Ask the Author: Mark Dame
Answered Questions (6)
Mark Dame
Just write. You get better with practice, so the more practice you can get, the better your writing will get. Start with short stories, even if you never publish them. Hand them around to your friends and family for feedback. Figure out who's honest and who's just trying to be nice. Thank the nice people, but listen to the honest ones.
Mark Dame
I've always been a story teller. I enjoy making people laugh or think. When I was younger, I loved sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories. Being a writer feeds that beast.
Mark Dame
I'm always ready to write. The trick is shutting out the rest of the world so I can focus on it.
Mark Dame
I have hundreds of ideas for books and short stories. Just with the list I have now, I'll never run out of ideas, even if I live to be 150 years old.
As far as writer's block on a particular project, I just work through it. Sometimes the result is the wrong thing, but that's okay. I'll fix it later. I generally know the direction I'm headed, so it's just about finding the right path from point A to point B. Sometimes I hit a dead end, so I back up to see if I went the wrong way. Other times, I discover I wasn't going to the right place in the first place.
The most interesting thing is when I think I'm going to point B but end up at point Q. And Q is almost always more interesting than where I thought I wanted to go.
So basically, if I get lost, I'll stop and try to look at the big picture to see if I'm on the right path or not, then get back to work.
As far as writer's block on a particular project, I just work through it. Sometimes the result is the wrong thing, but that's okay. I'll fix it later. I generally know the direction I'm headed, so it's just about finding the right path from point A to point B. Sometimes I hit a dead end, so I back up to see if I went the wrong way. Other times, I discover I wasn't going to the right place in the first place.
The most interesting thing is when I think I'm going to point B but end up at point Q. And Q is almost always more interesting than where I thought I wanted to go.
So basically, if I get lost, I'll stop and try to look at the big picture to see if I'm on the right path or not, then get back to work.
Mark Dame
I have several projects in the works, but the one I'm focusing on most is a fantasy novel about two friends who grew up in an isolated society and find themselves marooned in a strange land full of people and creatures that they believed only existed in fairy tales. I have ideas for several stories in that world, so this should be the first book in a series.
Another project I'm working on is a book about a freelance space-cargo hauler who crash-lands on a remote planet. While trying to repair his ship, he gets mixed up with the local law enforcement. And of course, a girl.
Another project I'm working on is a book about a freelance space-cargo hauler who crash-lands on a remote planet. While trying to repair his ship, he gets mixed up with the local law enforcement. And of course, a girl.
Mark Dame
Dark Ties started out with something that popped into my head while I was rereading Stephen King's The Dark Half. In The Dark Half, an author's pseudonym comes to life and terrorizes him. The author's pseudonym takes on the characteristics of the main character from his novels, essentially bringing the killer to life. There is a psychic bond between the author and his alter-ego. It got me to thinking, "What if the chicken came first? What if instead of the made up character coming to life, the killer was always real. And the author wrote a book about the killer, but didn't know he was real?" Which led to asking the question "How did they get linked?"
In my original first draft, there was an evil spirit that linked the author and the killer, but about halfway through the book, I decided to take a different approach. There was a really great scene where Ken and Sara are going for a walk in the woods and the spirit is following them. Ironically, it was the first scene I wrote in the first draft that really got me thinking the plot was going to work, and it ended up getting cut. The new explanation works better, I think, although the evil spirit is still wandering around looking for a story...
In my original first draft, there was an evil spirit that linked the author and the killer, but about halfway through the book, I decided to take a different approach. There was a really great scene where Ken and Sara are going for a walk in the woods and the spirit is following them. Ironically, it was the first scene I wrote in the first draft that really got me thinking the plot was going to work, and it ended up getting cut. The new explanation works better, I think, although the evil spirit is still wandering around looking for a story...
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