“I have a dream,” he started. “It’s one of those real trippy dreams, you know? Flying elephants and buildings crumbling and all that crazy stuff from the movie Inception.”

He inhaled another long drag from his cigarette, his hand visibly shaking. The bags under his eyes spoke of how he spent most of the previous night awake.

“But all this crazy stuff is happening — I don’t remember the specifics. They all just blur in my head. But I remember you,” he stated with enough emphasis on the word “you” to mean it as an accusation.

“You were there. You weren’t freaked out by all of the craziness. You just took it all in stride.”

He began speaking faster, his distress apparent.

“I felt like my face was melting off and my teeth were being pulled out and every bone in my body was crumbling… But you. You were fine with all of it.”

His stare told me how desperately he needed answers, but I couldn’t be too forthcoming. That wasn’t the point of this exam. Perhaps he would figure it out. Perhaps not.

If not, we’d meet again tomorrow here at this same spot where we’ve met for the past 42 days. He’ll remember he volunteered for our tests eventually… Or not…

Image Used under Creative Commons. Thanks to Acumen Fund.

So what do you do about that?

Of course, there are tons of marketing ideas that we could bandy about here, but my focus in this article is to simply say this: write about your passions.

Even if only a few people would ever read your material, would you still be interested in writing it?

I was recently listening to an interview with a comic book writer on iFanboy, and it reminded me how much I love hearing about / reading about artists’ processes. I feel like I always learn something after every interview by peering into the minds of creators I respect.

On Atypical Tales, we’ve done quite a few interviews with indie creators, and I’ve loved connecting with these directors and producers to hear how their minds work. But I’ve also wondered if readers were as interested in the discussions as I am. Will people flock to these articles and grow the site’s traffic numbers?

While I was listening to the iFanboy interview, I came to a realization. I don’t care about the numbers in this matter. I am inspired by talking with other artists, and I hope my discussions with these creators will give them a boost in audiences’ interest in their projects.

And before I go, here is another interview that recently inspired me — this time with The Boss: Bruce Springsteen. Read the interview, and then be sure to check out Springsteen’s amazing work on the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Everyone seems to have his or her own style of editing, and different styles suit writers with varying degrees of success. Some people work in writing partnerships, so they can easily have the other person do a revision process for them. Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Babel, 21 Grams) writes each new draft of his screenplays from scratch. He doesn’t keep any notes or anything from the previous versions. He just sits down and writes an entirely new piece each time. It’s the same story for the most part, but he continues to refine and create something more beautiful out of his initial idea (interview on Creative Screenwriting’s podcast).

Most people don’t do their editing with complete rewrites… at least, I know I don’t! Here are some various ways of approaching the material for the second time.

• Start at the beginning and correct each mistake (grammar, punctuation, plot points, etc.) as you find it, from beginning to end.
• Focus only on spelling and grammar, basically allowing Microsoft Word’s spell check to do the editing for you.
• Starting from scratch like Arriaga.
• Going through and comparing your written work to the plan or idea you started out with on your outline or in your head.

During my earlier years of writing, I always started from the beginning of the story and worked straight through. I fixed any problem I saw right away, and my drafts varied widely in terms of content. The beginning was still largely the same, but the end was something new each time.

After looking back on completed projects where I used this linear approach, I noticed the quality of my writing slipped as the story went on. It usually recovered for the finale, but the middle could get pretty weak in terms of grammar and storytelling. I became fatigued of the process in those long middle gaps, and the work suffered.

A linear approach works perfectly well for many, many writers. It just doesn’t work for me.

I heavily rely on outlines in all of my writing. I find that I wander too much when I write without an outline, and I skip important points that I want to cover. Writers like Stephen King don’t need an outline, instead relying on their extensive character background information that they created to allow the story to flow out of the character’s natural desires and reactions. I am unfortunately not like Mr. King, and I have to cling to those main plot points that tie my story together.

Even so, with all of the planning in the world, the finished first draft is still very different from the outline or idea you had in your head when you started the process. Now you have to ask yourself, was my original idea better? Or, have I come up with something better in the creative execution of the art. I frequently find that my better ideas come from the actual writing, but they still need some serious polishing before going out into the public.

I like to work on my editing in a top-down approach. After the first draft is written, I read through the completed draft, making as few notes as possible. I don’t need to correct grammar yet. I’m just looking for the big mistakes or the portions of the story that worked exceptionally well. I correct the big plot point mistakes, and then I start looking to the smaller stuff: all of the details that make reading prose or dialogue enjoyable. Is the wording creative enough? Do I have some funny dialogue or clever dialogue or scary dialogue?

And then, the scariest part of all… finding the first reader. If you’ve done any writing at all, you probably know you shouldn’t rely solely on your mom’s opinion or your boyfriend or girlfriend’s, or any one person’s for that matter. Another fantastic screenwriter interviewed on the same podcast said that he has a handful of people read his scripts. He then gives them a questionnaire to help guide their critiques, and he looks for the common complaints and praises (Michael Arndt of Toy Story 3 & Little Miss Sunshine on Creative Screenwriting). If only one person didn’t like something, it may not have been that big of a deal. But if everyone thinks the middle of your story is long and boring… you’ve got a problem. It’s a problem that can be fixed, but it certainly needs attention.

Editing Is Worth It

Editing is a lot of work. It can be frustrating, and sometimes it feels as if it will never end. Editing can also be highly rewarding. Taking a rough idea and honing it down to the leanest, purest form of artistic expression can only be done with ruthless editing and honest readers / editors. It’s worth taking the time to make your artistic project — which you’ve already poured so much into — and making it the best you can.

Develop the editing style that works for you. Best of luck!

Do you have a unique style of editing? Please share below.

In the distance behind him, he could hear the foreign government’s agents chasing him. While the man was sure these agents were in terrific shape, they were not accustomed to navigating curved clay roof tiles at these speeds. As tiles shattered around him, the escaping saboteur realized how deadly his opponents’ aim could still be even in such difficult circumstances.

The man launched himself from one roof to the next, hurdling a small alleyway several stories below. He smiled to himself as he heard the muffled curses when his pursuers realized that they would not be able to imitate his actions.

Few others in the world could match his pure athleticism and ingenuity in similar situations.

He came to another gap between the rooftops and launched himself into the air once more with unexpected results. The man’s shoe caught one of the tiles just as he was jumping, and the slight hesitation and loss of balance altered his course.

He did not try to fool himself. There was no way to reach the other side. It was a sickening realization from four stories up in the air.

As he fell, he reflected on how many times he had made such a jump with ease. Those jumps were his specialty! But it only took one mistake to end it all.

I love the Jason Bourne and James Bond movies. The lead characters are classy and ingenious, and they never make a fatal mistake. It’s impossible for them to trip in the middle of an action scene or to sneeze right when they should have turned the car to narrowly avoid the crash.

So this story is for all those secret agents who might have been Bournes and Bonds had it not been for a bad day.

Perhaps a dozen men and women strode through the small town, walking in the middle of the road like a parade of death. Instead of throwing out candy, they fired laser blasts from weapons on their wrists, burning half the small town as they went.

“Leave. Take your family, and get out. Tell everyone you love to leave this place. It won’t be safe.”

The woman’s speech had been short and choppy, almost like talking to a computer. She had said so many crazy things that Beth had not taken anything of it seriously. How many times had people predicted the end of the world on television only to be wrong? Just because a mental case told her to, Beth was supposed to take her kids out of school and leave the state?

In the numb shock that followed the destruction of her home town, Beth’s mind darted through her encounter with the woman as if the conversation would somehow provide the key to ending this waking nightmare. Despite the chaos and the smell of the billowing smoke, Beth still wanted to refuse the woman’s radical suggestions. The woman’s claim that her pursuers were not even from this earth had stretched her story beyond credibility. But now as Beth watched the town’s ice cream shop of over fifty years go up in flames, she had to believe that aliens were possible. After all, she had never seen any kind of laser technology like this.

But it wasn’t just the claims of extraterrestrials that made the woman strange. She had added her personal history as though it was the reason that she would not be swept up in the coming destruction. “I spent the last twenty-five years surviving and training in an abandoned missile silo for this very moment. But I never knew my abilities would be placed under such strain.”

Beth surveyed the woman, noticing the mud and the blood on her clothes. The clothes seemed from another time: a loose sweatshirt and old sweatpants with high-tops.

“What happened?” Beth had asked, indicating the blood.

“Gunshot,” the woman had answered dismissively. “I can dress it once I get home. I have all the necessary gear.”

“Yeah… okay.”

“Listen, they’ll come. First the police or National Guard, and then the destroyers.”

When the state police came through an hour later, Beth became anxious. But just because the woman had been right about the police didn’t mean the rest of her prediction was true.

Beth’s attention snapped back to the present when she saw the attackers coming her way. The perpetrators appeared to be simple people. If not for their metal bracelets shining in the sunlight and their exceedingly gaunt faces, they would have been able to blend in with the rest of the town folk.

Her breath caught when one of them looked at her. A man with unnaturally dark eyes lifted his arm, aiming his wrist laser weapon at Beth.

One moment, Beth stared into her killer’s eyes. The next, he was gone. At least, he was no longer standing in front of her. It was as if a gust of terribly concentrated wind had swooped in and thrown him to the side.

At the commotion, all of the attackers stopped their individual efforts and formed a protective barrier around their wounded. They faced outward, ready for an attack in any direction.

There she was, the same woman from earlier, still looking as terrible as before, but with an authority that made 12 to 1 odds acceptable. The woman pushed forward with her hands, looking like a performing mime, and several of the attackers were knocked on their backs. When the remaining soldiers returned fire, the woman deftly maneuvered around the shots.

The woman never said a word as she fought. She simply threw herself into the melee, using her ability of flight to place herself in close proximity to the attackers. In the middle of them all, she knew that they would be unwilling to sacrifice one another by firing their blasters, but she was still susceptible to vicious strikes from the trained warriors.

“I can’t come back to help. You’ll be on your own against these monsters. You must leave.”

The woman’s words only an hour ago… yet here she was, ready to die to stop further destruction.

The roar of the helicopters became apparent to Beth only when they flew directly overhead. Looking up, she saw the dark helicopters of the National Guard. Soldiers filled the streets, and a few of the aliens (the very thought still seemed objectionable to Beth) began to lose interest in their primary target. When four of the twelve were quickly gunned down in battle, the remaining attackers turned to take on the soldiers.

The woman used the moment to fly away from the battle perhaps a few blocks before crashing to the ground. Beth, choosing her path carefully, sprinted over to where the woman lay. Her injuries were far worse now, and Beth saw tears in her eyes.

“They know…” she sobbed, choking back tears of joy. “The world finally knows about the invaders. I can go home in peace.”

Beth blinked, wondering how long the woman had agonized over spreading the word that aliens were already among us.

The woman began to stir again. “I have to get home. I must heal, in case I’m needed again.”

“Back to your underground missile silo?” Beth felt ridiculous asking the question, despite the circumstances.

Another explosion tore her attention away from her rescuer. Another helicopter had crashed.

Beth turned back, and the woman was gone. Beth knew she would never see her again.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

This may be old news to you, so why am I doing an article about this now? Hashtags have been around for a while.

Well, I want to focus on relevant hashtags for writers, for comics and webcomics in today’s Twitter Hash Tag Report. This is certainly not an exhaustive list of every related search, but all of the ones suggested have enough activity to make them using.

Writers

I recently started using a couple of these tags, and the use of #FlashFriday was what originally gave me the idea for this post. Upon doing further research, I found the #PostaDay2011 tag that matched up with my New Year’s resolution. To see how these tags are used, jump over to Twitter and enter them into the search bar.

Some of these terms are pretty broad like #blog. You’ll generally find several posts per minute with this term, and your contribution could easily be lost in the shuffle. Try combinations to better target users. Change the word slightly to get #blogging, and far fewer users post (and search) for this keyword, but your listing will stand out more.

Comics

I was rather surprised that there were so few comics-related hashtags that had enough activity to be listed. After all, Marvel has nearly 100,000 followers, and Brian Michael Bendis has over 30K himself. The super-popular webcomic Penny Arcade has over 8,000 followers as well.

Suggestion

Do you have other Twitter trends / hashtags that you would like to see? I’m considering making this a regular segment, and I’d love to hear your opinion.

For the record, my name is Henry Stanton, and I am going to speak of my encounter with the suspect in Kansas who showed supernatural capabilities.

Apparently, local law officials were called out to a remote portion of the state. One of the families there believed they had a squatter on their farmland. Local law enforcement did their job and inspected, but they were not equipped for what they found. They apparently came upon a woman who was a drifter, sleeping in a small tent in an area blocked from the nearby gravel road with a line of trees.

Officers report finding themselves lifted off the ground and tossed backwards, perhaps ten, fifteen feet.

— Agent Stanton, please proceed to your interaction with the suspect. We have this on
record already. —

Yes, of course.

By the time I arrived on scene with an entire squadron of agents, the suspect had already attracted heavy attention from law enforcement. Half of the state’s police and FBI agents were in pursuit. But it seems that whatever gives her the ability to fly does not allow her to get very high off the ground. She may be able to reach heights of twenty feet but certainly nothing more.

Air support forced her to the ground –

— To clarify, Agent Stanton, was the suspect fired upon by agency helicopters? —

Not that I could tell. I couldn’t see her when it happened, but I didn’t hear any gunfire at the time.

However it happened, our commander told us that the woman had been brought down in a grove of trees alongside a local county road. The goal was to take her alive, but it was only a suggestion. We were prepared for apprehension through any means necessary as we each carried M4 carbines and tear gas.

At this point in the pursuit of the suspect, the Agency took jurisdiction over the case, and our team was sent to retrieve the woman. While we still a hundred yards out, Commander Tempkins instructed us to shoot to kill. We were to disregard any orders given prior.

— Agent Stanton, your commanding officer told you to disregard your orders? This is a permanent record, son, and your one chance to set the matter straight. —

God’s honest truth, sir. He said that the woman was “making us look like a bunch of backwoods militia men” and that we needed to “end this decisively. We take her out of here in a body bag, boys.”

We came out of the trucks hot and heavy, and we rushed the grove of trees. The gunfire started up right away, and my comm. system was just a jumble of voices. Soon enough, men started screaming in pain, but the suspect had not touched any of the men. It was our own men accidentally shooting each other in an attempt to bring this woman down. It was as though she could sense that she was in someone’s sights, and she would move at just the last second to avoid being hit.

It was pure pandemonium. We were in an area that was maybe a quarter of a mile wide, and it was like we had entered a foreign battlefield right there in the middle of the United States.

I was at the edge of my soldier unit, and we were positioned on the outskirts of the group of trees to make sure we had all escape routes blocked. As we progressed, we suddenly noticed we had fewer men in our unit. If we looked one direction, we could see out into Kansas wheat fields, but the sunlight was choked out beneath the trees. We were unable to determine if soldiers were simply falling behind or being eliminated.

We started back to recover our soldiers when I heard a voice inside my head. It was like being at the bar and having a conversation, but the others had did not respond to the voice. I stopped to see who was talking, and suddenly she was there in front of me. The suspect.

I was caught completely off-guard. I tried to pull my gun up, but she reached out and gently placed her hand on my arm. Without moving her lips, she spoke into my mind. She said something like, “That won’t be necessary. We have much to discuss and only a few moments.”

She spoke of bizarre conspiracy theories and aliens landing and infiltrating Russia during the Cold War. She claimed that these aliens that somehow mimicked human appearance and understood human behavior were the true cause of the escalation of the Cold War in the early 80’s.

She told me I had to warn you. I had to warn all of my superiors of the imminent threat. She was sure that we would have the technology necessary to uncover these human imitators.

She said I needed to help her escape so she could warn others before the final war started….

Saying all this now, it seems pretty silly, but her explanations made sense at the time.

— Agent Stanton, do you feel that the suspect may have tempered with your mind to convince you to assist her? —

I don’t know about that, but I—

— Let the record show that Agent Stanton’s mind was controlled by the suspect. She has already showcased her unusual abilities in other capacities. Mind control is the only logical explanation. —

Uh… yes, sir. I guess.

— Very good. That will be all, Agent Stanton. —

Do you want to hear anything else about what she said about the threat? About the people that are supposed to be causing—

— A separate investigation is being run in order to figure out the root of her delusions, Agent Stanton. That will be all. —

Yes, sir.

Image of soldier is in public domain and can be found on Wikipedia.

The following is a transcription of the testimony of Dr. Hagues from Arbor Memorial Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.

There she was, floating in the air in front of me in a vaguely messianic pose with arms spread open and lifted towards the heavens. She was not like my other patients. She made no grandiose claims of swimming to the bottom of the ocean or knowing where Jimmy Hoffa was buried or anything of the sort. She simply said she was capable of something more. She proved it.

If others had not been present, I would have feared I was the one suffering delusions. One glance at the others confirmed I still had my sanity… or that everyone else was having the same vision. Mass delusions were possible, but it did not seem likely in the situation. We were not a desperate group ready to believe anything. We were doctors. It’s our job to scrutinize.

Only hours prior, the woman had been found as the only survivor of what was obviously a horrendous encounter. Six men and women were killed in struggle in a department store, and some of the bodies had been torn apart as if by a wild animal. Security cameras revealed that the six had attacked her. She was the intended victim, yet she remained.

Why would they target her in the first place? Why would they know her to be a threat? She was one of the most plain-looking women I’ve ever seen. No makeup. No hairspray. Oversized, baggy clothes. She wasn’t worth a second look, yet she was capable of savagely killing and serenely flying.

If we had any doubts of her claims that people were after her because she was different, we cast them aside. Looking at her in that moment seemed to make even the most unlikely suggestions possible.

Photo by Jascha Hoste

As I fled, I put pressure on my own wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood, and I looked up at her as though she could deliver on her implied promise of salvation. Gone was the unremarkable woman. Though still dressed in the same blue cotton sweatsuit, she had transformed into a warrior. Her face had twisted into a sneer that would have sent professional soldiers running.

A group of maybe eight to ten people flew through the gap in the wall. They looked like regular people but something about their facial structure didn’t seem quite right. I don’t know. Maybe they were too thin or their facial bones too pronounced… Anyway, they wore some sort of weapons on their wrists like they were bracelets, but the blasts proved that they were far more than just jewelry. If possible, our panic grew worse. The people with the arm lasers were shooting people at random as though it were simply a bit of sport. They pointed their fists in the direction they chose, and a laser beam or something would cut across the room and straight through a person’s body cleaner than any scalpel I’ve ever used.

Now that they had our flying patient’s full attention, they fanned out in an attempt to surround her. Before they were able to complete their maneuver, she – the patient, if you can still call her that at this point – let loose a blood-curling scream and dove straight towards the person in the middle. The poor fool held his ground. All of the others were firing their blasters at this flying woman, but nothing seemed to slow her down. The blasts ricocheted off her. As she got closer to him, the man began to tremble as if suffering a terrible seizure. Without ever touching him physically, the woman literally tore the man apart with only her mind.

That’s pure speculation, of course, but I never saw her physically touch him. I could almost think the cause of his death was some sort of technology she had employed if it had not been for what happened next.

The rest of the man’s partners attacked the woman. Before I passed out, I saw these people dying just as quickly and in an equally gruesome manner. In fact, I think a severed leg or arm knocked me out.

The next thing I know, people in Hazmat suits are pulling me out what looks like a slaughter house, and here I am in what must be some sort of government installation. Is that about right?

Wait a minute. Don’t leave. Do you know who she was?

–The End… For Now–

Come back each Friday in January to get to know our mysterious heroine a little better.