Recorded live at LTUE 2010, here’s a high-energy Q&A session with the Writing Excuses crew and our special guest James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner. We cover outlining vs. discovery writing, the return to the hairy palate, education for writers, killing people, whether or not we want a bagel, pragmatic approaches, authors who don’t inspire us (and by “us” we mean “James Dashner”), and cooking up complex plots.

Note: Brandon says “Episode 6” but he was totally wrong. This is 4.7, for real.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: James pitches one of his favorites to us — False Memory by Dean Koontz

Writing Prompt: You’re flying in an airplane when a wing falls off… but the plane keeps going.

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Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key Points: To outline or not… follow your guttural instinct. Do what works for you, but don’t avoid the hard parts — practice them and make them easy. You learn more about writing by writing. Hands-on research makes killings believable, but do it with meaning. You don’t have to be gory to be scary. Sometimes you gotta staple some extra ideas onto your premise to make it strong enough. Don’t stop with the first, easy answers — look for the simple, surprising, excellent ones. Make sure you have revelations, plot twists, and scenes of suspense scattered throughout your story.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, season four episode six, questions and answers with James Dashner.
[Howard] 15 minutes long because you’re in a hurry.
[Dan] And we’re not that smart.
[James] Speak for yourself.

[Brandon] We’re going to do Q and A… rimshot… Q and A and we’re going to pitch most of these at Dashner. Question number one. Come on up and ask your question. Oh, yeah, you wrote it out for me, so you don’t actually have to. OK. I have an outline in my head, I tried to write one out on paper, and I started writing out this story. All three versions are different. Which one should I follow? James?
[James] I’m not much of an outliner. I think, if you’re worrying so much about your outlines and which one’s better and all that stuff, you’re probably missing the power of your story. I would put all three aside and maybe just focus on the premise, and just start writing and see what happens.
[Howard] I’m going to argue that if you’ve got these three things that are disagreeing, well, which of the three are you trying to publish? Probably the story.
[Brandon] I would ask yourself which one do you like the most? Pick that one and go. Maybe what’s happening is that you are not an outliner and it’s just not working for you. You need to practice discovery writing like James does. Maybe you’ve got this great outline and you aren’t quite sure how to follow it and it’s annoying you that you aren’t sure how to follow it. In that case, practice following the outline some more. But my guttural instinct…
[hacking coughs]
[Dan] Your guttural instinct?
[Brandon] My gut instinct reaction is to follow the one that you have written and disregard the other two.
[Dan] Guttural instincts are for people with very hairy palates.

[Brandon] OK. Question number two. Come on up.
[Dan] Speak into the bush.
[Laughter]
[Dan] Singing in the rain joke, people.
[Question] How important is education to a writer? How important is it to go get a college degree… not just an English degree, but a college degree, to a writer?
[James] That is perfect for me to answer, because my major was in an accounting of all things. It’s a very shameful, dark secret of mine.
[Howard] Oh!
[James] So, my number one education to become a writer was the countless hundreds and thousands of books I’ve read throughout my life and then going to writers’ conferences to fine tune what I instinctively had learned from that.
[Dan] Is that why the climax of every book is people adding?
[James] That’s why everyone dies via calculator at some point in my books.
[Brandon] Anyone else want to comment on that one? I’ll say that I got a master’s degree in creative writing. I thought it was helpful. It was most helpful for stalling my parents, but it was also helpful to give me workshopping experience and things like that. I do not think it is necessary. I think going to college and taking… taking classes in a lot of different things will be very helpful to you, but it is by no means necessary.
[Dan] I got an English degree because I love literature. But you’re going to learn more about writing from writing. I think the key is to get a college degree in whatever is interesting to you so that you have something to write about.

[Brandon] Let’s do question number three.
[Question] How do you do killings that are realistic and believable but not graphic, and then how do you put the characters feelings into how they kill the one person?
[Dan] Lots of hands-on research.
[Howard] Yeah, I’ve found the book l’arning just don’t help when it comes to killing people.
[Brandon] Oh, boy. This one seems tailor-made. James, do you have anything or should we just pitch that to Dan? He kills a lot of people.
[James] Just make sure they’re dead when you’re done, that’s all I’ve got to say.
[Brandon] Dan, let’s let you do this one? How do you handle killing?
[Dan] I don’t know, mine are kind of graphic. Honestly, it depends on what you’re trying to do. When I had something really horrifying, I would have it occur offstage, and then we would find the body later. If I wanted to specifically shock… and there were places where that was the point, because the main character witnessed something horrifying, and the way to get the reader to feel that same emotion is to horrify them as well. So there I stepped it up a little bit, stepped up the gore just slightly. But you don’t have to be gory to be scary. My second book, Mr. Monster, is a tenth maybe as gory as the first book, but it’s 10 times more disturbing. Because it presents what happens in a very different way. It cuts out the blood, but gets more into other freaky aspects behind it. How graphic you get depends on what you’re trying to do.
[Howard] The one caution that I would offer is that if you are killing people in your books, you want it to be meaningful. Don’t shy away from making it meaningful. Nothing harms us more than reading about death and having it be meaningless or cheapened or whatever. Societally, I just think that’s damaging. If there’s going to be killing, there needs to be a moral cost, and you have to show that somehow.
[James] If you want the death or the murder of a character to affect your reader, you gotta make sure that the reader is emotionally invested in that character before you have them killed off.
[Brandon] Or if you want a character murdering someone to be… or killing someone or something like this to be emotional [garbled] invest in the character causing it, because if it causes pain to a character that we love, it will cause pain to our readers. We’re… despite what Alcatraz says, our goal is not to give you pain, but our goal is to make you become emotionally invested in the story, to make it feel real to you, and give you the gambit of emotions. That’s part of what we do.
[Dan] Maybe your question is more about say a battle scene rather than of a specific murder. The one that I always think of is the original Ninja Turtles movie. There’s this huge fight in an antique shop with 5000 ninjas and these four turtles. Three of the turtles… or I guess two of them… there’s my turtle lore is faltering… two of them are using bladed weapons. They take down about 5000 ninjas and not a single drop of blood is spilt. If someone is actually whipping around katanas like that in close spaces…
[Howard] Broke a lot of china though.
[Dan] There would be arms everywhere.
[James] That’s the one you always think of?
[Dan] They shied back too far from that I think. That’s because it’s a great example of what Howard was saying, if you make it… if you take away too much of that emotional impact, I think it is dangerous.

[Brandon] Number four. Question number four, where are you? Hurry on up here. Oh, right. Go ahead and speak into the microphone. I do this under duress.
[Question] Do you guys want a bagel?
[Dan] Do you want a bacon mint?
[Howard] Why don’t we break for an ad?
[Brandon] Yeah, let’s break for an ad while people eat their bagels. Thank you for bringing us bagels, by the way.

[Brandon] We are going to… this week we are going to promo one of James Dashner’s favorite books. Dean Koontz’s False Memory. James, why do you love this book?
[James] This book is amazing because it’s a psychological thriller type book that… it’s one of those where it builds up this amazing mystery, and you know that you’re going to be disappointed in what’s behind everything… but you are not. It has some amazing twists. I love it.
[Brandon] OK. I have read only one Dean Koontz book, but I actually really liked it. We’ll give this a good recommendation. Go to audiblepodcast.com/excuse and you can download Dean Koontz’s False Memory for free on a 14 day free trial for audible.com’s book club.

[Brandon] All right. We have question number five.
[Question] Does the discovery writer need an outline or can they get away without it?
[Brandon] Were going to pitch this at James, because James, you are discovery writer as we’ve established.
[James] I do need something. Stephen King is one of my idols. He does zero outlining. He’s like a pure discovery writer. But I do like to at least jot out a page or two of notes. It’s very important to me that I have at least somewhat of an understanding of how the book ends. So I would at least do kind of surface level outlining a little bit, so you’re not just going all over the place in your story. I at least have a direction.
[Brandon] I would say… the best response to that question would be to try it out and see if it works for you. Keep in mind the cardinal rule that we have at Writing Excuses, which is if it doesn’t work, ignore it. If it does work, use it. Try writing stories two or three different ways. Find out what works for you. Then keep doing it. Refine it. Get better at it. Does this outline work for you? Yes? Do it more. No…
[Howard] I’d argue that that’s one of the principles of good, focused practice, is that if you look at something and you find out that it’s not working, it may be because you’re not trying to do the part that’s really hard. If there are hard parts that you’re skipping, you’re shorting yourself. Go do the hard parts, practice them, make them the easy parts. If you are discovery writing because outlining is hard, learn to outline.
[James] I would worry that if you can’t even do a simple short one, you might have a weak premise. Your story might not be strong enough.
[Brandon] Yeah, you may need more ideas stapled onto that premise… well, hopefully, elegantly woven into that premise.
[Howard] I use staples.
[Brandon] Thank you very much. Question number six?
[Howard] That was easy.
[Brandon] Question number six? The bagel dude is still handing out bagels. Thank you, bagel dude.
[James] Nothing like a good bagel… with no cream cheese.

[Question] Who is an author that you would not recommend being inspirational to you in any way, shape, or form?
[Brandon] When he did this, I first thought, “Oh, I don’t want to do that one.” Then I thought, “Wait a minute, I could make James answer it!” So, James, who do you find not inspirational at all? Who do you want to sue you?
[James] Well, present company excluded.
[Howard] Oh, good.
[James] I… OK, I’m just going to be honest. There… recently I decided I was going to branch out in my reading to try to help my writing. I was going to read books that I might not normally read. I started reading some of these mega-best-selling mystery type stories like Brad For [sp?] And Michael Connelly and… I shouldn’t have said their names, should I?
[Brandon] The opinions expressed by James Dashner are not necessarily the opinions of Writing Excuses or its staff.
[James] All I can say is I did not like them.
[Brandon] What about… why didn’t you want to emulate what they’re doing? What is it that you didn’t particularly care for yourself?
[James] I just… I was amazed at how… these have sold millions and there was no character development, the story was not intriguing, the chapters were super short and just had ridiculous… things like we talked about in our last podcast to try to trick you into reading the next one. It just had no depth to it whatsoever and I was… I couldn’t finish them.
[Brandon] And where can Mister Connolly’s lawyers reach you?
[Dan] I think this is a good time to point out something we’ve mentioned before, is that when a writer or an artist is very successful, even if you hate their work, there’s probably something you can learn from them.
[Brandon] Yeah. And it simply can be don’t do this. I’ve brought up Dan Brown a couple of times. I read the Da Vinci Code and had a very bad reaction against the Da Vinci Code. Why? Because I felt about halfway through that he was doing… all of his dirty tricks became very visible and plain to me, and I got really, really annoyed. I don’t like being annoyed at my fiction. That taught me, though, that taught me a lot of things about how I’m not supposed to trick people in that same way. It also kind of taught me the idea that in epic fantasy, I can’t afford to do that because I have to have people who are investing a long time into reading my books. I’d also suggest staying away from the Necronomicon, because it will drive you insane. Question number seven?

[Question] How do you make a storyline complex and intriguing, rather than too simple and easy to figure out?
[Brandon] James?
[James] Brandon, this has gotten way too easy for you to pass through to me.
[Brandon] I know. This is why we have guests on, because then we can take a break and play PSP like producer Jordo.
[James] That is such a hard question. Complexity… things that are intriguing. I don’t know. I honestly… my answer would just be that I rely on my instincts. That I think I’ve got to have revelations scattered throughout the story, I’ve got to have plot twists scattered throughout, I’ve got to have scenes of suspense that gets your blood boiling. I just rely on my instincts. I know that’s a really crappy answer. I’m sorry.
[Howard] What I’ve found works well for me is that I’ll come up with what I think is a cool, convoluted, twisty sort of plot. As I am figuring out the answer, I realize, all right, I was smart enough to figure that out. That means all of my readers are going to be smart enough to figure that out. Let’s not take answer number one, let’s look for something even more convoluted, more complex. Now, let’s look for something even worse. As I start twisting in there, what I find is not that I’m making this overly convoluted, it’s that I’m starting to discover the motivations of side characters and side organizations that entered into this, and actually made the situation much more complex than I initially imagined it. It just gets more interesting.
[Brandon] I would say exactly that. I’ve found that when I’ve done exactly what Howard said, I discard the first easy answers, I’m not making things more convoluted. I dig and dig. What I’m searching for is something that’s both more simple but more surprising at the same time. That’s the elegance you’re searching for, for this complexity is that it seems utterly complicated and complex and mind-boggling until a simple answer comes through in the text, and suddenly everything gets tied together. That’s what I’m looking for. You can’t always do that. But I think by discarding the first few tries, and trying to think a little bit harder, and try to work in your character motivations, that can work. That can help.
[James] That’s pretty much what I do, too.
[Brandon] Yeah. In this case, side stories and side plots may be what you’re also asking about. You may want to add a few more extra side plots which… if you figure out your reveal first that’s several layers deep, and add in some side plots that can weave into that, so when the reveal gets revealed, it actually ties up the side plots too, that’ll be surprising and shocking to your readers in the way that you want. But we are…
[Dan] Try-fail cycles are another one. Make sure that the problem… if the problem can be solved on the first try, it’s too easy of a problem.

[Brandon] We’re out of time. I’m going to let James just throw out any writing prompt he wants to give us.
[James] You are flying in an airplane, and suddenly, one of the wings falls off. But the plane doesn’t start diving toward the ground.
[Brandon] James Dashner’s book The Maze Runner is in stores now. You can also read his books The 13th Reality Series for middle grade readers. Thank you, James. This has been Writing Excuses, you’re out of excuses, now go write.