XXI: Walk Beyond The Borderline
Your world - perched on the edge of a blade - about to slide into two,
This is the twenty first edition of The Voice In Your Head Is Mine. The date is October 5th, 2020. If you're receiving this email and have no idea what's going on, well, fuck. I guess I blew it. Or maybe you blew it. Either way, you're here and this is Zac Thompson's weekly newsletter.
It’s late afternoon on Sunday. My weekend was a wash. Didn’t get to have as much time away from work as I would have liked. I was able to get a lot of good movies in but between that and long sessions of writing, I don’t feel like I got to look up and see much of the world. This isn’t that big a of a deal as I’m pretty thrilled with what I’m working on right now. I’m sure I’ll find some time to carve out for myself later this week…
Writing Craft: A Good Opening
Openings to stories are one of the things that I pride myself on. They are difficult to pull off - you have to manage a careful balance of intrigue while also offering compelling imagery and acting as a thesis statement for your story. Often times, I approach the opening as a single scene that is set apart from the narrative as a whole. A moment that when isolated can serve many masters while also offering the theme of the story to readers.
When crafting a new story, I treat the first scene as something isolated that essentially takes place before the story I’m telling but offers almost everything the narrative will say in bite sized form. This acts as a really great introduction to the world and provides a really fantastic opportunity to set the tone.
Most stories don’t begin at breakneck speed. Good horror stories need time to settle in to their worlds before a character can descend into depraved nightmares. So it’s imperative that the opening scene sets the tone as best you can. Take the opening page of The Dregs #1 for example. Right from the jump, we introduce this as a story about cities, their growth and evolution. At the core of this page, we’re making a declaration about what the series is about.
From here, you find yourself in a dirty warehouse where an unnamed homeless man is shaved and brutally violated as he’s turned into sausages. It’s a vicious sequence that gets into the farm to table style minutiae of serving human meat. You get up close and personal with carving this person up. Only to see that these human sausages are making their way to an elite restaurant somewhere in the city.
But as we pull out from that restaurant, we see its in the middle of an impoverished neighborhood. The folks being served on the inside are eating those who struggle to survive outside.
The opening scene of The Dregs #1 tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on. It sets the tone for our crazy world and establishes the stakes. At first glance, it has almost nothing to do with the actual story at hand but shows you that we’re not fucking around before we meet the protagonist Arnold for the first time. In five pages you’ve got the world, the stakes, and the tone.
So next time you’re struggling to open your story, think about an isolated scene that says everything you’re trying to say in a very short contained way. You can obviously do whatever you like to open a story and this is only one method of many. But I’ve found it works well for me. It helps readers understand the tone and the stakes of the story without sacrificing pacing.
Project Mycena
This month we’re going to be unveiling my next creator owned book PROJECT MYCENA. It’s a weird sci fi horror book set in the near future dealing with the problems of now. It’s a love letter to Clive Barker in a lot of ways but mixed with a modern Alex Garland influence. I just got to read a PDF of the completed first issue and I’m really proud of this weird book.
Art by Andy MacDonald and Triona Farrell.
It’s sort of a spiritual sequel to things I’m scratching at in LONELY RECEIVER. Part of a meditation on the way people use tech and the ways tech uses us. This has become an undercurrent on something new I’m currently building. Hoping the three projects can function as a trilogy of sorts. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
LONELY // RECEIVER #2 // TWO
This wednesday marks the release of LONELY RECEIVER #2. For those who don’t know, Lonely Receiver is my new horror/romance book with Jen Hickman. It’s about a woman who downloads an A.I. partner to bond with her for life but after a particularly traumatic fight, the artificial partner abruptly disconnects from the relationship.
Issue #2 takes place in the week immediately after the breakup. It’s an issue about the lies we tell ourselves, the things we do to cope, and the dangers of putting your entire life in someone else’s hands. How do you recover from being codependent?
I can’t wait for people to read this one. The response to the first issue wildly exceeded my expectations. I really hope you like our weird little descent into neon-soaked madness. Here’s a preview ahead of Wednesday.
NO ONE’S ROSE #5
Also out this week is the conclusion to my solar punk series NO ONE’S ROSE. This series was created in collaboration with co-writer Emily Horn and brought to life by Alberto Jimenez Albuquerque. This one’s a little bittersweet as it’s always sad to say goodbye to a world you’ve created. But I’m really excited to share the ending with readers.
NO ONE’S ROSE #5 is a further rejection of the dystopia or cyber-punk lens that has dominated near future storytelling for so long. It’s a collectivist moment of reflection, a much needed cry of grief, and a seed of hope for the future. It was written to defy your expectations and resist what so many stories of this kind do. I’m incredibly proud of this book.
It’s not something I talk about much, but writing NO ONE’S ROSE has legitimately changed my perspective on writing. It caused me to take a step back and consider the themes I’m putting out into the world with my work, but also helped me identify my writing as adding to a much needed chorus telling stories about the power of our natural world. To depict parts of nature as they are with no magical lens, to teach readers things about the environments we share, and to create stories of hopeful futures - however that may manifest.
Though NO ONE’S ROSE is coming to an end, the themes we’re scratching at in this book will be revisited in PROJECT MYCENA and another unannounced book that I’ll call PROJECT RAPTOR for now. Anyway, here’s a preview of the last issue ahead of Wednesday!
Tiny Scabs
The Criterion Collection just uploaded an incredible bounty of 70’s horror films on their streaming service. The list is insane and well worth your time this spooky month. Check it out!
I’ve really been enjoying Tim Heidecker’s Office Hours on YouTube. It’s a podcast where listeners call in to chat with Tim, DJ Dougpound, and Vic Berger. It’s not a pure comedy show, callers range from weird fans to political science professors. It’s fun and informative.
My younger brother is a Twitch streamer who goes by the name Bawkbasoup, he’s playing horror video games all month. Check out his channel! I’ll be popping by later this month to do horror trivia with his stream.
This week’s playlist:
Peace
Drink water, call your parents, tell someone you love them, practise mindfulness, get yourself a gift, don’t look at Twitter. It’s okay to detach and focus on the life in front of you. Watch a horror movie (or ten).
Until next week, be good to one another.
Z