Andrew Warren, Writer: But it had one tip that I think is gold. This is a million dollar
tip, so for anyone who's watching this I guarantee you this will improve your writing. Film Courage:
How can one word in a story be so powerful, can make or break a sentence? Wow um i don't
know about one word but i do think that um word choice obviously can really color you
know how a scene flows and this probably isn't what you're getting at but this this is an
example of something that really surprised me you know i always feel like most of my
leaps in writing quality come from writing something else you know so for example many
many long time ago i was uh i had a i was writing a screenplay and i had a book that
i was reading about writing novels because i was always trying to write a novel you know
sort of in the background of everything and i don't even think this was a particularly
good book about writing novels but it had one tip that i think is gold like this is
a million dollar tip so for anyone who's watching this i guarantee you this will improve your
writing and it's the tip was when you're finished with a manuscript do a word search for ly
because most adverbs end in l y and adverbs are usually imprecise and are not the best
word for what you're trying to convey and i was like wow like that really stood out
to me and so i took my script that i was working on i'll try it on my script and i tried it
on my script and sure enough when i finished i was like this is better you know like it
really made it better so i mean i think i think a lot of times when you're writing you
know your first draft you're kind of just trying to get it down but if you can go back
and say what was i really trying to say there you know and if you're using words like he
walked slowly to the door like well is that really what you mean or do you mean he stalked
towards the door or he crept towards the door you know or he sneaked towards the door and
you know if you know i don't think always that applies but a lot of times i think you'll
find that you were really trying to say something else a little more specific and by getting
rid of that adverb and finding the the right word it's going to make the scene pop you
know in the reader's head it makes it much more visual because you can envision someone
sneaking but if you envision someone walking slowly you might not see the same thing you
know and i think that really helped my writing oh that was just one of those little like
aha moments that i always remember even though it was you know like probably 20 years ago
what's the male version of the mary sue oh there's a name for that um so i thought i
can't remember what they call it but there is a male name for it yeah the character who's
just perfect like who never fails and never i think really what i don't even think it's
the fact that they're perfect i think it's that they never have to struggle i think that's
what people don't like you know we don't want and that's i think why it goes back to what
i said before about escalating action you know we don't want our heroes to resolve things
easily you know we want them to struggle we want them to fight you know we want we want
us we want them to show the strength that we wish we had or that we believe that we
have you know that and and when things just come easy that's not a interesting story you
know right so with your novels it seems like from the get-go you're establishing that this
character is not a mary sue no yeah kane i mean i guess it depends on of course he's
the hero so of course he tends to win but i always put him through the ringer you know
like i mean he gets hurt he gets beat up he gets you know cut and shot and you know by
the end he you know could a person who went through all that really win at the end maybe
not that's where i think fiction comes in and we're we'll suspend our disbelief um you
know when i was growing up uh the two two of the big action heroes in the box office
were uh jean-claude van damme and steven seagal and i always liked jean-claude van damme better
because steven seagal never took a hit in his movies he just went through and wiped
the floor with everybody no one touched him but van damme would always get beat up you
know or he's like crucified on a pole or you know something and at the end he rises up
and he wins like to me that's the story i want to see that's great i like that that's
pretty funny that's true you're right it just pushes him out of the way and he never gets
dirty yeah he never gets he never gets touched like his hair is always perfect yeah exactly
because that is the martial he does aikido which is all about redirecting attacks but
i for me as a hero i never i just couldn't i didn't like him you know it bothered me
what's your work schedule like when you're writing like i said i i'm usually i used to
write start writing a little earlier i think i think i used to start writing around 8 or
8 30. now i usually start by 9 30 is what i tried to do but i still try to keep it like
kind of half business hours you know i mean so basically i try to start when i would start
a normal job and i write till about lunch you know somewhere around there and then after
lunch i may still write but it'll be other things you know so so the book i'm working
on will be the first thing that i tackle and i'll write that to about lunch and then after
lunch if i have other things i'm working on like a screenplay or copy or even stuff from
my own business like advertising or email newsletters things like that that's when i'll
work on the other stuff in the afternoon and you take weekends off yes is that something
you've ever been tempted to say ah why don't i do something all the time but my fiance
gets very unhappy when i when i do that uh sometimes like if i'm almost about to finish
i'll be like look baby i just gotta finish this book and she understands but um you know
for the most part i i try to devote the weekends to other things and i think it's good to let
your brain recharge you know before you dive back in have you noticed that then when you're
at the point where you have to finish and it's seven days a week that you feel like
some of your creativity is dwindling not really because usually when i get to the end you
get you get this big kind of burst of excitement and momentum you're like oh my god i'm done
you know it's almost done like i can just see the ending one more chapter so usually
that's when i will work on weekends and that kind of carries me through certainly i think
if i tried to do that all throughout the book absolutely i would get burned out i think
it's good to have breaks and to let your brain kind of think ahead you know but when i do
do it it's usually very kind of exciting you know it's like the final stretch have you
always loved every character you've created well i mean i i don't love that's a tricky
one i don't like you have to create characters that you you have to understand your characters
i don't think you have to love them in the sense that some of the characters you write
will not be deserving of love i mean uh you know i've written some horrific villains but
i always try to give the villain a reason you know for what they're doing um most of
my villains tend to have sort of tragic backstories because i think that i just think in the real
world that's the way that's the way i see the world i see suffering leads to more suffering
you know everyone kind of has their own worldview and their own take on villains and i don't
think there's anything wrong with a villain just being sort of bad inherently bad but
i do think that i just find it more interesting if there's a little bit of a reason why you
know they see the world the way they do um so i don't know that those characters i love
them but i understand them how do you stay invested in a story if your character is unlikable
or there's parts of them that's unlikable well i think if parts of them are unlikable
that's fine i mean there's parts of parts of everyone is unlikable right nobody's perfect
and you know a story is about a person struggling to overcome something right so their flaws
can be just as important to that process as their strengths in fact probably more so because
if they're put into something that's playing perfectly to their strengths then it's probably
too easy for them it's their flaws that make it interesting so i think the more you incorporate
those flaws and their weaknesses or you know a big a big kind of ongoing thing in the cane
stories is one of his problems is he can't trust anybody you know and so sometimes that
actually causes him to make the wrong decision because he's so bitter and so cynical if he
just trusted his agency contact things would go better but he can't because of what's happened
to him in the past you know that makes it more interesting and more dramatic um and
i think that makes it also easier to stay invested i think it would be harder to stay
invested in a story where the hero is just sort of infallible and you're always playing
to their strengths and they win every fight and overcome every doubt i would have a really
hard time staying interested in in writing you know as well as reading can you give me
some examples of how he shows some of his weaknesses i know you said sometimes he doesn't
trust his agency contact well for instance so in the latest book he um he's kind of come
in from the cold and now he is working with the cia again um because there's you know
there's someone that he actually does trust is now in a position of power and they've
you know he's gone through this whole process in the other books and now he's working for
the cia again so they send him uh into vietnam to find uh this missing contact and they have
a someone to they say you know we'll we've got a contact for you to to meet with to get
some intel from and they'll set you up with everything they need but he refuses to deal
with that person because he's like no i trust you but i don't trust everyone else working
you know for the cia it's like i'll go through my own contacts and so he goes to sort of
the shady character that he knows but that character ends up betraying him because they're
a scumbag you know like and so he kind of realizes if i had just listened and you know
trusted this person like it would have gone way better now he's jeopardized the mission
because he couldn't put his trust in his superiors and so he has to kind of he's kind of working
under the weight of that knowledge that wow i almost screwed this all up you know so that's
sort of that's the most recent example i can think of and why doesn't he trust actual people
within the agency but he trusts some fringe character because he really shouldn't i mean
it's a mistake but he because he has a history of being betrayed by people within the cia
and because he doesn't he sees the work he did with the cia in the past as not really
being noble you know he realizes he was kind of used and the things that he did weren't
really making the world a better place you know in his opinion so he just has this kind
of wall of anger and guilt and really kind of self-loathing in essence you know i mean
it's i think i think it's more about him being angry at himself for being fooled you know
and that that when you're angry at yourself you don't make the best decisions you know
and i think that's a case where i intentionally had him make a bad decision you know i mean
he later regrets it and realizes that wasn't the smart thing to do.
Questions For The Viewers: Do you have another tip that is guaranteed to improve anyone's
writing?