What Star Trek Can Teach Us About Writing

[Note: This originally ran on the Writer's Digest website, but I promised someone I'd make it available again, and this seems like an excellent venue. Enjoy.]


Over the years I’ve looked at what my dogs have taught me about writing, what Batman can teach us
about writing, and today I’m going to extend the tradition. Today we’re going to look to the stars for our guidance.

No, not astronomy.

Mr. Spock. Captain Kirk. Captain Picard. Bones. The Ferengi. Captain Janeway. And every red-shirted crew member who has ever gone on an away mission and never made it home again.

That’s right (cue the funky theremin music), we’re talking about Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry’s legendary space saga. And why not? Star Trek has some fantastic lessons to teach us about the craft of writing.

Lesson 1: Red-shirted crew members seldom have a long life.

For those of you who follow Star Trek (in just about any incarnation), you know that being a red-shirted crew member (different colors signify different positions in the hierarchy) is a lot like running through a field of bulls wearing all red and swatting them all on the butt. Those unfortunate folks most often die.

So what does that have to do with writing?

You need to identify the literary equivalent of those red shirts.

Take the ever-popular adverbs and adjectives. Much like Castor Oil, a little goes a long way. So use them sparingly.

Attributions like “she expounded,” “he regurgitated,” should also be left on the surface of the alien planet in a smoking heap. It’s perfectly OK (and generally preferred) for characters to just say things. He said. She said. And not, “‘He makes my heart beat like a rabid drummer,’ she said breathlessly.”

Ick. Kill that “-ly” word on the spot (then kidnap the sentence and skip the ransom note).

Another red shirt that deserves what’s coming to him is what the Marshall Plan for Novelists refers to as Morse Code—the overuse of dots and dashes to make a character’s sentences trail off. This is a common tool used by many beginners, but like most tools, it has limited uses. You can’t hammer concrete nails with a screwdriver, and a soldering iron is practically useless for joining two pieces of wood. So go ahead and let the characters finish their sentences.

As Stephen King said in his essay Everything You Need to Know About Writing – in Ten Minutes, “When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.”

That goes for nonfiction too.

Don’t worry. The red shirts died for a good cause.

Lesson 2: Boldly go where nobody has gone before.

No pithy lead-in here. Instead, simply: Go find your own voice.

A well known acquaintance of mine was once touted in a book review as the next Stephen King. His response? “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with the one we have now. How about if I’m just me?”

There is only one Jerry B. Jenkins, only one Peter Straub, only one Shakespeare, only one Ray Bradbury, and there is only one you. That’s the way it works. Every writer is who they are, and they have (if they put in the requisite work) a singular voice. Their own voice. Why would you need to write like Brandilyn Collins or Tim Waggoner? We already have one of each.

The fact is, there are things only those writers can write, and there are things only you can write. And the only way to develop your own voice is to do the work.

Write.

Then write some more.

Boldly go where no man or woman has gone before.

Lesson 3: Always overestimate how long a job will take, and then look like a hero when you come in under deadline.

Every engineer on every ship or space station in the Star Trek universe has said, “Captain, it will take at least nine hours to fix the cosmic flapdoodle widget.” And every captain has said, “We don’t have nine hours. You have an hour and eleven minutes before we are turned into chicken nuggets.”

And every engineer fixed the left-handed sonic whatchamadiddle valve in the nick of time and looked like a hero.

They hit the deadline. And that is the optimal strategy for every writer who ever wrangled a word. Give better than you promise, and always do it on time.

(Sure, there are extenuating circumstances. This is real life, after all. But those situations should be the exception to the rule, and when you know you need to adjust the schedule, your first action should be to contact your very own Kirk—the editor or your agent—immediately. If you are one of those writers who hits the vast majority of your deadlines, when you find yourself in an unavoidable jam, editors and agents will probably grin and say, “been there, done that,” and make a new deadline possible.)

Lesson 4: Sometimes the best strategy is to rush headlong into the problem.

Once in a while a project turns out to be about as exciting as watching beige carpet rot. Or an assignment is more work than you realized. Sometimes you’re up against a deadline and are just tired.

This is no time for procrastination. This is time for rolling up your sleeves, putting some high octane coffee in the pot, and powering through. Like Captain Kirk (pick pretty much any episode) when the grits are hitting the fan: Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and run headlong into the giant nine-uddered mutant space cows from the planet Bovinicus and let the chips fall where they may. After all, you helped create the monster.

Now, for next time: Everything You Need to Know About Writing, From the Gang on Jersey Shore.

Or not.

Thomas Smith is an award winning writer, newspaper reporter, TV news producer, playwright and essayist. His supernatural suspense novel, Something Stirs, is available at a bookstore near you. In addition to writing he enjoys teaching classes for beginning writers at conferences and local writers’ groups. He has been a joke writer for Joan Rivers and his comedy material has been performed on The Tonight Show. Currently in his fifth decade of service, he is considerably younger than most people his age. Find Thomas on Twitter and Facebook.

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The Inspiration Fairy (and other urban legends)

by Thomas Smith

It is said to haunt the dark recesses of our reality, flitting in and out just beyond the periphery of our vision. Silent as a shadow, ready to strike full-blown, with little or no warning. Some people wait their whole lives and claim never to have seen it. Others tell remarkable stories about their brushes with the creature, their lives never to be the same after the soul-stirring encounter.

Still others say it’s a load of cow cookies and you should be careful where you step.

Are they talking about Bigfoot?

No. I’ve seen actual pictures of the legendary Sasquatch right on the cover of The National Enquirer.

Could it be the Tooth Fairy?

Not likely. Somebody has to deliver the dimes for those missing molars and bygone bicuspids. And just like a hundred thousand dollar advance check, just because you’ve never seen one, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

No, the fictional creature most likely cooked up when some disgruntled writer received one rejection letter too many is none other than the illusive Inspiration Fairy. Many a fledgling writer has sat staring at a blank computer screen or a blank sheet of typing paper (I’m showing my age here…) waiting for something to happen. Waiting for their muse to send smoke signals above the tree line so that a certain tutu-clad bringer of words could swoop down and whack said writer upon the noggin with the Strunk & White Genuine Official Magic Word Wand (patent pending). Then the words will begin to flow like a NASCAR fan’s kidneys on lap one eighty-seven.

Uh-huh.

People who wait for this illusive creature are doomed to live a life of unfulfilled dreams and more than a few excuses as to why they don’t write any more than they do.

Thomas F. Monteleone said it this way: “Writing equals ass in chair." The corollary to that singular truth is: Writing is mostly luck: The harder you work, the luckier you get.”

Which brings me back to the point. To be a professional writer takes putting hundreds of thousands of words on the page. It takes writing on a regular basis. Writing when you feel like it, and when you don’t. It takes relying on the sum total of your knowledge, your experience, your passions, your boredom, your triumphs, your tragedies, good meals, bad desserts, good friends, bad influences, lazy summer days and frosty winter nights. Faithful dogs, crisp autumn afternoons, sticky red candy apples at the county fair, and mining the whole kit and caboodle for the gems that lie buried within.

In short, writing takes sitting down and plunging in, not waiting for inspiration.

The need to write is inspiration enough. The wealth of living, loving, and life itself stored inside you is more than enough fodder for more stories, articles, plays, greeting cards, cereal boxes, books, songs, and cereal boxes than you can possibly write in your lifetime.

We all have stories inside us. We all have the raw materials needed to translate thought to the written word. We all have the ability to think, to reason, to research, to dream, to take a random thought or idea and turn it into an article, essay, story, play, greeting card, bumper sticker, or novel. And the finished product doesn’t rely on anything other than the God-given talents and abilities you already have within you.

Your challenge is to learn to access the ability at will. And that comes with practice.

Lots of practice.

You don’t need to wait for the Inspiration Fairy to sprinkle inspiration dust on your noggin.

You need to write.

And write.

And write some more.

A writer writes. It’s what we do. We write when we feel like it, and when we don’t. We write in a white-hot torrent of words that seem to come from nowhere and everywhere, and we write when every word feels like you’re giving birth to a Pterodactyl.

My mentor (and close friend for over twenty years), the late Charles L Grant, gave the keynote address at a writers conference a number of years ago, and said some things that shook many of the people in the room either out of their complacency, or out of the notion they wanted to be a writer. He said:

“There is a difference in being an author and being a writer. For the better part of the day I have talked with some nice people about being a writer. I have signed about fifty books, I had lunch with a number of you and listened to you talk about your writing projects, and I am up here now talking about what it is like to be a working writer.

That’s being an author.

“But when I go back to my room tonight, while many of you are hanging out in the lounge talking about writing, or at the open mic session reading your work, I am going to be in my room trying my dead-level best to fix a real mess I have created. I have painted my protagonist into a corner and I have no idea how I am going to get him out of it. But I will figure it out tonight before I go to sleep, because I have to have the book finished by tomorrow night so I can send it to my wife [a professional editor] and have her edit the last three chapters. Then I have to send it to the publisher by Monday. And I am going to wrestle that bear to the ground because I don’t have a choice. I have a house payment and a car payment to make and this is how I have made them for over twenty years.

That’s being a writer.”

You see, people who wait for the Inspiration Fairy tend to publish very little, but they have some great stories … about waiting for the Inspiration Fairy.

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What Batman Can Teach us About Writing

by Thomas Smith

en.wikipedia.org

When I was a kid I wanted to change my name to Batman. In many ways it was only natural. I had the lunch box, the Halloween costume, a Batmobile, a signed Batman photo (signed by Adam West his own self), Batman stickers, hundreds of Batman comic books, and two sets of Batman bubblegum cards.

I was a fan.

So, when I asked my parents if I could change my name to Batman, they were not surprised. They also weren’t inclined to say yes. So I thought about it a while, and the next day I asked if I could change my name to Bruce Wayne (Batman’s true identity…don’t tell anybody). They said I could, but I’d have to wait until I was 18 because it was the law. That was 12 whole years away. A whole lifetime.

Man, being cool sure did take a lot of patience.

I’m still holding out to drive the Batmobile one day (I sat in it for two minutes when I was 10, and that has held me over this long), but other than that, I am pretty well over wanting to change my name. But that doesn’t mean I have forgotten the lessons Batman had to teach us in the 60s (that was somewhere between the time the earth cooled and just before the last dinosaur died). Think about it; how many comic book and movie heroes today fight crime and still have time to remind us to brush our teeth, work hard to become good citizens, never park in a loading zone, be respectful of your elders, and don’t forget to vote?

None that I know of.

But if we take a closer look at the caped crusader, he has some things to teach us about becoming writers too.

Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?

In 1989 Michael Keaton put on the cape and cowl and surprised a lot of people with the fact that “Mr. Mom” could make the transition to The Caped Crusader. Of course, all it takes to become batman is millions of dollars, a really cool car, an underground cave, years of training, the suit, and all the bat-gadgets.

In that same film, Jack Nicholson stepped into the Joker’s garish costume, was thwarted on more than one occasion by Batman’s ingenuity, and asked the seminal question: “Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?”

While it might take millions to amass Batman’s toys, we as writers have access to our own “toys” for considerably less than the cost of a Batpod ($1,500,000 in case you were wondering). For example, if you don’t have the ready cash to purchase the latest version of Microsoft Office, there’s always Open Office (www.openoffice.org). It does everything Office does, saves files in just about every known format, and it’s free. Or sign up for the free version of Celtx (www.celtx.com) and download their software which allows you to format novels, screenplays, TV shows, stage plays, comics, and various media scripts automatically.

And what about record keeping? If you don’t mind doing a little work, most office suites either have a basic accounting program, or offer the tools to build a spreadsheet and invoice system that is workable.

If you’re like me, you carry your office in your pocket. With the advent of smartphones, tablets, mini-tablets, and e-readers that do everything but walk the dog, we have apps for every phase of our lives from the silly to the serious. We can write and edit with a number of apps. And even if you’re on a budget (who isn’t?), even expensive apps are usually less than $10, so if you don’t go overboard, the applications are accessible.

To the Batcave!

Whenever evildoers were out doing evil, and the bat signal was projecting a giant bat high above Gotham City, Batman would turn to Robin and say those immortal words, “To the batcave.” Then they would race to the batpoles, slide down into the lair under stately Wayne manor, and emerge fully dressed as the Dynamic Duo. Ready to go to work.

batchannel.blogspot.com

My commute is not nearly so adventurous. It’s about forty feet from the bedroom to my office. And I am often decked out in workout clothes (long workout pants and one of two Batman tee shirts. Honest) because I will have either already been to the gym, or will go just before lunch. And I generally work from my office. I have everything I need. Reference materials, internet connection, a printer/fax/scanner/Swiss Army knife setup, music, and a great view.

Once upon a time that’s what most writers did. They carved out a spot and that was their writing place. It may have been an actual office or a corner of the kitchen table. But the writing place was well defined and that is where the work was done.

To quote Edith and Archie, “Those were the days.” Just as Batman once had to construct a flying batcave, the writer’s lair is now equally mobile. We write on trains, planes, beaches, and in coffee shops by the score. Comic writer, New York Times best-selling and multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author, Jonathan Maberry, can often be found writing at his local Barnes and Noble. And I recently read about a writer who typed the first third of a recent novel on their phone.

So, looks like the batcave is now mobile as opposed to being a fixed place.

Keep Your Identity Secret

OK, he didn’t do so well on that one in The Dark Knight Rises. By the end of the movie, everybody knew Batman’s secret identity except Commissioner Gordon. But throughout the years Batman was able to keep his identity secret. That was the key to his being able to do his job effectively. And it’s the same for writers.

What are you working on these days? What are you writing?

Wait…don’t answer that. Not in the great ongoing detail many writers are tempted to blurt out: “I’m working on an urban fantasy with a steampunk twist. It’s about a troll who lives in a castle in the middle of downtown Detroit. He has this cat who watches Castle reruns all day. And the troll has this girlfriend who is really ugly. I mean as ugly as homemade soap ugly. But their pet dragon who is secretly the mayor of Knightdale, North Carolina, is a computer hacker who…”

Whoa! It’s much better to just say, “I’m working on a suspense novel right now” or “I’m writing a travel, article about Atlanta” and just let it go at that. First, most people really don’t want a drawn out synopsis. They’re just making polite conversation. Plus, when you tell enough people what the plot is, you start to pigeon hole yourself into what you’ve told people and shut off other possible creative avenues. So, keep the identity secret until the appropriate time. It will make your life easier.

OK, enough of that. Put on your capes and tights and get back to work. The reading world is counting on you.

Thomas Smith is an award winning writer, newspaper reporter, TV news producer, playwright and essayist. His supernatural suspense novel, Something Stirs, is available at a bookstore near you. In addition to writing he enjoys teaching classes for beginning writers at conferences and local writers’ groups. He has been a joke writer for Joan Rivers and his comedy material has been performed on The Tonight Show. Currently in his fifth decade of service, he is considerably younger than most people his age. Find Thomas on Twitter and Facebook.

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Drum Roll Please ...

Novel Rocket proudly announces the newest members of the website's team:

Allen Arnold spent 20 years in publishing overseeing the development of more than 500 novels as founder and Publisher of Thomas Nelson Fiction. He now leads Content & Resources for Ransomed Heart Ministries. Allen is passionate about helping storytellers write from an awakened heart.

Alton Gansky is the Angel Award-winning, Christy Award-nominated author of more than three dozen books. He is the co-director of the premier Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers conference.

Brandilyn Collins is a best-selling novelist known for her trademark Seatbelt Suspense®. These harrowing crime thrillers have earned her the tagline "Don't forget to b r e a t h e . . ."® She's also known for her book on fiction-writing techniques, Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors.

Lisa Samson, author of Christy award-winner, Songbird, is known for excellence in writing as well as her artistic bent, but more than anything, perhaps, the name Samson brings to mind authentic stories that makes you think. Once asked why she writes, she said, "So people will know they're not alone." Dealing with difficult issues has also given Samson a reputation for courage in her writing.

Thomas Smith is an award winning writer, newspaper reporter, TV news producer, playwright and essayist. In addition to writing he enjoys teaching classes for beginning writers at conferences and local writers’ groups. He has been a joke writer for Joan Rivers and his comedy material has been performed on The Tonight Show.

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