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What Hiring A Prostitute To Pretend To Be My Ex-Wife Taught Me About Writing Romance Novels

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

I have some bad news for fans of the channel: John Lazarus is no longer in a relationship. The prostitute I’ve paying to look, act and talk like my second wife has decided she’s no longer willing to provide me with her services.

It’s a tough thing to say goodbye to someone you still love. All those happy memories we shared — dinners together, movie nights, meetings with plastic surgeons and dialect coaches – just bring me pain and sadness now.

Unfortunately, Destiny decided it was time we moved our separate ways. So much time spent pretending to be someone she wasn’t caused her to lose her own sense of identity, it seems. Once she started dreaming as my second wife, she knew it was time to give nursing school another shot.  

As a romance writer, you will similarly construct a romantic identity for your characters in much the way I did for Destiny. In this article, I will show you how the mistakes I made with her are probably very similar to the mistakes many aspiring writers make when attempting their first romance novel. We’ll try to stop glamourizing underage relationships on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

~

So, if you’re new to the channel, I’ll just give you a little bit of background. I have been married three times in my life, but my second wife was definitely my favorite. But that’s not just because my first wife was a serial bigamist who was already married to several other people, or because my third wife was my therapist who used hypnosis and other forms of psychological manipulation to make me fall in love with her.

Cindy was simply a wonderful woman. And I’m not just talking about a pair that defied gravity or the fact that she introduced me to pegging. Cindy taught me how to cook. She convinced me to start my own publishing firm. She was instrumental in removing my dad from his burial plot, selling the plot to fund a down payment for a new house and then dumping him at sea. She was also the only woman I never cheated on.

But unfortunately, this storybook romance wasn’t meant to last. We parted after two short years together. While my love for her remained strong, she didn’t feel the same way. I’ve had over a decade to wonder what went wrong. Perhaps I was too wrapped up in my writing. Perhaps I was too clingy. Perhaps the fact that her new husband was taller, younger, richer and had more friends than me was my undoing.

In any case, that’s not especially important for the purposes of this article. Because I’m actually here to talk about Destiny, the escort I’ve spent the past six months forcing to look, talk and act like Cindy.

Step One: Forcing Chemistry Instead of Building It

This of course relates to our key writing rule: “Show, don’t tell.” You can’t tell your reader that your characters are in love, you need to show them interacting in an organic way that shows them building chemistry.

If you want to write a story about a reformed Islamic terrorist who falls in love with a female Silicon Valley CFO, that’s fine. “Opposites attract” is a great trope. But you’ve got to find a way to make their connection make sense. Perhaps they slowly bond over their love of Colin Firth movies or something.

Looking back, I realize I forced things with Destiny. The speech therapy is one thing, but making her listen to tapes of Cindy’s voicemails while she slept was too much. Maybe I could’ve called her Destiny on Mondays-Fridays and only forced her to pretend to be Cindy on the weekends.

Step Two: Making One Character Passive in the Relationship

Relationships aren’t about one person seizing control and making all of the choices; this isn’t the state of American democracy in 2025.

And this isn’t just a problem with male writers. You’d be surprised how many manuscripts I get from female writers whose male love interest in their novel is basically a dildo with nice hair who also happens to be a ghost.

I now realize I should’ve given Destiny more agency in our relationship. I should’ve let her choose her own restaurants instead of screaming that “Cindy didn’t like Italian.” I should’ve let her buy that boat even though Cindy was terrified of water because her brother drowned when she was five.

Step Three: Writing Relationships Without Commonalities

Your characters need to be together for a reason. Sure, in real life, people might be put together solely because they’re part of the Chinese government’s attempt to create a superrace of excellent basketball players, but your reader wants your couple to bond over something they share.

They shouldn’t be carbon copies of each other, obviously. They don’t have to love the same music or types of porn. But you still need to make that connection. In my novel Above the Rim, it was shared sexual experiences in basketball arenas. In Heartland, it was the shared belief that 9/11 was an inside job.

When I followed her on her days off, I saw that Destiny was into gardening and visiting her family and volunteering at a dog shelter. Those are all things I wouldn’t dream of doing.

Step Four: Not Allowing For Vulnerability

Human beings are frail things. We aren’t like the common salamander; we can’t survive if our head gets cut off.

It’s important that both members of your couple show weakness and fragility. For example, maybe she had both of her hands chopped off by a helicopter. Maybe he’s a control freak who wiretaps everyone, even his best friends and himself.

It’s clear I expected Destiny not to be the perfect woman but the perfect approximation of Cindy. And I expected myself to be perfect as well. One time, I accidentally called her Destiny while we were having sex. This was particularly egregious because I usually only shout my own name during sex. Anyway, I locked myself in a room for a day after watching home movies of Cindy and I.

Step Five: Having Contrived Conflict for the Sake of Conflict

I mean, sure, in real life couples fight. They slap each other. They throw drinks in each other’s faces. They break each other’s garage doors. They sneak devices that emit chirping sounds once every five minutes under their bed and pretend they can’t hear the sound. That’s all fine and normal.

But in your story, conflict must arise organically. Characters need to remain in character.

After Destiny and I settled into our groove and she really got the character of Cindy down, I tried to reenact a fight Cindy and I had several years earlier. The problem was, because of Destiny’s profession, she was cool with taking a cumshot anywhere. So she wasn’t able to channel Cindy’s rage. The next two days of silence and the following “make up” sex just felt so forced.

Step Six: Portraying Abusive Behavior As Romantic

While this doesn’t really relate to my situation with Destiny, you should try to avoid this. I see this way too often in romance novels.

Your Guide to Book Publicity (that’s legal in most countries)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

From the moment we’re born, we simply want one thing: to be recognized and acknowledged. As we go through life, our end game passes from breastmilk to star stickers to disappointing, booze-fueled sexual encounters, but the underlying need to have our existence recognized never changes. For writers, who are often neglected and emotionally stunted, this need is even stronger. Our stories are there to do what our flabby bodies and off-putting personalities never could. All of this is to say, a good publicity campaign can help prove your life wasn’t a complete waste of time and therefore is a fairly important skill to have as an author.  

However, book publicity isn’t like a son or daughter’s graduation party; you can’t just scream and cry until people pay attention to you. It requires planning, connections and a strong awareness of your strengths as a writer. We’ll lie about our background and make empty promises on this edition of Stories’ Matter.  

~

Finishing a novel is one of the most bittersweet moments in life for an author. On the one hand, you’ve finally completed something that’s taken you months, maybe years. There’s this concrete product into which you’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears. On the other hand, you worry that nobody will ever actually read it and it may not have been worth neglecting things like your job and family, who, come to think of it, you haven’t seen for weeks. 

But with a proper book publicity plan and media pitch, you can relax a bit. Even the most obscure, unappealing book that’s self-published can sell in today’s market with the right publicity. To prove this point, I’ll take you through how I marketed my neo-noir thriller Sam I Am, a story about a man with Down’s syndrome who helps the police catch a famous serial killer.  

Step One: Make it About Yourself

As you might’ve noticed from this channel, I hardly ever spend any time talking about my actual books, but focus on my personal life, everything from the fire that destroyed my publishing company to why my second wife was the most exciting woman I’ve ever been with sexually. My most faithful viewers have probably learned more about the ins and outs of restraining orders than they have about plot structure. However, I do this for a reason and not just because making these videos is cheaper than therapy.  

We’re much more drawn to people than we are to books. For example, most people relish the fantasy of having a drink with Hemmingway or watching the Fitzgerald’s belittle each other than actually reading any of their books.  

So let your fans know about you and your expertise. And this is a point I’ll keep coming back to: It’s okay to lie. When I wrote Sam I Am, my book publicity materials said I was inspired by my son Jefferson, who had Down’s syndrome. Personal connections like these will endear your audience to you. Truth told, I’m not quite sure what was wrong with Jefferson. 

Step Two – Give Expert Interviews

With all this in mind, it’s important you get yourself out there. And one great way is to give expert interviews to the media. You could do book blogs. Write personal essays for online magazines.  Local TV news is desperate to fill the air with something that isn’t tips on how to pack a suitcase.  

Now, you might be thinking, John, I’m not an expert in anything. Who will want to listen to me? Fortunately, you’re in luck. We are currently living in a golden age for dangerously unqualified people pretending to know what they’re doing.  

For Sam I Am, my big boost came from an interview I gave with a local radio station where I claimed people with Down’s syndrome have been unfairly maligned and marginalized and with the right care and guidance they can and have assumed many professional roles in our society. Of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time and was just making it up, but it turns out I was actually right.  

Step Three: Offer Special Giveaways and Promotions

Fans of the channel know I don’t believe in giving away anything for free. Hell, because of all the free copies of Sam I Am WKXP made me bring to their studio for my interview, I made sure to raid their green room. I even took the boxes of disposable forks and knives from the cupboards.  

But there are workarounds. You can have a flash sale that lasts only thirty seconds and if people complain, just say you had your clock set to Burmese time. To entice readers, post free versions of your book online but with every other word redacted.  

Here are some other useful tips: 

Put subliminal messages in your Tik Tok or YouTube videos 

Get plastic surgery to make yourself more camera friendly 

Hint that your book will help your reader get laid  

Fake a British accent to make yourself sound more intelligent 

Mail your book to media producers. And use unmarked packages to make it more of a surprise.  

How to Write Diverse Characters (that even racists and misogynists will love)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Whenever I start my writing workshops at the learning annex, one of the first questions students always ask me, after “Is this class fee refundable,” is “Is it okay to write about characters of a different race or sexual orientation?”

It’s a tough world out there right now. In addition to worrying about honing your skills, trying to get your name out there and getting cease and desist letters from your family to stop putting personal information about them in your YouTube videos, you also have to worry about getting cancelled.

You might feel like you wrote the perfect first page, one that was poetic and enticing and instantly draws the reader into your unique world, but after you think more about it, you get anxious that the woke mob will go after you for using the N-word six times.  In today’s video, I’ll show you how even the straightest, whitest Oberlin graduate who grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis can write about any race, creed, gender or sexual identity. We’re going to put on our metaphorical blackface on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Race, religion, LGBT issues… lots of writers want to shy away from these topics. But the whole reason you’re a writer is to explore the unexplored and represent the underrepresented. We need more books about unique people and unique perspectives. Plus, it’s unfair to ask writers to limit their writing to their own personal experience. If that were the case, nobody from Omaha could ever succeed because who the hell wants to read a book set in modern-day Nebraska?

Before I get to the advice, I want you to relax. Acknowledge your discomfort, but be open to everything. We’ll never make any progress if we embrace our ignorance. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions in the comments. Men, don’t be afraid to ask our female viewership how a vagina works. Black people, don’t be afraid to ask our Chinese, Japanese and Korean viewership what the different slurs for “blacks” are in their native language so you can finally know what those people at the laundromat are really saying.

Step One: Do your research

As with anything else you write, a good story begins with great research. Don’t even think about race, gender or identity for a minute. Pretend you’re a Mormon who wants to write a book about an alcoholic. How would you go about doing it? Now, if it were me, I might do a few different things. I’d watch home movies of my father. I’d attend local AA meetings under false pretenses to get ideas. I’d hang out under a bridge at night. And in fact, these are all things I did when I wrote Plastered Bastard, a revenge thriller about a serial vehicle manslaughter perpetrator.

So when you are writing about another race, you need to come to know that race very well. Do the things you might think a person of that race does. Listen to recorded speeches of beloved political leaders, for example. Watch gay porn. Watch anime. Email your manuscript to someone in your office of that race, even if you don’t know them very well, to get their input. And if they’re a janitor without an email address, print out a copy and put it in their utility shed, as I’ve often done.

Step Two: Describe Your Characters in Detail – When I was teaching at the learning annex, I can’t tell you how many people would give me vivid, detailed descriptions of their white characters while the minority characters were just Black or Asian and the reader was supposed to fill in the blanks. Whenever I came across this, not only did I make this person write an apology to each member of the class, but I also made them wear a sandwich board that said “Ignorant Racist” for the rest of the lesson.

Let’s take an example.

Look at this woman. How would you describe her? Would black suffice? I don’t think so. I would describe her body as voluptuous and her lips as pouty and full. I would say that “her hair was shiny and silken and I wanted her to stand over me, completely naked, bending down and dangling the hair so it was just gently tickling the skin on my chest until I reached orgasm.”

Step Three: Don’t Be Ambiguous

For a writer, specificity is everything. In addition to your descriptions,  this also applies to your diverse characters’ backgrounds. Your character should never just be Native American or Mexican. Are they from the hills of Sinaloa or the slums of Juarez? It doesn’t just apply to race. When I write gay men, the first decision I have to make is if he’s a top or a bottom. Then I ask, Does he generate the power or is he just receiving the power? Does he prefer reach arounds or is he willing to let the release come of its own accord?

Step Four: Avoid Savior Narratives

At the learning annex, I used to have this one student. We’ll just call him Jeff Stanley Wilson. Though he was an older guy, he was about as woke as a boomer gets. He followed all of the above rules pretty well and created some diverse, three dimensional characters of color and other sexual orientations. But Jeff’s problem was his heroes were always white males. And they also were described exactly the way he looked, bald head, glasses and six foot seven. And they were also all named Jeff Stanley Wilson.

I always told Jeff that he was limiting himself as a writer by doing this. Sure, like Jeff you may write as a kind of wish-fulfillment to forget that your wife left you and your son was killed by a drunk driver, but it sends the wrong message to say that people of color rely on whites to be saved. And it’s just not very true to life. I mean, look at… all of history.

I Wrote 51 Books in One Year… Here’s What I Learned

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

If there’s one mistake I’ve made in this series, it’s that I haven’t told you enough about myself. Any asshole can get on the internet and give you writing advice with zero credentials. Why should you trust me?

After all, I don’t show my face and I use a pseudonym and, if you listen closely, I frequently have the faint sounds of screaming in the background audio of my videos I can’t edit out. But the truth of the matter is, there’s a lot to be learned from my twenty-five years of experience as a writer, from both my successes and my failures.

In today’s video, we’ll take a deep dive into the most productive year of my career and I’ll share the things I learned about productivity, the elements of fiction and crippling drug addiction. And if nothing else, you’ll be able to identify the warning signs that someone is secretly poisoning you. Let’s ink up our pens and put on our writing gloves to prevent pussing blisters on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

~

Let me set the scene. The year is 2008. The global financial crisis had displaced thousands of hard-working investment bankers and hedge fund managers. America was well on its way to electing its first half-Kenyan president. And Hawthorn had shocked the world and won the AFL grand final.

This was about one decade into my career. As fans of the channel will know, the very beginning of my career was bumpy. I made the rookie mistake of working with the first publisher who would have me, a fringe publisher with no offices who wanted to publish my series of novels about serial killers who brutalize women for all the wrong reasons. And then my second publisher, while more reputable, had set it up so I lost money on every book I sold.

Then, in 2003, into my life came Tabitha Cartwright. Because of certain legal agreements, I can’t go into too many specifics about our relationship, but despite how things ended, it was certainly the most fruitful collaboration of career. She was, just to give an example, the first person who told me I shouldn’t endow all my female characters with DD breasts.

I finally was able to write a book that sold more than 1000 copies. And I grew immensely as a writer, with a much better understanding of narrative convention, how to market my books and myself, how to speak to publishers. Soon, I was churning out books like L. Ron Hubbard possessed by the spirit of Xenu himself. In the final year, 2008, I wrote 51. Here’s what I learned:

Lesson 1: It all starts with a strict routine

As a writer, it’s not enough to want it. You can say you’re determined all you want. The junkies at the support group I’ve joined under false pretenses to get ideas for my writing say it all the time before they inevitably relapse.

But having a strict routine enforces determination. You can see my video on my writing routine here. To paraphrase, you should design a routine that provides the following things: time to write, ways to make writing your happy place, time to edit and…

Lesson 2: Punishment for not following your routine

You can’t let life get in the way of a good idea. Think of what our world might be like if Einstein hadn’t been absolutely revolting to his wife so he could focus on his work.

But it’s not enough to miss recitals or funerals and stay home to write. You need a concrete method for making sure you meet your deadlines. Some people might hook up car batteries to their body and their alarm clock, but I’m not a science guy. As I told you in my writer’s block video, the most effective way to stick to a deadline is to hire ex-cons to inflict physical punishment for missing deadlines.

I got the idea from my loan shark and it worked wonders. Make sure you set clear rules and boundaries. Obviously, you don’t want your fingers broken or that would defeat the whole purpose. But if they rough your face just enough to avoid needing to see the doctor, you’ll find yourself motivated.

Lesson 3: Make sure your POV is consistent

Lots of writers worry about plot holes or creating snappy dialogue. But almost nobody realizes the importance of having a consistent POV that serves a specific function.

Maybe it was because I was writing 15,000 words every day and only getting up when I hallucinated that somebody was knocking on my door, but I would slide between third-person omniscient and third-person limited often.

Lesson 4: Big ideas are more important than details or spelling errors or turning in your final manuscript on the back of horse race pick slips

Whether you’re writing for thirty minutes a day after work or you’re writing all night just to avoid you sleep paralysis demon, keep in mind that publishers and consumers care about the big picture. A unique hook will draw more readers than a completely unfinished chapter will push them away. At least with the latter, you can disguise it as a metaphor.

Lesson 5: There are a lot of legal amphetamines

So after Book 30, even I was a little surprised by my own productivity. I mean, I knew story structure in and out and I also didn’t have to cook or clean or bathe myself because Tabitha had hired a maid to do all that for me.

I was always driven and never had the most normal sleep patterns, but it did seem strange to be awake for 72 straight hours and then crash for the following 16. And it turns out the aspirin the maid was giving me was actually an amphetamine responsible for my loss of sleep.

When I confronted Tabitha, she said it was legal, took me to the pharmacy where she bought it and said it was no different than putting her dog’s heart worm medication in his biscuits.

If I wasn’t so horribly addicted by that point, I probably would’ve gotten mad.

Lesson 6: Sleep Deprivation can lead to memory loss

Just like a porn star and calculus teacher, a writer needs to know their limits. Mine were thrust upon me. Books 32 to 47 are all lost to memory. The only evidence I have of those few months is the final product of 15 very poorly written novels and a very terrible Bernie Madoff Halloween costume.

I’m pretty sure I stopped taking the drug at some point during this period only due to the fact that I am not dead. To this day, I’m still not sure if was through sheer willpower or if Tabitha simply realized my books weren’t selling enough to pay for the pills, the maid and the baby I somehow put inside her.

Anyway, if you’re going to write 51 books this year, make sure to take care of your physical and mental well-being.

The Secret To Writing Great Cliffhangers Is…

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

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

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

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

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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.

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.