Tim Akers

I’m in a strange lull right now. The Pagan Night is with the copyeditor. ARCs are being printed, but have not yet arrived. The outline for book two in the series is on my editor’s desk, but actual writing can’t begin until that’s approved. I have more time to read, but still want to spend part of my day writing. So what to do?

What you do in this situation is work on getting better. While talking to a good friend of mine, I expressed frustration at how each stage of my writing always feels rushed. I spend a lot of time looking at the mistakes in a book and trying to find some way to patch them up, always thinking “Well, hopefully I’ll do this better on the next book.” And, frankly, I get frustrated that I’m not yet as good of a writer as I want to be, which is probably something most writers feel. We started talking about perceived weaknesses, and he was able to outline for me a couple things that I should be working on. And now we’re engaging in a series of exercises aimed at improving those weaknesses.

The biggest in my mind is character development. I have this tendency to develop a world, and then a plot, and then the characters necessary to fulfill that plot. I would like to work in the opposite direction, but it’s tough when your first instinct is world creation.

For the first installment of this exercise I wrote a scene with a character I knew nothing about, in an empty world. I was intentionally leaving out fantastical elements, because as soon as I drop any of that stuff into the narrative I immediately start to spin the world up, and that can change the character. Here’s the result.

“I don’t think that matters.”

“I do. I think it’s the only thing that matters,” Frank said.

“Sure. Sure you do,” he answered. The man in the hood turned away from the river, rubbing his face. “But I don’t think it matters right now.”

They were quiet for a long moment, listening to the waves slap against the pier, watching the city lights dance across the waves. Frank stretched his hands, balling them into fists and cracking his knuckles. They were getting nowhere.

“Let’s just forget it. They’ll bring the boxes or they won’t, they’ll honor the deal or they won’t.” Frank folded his hands beneath his coat, fiddled with his belt, then lay his palms flat against his thighs. The scarred mass of his knuckles hung like tree roots from the tailored cuff of his suit. New suit, new city, new worries. “So what can we do?”

The man, unknown to Frank before this morning’s call, let out a long and withering sigh. He turned back to the river. Frank caught a glimpse of black eyes, black hair. The moon flashed off his smile.

“Plan as if the box is lost. Assume we’ve already been burned,” he said.

“You know something I don’t.” Not a question.

“No.”

“If the box is gone then we should be gone. There’s nothing to plan. If the box is gone then we stop having this conversation and we leave. Quickly.”

“And how would you do that?” the man asked.

“Seriously? You need instruction on how to stop talking? You just… fucking…” Frank realized his fists were bumping together again, the meat of his knuckles clumping loudly against his scarred wedding ring. He took a deep breath and smoothed out the creases of his jacket, pressing damp palms into the still-slick fabric. “You stop talking and you disappear. The second you know this deal is fucked, that’s what we do. So if you know something…”

The man made an elaborate gesture with his thin fingers, a glitter of rings along his knuckles, all silver and gold.

“You need to be ready for betrayal. That is all I want from you, today.” The man’s pronunciation was sparkling, as though he were a virtuoso in enunciation, and wished to showcase his talents. “An assurance that, if everything goes to shit, you will be able to disappear. Because if they do not bring the box, the best thing for me is that you are never found.”

“By them?” Frank asked. “Or by you?”

“I do not make threats.”

“Only promises?” Frank laughed. “Fucking bosses and their fucking promises.” He waved his hand, the wide fan of his fingers bent and crooked. “Leave that to me. I’ve fallen out of more cities than you’ve seen, mister. Things go south, I’ll be fine.”

The man was still for a moment, bent toward the river like a heron, the peaked cap of his hood nodding slowly. Finally he laughed.

“Very well. Alexander will be in contact. Not before Sunday, but no later than Tuesday. Anyone comes to you outside of that time, assume they’re trying to kill you.”

“I don’t know anyone named Alexander.”

“Alexander knows you.” The man raised a pipe from his pocket, tapping the bowl against his sleeve. The air immediately smelled of roasted apples and ash. “Let us not forget the purpose of our deal, Mr. Franklin.”

“Right,” Frank said. He spat into the river and turned down the bank. “See you later.”

“Gods pray not,” the man said, then disappeared.

It’s a very modern situation, with a few fantastic elements. But you can see that dialog is my primary entry into character, along with some description tags. Things like Frank’s scarred wedding ring, his crooked fingers, nervous hands and suit so fresh that the creases are still in all communicate the character without saying anything specific. I feel like it’s a good scene.

For the second exercise I started including fantasy elements without overwhelming the character. I stayed in the same character-space while leaving Frank behind. I think the differences are clear. Here it is.

Cassus stood in front of the mirror, carefully disentangling his fingers from the rings of his bondspirit. Long, clotted streamers of blood dragged from the teeth of each ring as he twisted them free. He dropped them into a pewter bowl filled with ice wine, the pale golden surface quickly clouding into rust.

“It went well?” Lorren called from the other room. The last ring plopped into the wine, taking the final measure of Cassus’ sacrifice.

“He will do. Without trust or loyalty, but he knows his job.” Cassus dipped his hands into a different bowl, this one of chilled water and rum, wincing as the spirit stung his wounds. He dried his hands and turned to face the door. The room was crowded with trunks, each overstuffed with books and clothes and the remnants of a larger life. Lorren’s shadow moved against the white tiles of the bathroom. “The product of a wretched life, that one.”

“A wretched life is a better education than most schools,” Lorren said. He came into the room dressed in embroidered silk, his hair freshly oiled and black as a raven’s wing. Cassus suspected the poor man had started dying his precious locks, though he would never mention this. Lorren frowned when he saw the bowl of wine and blood, and the awkward way Cassus was holding his hands, palms up, fingers curled delicately around the injury.

“I hate those things,” Lorren hissed, hurrying forward to take Cassus’ hands in his own, rubbing thumbs into palms, tutting all the while. “I wish you could leave them somewhere else.”

“And where would I leave them?” Cassus asked quietly. “Not like I can call the butler and have him store them with the rest of the silver. Besides,” he gently pulled his hands free and slid past Lorren. The smell of the man’s hair, rich as mahogany, wafted through the air. “They ask little enough of me these days. Just happy for a home, I think.”

“Yes, well. Anyway.” Lorren drifted to the vanity and dropped a silk kerchief over the bowls, hiding the blood and silver. “Do you ever wonder what became of Hammond? A good man, and loyal. I would hate to think of him out of work because of us.”

“You were always so kind, my dear. I’m sure he’s fine,” Cassus said. He knew that Hammond had slid smoothly into the service of a barrow merchant upriver, even with the stain of House Frael on his record. Cassus had tracked all the servants of his former estate far enough to know they weren’t vulnerable to bribes or the temptation of treachery. He had removed those few who had fallen too far to be trusted. “Have you already taken your dinner?”

“Yes, sorry. But I put some aside for you.” Lorren went to a cabinet by the door and removed a tray covered in silk. He arranged two of the wayward trunks to form a table then pulled a chair from the corner and motioned for Cassus to sit. He did, and Lorren swept the silk away to reveal a bowl of cream soup and an apple. “Not the Kelling’s, but still a good soup. I’m afraid it might have cooled a bit.”

“I prefer it cold,” Cassus said.

“Wait, wait,” Lorren said, fluttering Cassus’ hand away from the spoon and disappearing into the other room. He returned a second later with a small vase, which he set beside the soup with a flourish. Then he produced a folded paper rose from his sleeve, bowing has he balanced it in the vase. “There. Ideal.”

“Lorren!” Cassus said. He plucked the rose up and turned it in the light. It had been made from a waxed candle wrapper, the chandler’s logo tucked into the delicate petals. “You made this?”

“I have to do something with my time,” Lorren said demurely, a slight blush on his cheeks. “And you’re always so glum after these sorts of meetings.”

“How could I ever be glum?” Cassus asked. He set the rose on the table and drew Lorren’s face to his own. “Where is there room in my life for tears, with such a rose in my heart?”

Lorren laughed and pushed him away. “Eat your soup, and think no more of this business. You’re too kind for such things.”

Cassus smiled, tucking into the soup. It was good, even cold.

Again, character names and things like the bonded rings say something about the world, but not as much as they say about the character. And I tried to say a lot about the character without yelling.

This is a good exercise, and one I recommend. Another dozen or so of these and I may have a story. But more importantly, I’ll have a character.

This is kind of a last minute addition to my schedule, but I’m going to GenCon this year. I haven’t been since they moved to Indianapolis, having put dreams of being a famous game designer behind me in the late nineties. But the writer’s track and support for authors has grown exponentially in the last few years. So this is going to be a business trip, wrapped in nostalgia, soaked in mainline geekery. I’m looking forward to it. I have no schedule going in, so feel free to stop me on the dealer floor or in one of the many bars. I’m totally approachable. Here’s what I look like, in case you don’t know:

Almost exactly like that.

I just got my hands on this, so rather than posting something substantive, I’m just going to give you this and then run gleefully around the yard. Ladies and gentlemen, the cover for The Pagan Night.

Dungeons and Dragons has an interesting alignment system that charts your character’s moral and philosophical standing along two axes. Axis one is Good vs. Evil and axis two is Lawful vs. Chaotic. The first standard is both common and long standing. Though the precise definitions might change depending on religion or culture or time period, the concept of good versus evil should be familiar to everyone.

It’s the second axis that makes things interesting. Apocryphally, the idea was stolen from Michael Moorcock. Hell, that might be canon, I really don’t know. But it expresses a relation to cultural and societal rigidity (or structure, depending on your viewpoint) that really makes the game fun. The difference between Chaotic Good and Lawful Good can be considerably more evident than between Lawful Good and Lawful Evil, for example. That said, people tend to identify more strongly along the Good versus Evil axis than the Lawful versus Chaotic axis. It’s just a more familiar concept.

Political stances are similar. We spend a lot of energy talking about conservative versus progressive, or right versus left, or fascist versus commie. But I would contend that there is a second axis: Rational versus Reactionary. Or, as it works in my head, Reasonable versus Screaming Internet Monkey Shitting All Over The Nice Things.

I will proudly state that I am left of center. Not very far left, not by the absolute partisan standards that get applied these days, but solidly left. Solidly progressive. But more and more, I’ve started to identify along that other axis. I think I have more in common with reasonable conservatives than I do with reactionary liberals. And there’s no one further from my standpoint than Internet Monkey Shitters of any stripe.

I’ve said all of that to say this. There is an organized boycott of Tor books, starting tomorrow. I think this is irrational. The organizer and lead proponent of this particular internet shitting is Vox Day. He is the Internettest Shitter of them all. His support for a cause should be reason enough to oppose it.

So I encourage you to go out tomorrow and buy books. Tor books, if the mood graces you, but mainly just books. Vox’s only stated goal is to destroy the science fiction community. And there’s no better revenge than living well.

Also, everyone knows you don’t let Chaotic Neutral into your party.

This is a quick, unscheduled post to address something that happened on the internet. I just want to say that I stand by Irene Gallo, and echo the thoughts of Kameron Hurley, Tobias Buckell and Chuck Wendig.

Double standards, doubled down by corporate masters. I call bullshit.

Jesus Christ, people. Where are the adults?

I’m going to engage in a little nostalgia this morning. This is part of an object lesson, about what can be achieved with persistent effort. It relates to last week’s post on discipline.

New writers sometimes complain that they don’t have the necessary talent, that so-and-so was just born a better writer. And there’s a little truth to that. Some people are more naturally talented than others. One of my childhood friends was simply a good drawer. He never learned the thing about the face triangle or how to balance the proportions of the body or any of that. He just sat down and drew what he saw, and it looked right. But just because you don’t have a talent for something doesn’t mean you can’t get good at it. Allow me to demonstrate.

I love miniatures. I use them in RPGs, in wargames, sometimes I just buy them to paint, because I think they look cool. But I have no natural talent for the task of painting these tiny little things. I just decided, almost thirty years ago, that this was something that I was going to do, no matter how badly it went. Behold.

That’s the first miniature I ever painted. I had a little experience with 1:35 scale military modeling, but I knew nothing of the fundamentals of miniatures. Still, I did an okay job, I think. The rivets on his armor are silver, the borders between flesh and clothing and beard and steel are well defined. So I guess maybe I had a little talent. But nothing great. This was in high school, and I remember thinking “Hey, this cost me a couple bucks and kept me interested for the whole day. I could really get into this.

This is probably four years later. There are a lot of space marines between now and then, but I wasn’t making great leaps in the skill department. I was neat, and that’s about it. I chose this model to show because it’s both neat and detailed, but there’s no highlighting, no shading, none of the stuff that marks improvement. I spend a lot of time on this model. It was expensive at a time when I didn’t have money to push around, and I really gave it my all. Again, good detailing. The borders are occasionally soft and blotty, but overall I was proud of that model.

Funny story: I never played Blood Angels. I was Space Wolves all the way, baby.

After I got married I took a break, because I really, really didn’t have the money, nor the time, to devote to any of my hobbies. Some years later I picked it up again and, after some brushing up of the old skill set, produced this:

It’s hard to pick out in the pic, but I’m starting to highlight. I had developed a love for inks, too, so there’s an interesting shadow mix on that metallic. I even highlighted the eyes! I’ve become aware of more advanced techniques and am trying the out. This is around the time I started writing professionally. Again I got busy, but this time I kept painting. And that stretch of practice brought this.

I’m very happy with this model. There are maybe five levels of highlights on the muscles, the hair took base, shadow, highlight and final highlights, I’ve really got some nice ink work on the greaves and bindings. I really feel like this is a serious improvement in my skill.

It only took twenty-five years. And there was a lot of stopping and starting in there, and I’ve never had a second of guidance. This is just me sitting in a room and trying things with paint to see how it works. And I still have a lot of room for improvement. I’m not sure how much better I’ll get. To be honest, my eyes are starting to betray me. I’m already painting with reading glasses on, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to see the finer details as well as I could in college. But that just means I’m less aware of my mistakes, so it’s all win, all the time.

One other thing: none of those models are properly based. I’ve never based a single model. I’m not sure that I will. I don’t even know where to begin on that.

How does this relate to writing? Simple. Work hard, and improve over time. Get frustrated with what you do wrong, but rest easy in the knowledge that recognizing failure is the first step to success. Becoming aware of advanced techniques, whether that means inking, highlighting, two-brush blending or dialogue, pacing, narrative description, just the act of seeing that in other people’s work and thinking about how it might apply to your own creations, that’s an improvement. There may be techniques that you’ll manage just naturally. I’ve always been a neat painter. I’ve always been good at description. But that doesn’t mean you can rely on that one technique to create your masterpiece. Depend on it, but learn the related skills.

Work hard every day. Get better with every failure. Play the long game.

I have a problem with discipline. Up until a certain point in my life, no one ever made me stick with something I didn’t want to do. I played soccer in middle school, but after I got hit in the face with a ball I told my parents I didn’t want to go anymore, and so I didn’t. I practiced piano for exactly one year, found it difficult, and quit. Social interactions never came easily to me, so more and more my parents let me stay home rather than hang out with strangers who might have become friends. I narrowed my life into the things I wanted to do and the things I wanted to avoid.

Fortunately, I recognized the essential wrongness of this at some point. College and the years that followed were mostly a game of remaking myself into someone I could respect, but I still have those initial tendencies baked into my brain. I wasted a lot of really good opportunities in my life because they required difficult things, and I had spent too much time ducking out of my responsibilities.

The turning point was my writing career. I have a certain amount of inherent talent that let me coast through my college writing courses. But when it comes to writing professionally and commercially, that talent is only worth so much. It takes discipline to actually make it in this business, and discipline was a thing that I sorely lacked.

I found that discipline in two ways. First, I took up various physical activities. My father is especially derisive of the life of the body, preferring to focus on the life of the mind, and so in my childhood whenever I expressed an interest in sports or exercise he was, to put it politely, disdainful. In those cases I wasn’t just given an opportunity to quit, I was given an argument for it. So once I got serious about writing, I also got serious about my physical well being, because the discipline learned in the one form aided the other.

The second thing that I did was stop making excuses. I have a history of giving up, whether that’s something in my psyche, or something that I was trained to do as a child. Having a history of it makes it easier to give up in the future, too, because I’ve already come to expect it of myself. The people close to me can just roll their eyes and write it off. I can blame my schedule, or my depression, or my upbringing. It’s easy. And people are so empathetic to quitters. We’re a generation of wasted potential and legitimate excuses.

But each and every time that I’ve given up on something, it’s been a decision that I made. There was a point where I could have kept on going, and instead I stopped. When I’m running, it’s each and every step. When I’m writing, it’s each and every word. I can blame my history, but at the core, I am the only one who can overcome my own failings.

I have excuses, but none of them are reasons. I have failings, but none of them are failure. I have successes, and each one is hard won and hardly notable.

In the end, I overcome myself.

Over the course of my life, I have been fired from one job, and that was on the day that I quit. I was a baker, working the 2 AM to 9 AM shift. I had just gotten married, and frankly I was tired of only seeing my wife in passing, so I turned in my two weeks notice. The owner fired me on the spot. Life goes on.

Writing novels is completely unlike that. If you take up the job of writer, you will never be fired. You will most likely have to take other jobs at the same time, you will certainly have to curb your budget during the transition from salaried employment to freewheeling novelist, you may even have to depend on the patronage of strangers. If you’re fortunate, your family may be willing and able to carry the extra burden of your fiscal irresponsibility. But no one is ever going to call you into their office, make a few offhand references to your performance reviews, and then show you the door.

Instead, you’re much more likely to starve. That is to say, your sales may suffer for whatever reason, so your publisher might not pick up their option on your contract, and the next publisher might not offer as much of an advance, or the buyers in charge of stocking the distributors might order fewer copies of your next book, until you’re facing a smaller and smaller income stream. And then one day you wake up and realize that you have to get another job, and maybe put this writing thing behind you.

I guess it’s more accurate to say that the only person who can actually fire you from this job is you. They say that writing is some combination of hard work, talent, perseverance and luck, but it’s also possible that you just might not be smart enough to fire that lout at the keyboard.

In the early drafts of The Pagan Night (when it was still called The Heretic Blade) I had a problem with characters. Their motivations, specifically. My readers kept saying things like “I have trouble believing so-and-so would do the things that he’s doing” which is a troubling thing to hear. I spent some time tinkering with backstory and with the scenes that led up to the scenes in question, but I was never able to get it quite right. That’s part of the reason that draft never saw the broader light of day. Even the draft that made the rounds to the publishers continued to suffer slightly from that problem. The fact that I’ve rewritten this book six times has something to do with it, but the larger problem was really a matter of character creation. And it’s something I saw a lot in other books, and in my own writing in the past, so I think it’s worth addressing.

In the book, my problem was in order of creation. As with most books that I write, when coming up with the world of Tenebros I started with a single theological truth. Then I created some cultural institutions around that truth, devised ways that the different cultures interpreted that truth differently, and iterated that a few hundred generations to get the final religious/social/cultural structure that would define the world. That’s just how I create.

Once I had that, I looked for the points of tension in that culture, and the institutions that would drive that tension. Up to this point I feel like my process is pretty solid, but then I made a mistake. Once I had those points of conflict and tension, I came up with the plot of the book. Once I had the plot, I created the characters that would fill in the plot holes. And that’s a mistake. Because everything that my characters did after that point was in service to the plot, rather than in service to themselves. I think this last iteration of the book solves that, because I stripped it down to a couple of characters and had their personal conflict (father and son, hero and heir, heretic and saint) drive the story. Looking at the world that way really refreshed my own perspective on things.

While waiting for edits back, I’ve started working on something else. Always writing. That’s how writers are, man. But this time, while I’ve done the Great Theological Truth thing, and the world creation, and the social/cultural/religious structure, I stopped at that point and just created a character. One person who I personally can relate to, and I’ve put him in an interesting situation, and I’m going to let the story grow on its own. I have some ideas, some scenes, and some conflicts that I intend to insert, but I’m going to get to those places organically, and not worry about what happens in between.

For the curious, here’s the first paragraph from this enigmatic new work:

The eldren had a way of forgetting, of sealing memory into stone and dropping their sorrows into the black waters of the lake that lapped against their floating city, to sink beneath the surface, never to be remembered again. The lake is gone, the city is gone, the eldren dead and legend, but the stones remain. They whisper underfoot of broken love and angry hearts, of children dead, of glory never realized and dreams turned to ash in an age before the age of mortal flesh. I walked among these stones, looking for a friend.

This past week I finished a book. Finished is probably a strong word, because there will be another round of revisions, and then maybe a final copyediting pass, but the book is by and large done. I have been writing some version of this book for the last four years, ever since Dead of Veridon came out and it became clear that the direction of my career was changing. The book has had many titles, starting in my notes simply as The Winter Sun, then spending a lot of time as The Heretic Blade (a name I will probably reuse, though not in this trilogy) and finally evolving into the book that is now being marketed as The Pagan Night.

If you look at the original book, there is almost no similarity between it and the final product. The characters are all different, the tone of the book has changed, even the scale has shrunk. I originally wrote a ten thousand word outline of the series, something I planned on telling in five books. My plan was to retell the Reformation as knightly adventure, something that I think might still be interesting at some point. I’m pretty sure none of that outline survived. It might be fun to dig it up sometime and compare notes.

I’m telling you this for a simple reason. You’re never completely sure which book you’re actually writing. No matter how hard you try, the thing that you end up creating isn’t going to match up to the thing in your head. And once it goes through the process of editing, revising, re-revising, more editorial evaluation, feedback from your writing group, from your friends, from that little demon that lives in your heart that doesn’t have anything better to do than criticize everything you do… once all of that has passed, you will have a book in your hands. Something that you wrenched out of your head and put into words.

The best thing you can do is love what it is, rather than compare it to what you meant for it to be. This is important not just for your book, but also for your career, your family life, your circle of friends, your belief system… everything.

Reading this, you might think I’m disappointed in The Pagan Night. Nothing could be less true. I love this book. I especially love what it’s become, now that I’ve stopped trying so hard to make it something that it shouldn’t be.

By the way, while all of that negotiating and revising was going on, I wrote a different book. I really had no idea what I wanted from it, and it shows. And now, while the next round of contemplation is going on, I get to work on that book once again. It’s refreshing. It’s different. And it’s a little bit scary, because I’m still not sure what I want from it, or what it wants to be. But experience has shown me that the only way to find out is to sit down and write the world that presents itself. Write the world you see.