The stories of Bryan Young

Earlier this week, Chuck Wendig, author of the upcoming Star Wars: Aftermath, wrote a post about his writing proces s and challenged other writers to share theirs, so I thought that would make a perfect post for this week. I'm the sort of writer who works really well with a consistent routine and something to always work on. My routine has been something I've slowly been coming to over the years and I really like where I'm at because it's allowed me to create a tremendous and, I think, quality output. Though I used to be the exact opposite, I'm an early riser and do my best to get to my local coffee shop or my office by 6:00 am. At that time in the morning, there is no one trying to send me emails, no one calling or texting, the kids aren't awake, and I'm left with nothing but my thoughts. Lately, I walk to the coffee shop as often as possible. It gives me time to collect my thoughts. Then, I sit down with my writing notebook and journal for a little w...

When you're writing, it's easy for me to get distracted. I'm not just talking about the Internet and family and work and everything else that can come up while you're at your notebook and keyboard, although that's also a danger for distraction. I'm talking about with other stories. I'm currently 30k words into my new novel. It's a fantasy epic and I'm probably not even a third of the way through the book. I know there's a lot of hard work coming to get it finished and there's a lot of words I'm going to need to write. I'm still passionate about it and I love it. The setting is fascinating, I'm really happy with the characters, and as far as story and action it might be the most exciting thing I've ever written. But I'm a writer. I have lots of ideas. Ideas tumble out of my head a dozen a day, at least. And some of them are, I think, really good. Some of them are so good I get really excited about them. And now, as ...

When I'm working on my first drafts, sometimes it's easier for me to choose a cliched description and keep going. It's natural. These are the things that come to mind first and when you're writing a couple of thousand words in a sitting, they're not going to all be gold. It's a note I get back from all of my earliest readers, "Take out the red pen and get rid of the cliches." In fact, that might have been my favorite note from one of my favorite authors after he'd read one of my books. Warren Murphy, the creator of "The Destroyer," wrote me a this: "You sometimes have a tendency to slip into cliche and, once in a while, at the worst possible moment. I know it comes from working fast because I've fought that tendency too, but it becomes particularly awful. While it might, just maybe might, be okay in dialogue, coming in the author's voice it means "I couldn't think of anything good so I'll write this crap i...

When one thinks of the word "compromise" in terms of art, it's usually as a negative. "My vision was compromised," you might hear an artist say. Hell, I've said it a time or two when something important was removed from a piece I'd worked on without my knowledge. And in that sense of the word it's a bad thing. In talking to some people, though, it's clear to me that there seems to be an idea floating out there that editors and beta readers exist to force compromise on your vision, and I'm not sure that's the case. In fact, I'm pretty confident it's not. When you finish your draft of a story, it's just that: a draft. It's not living up to its potential because it's just been vomited from your mind. Whether you're a swooper or a basher, your work is still going to need some editing. It's going to need more massaging and finesse. The problem is that you're too close to it. You might be able to revise it ...

I've always been a big believer in the phrase, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." It's something I use as a gamemaster when roleplaying, and it's something I use when I'm plotting novels and stories. When I'm working with the characters and trying to decide what their course of action is, I have to take into account the fact that nothing should work as planned. And why should it? How often do you plan on something and have it work so smoothly that you don't need to react to variables in any way? It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's pretty boring, right? There's no strain, there's no stress to accomplish, no drama at all... When we're writing, we're putting characters through the most interesting and challenging things possible so our readers may experience this drama vicariously. Why would we skip all of the dramatic effect of everything going wrong? You tell me: What's the more interesting of th...

It's been a while, and for that I am truly sorry. Having a baby in the house after a decade is busy work. After making sure everything in that department was taken care of, my next responsibility was to keep up on my writing. I've had so many deadlines in the last month and I felt it was more important to get my writing schedule back together than to come back here and to report to you all about it. It made me think a lot about priorities, though, and it forced me to rely on my discipline. I don't think the material I wrote for the first couple of weeks after having the baby was the best work I've done. I was exhausted. Sometimes I wasn't feeling as creative as I wanted to. I was easily distracted by the fact that there was a baby around whose cheeks I could kiss. But I got through it. I hit my deadlines, I got through the stories and chapters I needed to. And I think the only reason I was able to do so was because I had become so accustomed to the daily ritua...

So, I missed my post last week and I considered skipping a post this week. Why? We have a brand new baby in the house. Her name is Valkyrie and she's great. Naming tiny humans is a much harder thing to do than naming characters, and I find naming characters to be one of the hardest parts of a story for me. But I know that if I'm at any point dissatisfied with a name, I can find+replace the old name and insert a new one. With a kid, it's fairly permanent. Valkyrie was on a long list of names and it's the one that seemed to match what we wanted the most and came out on top of the compromise. That's the other thing about naming characters versus children. Unless you're collaborating with someone, you have the final say in what your character's names are. While I'm taking some time off from other forms of work because of the new baby, I'm not taking time off from writing and I've been chugging along on a new novel and short story, as well...