’s head explode.

However, writers also know that the writing can’t always be this good. Writing can be as much of a cruel mistress as any $500 BDSM escort you can find on tryst.link.

So you might decide that a real human relationship is something you want in your life. Being a writer makes this very complicated, but not impossible. In today’s segment, I hope to help you navigate the potential problems you might encounter with flesh-and-blood humans. We’ll discuss the agony of compromise on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now, fans of the channel have probably pieced together that I’ve had a shaky relationship history. After all, I’ve been married and divorced three times, even if the first one doesn’t really count because that wife used a fake name and was already married to several other people. So just full disclosure, while I think I have some good advice to impart, keep in mind that I’m mostly a cautionary tale.

Also, my story might not be your story. Sex and romance is varied and complicated. So a little more about me: I’m the type of person who needs lots of love. As my therapist used to say, I’m the type of person who runs into relationships very quickly. The fact that my therapist became my third wife probably means she was right.

Anyway, to narrow the focus of this video, I will try to keep this advice specific to the ways writing can impact your relationship.

Tip 1 – Never Date Another Writer

This almost goes without saying. Obviously, it’s natural to be jealous when your wife gets a massage from her tennis instructor. But that’s nothing compared with the crippling jealousy of your partner getting her story published in the New Yorker. At least I can sometimes get erections thinking about my wife bouncing atop a 20-year-old with a flawless chest and rippled back.  I can safely say another writer inking a deal with Random House has never made me erect.

Plus, with both of you constantly shut away at your desks, nothing is ever getting done. Good luck keep the mold at bay and the power on. And God forbid, if you managed to produce a child, let’s just hope it isn’t fascinated by power outlets.

Tip 2 – Never Date Fans

To be honest, you really should just be with someone who doesn’t read. I’m not saying you should date someone’s who’s illiterate but I’m also not not saying it.

While not as bad as dating a writer, this one is easier to fall into. Because naturally you want your fans to love you. And when those fans happen to have perfect tits, you’ll probably think you hit the jackpot.

Wrong: you almost certainly won’t live up to their expectations. I’ve met a lot of writers and they are way less cool in real life. Margaret Atwood: wonderful writer, but she steals silverware from restaurants. Jennifer Egan: maybe our greatest living writer. But she constantly looks at your phone when you’re texting other people. And while Jonathan Franzen was a huge inspiration, he smells like onions, garlic and cigar smoke.

Tip 3  – Don’t ask for writing advice

As I said before, you should never ask people you know closely to be your beta readers. There are only two possible outcomes, both bad.

One, they will be give vague, dishonest support. Afraid to hurt your feelings, they will tell you you don’t to change a thing, which all writers know is never the case.

Two, they will be brutally honest. You’ll share your opinion. They’ll say why’d you ask for my opinion if you’re just going to yell at me. You’ll say you’re not yelling. They’ll then ask why you also criticized their weight. You’ll then say that you’re such a great writer, you could literally have sex with anyone so they should be grateful. They’ll spend the night at their mother’s house. You’ll go on a bender and have to spend any money you made that month from your writing on medication to treat your crabs.  Happens all the time.

Tip 4 – Be Honest. Unless you do something really unforgivable. In that case, take that to your grave.

This isn’t really related to writing. I’ve just always found that this is generally great advice.

Tip 5 – Partners aren’t your characters. You can’t make them do whatever you want.

It’s easy to fantasize about your characters. After all, you can make them do anything and they don’t need to consent to it. Having the power to kill the things I’ve created is probably the main reason I became a writer. But you have to get rid of that mindset and remember that real people are just very disappointing.

And I’m not just talking about crazy sex stuff. I mean, obviously it’s unlikely you meet someone willing to give you a Brazilian pile driver in real life. But you also can’t write your way out of bad situations. Fans of the channel know that my second wife is by far my favorite. If our love story was fiction, I’d find some way to make our characters realize we were meant for each other, perhaps by having our daughter trap us in a broken elevator until we made amends. But in real life, I’d be breaking several laws if I tried that.

As fans of the channel will also know, in real life, I had to settle for finding an escort and making her look, talk and act like. Which reminds me…

Please don’t forget to like and subscribe so I can keep paying this hooker to look like my second wife.

Five Hacks For Writing Great Dialogue

Daniel Madison1 Comment

For years, I struggled with writing dialogue. I just didn’t seem to have a knack for writing realistic conversations. There were a few possible reasons for this: I didn’t read enough, I avoided conversations with people like creditors and my wives and especially my children, I watched too much porn (though, in fairness, I was considering it as a career at the time and was doing it for research purposes).

Dialogue can be one of the most difficult things for an author to master. But first you might be asking, why use dialogue at all? Can’t I just tell a story with no spoken words, where feelings and thoughts are transmitted telepathically or via some system of interpretative dance? And sure, while many authors have tried and succeeded at this, it’s not something I suggest a novice writer attempt.

We’ll look at ways to write more compelling, genuine, realistic and quotidian dialogue that’s not repetitive and mimics the modus operandi by which real people converse and exchange discourse on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Dialogue serves many important functions in your story: it helps you to show, not tell, it helps distinguish between characters and it puts less words on the page to make your reader read faster and feel like less of a dipshit. Plus, many scientific studies have recently proven that humans express themselves through dialogue. Sure, you can tell a lot about someone from how they dress, what they eat or the color of their skin, but dialogue offers such a wider range of human expression. So, if dialogue is so important, how can we improve its implementation in our writing?

Step One: Listen to people talk in real life.

Now there are many ways you can do this. If you have friends, you should probably consider wiretapping them. I’ll post a link in the comments for some great, unobtrusive devices you can set up in houseplants, stuffed animals, ballpoint pens and so on. But, if you don’t have any friends, and the fact that you’re watching this video makes that likely, there are other solutions. Go to coffee shops, grab a notepad and a number two and jot down everything you hear. From personal experience, I can admit that as a man I had no idea how women talked until I started spying on them.

Step Two: Hold back. Use subtext.

Most people don’t just blurt out everything they are thinking. Both drama and comedy rely on characters withholding information. This creates suspicion, intrigue, and misunderstandings. Let’s look at this snippet from my novel, The Island of Lost Time. “Did you…” Angela asked. “Yes.” “Wow, I can’t believe…” “I know.” “So this is…” “Yes, that’s right.” See what I did there? Though revealing little we learn so much about the characters and their struggle: Angela’s issues with her mom, Dan’s homosexual experience from childhood, their fear of climate change, all in an exchange of dialogue about the surprise painting of child’s bedroom.

Step Three: Pay close attention to your character voice

Each character should have a voice unique to themselves. This will help your slower readers keep track of who’s who. There are different ways to do this. Maybe the smart member of your Italian crime family uses words like “matriculate” and “cajole.” Maybe one character turns every question into another question. Other ideas include: characters who speak entirely in haikus, characters who constantly refer to others as “deer fuckers,” or even characters with accents.

Step Four: Use dialogue to reveal backstory.

Let me just give you some examples of what I mean: “Cancer? Not again.” “That was before I stopped being racist.” and “Looks like herpes wasn’t the only thing you got from that trip to Atlantic City.” Now while these are all from a rejected Young Adult mystery I was working on a few years back, I’m still proud of the way they reveal a lot through a little. When you do this technique, think about past events in these characters lives: family deaths, bare knuckled brawls at a school reunions, or even a really bad sore throat they had during finals week. All of this deepens and humanizes your characters and draws the reader in.

Step Five: Read your dialogue aloud.

Like most of your writing, you won’t really know if it’s good unless you hear it spoken aloud. Again, if you have a friend, try reading it to them. If one of your characters is the voice of God, you can amplify the wiretapping hardware you were using to test it out on them. But again, the friendless still have options. You can blurt it out to people in elevators and see how they respond. Waitresses, baristas and topless dancers walking to their cars after work also make good targets.

Blood Shot Chapter 1 – Play Call

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“Meet me in Wuhan.”
Those were the words that lifted me out of my slumber that early Friday morning. I didn’t need to ask – those dulcet tones could only have come from the mouth of a certain European seductress:
the petite, ever sprightly Fran Blauchamp. I pressed the phone to myear and tried my best to respond to her primordial mating call.
“How you doin’?”
“Come to me.”
“I looked for you. For years. I thought you’d run away to Paris.”
“Oh no, I found a place much more romantic. For starters, it doesn’t smell like the piss of Japanese tourists here.”
Her rapier wit had not diminished with age.
“China,” I said. “Just like we always talked about. Where are you, exactly?”
“I’ll text you the address of my hotel. You’d love it here. It’s hot. The food’s great. Plus, you can do your banking on a Sunday! There’s a flight leaving tonight at seven. There’re two layovers, through Dallas and Pyongyang. Tickets start at $3500.”
Dallas? No, thank you, I thought to myself.
I sat up in bed and closed my eyes. Fran Blauchamp. I felt the imagery pulsing through my temples – the smooth, olive skin, that tropical, private island – the one visible from our Holiday Inn SuperSavers suite – that vagina, white sand beaches, shade from palm trees, two bell boys knife fighting along the docks, the ruffled bedsheets, a three-legged dog, Diet Sprite, more vagina, a bottle of
lube leaking onto a copy of Gideon’s Bible.
“You know I’d love to, Fran. But… it’s complicated.”
“Wuhan – do I really need to say any more to convince you?”
She was right. Memories started pouring in. Thirteen years ago we spent four unforgettable days together in Aruba. Two lonely stars crossing paths in the cosmos. I still thought of her fondly every time I stayed at, walked past, or saw commercials for, hotels.
“Just imagine,” she continued. “You and me. Wuhan, China. The Hong Kong of the East. The Pearl of the Clam. Sin City. The Big Hot and Steamy. Fuck Town. Gateway to the Ass.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like one hell of a tourism board.”
I took a sip of water to calm my nerves. “That covers the nights. But that still leaves our days free, though.”
“Well, we can do what everyone else here does.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, mostly wander around watching people fight with traffic cops.”
“That does sound tempting. But…”
I hesitated. I looked over at the picture on my nightstand. Guilt began to creep up my spine. Then I turned over the pamphlet to feed starving children I knew I was going to ignore. But the guilt
remained as my eyes reached back to the photo of my current girlfriend propped farther along the nightstand.
“But I just can’t. I’m seeing someone now.”
“You mean the 9/11 widow?”
I wasn’t sure how she could’ve known. The guilty tingling worsened. I drank some more water.
“She doesn’t have to know. Make something up. People come to Wuhan on business all the time.”
She was really reaching with that one – I could sense the desperation in her voice. Nobody would ever buy that. I tried to think of excuses. To buy time, I started hacking up phlegm into the
small trash can near my bed. I then decided to go on the offensive. “Is there something wrong, Fran?”
“Of course not. It’s just that, me staying in a hotel and all, I naturally thought of you.”
The tension throughout my body worsened. I started chugging any water I could find to calm myself down. “It’s just… I haven’t seen you in thirteen years, right?”
“Almost fourteen.”
“A lot can happen in fourteen years. People might switch jobs or move to a different house, crazy as that sounds.”
“I know.”
“I looked for you for a long time.”
“I know,” she repeated.
A great silence bore down upon us. I thought I’d hack up some more phlegm to break the icy chill, but my throat was all cleared out. Instead of just tiptoeing around it, I decided to take the ball straight
down the lane, see if I could draw a charge.
“Did I mention I’m dating a 9/11 widow?”
“I actually mentioned that.”
“Well, you know, it’s not like I can just…”
“Of course you can.”
The silence returned. I thought I’d let her bring the ball up the court this time. We played this game of cat-and-mouse for five minutes. She finally relented.
“Do you remember when we met?”
I did. We had met coming off some of the biggest disasters of our lives. Her parents had recently passed in a climbing accident in the Apennines; I had just missed two free throws that cost our team an eighth seed. I suppose when our eyes met across the room of that party we could sense it. Through the lines of tears streaming down her face, I could sense a great sadness.
Of course, I never put much credence in the idea that eyes are the window to the soul. For starters, most scientists will tell you souls can’t even be measured.
(Plus, all the time I’ve spent with hardened criminals, I’ve learned the eyes can be used just as easily to deceive. Like when you got a gun on a guy, and then he looks at something behind you and
yells, but when you turn around, there’s nothing really there and he was just pretending, and now he’s running away.)
Fran had a friend at Holiday Inn corporate who had gotten us a great package deal in Aruba. I ran off with her for four days. We made love. We talked. We shared long walks along the seaside. We got first aid certifications. We became proficient in Mandarin. We finished a game of Risk.
“Duh,” I said finally.
She laughed. A lot. But then her tone changed.
“The pain we shared, that will always be a part of us. The anguish that brought us to embrace, it will never leave us. The despair that you shot inside me, and sometimes in and around my mouth, will forever remain.”
“But we can move on. We can rebuild. It’s what makes us human.”
She paused, and then continued.
“For you, maybe. But I’ve been running a long time. I thought the pieces would be there for me to pick up, once I found the right place. But I don’t think I ever will.”
For some reason, it didn’t seem like she was flirting anymore.
“Forget I called.”
“I want to help you.”
“Don’t worry. This didn’t turn into that kind of call. I guess I just wanted to hear your voice.”
She hung up. It was now approaching midday. I put on my clothes and headed for work.

How To Write Complex Villains (from the HR Department to United Airlines)

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From the cashier who refuses to bag your groceries to the co-worker who threatens to report you just for saying you like the way her dress hangs off her body, villains are an inseparable part of our daily lives. As a writer, villains fill an equally commanding role in your fiction, driving the conflict, defining the hero’s journey and giving your reader that extra little thrill to keep them engaged. In today’s article, we’ll look at ways to create unforgettable villains without resorting to gender, ethnic or class stereotypes no matter how true they might be.

Just like in real-life, villains in fiction come in many forms. For example, we have villains who are shadowy reflections of our protagonist. They might mirror the journey, the experiences, the worldview or the methods of the protagonist. Batman and the Joker are a perfect example of this. For example, they both operate outside the law, they both wear makeup and they both keep a younger sidekick around decked in tight-fitted clothing to distract opponents.

Next, we have the corrupt villain. These are villains who utilize great their power and resources and the mechanisms of the large systems they control to enact their evil. They’re Mafia dons who have the police in their pocket. They’re crooked senators who steal taxpayer money to give Medicare to lazy welfare queens. They’re Chinese people.

Then we have The Force of Nature villains. These are beasts, monsters, zombies, plagues, uncontrollable psychopaths, menstruating women, vampires, Chinese people again, swarms of locusts, Napoleon’s armies, swarms of vampires, tornadoes, despite the title, pretty much all stories about robots or androids, tsunamis, lahars, which are a sort of mudslide full of pyroclastic material and debris which can occur even without being triggered by volcanic activity and threaten the Pacific Northwest in particular, heroin, electricity and the corrupting influence of big boobies.

Finally, we have the anti-villain. These guys go against our protagonist, but actually we kind of end up sympathizing with them because they often make a pretty damn good point. We sympathize with Thanos because making a stupid decision like eradicating half of all life instead of just doubling all resources is totally a brainfart we’d have. We sympathize with Hannibal Lector because being a therapist and listening to people’s problems all day would probably drive us to cannibalism, too. We sympathize with Misery’s Annie Wilkes because who hasn’t wanted break the legs of an author who wrote a book that sucked. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Now, let’s look at some tips to make our villains shine their brightest.

Step One: Choose a real-life model

Famous authors do this all the time. Pennywise was largely inspired by John Wayne Gacy, Vlad the Impaler was the inspiration for Dracula and Monster’s Aileen Wuornos was largely based off of Hilary Clinton. And yes, while people like Clinton, Kamala Harris, AOC or Ilhan Omar would probably inspire great villains,  you don’t have to limit your search to the headlines. In my 2013 thriller Game, Set and Match, the murderer was based on a woman from my tennis club who rudely refused to let me give her pointers.

Step Two: Give them believable and even relatable motivation

In real life, villains don’t need much reason to commit crimes. Child killers, for example, do it because it’s fun and it’s easy. But in fiction, your reader will engage more if the villain has a relatable reason for doing bad things. Maybe they’re out for revenge (Dr. Freeze). Maybe they think watching rich, powerful people kill each other is funny (Iago). Maybe they think it’s better if women aren’t left to their own devices (Handmaid’s Tale). So I suggest thinking of something you want from life and making your villain get it through any means necessary. If your neighbor has a loud dog, make your villain a dog murderer.  If your dealing with rent hikes, make your villain a squatter who refuses to respect property rights.

Step Three: Don’t skimp on the backstory

Most people aren’t born evil. Upbringing and unfortunate circumstances play a large role in nurturing evil in the real world. For example, we all know that Bernie Sanders’s radical and evil Communist policies wouldn’t exist were it not for his brother being gangraped by Rockefellers. In fiction, you can give your villain a tragic backstory or at least depict the conditions that led to their rise. Like how Norman Bates’s overbearing and controlling mother led to his psychosis. Or how Humbert Humbert’s pedophilia was due to him being born in France.

Step Four: Introduce them with a bang

I’ll never forget that first moment I saw Darth Vader, walking down that corridor, trying to stop those Wookies from celebrating Life Day. Give your reader a clear message from the outset that this a bad dude you don’t want to mess with. Have them steal from an orphan. Have them blow up a convent. Have them blow up a convent filled with stolen orphans. Or tone it down and have them do a normal activity, but in a sinister way. Like tai qi in the nude or fencing in the nude.

Six HACKS To Help You Write Faster

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Whether you’re a nonfiction essayist, a novelist who’s trying to finish a manuscript under a deadline, or just a YouTuber trying to write a script for a six-hour video explaining why all the female characters in a Star War or Marvel movie are too woke, everyone wants to write faster.

As someone who’s written over 429 novels, you might assume that writing speed was never a problem for me. But it wasn’t always this way. Back when I was a young man, living on the streets of Phoenix, worried I’d have to sell my body for food, all I had was a desire to get published (and a knowledge of which street corners had the most reliable action after midnight.) Anyway, my first book took me over two years to write, and it was barely over 90 pages.

There were many things that were holding me back, but one thing I want to make clear is that it wasn’t writer’s block. I wrote almost every day, squeezing in quick sessions between hawking fake jewelry outside gas stations. I’ll cover many other tips in the video, but the key problem I had was that I was a perfectionist. I was just certain that my story about a down-on-his-luck graduate student who has to choose between finishing his degree and hunting down the serial killer who murdered his sister was going to launch me to instant critical acclaim. But I soon found out that, in the publishing industry, quantity always trumps quality. We’ll write until our fingers bleed on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Okay, now if you are worried about your writing speed, it may be helpful to start by analyzing why you write slowly in the first place. The following is a list of things that might be slowing down your writing speed:

  • Lack of an outline
  • Not setting a goal, aside from proving that dad doesn’t know what he’s talking about
  • Editing while you write
  • Eating while you write
  • Having a family
  • Edging while you write
  • A keyboard missing the letter “e”
  • Sending veiled threats to haters on social media
  • Using a computer that still runs on Windows XP
  • Ghosts in the hotel in which you’re writing asking you to kill your family
  • Wasting your time watching writing advice videos on YouTube
  • And constantly worrying you’re a piece of shit who will accomplish nothing

Now, what’s a good writing speed? This depends on several things: how old you are, how fat your fingers are, your brain pan, et cetera. But most writers try to get at least 1,000 words a day, which should be easily accomplished in two hours. At that pace, it will only take you 80 days to write an average-sized novel. To put it in perspective, that amount of time is the equivalent of bingeing both seasons Milf Manor three times. Not such a big time commitment when you think about it that way.

Now, let’s look at some ways we can easily get 1000 words in under two hours.

Tip 1 – Reward Yourself For Hitting Certain Word Counts

Humans are, evolutionarily-speaking, rather simple creatures. Like a chimp that agrees to administer a shock to their chimp family member in exchange for a banana, humans are driven by selfish impulses.

It doesn’t have to be a big reward. Maybe a nice cup of coffee, maybe a dessert, maybe a quick episode of Milf Manor. For myself, I set a weekly goal. If I hit 10000 words for the week, I reward myself with a nice relaxing drive past my second wife’s house when I know her new husband isn’t there.

Tip 2 – Set Punishments for Distractions

A writer needs to know what fascist and authoritarian governments have known for a long time: negative reinforcement works.

Be strict about distractions. Turn off your internet while you write. Keep all of your favorite guns out of your writing space. But you have to also set consequences for getting distracted. What I do is have my assistant monitor my computer remotely while I write. If she catches me watching porn, she uses a burner to call the police and say there’s a violent pedophile living at my home address. I find that my fear of incarceration or at least an uncomfortable discussion with the cops keeps me in line while I write.

Tip 3 – Beat Your Keyboard Into Submission

This is a tip which, like many life lessons, I learned from Finding Forrester. Your fingers should be an extension of the confidence you have in your writing. Much like saying your own name repeatedly while having sex with someone, your brain will subconsciously think you’re doing a good job and make you perform better. I go through at least two or three typewriters while writing each one of my books.

Tip 4 – Use Focus Apps

If you don’t want to go so far as risking your incarceration, there are apps which can help with distractions. My favorite is a Russian one called Freedom Blocker. It locks your computer to stop you from looking at news articles while also emitting a type of white noise that is supposed to suppress all thought outside of the task at hand. It’s been scientifically tested on labor camp detainees and you’ll really notice a difference.

Tip 5 – Set a Marathon Day (Or Marathon Fortnight)

Sometimes just having a routine isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to make a big push. You can get 10 or 20 thousand words down so long as you can convince your wives you have a devastating illness that your kids haven’t been vaccinated for yet, and if you haven’t used the “my grandpa died” excuse twice already with your boss.

Tip 6 – Get Healthy

Speaking of death and illnesses, lots of writers forget how important your bodily health is to your mind. I wasn’t like this as a young man, but now I find that jogging helps me sleep better, reduces my real illnesses so I don’t miss writing days and I’m much less distracted by all the horrible trauma my father and the whore who raised me inflicted upon me. And think about it. Is it a coincidence that George RR Martin hasn’t finished A Song of Fire and Ice and that he looks like this?

“Your Honor, I Only Did What I Did Because I Didn’t Think I’d Get Caught”

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Photo by Donald Tong: https://www.pexels.com/photo/rear-view-of-a-silhouette-man-in-window-143580/

“I didn’t mean for it to end like this. I realize that now as I stand before you, humbled, manacled, stripped of my dignity, deprived of my freedom. No, your Honor, despite what you and others may think, if I could turn back time I would absolutely keep committing crimes for decades while living a life of comparative comfort and luxury.”

“I’ll admit I made mistakes. Looking back, I’d say the most obvious one was getting caught. I shouldn’t have answered that door when the police arrived with their search warrant. And I shouldn’t have used my real identity to register those P.O. boxes. And I most certainly shouldn’t have used my work computer to login as the admin for the websites connected to my Iraqi dinar mail fraud scheme. It shames me to think I didn’t hide my tracks better.”

“However, your Honor, I hope the court understands I took no pleasure in getting caught. Being handcuffed and imprisoned gave me no joy. I was intransigent during all my interrogations, disrespectful throughout these proceedings, and I soiled myself behind closed doors when my court-appointed attorney insisted I take a plea deal, first out of fear and later just to spite him.”

“Speaking of my attorney, he has appealed for leniency under false pretenses. He says because I am a first-time offender, my sentence should be reduced. On the contrary, my present incarceration is the only thing keeping me from committing more crimes. I enjoy crimes and have enjoyed them for a long time. I enjoyed them up until the police officer punched me in the face for spitting all over the windows of his squad car.”

“However, your Honor, while I knew there might be consequences for my actions, I really, really hoped there wouldn’t be. If you knew what my childhood was like, you’d understand. Framing my best friend for a hit-and-run, stealing my mother’s money and blaming it on my Portuguese au pair, having my father’s interns falsify my grades when applying to Duke: these experiences, while they don’t excuse my behavior, will hopefully explain why I thought I could get away with it.”

“As for the families I’ve affected, I can’t help but not think about them. After all, they didn’t get caught. They didn’t get their freedom taken away, didn’t bruise their spine trying to jump over the bailiff and escape the court house, and they didn’t lose their houses. Well, except for the ones who went all in and converted their life savings into a worthless currency.”

“The past is the past, though, and I only have the power to change my future. I promise to strive for personal reform. I hope prison gives me the opportunity to make connections and learn about other, more lucrative criminal schemes. I hope to eventually assume a position of leadership so I can counsel others like myself, those who want nothing more than to not get caught a second time.”

“Thank you, your Honor, for your time and patience. I hope you understand that when I said I’d break into your house and rob you blind the moment I got out of prison, I was only speaking figuratively. As for my racially-insensitive outbursts, I think we can chalk that up to my ignorance of proper legal procedure.”

“The only other thing I ask for is your forgiveness. And maybe letting it slide this time.”

How Writers Can Deal With Stalkers

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Today’s article is the first in our Platinum Club Series, which will cover topics targeting the more successful subscribers of channel, established writers who are starting to see some solid book sales. We’ll cover topics from investing your book revenue in high-yield bonds to what to do with a dead hooker to what to do with an alive hooker.

Authors who’ve sold 1,000 copies of their book will gain immediate membership in our Platinum Club. But for those who know their big break is right around the corner and want to plan ahead, you can also gain membership by purchasing five D&E Publishing titles and submitting the receipts to my sister’s son Bradley, at this email.

totallyrealemailaddress@notafake.com

And we’ll kick off the series with one of the first markers of writing success: being followed by a dangerous, unstable stranger. Having a stalker can be a terrifying and flattering experience, and it can be tough to balance your fear of being gunned down in your doorway with your need to be constantly praised. We’ll keep our eyes open and move to an undisclosed location, on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now, the first question you might have is, John, haven’t the internet, Covid, the obesity epidemic and rising gas prices moved stalking online now? Excellent question but you’re getting ahead of me. We’ll talk about online stalking in a bit, but for the sake of this video, we’ll assume you’re popular enough (or at least have a hot enough mouth) to get another human to overcome all of those obstacles (and the increasingly inclement weather produced by climate change) to follow you to your home.

Today’s video will be broken into four parts:

  • Identifying if you’re being stalked
  • Distancing yourself
  • Collecting evidence
  • Asking for help

What is stalking?

According to the judge at my second wife and my custody hearing, stalking is repeated and unwanted contact. But that can be vague. After all, if that were true, I’d never legally be able to hire anyone.

And when I first made it big, I often confused my postal carrier and the local census worker as a stalker. But unlike those guys, a stalker needs to be someone who follows you even after you’ve put up some resistance.

Types of stalkers

Most stalkers want the same thing the rest of us do: love. If you’re a man like me, with an incredible sex drive, it can be difficult to know you’re being stalked by a pretty woman.

Let me share a story: I knew this woman once, a large breasted college student named Daphne who also happened to be double-jointed. Daphne was a big fan and introduced herself to me after I gave a reading on campus. We ended up having sex that night, and though I didn’t realize it at the time, that’s when the stalking began.

She’d make me take her to restaurants and movies, and she’d complain if we didn’t talk for at least thirty minutes every day. She’d come over to my house after work and even suggested moving in with me and paying her share of the rent. I kept having sex with her obviously. But if I had realized how much danger I was putting myself in, I might have acted differently. My advice: Don’t let the people you are intimate with try to be a part of your life.

Though less common, there are other types of stalkers. Death obsessives who wanted to involve you in their murder-suicide, cannibals, who just want a taste of greatness, and child stalkers, who will claim you impregnated their mom 15 years ago before you switched towns.

Avoid Unintentional Signs or Messages

So, once you realize you’re being stalked, it’s important you don’t escalate the situation. When I came on Daphne’s face or did other things I can’t mention on this channel, I was symbolically suggesting that I didn’t mind being stalked.

The best thing to do is just stay completely silent, otherwise you might erroneously send mixed messages. A simple phrase like “Go away” might seem straightforward enough, but to a stalker only proficient in Choctaw, they might assume that you meant “Explore my body.”

Hide Your Personal Information

When I was a hungry young writer, I put my phone number and email address on the front cover of all my books. At the time, it seemed like the easiest way to get the attention of literary agents and publishers. I stopped doing that once I started selling my books at actual bookstores, but unfortunately, a few enterprising fans found the few copies of those early books that weren’t incinerated. And while I don’t think I would’ve minded receiving daily locks of Daphne’s hair in the mail, you might not know where that hair is coming from. But speaking of…

Collecting evidence

If a stalking case gets really out of hand, you might need to do a little stalking back at them. Keep any messages they send you. Record any phone calls. Follow them to their home. Turn it into a descriptive writing exercise, if you don’t want to waste precious writing time.

In Daphne’s case, I memorized the locations of all the moles on her body, the location of her parents’ summer house, and I even collected a sizeable amount of her urine. (Which is something I do for all my female companions, stalker or otherwise, just so I can get a third-party pregnancy test.)

Contact the authorities

If you have a dog you don’t particularly like, you could consider calling the police. While they’ll most likely ignore you, especially if you’re a woman, it will at least be nice to get all your frustrations off your chest. And it’s certainly cheaper than therapy.

Notify your friends, family and co-workers

This one comes with a caveat. If you are being cyberstalked, it’s very likely that you actually know the person who is doing it. It could be a family member who’s upset you didn’t include their ideas in your latest novel, or a coworker who doesn’t understand why you used a phony cancer GoFundMe to fund your marketing campaign.

If you are that rare type of writer with a loving family and supportive friends, you could enlist them to help you scare the stalker away. If you don’t have that, and YouTube analytics tells me it’s likely, you could also post about it on social media.

Of course, your followers could help you, but this could also lead to a multitude of copycat stalkers. If you are very lucky, it may even lead to some sort of battle royale situation, where, after days of unspeakable bloodshed, one final stalker reigns supreme, and sickened by the senseless violence, your champion stalker realizes the error of their ways and decides to walk the Earth to in search of meaning.

How to Write Strong Female Characters

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Compelling characters come in all shapes and sizes but for a long time writers assumed that shape was generally 176 centimeters, 71 kilos, with a high center of gravity and without the ability to ovulate. In the past few years however, writers have come to realize people are willing to consume literature with conflicts centering around characters who are female. We’ll look at ways to create strong compelling, independent characters that just happen to have large breasts on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now, you might be thinking, hey John, why are you doing this video? Haven’t there been many great examples of female characters in hundreds of years of English fiction? Well, yes and no. While you will find some female characters in works by Shakespeare, Milton and Jane Austen, they aren’t what we’d call psychologically complex. Women in these stories were often docile damsels (Elizabeth Bennet), one-dimensional witches (Lady Scottish Play) or nagging shrews (Joan of Arc).

In most of these stories, the female characters weren’t given much to do. The largest conflict they might face is whether or not they should have sex with their cousin. Or they were simply female versions of male characters (Miss Marple) sold to prevent nineteenth and early twentieth century housewives from succumbing to boredom and turning to laudanum.

However, with advances in technology like the birth control pill, the Hitachi vibrator and the iPhone, things have changed. Readers today want complex female protagonists. Some even want women to spend a whole scene with no males present, though personally I find that a bit stifling as a writer. So what does our strong modern female look like?

She should have the following characteristics. First, she should have her own opinions. Not just about what to cook for dinner or which abortion doctor is her favorite, but even for things like battle strategy or which whiskey pairs well with which cigar. Her unique value system should guide her decisions and often times those might take her in the wrong direction, but at least it gets her out of the house.

Second, she should be her own person. That doesn’t mean she should be totally independent necessarily. If you want to give your female protagonist a husband, just make sure she maintains that independence by cheating on him a lot. Or if you go the other way and make her part of a satanic lesbian coven, maybe she manifests her independence by taking a painting class at the learning annex.

Thirdly, she should have a certain level of toughness. And not just the kind of toughness that comes from enduring childbirth or dealing with your clique of friends constantly critiquing your body weight. This kind of toughness could be, for example, a defense attorney building a case for a man she knew to be a pedophile who also was her youth volleyball coach and father. In my espionage thriller, 39 Days to Doomsday, for example, my female protagonist, an intelligence official, has to bear the guilt of blowing up 45 Palestinian villages in her search for the head of Hamas.

Now that we’ve established what a strong female character is, I have four tips to help you create one on your own.

Step One: Give her flaws

Like their male counterparts, flawed females make for compelling protagonists. Try to avoid cliches, like making her bad at pull ups or mentioning she earns 77 percent what her male co-workers do. You could give her a flaw irrespective of gender, one that you’d give any male protagonist. For example, she could get sexual gratification from fighting with or spitting on strangers on public transit. Or you could give her something uniquely female, but with more originality. For example, in my 2003 Western Whither the Roses Blow, my female lead had ovarian cancer.

Step Two: Give her female allies

When I was starting out as a writer and trying to find ways to implement female characters in my writing, it was difficult writing one female surrounded by a cast of males and not have it devolve into a gangbang. The best way around this is to surround her with other females, unless of course your book is about a satanic lesbian coven. Some good pairings include: mother-daughter, sister-sister, grandmother-aunt, first cousin-second cousin once removed, pregnant woman-lamaze instructor. Try to have them talk about things women might discuss in real life that don’t specifically revolve around men, like whaling and how to deal with the threat of Sharia law.

Step Three: Base your female characters on someone you know

The problem a lot of male and even some female writers have is that they try to base their characters on what they’ve seen in movies. But we all know Hollywood actresses and models aren’t exactly emblematic of actual womanhood. In real life, most women are fat, old, decrepit, missing teeth, and just generally unpleasant to look at.

Mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers are a great place to start. But if you’re like me and all of those have died, you still have options. You can hire prostitutes, for example, not for sexual services but for interesting anecdotes. Normal rates still apply, but you’ll be amazed at how the depth of human despair becomes a goldmine for you as a writer. If money is an issue, you can consider joining support groups under false pretenses and only listening to the women.

Step Four: If you have to dwell on her body parts, make it integral to the story

In my first 100 novels, I bestowed all 25 women with speaking parts double-d breasts and I hadn’t even realized it until a female friend pointed it out. As a male writer, it was an honest and understandable mistake, but something you should consciously try to avoid.

However, if you’re too far along in the story and you’ve already got some wonderfully vivid prose depicting your heroine’s mammary abundance that you don’t want to delete, find a way to make it pay off in the third act. Perhaps her d cups take a bullet for a friend. Or perhaps they lead to her downfall, for instance, a refusal to get breast reduction surgery makes her not able escape the villain’s lair.