I’ve been freelancing for long enough now that I’ve had several other writer friends come to me asking for advice on how to do it. I think sometimes they’re looking for a step-by-step, and I’m afraid I always leave them disappointed because the truth is, there really isn’t one. Every freelancer’s path is going to be different, which is simultaneously one of the best and the worst things about being self-employed in general.
It’s like the difference between playing a side-scroller or an open-world RPG. A side-scroller has a logical, clear progression from level to level—you don’t need to wonder what order to do things in, or where you should go next. In an open-world RPG, you can spend hours just wandering around before you accomplish a single game objective, or accidentally wander into map areas with enemies you’re not strong enough to fight yet and have to backtrack to a more familiar space until you’re ready to face them. It’s up to you to decide when you’re ready to fight the next boss, or which activities and areas you’re most interested in spending time on. It’s no coincidence that open-world RPGs usually have a significantly longer average playtime than side-scrollers, too. If you want to do speed runs, you’re probably playing the latter type—and, I would argue, if your goal is to make quick advancement into a 6-figure salary, traditional employment is where you should focus. You absolutely can reach that income level as a freelance writer, but it’ll take some time to build.
From the time I was a wee nerdlet, I loved text-based adventure games, choose-your-own-adventure books—anything that let the audience, not just participate in the story, but influence how it played out.
As much fun as these stories are to read, writing a choose-your-own story can be a beast of an undertaking. I attempted several that I never finished before finally completing my first one—and even though I made it through, it took a couple of false starts. On the plus side, I made a few valuable learning mistakes along the way. I’m currently in the planning stages of a new choose-your-own story and, while it’s still a bit of a daunting task, I feel much more confident about how to tackle it than I was last time.
I’ve been seeing more interest in these kinds of narratives of late. In part I think because online publishing makes it much easier to share this kind of story with readers, but I’ve also seen a few writers playing with the form in print books (a chapter in Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House comes to mind). So I figured I’d share some of my tips for writing a choose-your-own story without losing your mind.
Conventional wisdom says to read a journal’s back issues before you send them work so you can get a sense of what they publish and whether your stuff’s a good fit. The same advice is often given to folks shopping around a chapbook or book-length manuscript: read what the press has done before. It’s good advice—when it’s possible. That’s easy for free online journals, for instance, and even many print journals, small presses, or paywalled online publications have free samples available.
In other cases, though, the only way to read past issues is to buy them. While I’m in favor of supporting small publishers in theory, my budget and bookshelf space also aren’t infinite. Granted, there are other ways around this conundrum. You could only submit to places that do have work available on line, for instance, or you could just say fuck it, send your stuff anyway, and hope for the best.
There are other ways to get a sense for a journal’s tastes too, though, ones that don’t involve spending any money. Here are some things I’ll often do when I want to scope out a journal, anthology, or press to decide whether it could be a good home for my work.
We’re in the middle of an open call for After Happy Hour, which means I’ve been reading a lot of submissions lately. The variety of stories that get submitted to us always makes it an adventure to read the slush, and it’s usually one I enjoy. For the most part, the stories people send us are fun to read. A lot of the things we reject are good stories at their core that either just don’t fit the aesthetic of the journal—or, more often, that are a draft or two shy of being completely finished.
I think every writer has sent out stories too early at some point. I’ve definitely been guilty of it—I’ll finish a round of edits, think the story’s finally done, and send it off. Then I reread the story after the rejections come in and realize I’m glad those editors said no, because the piece definitely isn’t as good as it could be.
I generally don’t concern myself with genre divisions as either a writer or a reader. When I’m looking for things to read, I want to spend my time with realistic characters inhabiting an immersive world—and, beyond that, I’m not too picky. I take the same approach when I’m writing. Whatever conventions and ideas fit a story are the ones that I’m going to use, even if that means pulling from multiple genres, or ending up somewhere in between them.
At least, until I get to the point that a story is finished and I’m trying to find a home for it. Then, the question of what genre it belongs to becomes more pressing. While there are a number of markets that accept any flavor of non-realistic fiction, others have a tighter focus on one genre or the other and I find myself forced to answer the question: just what do I call this weird thing that I’ve created?
I love writing conferences—which might be a bit surprising, considering I’m generally an introvert who, most days, will do just about anything in my power to avoid being forced to socialize. That doesn’t mean I don’t like people, though. I just like being able to engage with them on my own terms, and to retreat into my little corner of solitude when my people-ing battery starts running low.
Which is actually why I love conventions, conferences, book fests, and the like. Panels and readings give you a place to listen to other folks talk about interesting things without feeling pressure to engage. When you’re talking one-on-one, there’s less need for empty small talk—you can jump right into subjects like writing, books, or other things you actually want to talk about. For me, at least, just having those easy potential conversation starters lowers my anxiety level about entering a room full of strangers.
I’m definitely a cat person; there’s no denying it when you own four of them. For the most part, I try not to be one of those annoying pet parents that always finds a reason to show off pictures of the furbabies or work them into conversations.
That said, pets can be a very useful tool for a writer. The animals a character owns—and how they view and treat them—can do a lot to characterize them for the reader. Pets can be characters in their own right, too, or can serve nicely as symbols to reinforce the themes or imagery you’re playing with. They can also be a great way to introduce movement and sensory details like touch, smell, and sound, not to mention emotions—depending on the situation, they can be a catalyst for grief, frustration, and fear, or a source of comic relief from them.
In that spirit, here are three pet-based prompts that can help you play with ways to utilize pets in your writing.
The Dune trilogy is among my biggest influences and inspirations as a writer—and I’m certainly not alone in this. It was one of the works that helped to define space opera and science fiction as we know them today, so it’s no surprise that people keep trying to adapt it for the big screen.
Unfortunately, none of those past attempts did full justice to the source material. Not even Patrick Stewart could save the David Lynch adaptation, and while the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries hit more of the right beats, it still fell far short of the tone and epic scope of the original.
And I will say Denis Villeneuve’s two-part Dune movie isn’t perfect, either—but it gets it a lot more right than any past attempt, and has earned at least this life-long Frank Herbert reader’s seal of approval. Stretching it into two films was a smart move, giving the story the space it needs to breathe and nearly achieving the expansive, multi-threaded plot of the book.
