The stories of Bryan Young

At the moment, I'm working on a screenplay in addition to drafting my 11th novel. It's how I learned the art of story structure and how the moving parts of a story worked. I wrote or co-wrote a dozen screenplays before I turned to write my first novel and it was an invaluable experience. Granted, the first thing people asked after they read my early drafts of my early work was, "You were a screenwriter, weren't you?" It showed. They really are different media, and it can be easy to ease too far into one or the other, but I think both are valuable forms of storytelling. I mean, at my day job I work with telling stories with moving pictures every day, and at night I work with words. Or the morning, rather. I still find advice people dole out to screenwriters valuable to all writers, though. In fact, I pretty much insist anyone who is interested in telling stories read Robert McKee's Story . And then re-read it every time you're plotting a new story. ...

There are writers I love to read, regardless of what they've written. It doesn't matter what genre it's in, what length, how it's published, I just want to experience their work. Graham Greene is one of those writers. I was introduced to him through the movies that he wrote, principally The Third Man , directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles. Coincidentally, I wrote about that movie on StarWars.com here.  After that, I read his book Dr. Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party, based on a friends recommendation and it blasted me right between the eyes. It was reading this book that showed me how I could wrap my head around writing a novel. Then, over the years, I set out to devour everything he'd done. He'd written entertainments, thrillers, human drama, and many, many short stories.  His book, The End of the Affair , was a direct inspiration on The Aeronaut .  I wanted to bring some of his literary sense to a genre arena and bring a di...

Sometimes when I write there's a little voice that tells me that no one is going to care about what I have to say. It asks me who is going to read this blog about writing, let alone care about what's written there. It asks me why anyone would want to read my prose at all, let alone pay for it. It's a constant voice of doubt. Hell, even as I'm writing this, I'm telling that little voice to shut the hell up every time it suggests I delete all of this and start this post over from scratch and pick a different topic. One that exposes less vulnerability. But it's something that I would assume every writer deals with. It's that voice that says you're not good enough. The one that tells you not to worry about submitting the story to the publisher. The one that tells you it doesn't matter if you finish that novel. Or screenplay. Or whatever. That little voice is a total asshole. And my suspicion is that you shouldn't listen to him. (Or her. It ...

A lot happened in 2015 in my writing career and I produced a LOT of work. By the numbers: I published 1 novel I published 1 original short story collection I wrote 2.8 new novels I wrote and published more than 12 short stories I wrote more than 100 pieces for magazines, print publications and websites Altogether, I wrote  498,161 words in 2015, which a verages to 1368 words written per day By December 31, I'd written for 181 consecutive days These are not for comparison with other writers. I write more than some and less than others. I keep track of these things as a mere benchmark for myself, so I know what I am capable of and I know how much further I can push myself. Honestly, I think I can be more prolific than this and seeing it laid out, I know I can do more and keep my quality consistent.  This is purely an exercise in accountability for myself.  My challenge for myself is to increase these numbers in 2016.  My challenge for you...

I haven't done one of these since March of 2013, and since people keep telling me how useful they've found these over the years, I figure I might as well finish what I started.  For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago (way back in August of 2011) I posted a list of rules and guidelines I'd been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing  here)  But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it a couple at a time ever since.  I didn't feel like I was saying anything useful that people didn't already know for a long time, and I was reminded that that wasn't exactly the case, so I figured I'd tackle them here and there until it's done or I keep adding to the list. If you want to catch up on the series: You can read Part 1 here , ...

My regular blogging schedule has been a bit erratic lately. Surely you all know that there was a new Star Wars movie released. That probably has a lot to do with it. I've been distracted by that, and then got hit with a sinus infection, which made things even more challenging for my schedule. But I'm getting back in the swing and the first thing I thought I'd do would be to post an update. My writing of prose has slowed down considerably. I'm down to only a few hundred words a day, which is lousy of me. I really need to get back in the swing. It's just so hard to get up in the morning when you're sick. Or when I'm sick. I'll get there, though. I've got some time off for the holiday, but I need to keep pushing myself. I still want to try to get this manuscript done before the end of the year and there's only about 8,000 words left before I get there. It's doable. I just need to work harder. As for my work that's come out in the last ...

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote some of my favorite fantasy books, even though I only managed to read them this year. The EarthSea books were absolutely incredible and, although I was late to the game, I became a large fan of Ms. LeGuin's. And then I saw this video of hers: She's accepting  National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters here , but the speech is incredible and it called upon us as writers to imagine worlds with alternatives to capitalism. We live inside of capitalism. "Its power seems inescapable," she says to us and I have a hard time disagreeing with her. "So did," she continues, "the divine right of kings." And here she's hit upon my favorite thing about writing fiction. That we don't have to be trapped in the world as it is. We can imagine it as we want it to be and inspire others to think about it in this way as well. How many of us weren't inspired into science by Star Trek...