An Interview with John Passarella

How did you get into writing? At what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I started drawing at age 9, drawing stories at age 10, then by age 12 I was teaching myself how to type and writing one page "creature feature" stories on music paper. A "long" story would be continued on the back of the page. I've been writing ever since.

What was your first book or story that you completed? Did you ever get it published?

First story would have been one of those one-page monster stories. First novel was probably something I wrote in high school with a science fiction/science fantasy slant. I wrote a few short novels in high school and a long fantasy novel in college. My first published story was a humorous mystery story published in my college alumni magazine a year or two after I graduated. I wasn't paid but I was happy for the exposure.

How did you finally get published? When were you able to write on a full time basis? Please explain your success story?

Around 1990, I collaborated on a supernatural thriller (WITHER) with another aspiring writer who became a friend of mine in the independent bookstore where I still hold all my launch events. It sat on a shelf for years. In 1997, my coauthor sold a spec screenplay and one of his film agents asked him if he had anything else. He mentioned the coauthored novel and was told to send it in. The agents loved it and sent it to a bunch of studios and production companies for a weekend reading period. Columbia Pictures purchased the film rights in a pre-emptive, pre-publication bid that made news in The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. We were also written up in Publishers Weekly's "Deals" section. The novel rights sold about a week after the movie rights. At my editor's suggestion, I had my author website (www.passarella.com) online in 1998. The hardbound WITHER was published in FEB 1999. (Mass market paperback followed in March 2000.) I worked at the printing company that printed and embossed the cover, so that was a super "extra" experience during the publication of my debut novel. WITHER later won the Bram Stoker Award for best first novel. Even though it took a long time, it was well worth the wait! Before you ask: No, the movie hasn’t been made yet. Columbia Pictures paid for several screenplay revisions by never fell in love with any of them. I think those scripts strayed too far from what excited them about the novel. Someday, maybe, the movie will get made. Everyone who reads the book says it would make a great movie.

How do you stay motivated to finish a novel? How do you stay focused?

The novels I never finished taught me a valuable lesson. They would always die at the start of the second act, around page 90. That was the hurdle I needed to clear. But this is something I would realize later, after studying the craft of writing more than I had when I was writing by the seat of my pants. In my mind, I knew what would happen in the first act, and in the third act, but the second act was this vast wasteland. It was a case of not getting from point A through point B to get to point C. Now, before I start a novel, I work up enough of a rough outline to know what major events will carry the story through the long second act. Studying the structure of film is helpful, because the three act structure is much more visible in screenplays than it is in a novel. (I had an editor who said screenplays showed the skeleton of the story.) You have an inciting incident that kicks things off, then a point where things get bad (end of act one, start of act two), and then when things go from bad to worse (end of act two, start of act three), through the conclusion and resolution. Once I map out these major turning points, I can start to slot scenes that occur in each section, and help move the story away from one and toward another. So you have the plot arc and subplot arcs, and within those you have character arcs. The more plot points you can pin down early, the less likely you are to have blocks in the writing process. For my original media tie-in novels, I had to submit 10 to 12 page outlines, very detailed. When I wrote those books from my outlines, the writing process moved well and I never stalled. I stay motivated because I get caught up in the story myself, bringing the characters to life, experiencing the emotions my characters feel, it's a heady process.

What is your writing schedule like? Do you write in the mornings, evenings, and for how long?

When I'm writing a novel, I tend to start with four to five pages per day. As the story momentum picks up, my writing momentum follows suit. By the time I get to the third act, the final 100 pages, I'm writing in big chunks, 15, 25, 35 pages in a day. If I don't feel that narrative drive myself in the writing process, I worry that the reader won't experience it. I'm writing thrillers, so this is an important measuring stick for me as the author. In my daily writing, I follow the "waxing the car" strategy. When I write on day two, I start by reading and polishing what I wrote on day one. In addition to improving that first draft quality of the previous day's work, it helps get my mind back into the story. So I'm polishing as I go and the end result is that the finished first draft is clean. When I go through subsequent drafts, I tend to add rather than cut. During the first draft, I stay close to the narrative line of the story. When I revise, I see areas where I need to add more description and flesh out other areas of the story.

When I was working full time, I would write on a tight schedule, using half my lunch hour, part of the evening and weekends. I also need to write almost every day when I'm writing a novel. My wife suggested that I write on the weekends, but I told her the story would get too cold over five days of no writing. Now I'm self-employed with my own web design business ( www.authorpromo.com ) and I find that running a business out of a home office makes it harder to find time to write because there's always something else you could be doing on the business side. You never leave the business since you live in the same place. That has been an adjustment for me.

How do you get your ideas? What is your method for remembering them?

There is no one answer for that question. At least not for me. I try to read newspapers, magazines and online news sources so that I have a constant stream of information, facts, oddities coming in. When I read that John F. Kennedy Jr's sister-in-law was a passenger on the plane that crashed, and that she had a surviving identical twin, that led to me writing KINDRED SPIRIT which dealt with an identical twin whose sister died in an unsolved murder. WITHER started after my coauthor read a theory regarding widow landholders in colonial Salem as outcasts. We started with the premise that recorded history might not tell the whole story of what happened three hundred years ago. The novel is a process of discovery about what happened in Windale, our fictional Salem stand-in. Before I had a computer, I would keep journals with ideas. Lately, I tend to carry a notebook when I'm away from the computer but mostly I put ideas into text files I can look up later. Since I write novels more than short stories, I'm less likely to forget an idea for an entire novel.

If you get writer’s block, how do you get over it?

I mentioned earlier that creating a rough outline is a good way to map out the major plot points of the novel. As I go along, I fill in more details, more scene ideas occur to me, etc. When I was writing WITHER'S RAIN, I remember I reached a point about halfway through the novel where the rest of the novel just came to me in a rush. I wrote down a bunch of scene ideas and that carried me through the end. I think blocks occur when you have no idea where the story is going. Many writers rebel at the idea of writing an outline first, but it's a good way to avoid the possibility of a fatal block. Writing the detailed outlines for my Buffy and Angel media tie-in novels convinced me that I should be as diligent with my own novels. I don't always create a detailed outline but I try to have a loose outline with all the major plot points mapped out, at a minimum. At the moment, I have a different type of block. I have several novel ideas (one could possibly be a television series idea) and I've been undecided about which way to go. I know from prior experience that I am unable to work on more than one novel at a time. I need to focus all my attention on one novel project at a time. The characters have to start to live and breathe and feel, which is another reason why writing almost every day is how I approach novel writing.

What are your thoughts on self publishing?

It should never be your first choice. Why would you place that burden on yourself? You should aim as high as you can, to the best paying market with the best distribution, etc. If that doesn't work, it’s okay to set your sights lower. Of course there are a lot of services to assist self published authors these days for minimal cost. It's tempting to skip the traditional process, but it is important to elevate your writing to professional standards. Chances are good that your first novel isn't good enough to be published professionally, but there is nothing stopping you from self publishing that novel. And many authors do just that. As a result, self published novels have a hard time finding respect in the writing and reading community and the success stories are incredibly rare. I wrote several novels before WITHER sold. When I wrote them, I was sure they were good enough to be published. In hindsight, I'd be embarrassed if they were out in the wild. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a book doesn't find a sympathetic editor (or agent), or a market conducive to new authors and self publishing is your only viable choice. If you do self publish, everything is on you, as the author. You'll need to wear many hats and you will be hampered by the stigma and you will lack the wide distribution you need to have a novel become a success. So know going in that the odds are stacked against you. Jerry Pournelle said in a column once that the average author will write about a million words before his or her writing will be good enough for publication. Year ago, I estimated the combined word count of all the novels I wrote before WITHER and I was amazed at how close I came to that million-word apprenticeship.

My most recent novel, SHIMMER, had a wild ride in Hollywood, with A-list production companies really excited about the possibility of turning it into a tentpole summer movie franchise, but the studios were looking for packages with approved directors and screenwriters attached. They failed to line that up and the “window” closed, so I worked with a television production guy on turning SHIMMER into a TV series. Shortly after we began discussions on this, he left the production company to shepherd a film he had in the works before taking the TV job, so the SHIMMER TV series fell through. I had a new book agent who couldn’t find a publishing home for the novel. I figured that would be the end of the line for SHIMMER. It was a surreal experience! Then, last year, I decided to do a free weekly eSerial of the novel to grow my mailing list. The serial ran for about three to four months and when it was over I created various eBook formats of the novel for those serial readers who wanted to read the whole novel at once. I had some readers asking for a print version, so I decided to use Amazon’s Create Space for a print run. After I made that trade paperback version of SHIMMER, Dark Quest Books asked if they could print a small press version of the title, so I agreed. That should be out soon. An earlier DQB version came out last year, but a cleaner (typesetting-wise) version should be available soon. Here's the DQB link.

What piece of advice would you give to someone thinking of becoming a writer? What is a good starting point for them?

Write often and read often. Read a lot in the field of your primary interest, but read other fields as well, to help cross-pollinate your writing. Go to conventions, attend panels, learn about the field and the business side of writing. Join a writing group, network with other writers, soak up information. Its fine to write initially solely for exposure, but don't wait too long to submit to paying markets. Build your writing credits. If your goal is to write novels, try to find an agent based in New York who believes in your work. But don't worry about an agent if you are writing short stories. Always act professionally, online and in person, in verbal and written communication, when you tweet on Twitter or update your Facebook status. Authors talk to each other, and editors talk to each other. If your goal is to become a professional writer, it's never too soon to start presenting yourself professionally.

To find out more about John Passarella and his published work check out John Passarella's website. Or to read more interviews, go to the main writer interviews page.