Ask the Author: Dan Frey
Answered Questions (5)
Dan Frey
Preemptively. Always spend time reading, living life with curiosity, and journaling about things you're excited about. When I’m doing so, I find that I always have a wealth of ideas that I want to write at any given time. So if there's one I'm stuck on, I jump and work on something else, which usually un-stucks me… and if it doesn’t, eventually I figure that it just wasn’t meant to be.
Dan Frey
Find what works for you, but here's what works for me:
Keep a journal and write in it every day. Read as much as you write.
Before you start a draft, take your time doing research (whatever that means for your project), pre-writing, making lots of notes... just saving up a ton of material that informs your book. Fill up the well, so to speak. But that doesn't mean you need to figure out every beat of the story; you just need to have a lot to draw on. Don't be precious with your idea; talk to people about it, and see what lights up for them.
Once you start your draft, go fast. Don't get bogged down in revising what you've already done. Give yourself a word-count per day (I'd aim for 1K) and hit it 5 days a week.
Once you're done... now you can slow down again. Get some friends to read it. Get feedback from multiple people (3 is good) at a time so you can always balance out and compare what you're hearing. Once you get some feedback, don't immediately start revising. Take a beat to mourn the fact that you're not a once-in-a-lifetime genius who nailed it one. Take your time to make a robust plan for what you're actually going to do in your revision, and set about executing it. Do 2-3 revisions in this fashion, depending on how the feedback goes, and then it's probably time to release the book into the world, in whatever form that takes.
Keep a journal and write in it every day. Read as much as you write.
Before you start a draft, take your time doing research (whatever that means for your project), pre-writing, making lots of notes... just saving up a ton of material that informs your book. Fill up the well, so to speak. But that doesn't mean you need to figure out every beat of the story; you just need to have a lot to draw on. Don't be precious with your idea; talk to people about it, and see what lights up for them.
Once you start your draft, go fast. Don't get bogged down in revising what you've already done. Give yourself a word-count per day (I'd aim for 1K) and hit it 5 days a week.
Once you're done... now you can slow down again. Get some friends to read it. Get feedback from multiple people (3 is good) at a time so you can always balance out and compare what you're hearing. Once you get some feedback, don't immediately start revising. Take a beat to mourn the fact that you're not a once-in-a-lifetime genius who nailed it one. Take your time to make a robust plan for what you're actually going to do in your revision, and set about executing it. Do 2-3 revisions in this fashion, depending on how the feedback goes, and then it's probably time to release the book into the world, in whatever form that takes.
Dan Frey
My first fantasy book, which will also be with Del Rey.
Also writing some movies, and just starting up on a TV adaptation of The Future Is Yours, which I'll hopefully be able to share more about soon.
Also writing some movies, and just starting up on a TV adaptation of The Future Is Yours, which I'll hopefully be able to share more about soon.
Dan Frey
Reading.
Traveling.
Journaling.
Bugging my friends and family with annoying hypothetical questions.
Traveling.
Journaling.
Bugging my friends and family with annoying hypothetical questions.
Dan Frey
The Future Is Yours was inspired by:
A) My own anxiety about the future of technology
B) Mark Zuckerberg's 2018 Congressional testimony
C) Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus
D) Growing awareness of how hard it is to maintain deep friendships as you grow and change
E) A love for mind-fucky time-travel stories, from "By His Bootstraps" through Primer and beyond, and a desire to create one that would feel credible in the modern world of Silicon Valley
A) My own anxiety about the future of technology
B) Mark Zuckerberg's 2018 Congressional testimony
C) Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus
D) Growing awareness of how hard it is to maintain deep friendships as you grow and change
E) A love for mind-fucky time-travel stories, from "By His Bootstraps" through Primer and beyond, and a desire to create one that would feel credible in the modern world of Silicon Valley
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