Scott William Carter

Some Thoughts on Collaborating

February 25, 2010February 25, 2010Scott William Carter

I’m about to run out to the Oregon coast for a three-day writing workshop — a fun opportunity to talk shop with lots of other writers, something I don’t get to do nearly often enough — but I wanted to share this link before I go.

On Monday, Fantasy Magazine, published my collaboration with Ray Vukcevich, “A Stray.” You can read it for free online.

Well, today they’ve published an interview with Ray and I about the collaborative process. We even included a couple of our email exchanges at the end, which you might find interesting. I also agree with Ray’s comment that when two people collaborate, then a third person emerges, which was certainly true in this case. A lot more planning and pre-writing went into this story than is usually the case for me — usually this sort of thing happens more in my head, and even then more on a gut level. I believe Ray was saying the same was true for him.

But going back and forth about the story via email, shaping it and molding it a bit before setting a word on the page — that was a very valuable experience. You might find some of our notes interesting too, especially if you read the story, because it shows where we made decisions about the direction the story was going.

Whether those decisions worked or not, well, that’s up to each reader to decide.

Games Writers Play #6: Pages Before Play

February 23, 2010February 16, 2010Scott William Carter

If you’ve followed my blog, you know I’ve written about the Pages Before Play principle before, but it’s so effective that it deserves a mention here.

The basic idea is this: You withhold all activities you enjoy until you’ve met your page quota for the day.

It’s simple, isn’t it? Surfing the Internet, reading books, watching television or movies, playing video games — whatever you do for fun in your free time, you don’t allow yourself to do those things until you’ve met your quota. The idea is to use those activities as extra motivation to get your pages done — and not only done, but done sooner and faster.

More than any other principle, this is one I’ve tried to live by. I’ve found it to be one of the most effective ways to keep myself focused. My big Achilles heel is the Internet. It’s easy to tell myself I’m just going to check my email, five minutes tops, and the next thing I know I’m off ogling a gadget on Gizmodo or arguing with some pinheaded pundit (in my head of course) on Politico. Before I know it, an hour is gone — and the time I would have devoted to writing some new pages is gone with it.

But I also have to say: Although it’s a deceptively simple game, and tremendously effective, I’ve also found it to be incredibly difficult in actual practice. I’m always falling off the wagon. Temptations abound, after all.

That’s okay. You’re going to fall off the wagon. Just get back on again. It’s also a great game to whip out now and then as a corrective measure, when you find your productivity dropping. You want to watch Lost? All right, buddy, then get those pages done.

(A lot of people use a variation of this game, but here’s a hat tip to two of them who emailed me something along these lines:: Michael Jasper and Cyn Balog)

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“A Stray” — My Collaboration With Ray Vukcevich

February 22, 2010February 22, 2010Scott William Carter

It’s not often that a magazine that pays professional rates makes one of your stories available for free. It’s even less often that the story is a collaboration with a writer you’ve long admired, Ray Vukcevich.

But in this case it’s true. “A Stray,” a tale of a man who’s slowly going blind and his encounter with a very unusual stray cat, is now live and freely available at Fantasy Magazine.

Check it out. I’m very happy with this one — I think it’s a good blend of both Ray and my work, something that neither of us would have written quite this way on our own. And later in the week, they’re going to post an interview with Ray and I about the story and our collaboration, so be sure to return for that.

Games Writers Play #5: Title Mash-Up

February 16, 2010January 21, 2010Scott William Carter

So far, I’ve been focusing mostly on ways to boost your productivity. Well, all that productivity begs the question: How do you keep coming up with ideas? Most serious writers learn very quickly that story ideas are a dime a dozen — they can literally come from anywhere. It’s what you do with those ideas that matters.

That said, having a bag of tricks you can use to come up with story ideas on demand is immensely helpful. The Title Mash-Up is a good one.

Here’s how it works in essence: Take parts of two titles of two stories and combine them into a new title, then write a new story about it.

That’s it. Take a couple anthologies from your bookshelf and type up a list of all the titles. Or, better yet, go to Amazon.com and do the same with anthologies you haven’t read — easier not to be tethered to the author’s original ideas when you do so. Then start copying and pasting a list of new titles. This works best with longer titles, ones that have conjunctions (“and,” “or,” etc.). Pick one and start writing.

I’ve used this one a number of times. I published a story in Asimov’s a couple years ago called “The Tiger in the Garden.” I’ve since forgotten the original titles I used, but I know that I used this game to get it, combining “The Tiger” and “in the Garden.”

The great thing? No two writers will write the same story. You might look at that title and think fantasy or a children’s story; I turned it into a science fiction tale about a terrorist computer hacker in hiding on a small backwater world, a man whose handle was “The Tiger.” Now he’s suffering a debilitating mental illness that’s crumbled his once brilliant mind so that he’s only a shadow of his former self. His only joy now? Working in his garden.

See how it works? The title is just a touchstone to get you thinking; to get you to ask questions. It’s a starting point, nothing more. Try it out.

(Hat tip to Dean Wesley Smith)

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