Read Blackbirds Online

Authors: Chuck Wendig

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Supernatural, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Urban, #Suspense, #Horror, #road movie, #twisted, #Dark, #Miriam Black, #gruesome, #phschic, #Chuck Wendig

Blackbirds (32 page)

BOOK: Blackbirds
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  For a long time I was concerned about certain themes and ideas that keep popping up. But then I realized, that's part of me, part of my voice. As long as it's kept in check and doesn't end up redundant, it can be a good thing for one writer's body of work to traverse and explore the same themes and motifs.
 
Blackbirds
is written in the present tense. Was that a conscious decision, or is that just the way you write?
It was conscious, but the book didn't start out that way. The first draft or two – which were largely incomplete – ended up in past tense.
  But
Blackbirds
has a curious procedural journey that involves a screenwriting side trip – and scripts are, of course, written in the present tense. Very active, very direct. And it dawned on me that
Blackbirds
really needed that. Especially given the nature of Miriam's power which demands a certain timeliness in the plot – that way, the reader is seeing what Miriam is seeing as it happens.
  Some have said present tense is more "cinematic," which I don't know is true – but it does ape how screenplays are written, and further, does force every moment of the plot and the action to pivot on the head of a pin given that everything is happening at that precise instance. Present tense for me creates a greater sense of tension and urgency. It's saying, things are not yet written. And with a story asking big questions about fate versus free will, that seemed apropos.
 
"Procedural journey?" Tell me more!
 
It's like this:
  
Blackbirds
is… I want to say the sixth novel I wrote. (All five novels prior to this are, in fact, garbage and should not be spoke of lest they hear us talking about them.)
  The big problem was, I couldn't finish it. I just kept writing myself into corners. Worse, even before I found myself nose to-narrative-corner, I took long circuitous routes to get to that blockage. Endlessly rambling plot. I convinced myself that this was a good thing because it was a "road novel," but this was just one of many writer-fed delusions that needed swift extermination.
  The extermination came, though perhaps not swiftly. My sister wrote me one day to tell me she saw a screenwriting contest where you could win a year-long mentorship with a screenwriter – in this case, Stephen Susco, the guy who wrote both of the American
Grudge
adaptations (as well as Ketchum's
Red
adaptation).
  His specialty was, in fact, adaptations. I thought, "Hey, it would be hilarious if I won the mentorship and then used it to workshop
Blackbirds
, thus turning the unfinished novel into a finished screenplay and
then
back into a finished novel." Of course, I had no interest in screenwriting and no talent in that regard and I expected nothing.
Blackbird
s – which then remained without a title – threatened to become just another useless junk drawer manuscript.
  Except, oops, I won.
  So, I got to spend the year workshopping the story into a script. Susco, it turns out, grew up like five minutes down the road from me and went to my high school, so we had that connection going for us, and I found his advice always spot on. His first and most critical piece of advice was the one I'd longresisted:
  Outline your work.
  
Outline your work.
  I thought, "Eeesh, that'll kill my story! It stomps on all the magic." Which is a lie, of course, a chumbucket brimming with gory gobbets of self-deception, and he made it clear that the business of screenwriting was very much about outlines. He told me to learn to write them and, even better, learn to love them.
  A year later, the
Blackbirds
script was complete and the story was done and I spent time again turning it back into a novel. I followed the script (which was now itself a big giant outline) and deviated where appropriate, as films are not analogous to novels.
  I think all told, between script and novel,
Blackbirds
went through eight or nine solid drafts. Some drafts operating as total rewrites.
  And odd process, but it found its feet in the end. And now I know a lot more about writing novels (rather than
thinking
I knew a lot about writing novels).
 
Okay, so outlining is key. But how do
you
do it? You're the king of online writing advice, so: what's Chuck Wendig's Official Guide to Outlining a Novel?
The king? I demand a crown! And a jester! And a throne made of the bones of failed writers! I shall sup from my goblet of ink and bark commandments at floundering penmonkeys everywhere! Fetch me my whisky, lackeys!
  Ahem.
  I do dispense what I call "dubious writing wisdom" at my website,
terribleminds.com,
but writers shouldn't hope to find any gospel there. That said, I think it's important that writers talk about what they do, and one of the things I talk a lot about is outlining. Some writers can get away with not outlining – "pantsing" is, I believe, the favored term – but some writers can't and then try anyway. I was one of those writers, as noted. Panster at heart, plotter by necessity.
  Just the same, I don't outline in any one specific way. Every book demands a different outline. The one common technique between all my outlining is that I always like to identify my tentpoles – what five or ten plot points
absolutely must
happen for this whole thing to stand up? Plot points that, if I miss them, the whole tent falls down and smothers both writer and reader under a polyester death tarp.
  Some books demand chapter-by-chapter outlines. Some ask for beat sheets or synopses. Every story is different and hungers for different preparation. Same as how the preparation of different meals demands a different
mise en place.
 
What else did the scriptwriting workshop teach you? Something I find fascinating about scripts (whether they are for films, or television, or even comic books) is tha they're almost entirely dialogue. Do you think it is beneficial for writers of prose to at least make a small study of other forms of writing, such as scripts?
The best screenwriting workshop I attended was when I got accepted into the Sundance Screenwriting Lab with my writing partner, Lance. For several days we hunkered down with a number of top shelf screenwriters and incubated the very concept of story and character and what it all means. Very potent experience.
  And what it taught me is that story is story. Whether we're talking games, novels, films, comics, whatever – story is story. It's still beholden to narrative ideas and rules and tradition. Sure, each format brings its own challenges and advantages, but at the end of the day a good story is a good story no matter the format.
  It is beneficial, then, for writers to become more versatile and try other forms – from short stories to comic scripts to game material and back to novels. If anything, it teaches you to identify those things that work across the board, those things that speak to the heart of the reader and, even better,
from
the heart
of
the writer.
 
Consequently, what impact has the scriptwriting tangent
had on your subsequent work after
Blackbirds
?
 
That's the funny thing – I kind of snuck into screenwriting through the back door hoping only to workshop a then-failed novel, and what happens? I end up a bonafide screenwriter, it seems. Had a short film go to Sundance (
Pandemic
in 2011), have a larger film from that transmedia storyworld in development (
HiM
or
Hope Is Missing
), took an original idea to pilot with my writing partner for TNT, had a transmedia project (
Collapsus
) nominated for a international digital Emmy award. Been a crazy ride. And all of it, really, thanks to stalling out with Blackbirds!
  Each writer's journey is ever the crazy one. We all dig our own tunnels in and detonate the path behind us.
 
Chuck, thank you very much! Um… did you want me to detach the electrodes, or are you okay for a while?
No, no, I'm good here. The puddle of my own urine is somehow comforting. Like an old friend.
 
Adam Christopher is the author of EMPIRE STATE and the forthcoming
SEVEN WONDERS, both from Angry Robot books. You can find him
online at adamchristopher.co.uk and on Twitter as
@ghostfinder
.
ANGRY ROBOT
A member of the Osprey Group
 
Lace Market House,
54-56 High Pavement,
Nottingham,
NG1 1HW, UK
 
The death of me
 
An Angry Robot paperback original 2012 
1
 
Copyright © Chuck Wendig 2012
 
Chuck Wendig asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
 
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
 
ISBN: 978 0 85766 229 3 
EBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 231 6
 
Artist: Joey HiFi 
Set in Meridien by THL Design.
 
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
 
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
 
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
BOOK: Blackbirds
5.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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