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 enemies you’re not strong enough to fight yet and have to backtrack to a more familiar map area 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.

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 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.

It can be tricky to figure out the right place to start and end a story—at any length, really, but it can be particularly challenging for a short story, when it’s coincidentally the most important to find the right moments. A novella or novel gives you a bit more time and space to breathe. You have the freedom to mosey a bit more, taking some time to explore the world and get to know the character before you dig into the meat of the story. With a short story, though, conventional wisdom says to introduce the reader to the core conflict from the first page, and that’s certainly what you need to do if you want to get your short fiction published in most markets. 

I’ve discussed strategies to find the right place to start and end a story in the past, and there are tons of different approaches you can take to do this. One that I’ve only recently become hip to is Orson Scott Card’s MICE Quotient, which is a nugget of storytelling wisdom that I’m mildly annoyed with myself that I’ve only discovered now, because it’s an incredibly useful way to categorize and think about stories.

In the MICE Quotient, stories are categorized into 4 groups depending on what provides the driving energy of the story: the world, information, a character, or an event. You can identify roughly where the story should naturally start and end, along with how the story should move between these points, based on what category the story fits into.

I adore Star Trek. But one common (and fair) critique of the series is the fact that most of its alien characters are really just humans in a mask—and not just on a physical level. Many of the aliens in Star Trek generally act and think the exact same way that people do, and it’s far from the only universe that’s guilty of this. Star Wars has more weird-looking aliens, but a lot of them are still functionally humans. The Mon Calamari look like squids, for example, but they use the same spaceship controls and don’t seem to have issues breathing air.

I use a lot of non-human characters in my stories, so this question of what makes them truly feel like a distinct being—and not just a human in an alien suit—has been at the front of my mind lately. The key, I think, is ultimately in the worldbuilding. The writer has thought through the environment and culture these beings would live in, and that is reflected in how they look and act. This makes the details of their appearance or behavior feel purposeful, like they’re driven by an in-world logic.

When I’m reading submissions for After Happy Hour, I try not to make any judgments about the writer. We read things anonymously for a reason. We don’t want anything to sway our decisions except the work itself.

That said, I am still human, and humans are adept at noticing patterns. There are some things writers do that give me the impression they haven’t been writing fiction for very long. Usually, when I see their bio after we’ve made our decision on the piece, I find that I’m right.

Christmas-themed things can be a bit of a landmine for storytellers. It’s pretty easy for them to veer into cliché or maudlin territory, and a lot of the familiar themes and plots have been written to death.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get inspiration from the holiday season, though. Here are some prompts that can get your brain going on some stories in the Christmas spirit.

Reality television is one of the more decried entertainment genres. And, sure, it’s got its flaws. I’m not going to claim it’s high art—but I do enjoy watching it. Competition-style shows are my reality genre of choice, and I’ll gladly watch people do just about anything if they’re competing on a TV show while they do it: cooking, designing clothes, modeling, doing drag, surviving in the wilderness, making piñatas, you name it. They don’t even need to be that good at it. Honestly, sometimes it’s better when they’re not.

I also do feel like this content has value for a writer, and I’m not just saying that to justify the hours of it I’ve consumed. Here are three lessons that storytellers can learn from reality TV, arguably better than from any other television genre.