#This book I'm writing went through three different plots in the planning stage before I landed on this one. This plot really is just the

[the-halfling-prince]

₳₮ ₮ⱧɆ Ɇ₦Đ Ø₣ ₮ⱧɆ ⱤØ₳Đ

Character info under the cut

This group of six recent high school graduates just wanted to go on a road trip before they all went their separate ways for college. Yeah that didn't work out very well.

1- Vanja Tsui. 18. She/Her. Third generation Chinese American. Planning on majoring in literature. Deaf (wears a cochlear implant). The coolest person you'll ever know.

2- Rebekah Rothschild. 18. She/Her. Jewish. Plays the violin. Probably knows math. Gay disaster.

3- Tristán Serrano. 18. He/Him. The one with a driver's license. Doesn't know how he ended up best friends with five weirdos. Still loves them all.

4- Aleksanteri Rinne. 17. He/Him. Transmasc. Classic loser boy. Soon to be art student. Childhood best friend with Tristán.

5- Eugénie Perreault. 17. She/Her. Has a band where she plays drums. Has ten pairs of tinted sunglasses. Is color blind.

6- Mick Santinera. 19. She/Her. Plays guitar and sings in Eugénie's band. The worst™. Short. No one knows what Mick is short for. Michelle? Mikayla? Whatever.

[delightfullysubatomic]

All Bar Luke doesn’t get the hype it deserves!! It’s such a fleshed out and deeply told story for something that is entirely monologue up until the final phone call. Tim’s insanely good at writing!! I feel like that’s finally being recognised with Wife and Mulberry and the mini script conversations in those two books but I still feel he’s worth more writing home about...

I agree! 

I'd forgotten about the final phone call, such a good way to end it. I find it so interesting that ABL was his first real solo thing too, you'd think it would have led him to more writing but I guess his poet persona / live work took off right when it was coming to an end (it's weird to me that Screenwipe was at the same time as series 2 or 3 of it, but I suppose the early eps of Screenwipe had a different persona too).

It seems like really random bits of his article writing go widespread e.g. that tribute he did for Paul Ritter went all over twitter and I remember a thing he wrote about The Ashes too.

I always like written interviews where it's clearly been done by email too because his answers end up being really good little paragraphs, like this one.

I've heard him say he doesn't think he could write a novel and I assume that's because he'd find it hard to plot out because his prose / writing style is better than most stand up comedians, whose writing is usually quite irritating including some of his friends. I mean there's a reason him reading out little bits of his writing on stage works.

Reading between the lines, I think he's probably written pilots for TV / tried to get film scripts going, but hasn't got anywhere.

Wonderdate might have done something for him, it got nominated for a BAFTA but that was, what, 2018? Although I guess sometimes life gets in the way.

I do agree it's sort of getting recognised with HUTAAF / Mulberry but the number of interviews that just mention the cover or how small the text is is ridiculous (I'm still pressed at you Mr Herring). Is it so hard to read three or four pages before interviewing someone???!!! This was very cool from the New Statesman, it's sort of a promo article but is so gushing that I assume it's the interviewer's actual feelings. I also feel like all of Tim's stuff has a thread of loneliness running through it and his stuff in the last couple of years has sort of been the perfect outlet to express that but I haven't really heard that sentiment in reviews so maybe I'm projecting. The only thing I wish he'd done in the books is add a timeline of the poems at the end (or dated them). Lots of them are about the specific events of each day and in a couple of years time it will be hard to remember what was what (already is tbh).

Also, Tim's version of promo seems to be twitter / Instagram / his website / doing interviews and podcasts on the shows of his comedian friends, all of who will have extreme crossover in audience, and sometimes he doesn't even mention the book (plus he goes on Sunday Brunch which every comedian seems to do and I'd love to know if that works for anyone at all). I love that he uses Utter and Press - I mean obviously it's a big part of the whole thing - and I guess he's essentially making the publicity up himself (with the help of his agency), where authors would often have the publishing house doing a lot of that work. Plus it sounds like they never even necessarily had plans to get into the shops at first so it's probs been a lot more successful that him and Emily ever planned, so forget all that and support indie publishing.

Ps. lovely punning. Also, this was not supposed to be this long. I guess my brain went off in five different directions so I just stuck them all in.

[sineala]

hey, sineala, this is probably a stupid question, and i'm so so sorry for taking up your time. but. have you ever been unable to write more than 5-6k words before? like, you're just stuck there, or you lose muse to write when you hit a certain point and you don't know how to continue. is it just a stage one has to get past in writing, or are some of us (like me) doomed to be unable to write long things until the end of time?

It’s really not a stupid question and you have nothing to be sorry for!

I always knew I wanted to write stories. Well, okay, that’s not exactly true. I always knew I wanted to tell myself stories, because clearly the best things to do as a child were (1) read books, (2) tell myself extremely elaborate stories, and (3) make my long-suffering friends and relatives act out the stories with my My Little Ponies, Barbie dolls, and various superhero action figures.

So writing sounded like a great idea because that way you can tell yourself stories in such a way that they will be right there and you don’t have to worry about remembering them later! But I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be A  Real Writer because I was pretty sure Real Writers actually finished writing their stories, and I couldn’t. I started trying to write when I was... I don’t know, thirteen? I had all these epic beginnings and I never finished anything and they would usually stop after maybe 5-6k. Sometimes not even that much. When I was in college I did NaNoWriMo -- this was in, like, 2002, when it was just starting to become a Thing -- and you’d think that if I could write 50,000 words I’d be able to finish something? Either that or I’d give up. I actually wrote the 50,000 words and... never finished it. I still haven’t. (On the plus side, @carminapossunt read the half-finished draft I sent her and apparently decided on the strength of my writing that she needed to date me, so I guess... it’s why I’m married now?)

So basically up until I was... I don’t know, maybe 25... I hadn’t really managed to figure out how to finish stories. And then suddenly I just started being able to finish stories. I went from nothing to, like, a 90,000-word Bodie/Doyle story. So this is definitely something you can learn to do, because I did it. I wasn’t born knowing how to write a novel-length story or anything. Writing is a craft and it is teachable. 

I don’t know where you are getting hung up in your writing process, and I don’t if I can really explain what the difference is to me or what made me able to do it, but I can try. I think for me the biggest difference is knowing the story. Having a plan. I don’t necessarily mean having it all outlined in bullet points, if you’re not that sort of writer, but I find that minimally I do actually need to have some idea of how the story is going to end before I start it. I’m not gonna be able to figure it out on the way. These days I try to write out some kind of very loose synopsis, a few hundred to a few thousand words (depending on how big the story is), just as a guide for myself. That way I can look at it, kind of eyeball it and figure out if the plot feels like it has the right shape for a plot (this is where you can tell I am entirely self-taught) and so on. I don’t always stick to it (I might discover I need more of a B-plot or more tension or an extra sex scene or whatever), but at least I know where I’m going to end up. My problem before was that I literally would not know where I was going with a story, and I would start writing when I only had one scene figured out, and then... yeah, that’s all that gets written.

Another thing I have found motivating, after I have some idea of what I’m doing, is to use future scenes as bribery. Like, I will have a scene -- ideally the climax of the story -- that I am really excited about writing. And I usually write things sequentially, so I have to get there to write that scene! And then, after that, well, it’s usually so close to the end of the story that I better keep going! It would be a shame to stop! I also attempt to actually bribe myself with Things I Want in order to keep writing. That one works too.

Also, it is really helpful to have a cheerleader who reads as you write and says nice things and generally makes you feel motivated to keep writing. It would be a lonely slog without such people!

If you’re having problems with a particular scene... maybe the answer is that the scene doesn’t need to be there? Like, if it’s like pulling teeth to write a particular conversation... maybe just don’t. It depends on the story, of course.

Another good trick to play on your brain is to switch stories. This is why when I am in the middle of a 100k UST-filled romance epic where no one is going to kiss for another 40k I usually take a break and write a 5k PWP to get all the tension out of my system.

And sometimes the will to write just comes and goes. I just spent, like, three weeks not wanting to write basically anything and dragging myself through writing maybe 100 words/day of my Big Bang and then someone on Discord said there should be a story where Steve watches that video of Tony and Doc Ock and my brain just perked right up and went ME ME ME I NEED TO WRITE THAT and then I did and now I am making much better progress on my Big Bang too. So inspiration goes, but it comes back.

So, hang in there, anon! I believe in you!