(NOTE: the following series of tips originally appeared on my Facebook and Twitter accounts)
For no real reason, I’ve
decided to start typing up some of my advice to writers. I think it’s a
worthwhile goal because one always sees such advice online but usually it’s
just the same bromides being repeated over and over again (you know, “Type
1,000 words a day even if you have no ideas and it’s crap”), whereas I
(hopefully!) approach it from a more slightly askew point-of-view. My only real
credentials is the fact that I’ve written a great number of books in my life,
some of which have even been published (I also won the Young Author Award twice
in my schoolboy days, for what that’s worth), so I like to think I know a wee
bit about what I’m talking about. So, with that in mind (and I should stress
that these are merely my own opinions):
James Champagne’s Writing Tips #1: Text
Appearance
When it comes to
typing out the actual text in your word processor of choice (I myself just use the
standard Microsoft Word) I find appearance is important. Specifically I almost
always use 1.5 spacing and ALWAYS do the justified margins. To my eyes this
gives the text a cleaner and more professional appearance and looks more like
how an actual book would appear if it were published in the real world. This
might seem to some like a pointlessly trivial thing, but I think it can provide
the writer with a subtle yet beneficial psychological boost: the leap from “This
looks like something that might be
published” to something that IS actually published isn’t as big as one might
think, and positive thinking is important. . . if you go into a project
constantly thinking, “Why am I wasting my time with this, no one will ever
publish it,” you possibly create a sort of negative and vampiric feedback loop,
and fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy. While on the subject, self-confidence
is key: nothing is worse than when you’re reading a book or a story and you can
tell that the author has little confidence in their own work, whereas when you
read a book that you know is good and you can tell that the author knew that
too, well. . .
James Champagne’s Writing Tips #2: Fake It
Till You Make It
When I was in my 20’s,
in my (ahem) “Chaos Magi(k)ian” phase, I read a book called LIBER KAOS by Peter
J. Carroll (of LIBER NULL & PSYCHONAUT fame) and was intrigued by this bit
of advice that he gave to the aspiring magician: “In Chaos Rituals you Fake it
till you Make it, to obtain the power that a belief can provide.” This useful
advice I’ve applied to various areas of my own life, including writing. One
thing I like to do is, when submitting author bios to anthologies that I’ve
appeared in, to mention the names of future unpublished books as “forthcoming.”
I do this even for books that have no publishers lined up and aren’t even really
close to forthcoming at all. Why, you might ask?
Well, first off it
creates some initial buzz for said forthcoming book. If the reader who reads
your story and likes it then reads your author bio and sees you have a new book
coming out, they might get excited by that and this will start to generate some
positive energy towards it, which I believe the Universe notices. This also
stretches into the domain of magic, as well. It’s well-known that I have a deep
interest in the history and culture of Ancient Egypt, and the Egyptians of
those days were some of the world’s first magicians. The Ancient Egyptians
generally believed that words had an almost magical power, that by
saying/writing things you could make them manifest in reality, and much of
their spells were actually closer to our modern culture’s techniques of
self-affirmations (for example: “I will catch many fish today” or “I will not
consume my own feces in the Western Lands”). And as Alan Moore noted in an
essay some years ago, “Crowley also points out the connection that exists
between a grimoire and a grammar, between casting spells and spelling; goes so
far as to admit, at one point, that the greater part of magical activity lies
in simply writing about it. Clearly there is a reason why Hermes and Thoth, the
Gods of Magic, should be simultaneously the Gods of Writing.” Which is a long,
pretentious and roundabout way of saying that by listing a future book as “forthcoming”
and having it then printed in a book that other people read, other people will
believe it as well, and you can almost Will it into existence . . . seriously,
I’ve done this 3 times now and in all 3 cases the books listed as “forthcoming”
have either been published (or will be published).
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #3: Further Thoughts on Author Bios
Before
moving on to more pressing matters, I would like to add a few more thoughts on
the subject of writing one’s author bio. Despite my apathy towards minimalism
in general, I feel with author bios that it’s best to err on the side of
caution and that maybe less is more and one doesn’t want to go overboard. To
wit, some writers tend to try too hard to make themselves sound exotic and
interesting, which, I think, betrays a lack of professionalism (and I speak from
experience here, as in my very earliest publishing efforts I too was guilty of
this from time-to-time). I’m reminded of a funny scene from Umberto Eco’s novel
FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM, where a character mentions how serious/famous writers tend
to have very short and to-the-point bios, whereas neophytes and wannabees have
long-winded over-the-top “colorful” entries.
So,
I think the ideal author bio should provide a list of one’s previous (and don’t
forget forthcoming!) works, maybe mention a few anthologies that one has
appeared in and/or any literary awards one has won, and perhaps one or two
autobiographical facts (my preferences are usually to mention the year I was
born and the state that I live in . . . but for the love of the gods, DON’T
boast about your former menial jobs, no one cares that you used to be a
line-cook!). It doesn’t take much practice to master the art of writing concise
author bios, but it does help to carefully study the author bios in the books
one reads (I would refer the curious to the books of Bret Easton Ellis, who I
think does this very well). Anyway, I’ve attached to this tip two photographs
that I think serve as appropriate examples of the right way and the wrong way
to write author bios, with the Pynchon one serving as a good example of an
author bio and the Nicolay one serving as a bad one. “Here endeth the lesson .
. .”
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #4: Crafting Your Literary Persona
While
of course the books that you write are, as should be expected, the most
important thing, it doesn’t hurt to spend some time figuring out how you will
project yourself to your readers. The first thing you need to consider is your
name. If you already have an interesting-sounding name, you’re good to go. On
the other hand, if your name is something like Jack Smith or Jane Brown, you might
want to look into adopting a pseudonym. Caution is needed here: you don’t want
to choose a new name that’s TOO exotic as then it might be hard for the readers
to remember. A good strategy is to go with a generic-sounding first name and
combine it with a cooler-sounding last name. That mixture of the commonplace
with the exotic should create something memorable.
Next
you need to consider your literary persona and how you will choose to project
yourself to the public. Now, you might be tempted to portray yourself as an eye
patch-wearing, Alaskan sled dog racing, ramblin’ gamblin’ “hard man” (with the
obligatory bloody receipts in the pockets), but I would advise against it, as
the only people impressed by such things are overweight horror neckbeards. One
route you COULD take is the alchemical Union of the Opposites, mixing in things
that people don’t usually associate together (consider the success of Johnny
Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow character, which had the genius idea of combing the
pirate archetype with that of the 70’s rock star). Here are some potential
ideas to get you started: Goth cowboy, Victorian steampunk Parrothead, hip-hop
Civil War reenactor, PoMo disco crack whore. The possibilities, as they often
are, are limitless.
Some
modern writers frown on the idea of author photographs, but I’m all for them
and highly suggest you do them. Figuring out what to wear for such affairs is
beyond the ken of this series of tips, but though I’m not a sartorialist I can
at least leave you with this pearl of wisdom: muumuus, turquoise suits,
keyboard neckties, and those polo shirts with the little alligator patches are
looks that just never go out of
style.
James Champagne’s Writing
Tips #5: Editing
Many
writers will tell you that editing your books should be a process of addition
by subtraction, and while there’s some wisdom in this, I follow the Champagne
method of editing, which is a process of addition by addition (I’m reminded of
an exchange between Frasier and Niles Crane on FRASIER where Niles asks
Frasier, “Whatever happened to the concept of less is more?” and Frasier
replies, “Ah, but if less is more, then just think of how much more more will
be!”). It seems strange to me to go through all the trouble to write a scene,
only to exorcise it completely later on . . . a waste of time and energy! Also,
I think it’s important to factor in the occult psychoanalytical elements
working here as well. Which is to say, maybe there was a sub rosa reason you put that scene in there in the first place that
you only dimly understand on a sub- or unconscious level, and that by removing
that scene later on you might be actually damaging the psychological power of
your MS (again, on a subconscious or unconscious level). So, I would advise you
to think very carefully before trimming!
My
last novel, HARLEM SMOKE, was around 290 pages when I finished it. But any
writer will tell you how hard it is to get things right on the first pass:
oftentimes when you first write something the end result can look pretty
skeletal, because you’re more focused on getting the main details down and less
concerned with aesthetic ornamentation and stylistic niceties (which to me is
the “fun” part). Later drafts of my novel ballooned up to 330 pages or so, as I
went back and gussied it up with all of the fun little details I missed the
first time around (though I DID end up trimming around 5 pages for the final
published version, which I really don’t think affected the book in any real way,
to be totally honest).
To
me, the most important stage of the editing process is hunting down repetitions
(which is also one of the final stages for me). I keep a big list of words and
word combinations that I find I tend to unconsciously overuse and maybe repeat
myself with too often, so (using the handy “search” function of my word
processor) I go through the MS and try to cut down on said repetitions. Some
examples: “in fact,” “for example,” “needless to say,” “not to mention,” “it
just so happened,” “in question,” “after all,” starting too many dialogue
exchanges with the word “well,” and so on and so forth. As you write more
books/stories and reread your own work you’ll slowly become more aware of which
words/word combinations you overuse, and I think it would be helpful if you
created a similar list of your own to deal with this problem.
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #6: Dissonant Notes and the Quest for Imperfection
This
tip primarily applies to short story writers. Let’s say that you’ve finished
your collection and are assembling the contents and after going over said
contents you realize that there’s a story or two that are . . . well, maybe not
quite “bad,” but also not on the same scale of quality as the other stories.
Let’s call these weaker stories “dissonant notes.” Conventional wisdom would
dictate that you scrap that weaker story and replace it with a new superior one
(thus making your collection a symphony of perfection), but . . . I actually
think that’s not a good strategy. Sometimes it can actually be beneficial to
keep a weaker story around, as paradoxical a notion as that might seem. Why?
Simply because a weaker story will make the GOOD stories shine all the brighter
and seem even better when set next to them.
Think
about it: in a hypothetical world where everyone is beautiful, “beauty” ceases
to exist as a concept (the same could be said for a world where everyone was “good”).
Beauty owes its existence to its opposite ugliness (and vice-versa), just as
health needs illness, existence needs non-existence, life needs death, good
needs evil, Batman needs the Joker, and so on and so forth. Likewise, I would
argue that perfection needs imperfection as well, which is why the idea of a
utopia is a fallacy. Many people take the imperfections of our universe
(disease, war, sexual deviance, evilness in general and so on) as proof of the
absence of God . . . but I think the imperfection of the universe is proof that
it’s actually a perfect universe (I’m reminded of that scene in THE MATRIX
where Agent Smith tells Morpheus, “Did you know that the first Matrix was
designed to be a perfect human world. Where none suffered. Where everyone would
be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.”). Or, to quote a
famous fictional serial killer, “Typhoid and swans – it all comes from the same
place.”
So,
to sum up, do not despair over your dissonant notes and imperfections, but
rather use them to your advantage!
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #7: Reading Outside the Genres
This
advice primarily pertains to those writers working in established genres (be it
horror, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, westerns, mystery, or others). Everyone will
tell you to read as many books as you can in the genre you seek to write in,
and there’s some good advice in that, in that you want to know the tropes and
it’s hard to subvert audience expectations if you aren’t aware of the genre’s
trademarks (the old “know the rules before you break them” philosophy). The
problem arises when one reads mainly just in that one genre to the exclusion of
all else. What you risk happening then is that your own endeavors in the genre
might become indistinguishable from everything else out there. Sometimes you
read a book/story in a certain genre and you can instantly tell what books the
author has read, which isn’t always a good thing.
If
you want your work to stand out from the rest of the field, you need to broaden
your horizons and encompass things from Outside your chosen genre. I recall reading
an old Grant Morrison interview from the late 1980’s where he mentioned one of
the reasons why his comic books seemed so weirdly different from most of the
other stuff out there was because he took the familiar (say, Batman) and mixed
it with things that were unfamiliar with the genre (for example, Jungian depth
psychology). Stephen R. Donaldson has also had great success with this
technique (see his afterword to THE REAL STORY). To cite one of my own stories
that follows this path, I would highlight “Chaoskampf,” which mixes
Lovecraftian Weird Fiction with the inner workings of Soviet nuclear submarine
technology of the mid-1980’s. Seek inspiration everywhere and read everything
that crosses your path, not only books but also newspapers, websites, magazine
articles (even on subjects you don’t think you’d be interested in), religious
tracts, manifestos, technical journals, video game instruction booklets,
pornography, cereal boxes, advertisements, and so on and so forth. Essentially,
train yourself to be a sponge, constantly taking in data and information that
can be utilized for your future projects.
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #8: Cultivating Literary Feuds
While
it is a commonly-accepted truism that one can never have enough friends in the writing/publishing
industry, all the same I think one should be selective at times. Less advised
but equally important is having a couple of enemies as well. If you’re the sort
of person who needs to be “liked” by everyone, you might have trouble making it
in the world of creative writing/publishing, so I think it’s good to know right
off the bat that at some point, if you’re an interesting-enough person with
strongly held opinions, you’re bound to rub some people the wrong way. The
sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be.
I
think literary feuds are underrated and something of a lost art form
(seriously, just Google the words “literary feuds” and you’ll bring up all
kinds of funny and intriguing historical stories). As your social circles widen
and you encounter more and more writers, you’ll quickly realize (and this
especially holds true in the world of genre fiction) that many writers out
there are totally boring and blandly inoffensive specimens who are more
concerned with networking, careerism and winning points on social media than
aesthetics or creating art. Pissing these people off (and it’s astoundingly
easy to do, but if you need further tips in this area I suggest you look into
the life of Léon Bloy, who made the technique of amassing literary foes an
artform) might close off some doors for you, but in all honesty those doors
probably just lead to rooms you would never want to ordinarily step into
anyway. One is reminded of an old Charles Barkley bon mot about why he and
Michael Jordan were good friends: “ . . . because most of the guys in this
league are jerks and you wouldn’t want to spend any time with them.”
Sure,
you could strive to be a universally
beloved writer like Neil Gaiman, but sometimes being universally beloved can
get pretty damn boring. I imagine that enfant
terribles like Yukio Mishima, Bret Easton Ellis, Lydia Lunch or Michel
Houellebecq (to name just a few) have/had more fun, so I would suggest you look
to figures such as them for artistic inspiration. Sometimes negativity and
antagonism can be great boons for motivation and creativity, so go out there
and make some enemies today!
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #9: Music
This
could be one of my most important lessons. There are a lot of writers that
listen to music when they write, and there’s something to say for this
approach: it’s good to find music that fits the ambiance of the project you’re
working on, and perhaps some of that music’s influence might even seep into the
book by a manner of aural osmosis (I’m reminded of a young Hitchcock’s humorous
attempt to make a boring script more exciting by leaving it within the pages of
an almanac overnight, to see if it could absorb something interesting). I read
once that Quentin Tarantino often listens to a ton of music before starting a
screenplay to find those initial songs that capture the “feel” he’s looking
for, and this is something I do as well (the two most important songs that
inspired my last novel, HARLEM SMOKE, were Insane Poetry’s “The House That
Spilled Blood” and “Gimme Hell” by The Jesus and Mary Chain, and finding those
two songs early on in the process really helped me get a grip on just what kind
of book I was trying to write).
Equally
important is selecting a “soundtrack” for your book, which is to say, the
musical cues mentioned in the text itself. In my writing workshop days in
college I had to deal with a lot of whiny little bitches who complained that I
shouldn’t namedrop songs in stories because it will just alienate readers who
have never heard them. Then after college I discovered the work of Bret Easton
Ellis, who used music in his books in much the same way I did, which made me
think, “Whose lead am I going to follow here, whiny little college writing
workshop bitches or a guy who’s actually been published?” It was an easy choice
to make! The beauty of creating a soundtrack for your book is that it gives the
reader something to do when they’re done reading it: maybe they could make a
playlist of all the songs, or, if they’re old school like me, a mix CD. I even
helpfully list the songs in the order they appear in the backs of most of my
own books to make this process easier for the reader. You don’t want to go
overboard, though: my first novel CONFUSION had over 100 songs, which was way
too much: ideally, you should keep it to maybe under 50 songs (which can fill
up around 3 CDs, depending on song length). If you’re unsure how to use music
in books, some good examples to investigate (besides my own books) are the
works of Bret Easton Ellis and GUIDE by Dennis Cooper.
Now,
some people might say, “But what if I’m writing a fantasy novel that’s not even
set on Earth? How can I do a soundtrack for that?” I’d just say, “Do it anyway!”
I mean let’s be real, if your book is anything like most other fantasy books
out there then it’s probably just a thinly disguised fantasy version of
medieval England anyway, so it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world if you
had your characters listening to Nirvana or MC Hammer or whatever. Immersive
world building is wildly overrated.
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #10: Don’t Cut Out The Boring Bits!
One
piece of advice often bandied about by the “experts” in regards to writing is
that you should eliminate anything that doesn’t move the story forward or that
comes off as irrelevant or extraneous. One gets the impression that they think
the sole reason someone should read a book is to flip through the pages as
quickly as humanely possible (maybe they should invest in flipbooks?). In
short, to cut out the “boring” bits (even if you happen to find those bits
personally interesting). But I say, not so fast!
Human
emotions and feelings are like paints employed by the writer, and most of us
seek to make our readers laugh, or cry, or scare them, or sexually titillate
them, or whatever. Humor, sadness, fear, sexuality, happiness, these are all
universal states that most human beings have some experience with. So why is
boredom, as valid a human feeling as anything (and something which almost
anyone experiences at some point in their life), discriminated against when it
comes to literature? Granted, I’m not saying one should overdo it either, but .
. . I think one of the things that made Warhol a genius was that he was one of
the first artists to really embrace the aesthetic of boredom (mainly in his
movies), choosing to often focus (especially in his early films) on banal
everyday activities like sleeping, eating, and what have you. And yet those
films oftentimes possess a strangely hypnotic quality. And who knows: maybe the
stuff in your books that you fear might bore the proverbial “Joe Public” might
actually end up fascinating them!
James Champagne’s
Writing Tips #11: Odds & Ends
-Within
the skulls of each and every one of us there is enthroned a policeman, a judge,
a priest, even god(s). I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, as without
some type of self-censorship unit in place the world might lapse into an
inferno of total chaos. However, sometimes the writer might be forced to slay
that cop, execute that judge, violate that priest, and devour that god
(metaphorically speaking). “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” as
the koan proclaims. Remember that within our skulls there also lurks an
anarchist, a criminal, a serial killer, a dictator, and demons of all shapes
and sizes. One of the benefits of being a writer is that we are given a
creative outlet, a means to exorcise those negative aspects of our character
(what Jung would call our ‘Shadow’) by channeling them into our work, thus
binding them and rendering them harmless.
-Remember
that environments, buildings and interior spaces are characters in their own
right and can be just as important as the flesh & blood creations that occupy
them. Writing a story or a book is a lot like being a one-person film studio:
you’re the screenwriter, the director, the editor, the camera, the costume
designer, the sound composer, and more... but never forget that you’re also the
set decorator!
-Regarding
the subject of research, a common question is, “How much is too much and how
much is too little?” Though I see myself as a man of temperance, balance and
moderation, I think when it comes to research you should either go crazy and
read every book you can on the topic, or do no research at all and just wing it
(I myself prefer the former approach). All or nothing, there should be no
middle ground here!
-Many
writers take themselves too seriously and have no sense of humor about
themselves or their work at all. This is, in my opinion, a grievous way to live.
I think it’s good to have a healthy sense of humor/an appreciation of the
absurd, and to not take oneself super-seriously. If you need help developing a
sense of humor, here are some suggestions to help you along, studying the
following TV shows, movies and comic strips might show you how to tickle the
proverbial funny bone in your readers:
TV
Shows: Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, Saved By
The Bell, How I Met Your Mother, Mr. Bean, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers,
Father Ted, The Ben Stiller Show
Movies:
Reality Bites, The Great Outdoors, What
About Bob?, Clue, Hook,
Mrs. Doubtfire, Ernest Goes to Jail,
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Meet the Fockers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Roman Holiday, The Truth
About Cats & Dogs, Wedding
Crashers, Ghostbusters
Comic
Strips: Calvin & Hobbes, The Lockhorns, Garfield, Doonesbury
-When
writing a novel, it can be helpful to set milestones for yourself as a way to
gauge your progress. My method is, I’ll start by making a list of all the
scenes/chapters I expect will be in my book (which is the closest I get to doing
an outline), then go through that list and try to estimate how long each scene
will be, so that I can get a rough idea about how many pages the book should
be. So, for example, if you think that your book will be 300 pages long, every
time you finish 30 pages (which would come to 10% of the book) write it down on
a list so you can see what your percentage completed is. As an extra incentive,
feel free to reward yourself every time you get another 10% done.
-I
think it’s important to decide what your book’s title is early on, because it
can give you some much-needed focus. Alfred Hitchcock believed that a lack of a
set-in-stone title cursed a film production with a sense of haphazardness and
an unfocused atmosphere, and I think the same can be applied to books.
-A
good rule of thumb: if you write something that moves even yourself to tears,
odds are good that your readers may feel a bit of those strong emotions as
well. If by the end of a project you don’t feel anything at all, your book
probably won’t stir up any emotions in the reader (though if that’s by design,
knock yourself out!) Remember what Franz Kafka once wrote: “A book must be the
axe for the frozen sea within us.”
-So
you want to write a sex scene but you’ve never actually had sex? Don’t sweat
it! Just find a porn clip you like, copy down everything that happens, then
change the names and some small details, and voila! You’re good to go! (EDITOR'S NOTE: this point caused some controversy on social media so I should stress I was not being 100% serious with this one).
-On
the subject of author readings: unless you have a really distinctive voice like
that of William S. Burroughs or Ted Levine or James Earl Jones, I would advise
against it. If you still strongly feel the need to do such a thing, make it less
like a typical staid author reading and more like a Nick Land/CCRU mid-1990’s “lecture”:
lie on the ground croaking out demon names and channeling Artaud while Jungle
music blares over acid rave blob visuals in the background.
-When
reading books by other people, always write down unfamiliar words and look them
up later. Over the years I’ve assembled a gigantic list of nearly 900+ exotic/unfamiliar/archaic
words, which has come in very handy for my own writing projects. Reading the 19th-century
French Decadents in particular has exposed me to many words that I’ve never
seen used elsewhere. Archaic/exotic words are to the writer what spices are to
a gourmet chef: don’t be afraid to use them (and be sure to assemble your own “Weird
Word” list!).
-Finally,
even though writing is a mostly cerebral exercise, don’t ignore the rest of your
body! If you’re going to be spending a great deal of time typing you’ll want to
have strong, well-developed arm muscles. Keep a pair of dumbbells near your
work station (I would suggest 10 pound ones) and do some bicep curls every now
and then to really develop those arm muscles of yours.
