Guest Post by Phil Brucato: Green Room Writing

Today I’m happy to turn my blog over to acclaimed author Phil Brucato. Phil is a professional author with years of experience under his belt. Although he shares a background with me in the hobby games industry, Phil has branched out and has been published alongside many well-known authors. This article talks about writing from an unusual, yet necessary, perspective.

Not everything in a story happens on the page. When an author writes material that occurs “offstage,” that so-called “green room writing” may inform the events that the audience sees. Giving foundations for the characters, their motivations, personalities and activities, green room writing may well feel like wasted effort. Trust me, though – it’s really not.

I coined the term green room writing when describing the many false starts I had with my short story “Ravenous.” An intense urban faerie tale inspired by my experiences in a heavy metal group, “Ravenous” featured the implosion of the narrator’s band in mid-gig. The story’s first few drafts began in the “green room” – the often-cramped backstage space where performers wait before a show. My original versions of the tale started with the bandmates sniping at one another while a warm-up group performs out front. By the time the first show ends, all five members of the narrator’s group are ready to blow… and soon do.

It didn’t work for me, though. The characters seemed realistic, the dialog zinged, the tension radiated in all directions… and yet, it didn’t work. I pounded through two or three drafts of the opening like this, wondering why my inner critic kept pouting at it.

Then it hit me: The action didn’t begin in the green room. It started as the band stepped onstage – tense, pissed off, surging with adrenaline and facing a drunk, voracious crowd.

“Ravenous” doesn’t kick in when the music does – that option seems too abrupt, and doesn’t give the reader time to care about the characters. (I know; I wrote that version, too.) The tale starts just before the lights go up, with five fiercely terrified young people ready to pounce and be pounced on in return. “I’ve got that just-before-the-cages-open feeling in my chest,” says our narrator, Nikita. The bomb’s just about to explode, and in the next few paragraphs, it does.

By the time I wrote the band’s detonation, I knew every character on stage. Each one spoke with a distinctive voice; each had a unique personality. I knew how the bandmates looked, what they wanted, why they blew up in the ways they did. That scene essentially wrote itself. From first draft to final, I changed hardly a word of it.

I was able to write that scene the way I did because of the various passes I’d run through in that green room. Although they didn’t appear in the final story – nor should they have appeared – those literally offstage brainstorming sessions informed all that followed afterward.

Green room writing can feel frustrating. Personally, I get annoyed when my Muse dictates something that probably won’t make it to the final draft. I often feel like I’m wasting my time, and that goes double if I actually like what I’ve written and know at the time that no one but me (and possibly my editorial first-readers) will see it. That said, I realize that green room writing is helpful… even, sometimes, essential to a good story.

Sure, I’ve written many tales that leapt full-force from my imagination, with engaging characters and fascinating action intact. It CAN happen that way… but it doesn’t always. More often than not, especially with long or complicated storylines, I need to “waste” time and words figuring out what happens in the green room. As frustrating as it might be to throw scenes out or re-write that damned first hook yet AGAIN (yes, Holy Creatures To and Fro, I’m looking at you!), those secret stories we tell in the green room can make the ones seen in the spotlights sing.

About Phil Brucato

A professional author for 20 years, “Satyr” is best-known as Phil Brucato, the driving force behind the award-winning RPGs Mage: The Ascension, Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade and Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium. Beyond his RPG work, though, he’s also published…

  • The anthology RAVENS IN THE LIBRARY, a benefit collection featuring Holly Black, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Laurell K. Hamilton, Amy Brown, Carrie Vaughn, Terri Windling, Midori Snyder and many others. For details, see http://www.sjtucker.com/ravens.html.
  • Short fiction (the magazines Weird Tales, newWitch, The Tomb, Cyber Age Adventures and The Morning Star, plus over half-a-dozen anthologies from Daw, Masquerade, Harper Prism, White Wolf and other publishers).
  • Essays, columns and interviews (newWitch Magazine, Realms of Fantasy Magazine, Disinformation Press, beat-a-go-go.com, Fantagraphic Press, Citadel Press and Knights of the Dinner Table, plus several local newspapers and weekly magazines).
  • Comics (White Wolf Publishing, Infobia Magazine) and a forthcoming webcomic called STRING THEORY.
  • Novels (the Ascension Warrior trilogy)
  • …and a variety of pending-publication projects.

    Not everything in a story happens on the page. When an author writes material that occurs “offstage,” that so-called “green room writing” may inform the events that the audience sees. Giving foundations for the characters, their motivations, personalities and activities, green room writing may well feel like wasted effort. Trust me, though – it’s really not.

    I coined the term green room writing when describing the many false starts I had with my short story “Ravenous.” An intense urban faerie tale inspired by my experiences in a heavy metal group, “Ravenous” featured the implosion of the narrator’s band in mid-gig. The story’s first few drafts began in the “green room” – the often-cramped backstage space where performers wait before a show. My original versions of the tale started with the bandmates sniping at one another while a warm-up group performs out front. By the time the first show ends, all five members of the narrator’s group are ready to blow… and soon do.

    It didn’t work for me, though. The characters seemed realistic, the dialog zinged, the tension radiated in all directions… and yet, it didn’t work. I pounded through two or three drafts of the opening like this, wondering why my inner critic kept pouting at it.

    Then it hit me: The action didn’t begin in the green room. It started as the band stepped onstage – tense, pissed off, surging with adrenaline and facing a drunk, voracious crowd.

    “Ravenous” doesn’t kick in when the music does – that option seems too abrupt, and doesn’t give the reader time to care about the characters. (I know; I wrote that version, too.) The tale starts just before the lights go up, with five fiercely terrified young people ready to pounce and be pounced on in return. “I’ve got that just-before-the-cages-open feeling in my chest,” says our narrator, Nikita. The bomb’s just about to explode, and in the next few paragraphs, it does.

    By the time I wrote the band’s detonation, I knew every character on stage. Each one spoke with a distinctive voice; each had a unique personality. I knew how the bandmates looked, what they wanted, why they blew up in the ways they did. That scene essentially wrote itself. From first draft to final, I changed hardly a word of it.

    I was able to write that scene the way I did because of the various passes I’d run through in that green room. Although they didn’t appear in the final story – nor should they have appeared – those literally offstage brainstorming sessions informed all that followed afterward.

    Green room writing can feel frustrating. Personally, I get annoyed when my Muse dictates something that probably won’t make it to the final draft. I often feel like I’m wasting my time, and that goes double if I actually like what I’ve written and know at the time that no one but me (and possibly my editorial first-readers) will see it. That said, I realize that green room writing is helpful… even, sometimes, essential to a good story.

    Sure, I’ve written many tales that leapt full-force from my imagination, with engaging characters and fascinating action intact. It CAN happen that way… but it doesn’t always. More often than not, especially with long or complicated storylines, I need to “waste” time and words figuring out what happens in the green room. As frustrating as it might be to throw scenes out or re-write that damned first hook yet AGAIN (yes, Holy Creatures To and Fro, I’m looking at you!), those secret stories we tell in the green room can make the ones seen in the spotlights sing.

    This article was written by Phil Brucato and has been republished with his permission. For more about this acclaimed author, read his full bio and other shenanigans on Phil Brucato’s LiveJournal.

    Read my Guest Post about Dracula on the Crackle.com Blog

    Crackle.com LogoFolks, I’m pleased to announce that I have a guest post over at Crackle.com.The best part about Crackle.com, is that you can legally watch original and older content for free online — without a lot of commercials! As part of their Halloween celebration, they’re offering really, fun movies for fans to watch like GHOSTBUSTERS and CANDYMAN.

    When they asked me what vampire movie I wanted to write about, I initially chose FRIGHT NIGHT as my first pick. When they had mentioned that they needed someone to write about BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, I was interested because I’ve often considered the film to be a “paranormal romance.”

    In the novel, Mina does not return the Count’s love. In the film, she not only returns his love, she pities him and fights for him. This is an important difference between the two because this version of Dracula does eventually find forgiveness from the same God he turned his back on centuries ago. The phrase “the blood is the life” holds layers of significance here as well: the blood of God and the vampires’ primary sustenance. — SOURCE: Love, Blood and Fangs: Bram Stoker’s Dracula at Crackle.com

    If you’re interested, I invite you to check out my post on Crackle.com’s blog. Remember, you can then watch BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA for free, too. Enjoy!

    Guest Blog Post: Brozek on Editing Anthologies

    Readers, I asked Jennifer Brozek to offer a guest blog today. Jennifer is an editor, writer and a game designer who has recently done some work through Apex Books and Morrigan Books. This post is about her perspective on editing a fiction anthology. I know that many of you are looking for places to submit your short stories, and anthologies can be a great opportunity for you. Be sure to read Jennifer’s bio if you’re interested in learning more about her, too. Without further ado, I’ll turn this post over now to my esteemed guest…

    Monica was curious about how editing an anthology is different than editing a story, a novel or something like marketing copy for Amazon that pays-the-bills for us full-time authors. In essence, editing an anthology is the same as any other editing with one big difference: all of the short stories need to blend with each other to make the overall theme of the anthology flow into a cohesive storyline.

    I would liken it to putting together a string of freshwater pearls. Each pearl must be a beauty on its own – just like each story in the anthology must be perfect on its own. The technical writing has to be excellent, the story itself must be interesting and each story must adhere to the theme, genre and word count of the anthology in question.

    Once you have all of the pearls for the necklace, you need to string them together in such a way that, when hanging together, all of the pearls become a necklace that is more than the sum of their parts. Just like an anthology becomes more than just the sum of the individual stories. No one pearl can stand out in a way that interrupts the flow of the string. It cannot be too big, the wrong shape or the wrong color. Just like all of the stories must have a sense of an overall cohesion. Each story is telling a part of a bigger story. There is no room for rogues in an anthology.

    This is what makes editing an anthology so difficult. All of the stories must play nice together. None of them can introduce a plot point that will throw off any of the other stories. In the GRANTS PASS anthology (Morrigan Books, August 2009), we had to be very strict on how the world was destroyed by nature and where specific bioterrorists plagues were released.

    One story could not mention volcanic eruptions in the Hawaiian Islands while the stories set in California neglected to mention ash haze. Neither could one story state that an earthquake split the Americas in half while other stories described people traversing the Americas on foot. All of the stories were in the same shared universe. The details matter.

    In other anthologies, like monster anthologies about vampires, werewolves or zombies, there needs to be a cohesive and consistent story background on how the monster is defined. Are they non-brain eating Voodoo zombies, slow moving Romero zombies or fast moving Synder zombies? An anthology editor must consider the overall project and what it is they want from the anthology as a whole.

    That is why reading and understanding the submission guidelines for anthologies is so important. You may turn in a beautiful story that would have been perfect if everyone else had the same vision you did. But if your story does not fit well into a collection you will be rejected every time.

    About Jennifer Brozek

    Jennifer Brozek, the creator and co-editor of the Grants Pass anthology (Aug 2009, Morrigan Books), is a freelance author for many RPG companies including Margaret Weis Productions, Rogue Games and Catalyst Game Labs. Her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Castlemourn, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun and Serenity. She has also co-authored three books including Dragonvarld Adventures with Margaret Weis. She is published in several anthologies, is the creator and editor of the semi-prozine, The Edge of Propinquity, and is a submissions editor for the Apex Book Company. When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. You can learn more about her by visiting her blog at http://jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com.

    The Myths And Realities Of Writing For The Screen and Stage

    Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Joe Filippone–an experienced playwright and screenwriter. Joe has a unique perspective on writing for the screen and stage, and helps dispel some of the myths surrounding this lucrative form of writing. I’m happy to feature this fact-filled guest post about the forms of playwriting and screenwriting and what you can do to see your play or movie come to life.

    Playwriting vs. Screenwriting

    Everyone seems to think two of the easiest ways to break into the writing world are playwriting and screenwriting. After all, those are the two easiest realms of the writing world to break into. All you need to write is dialog and a few meager stage directions or camera angles that no one cares about anyway right? You don’t need to worry about character development, writing what the character is thinking or filling the page with vivid descriptions of the environment because the audience will see it right? And you don’t need to worry about making it novel length. A play is maybe eighty pages at the most. One can easily get it written over a weekend, mail it to some theatres and just rake in the royalties. Right? Wrong. Writing for actors is one of the hardest, difficult aspects to break into. Here’s why.
    Read More…

    Guest Blogger Writing Tip #2: Reading out of Discomfort

    When you choose your next book off of the bookshelf, many genre writers can’t resist the temptation of reading only “their” genre. There is nothing wrong with reading other science fiction writers if you are a science fiction writer yourself, but you’ll find yourself quickly running out of ideas. Well-rounded writers should read outside of their comfort zone, and study how other writers write. Even if you normally don’t read romance novels, science texts, biographies or history, you might just find that by reading different kinds of content will give you a fresh perspective on your own writing. I have learned more about plot construction from reading outside my comfort zone, then reading inside my comfort zone. Non-fiction, especially gives you a lot of ground to take inspiration from. Read, and learn from writers in other fields. Your writing will be better for it.

    About Richard Iorio: Since 1996, Richard has been a freelance writer and designer and has written for Atlas Games, Guardians of Order, Hogshead Publishing, and Zeitgeist Games (just to name a few). Currently, Richard is the Operations Manager for Goodman Games, as well as the co-owner and co-founder of Rogue Games, Inc.




    Monica Valentinelli >

    Looking for Monica’s books and games that are still in print? Visit Monica Valentinelli on Amazon’s Author Central or a bookstore near you.

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