Transcript
Speaker: What is the scariest thing that can happen to you when you are alone? My guest today has built a career on that question. Marcus Klever is the author of We Used to Live Here and The Caretaker, two novels about people cut off in over their heads and not sure they can trust who or what's in front of them.
Speaker: But today, we're not only only go to be talking about monsters, we're also going to be talking about isolation, about where fear comes from, about why being scared together might be one of the most connecting things we can do, and what it really takes to make something in a world that never stops watching.
Speaker: Welcome to Friendless, sweet peas. I am James. So, Marcus, to's just to really kind of, you know, your books continually keep putting people alone in houses. That seems to be a re-incorporating motif with your writing.
Speaker: What is it about being alone that you keep coming back to?
Speaker: It's so easy to immediately add tension when you're by yourself in a house because even if you have like a cat around any sound that happens, you can always kind of chalk it up to, oh, that was the cat or oh that was my roommate. But if you're alone, immediately a bump can become anything. I feel like that's a pretty, even if you're not like a jumpy person, that's a pretty universal feeling of being like, okay, now that's a sound too potentially investigate as opposed to a sound I can just kind of wave away.
Speaker: And yeah, I think it all just starts from that. And then just fun to build on that. Do you see a difference between being alone and being isolated? And where do you see one kind of turning into the other?
Speaker: I mean, I don't know the like Oxford dictionary differences, but I would say like for my own personal interpretation, I would say alone is something that you can be even when you're around people. I mean, who is the loneliest number since the number one or whatever. And then isolation would feel more like a physical kind of thing where youre you literally physically do not have people around you. And that could be you're because you're in the wilderness, it could be because you're in ah an apartment by yourself.
Speaker: And so I think they kind of feed off of each other in a sense, even though they're basically the same thing, but not really. So yeah, it's an interesting question. I haven't actually thought about the difference. It's, I guess maybe I should have, I should have have vetted you a little bit beforehand. Cause you know, I, on the show, I tried not to come up with questions about like, you know where do you get your ideas from? You know, what, ah how do how do you, how do you write? you know as a You know, friendless, I like to explore connection and community. And I often like to look at the idea of sort of a personal definition.
Speaker: So for years, I would ask a question of what to you, what does it mean to be a good friend? Right. These, these kinds of things that this idea of, I'm really fascinated by these words that are very nebulous to us that we're using constantly. And yet we don't actually have these kind of like personal clarifications or sort of intentions behind them. So when I say a word like isolated versus alone, do you internally feel a difference or do you see a separation between the two?
Speaker: Yeah, I think i think immediately, like, just saying isolation makes me think of, like, Antarctica or something. It makes me think of, like, a research base in the middle of nowhere, whereas saying alone, mean, everybody's had that feeling where you're in a crowded room and you feel kind of disconnected from everything. And so I think um i think that's probably the main difference. One feels way more relational, and then the other one feels more physical and wilderness-directed and specific.
Speaker: I'll give you the old classic question, just because I'm i always curious about these definitions. You know, the original exploration of this show of friendless was around, I was interviewing people from my Facebook friend list and we would talk about our relationship. And at the end of the episode, we would unfriend.
Speaker: And that that's where the name of the show comes from. And so in your experience, how do you personally define what it means to be a good or effective friend? I think.
Speaker: That's a good question. I think that for me, I'm not somebody with a ton of friends. Like I have a lot of, as far as like close friendships, I don't have many and I don't also feel the need to have many. I feel like that's just how I've always been. And so I would say like for me,
Speaker: somebody that you feel like you can go to in any situation and not get judgment or also sometimes get judgment when it is deserved. You know what I mean? Like you see, you don't you also don't want like a yes man around you either. And so there's that good balance of like somebody who's able to be honest with you,
Speaker: in a way that you know is coming from a good place. And I think that can take a really long time. Most of my friendships are people I've known since I was like a kid. It takes me a really long time to blake ah build that trust up with somebody. But yeah, I would say that's important. And then just as simple as like getting along and like enjoying their company, which is like a very important part of that for sure.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. Because I, you know, I realized that that can kind of spill into, it's almost like, you know, we're going to lay the foundation of like the things that make us feel safe so that we can talk about the unsafe, right? you ah You know, horror as a genre, as a whole, you know, is often, it often works by cutting people off from help or from security or or safety.
Speaker: um Do you find that there's a reflection of that in how modern life is kind of working for us? Do you see that reality working in just sort of a slower pace than, you know, a 200-page novel or a two-hour movie?
Speaker: Yeah, I think... um I mean, everybody likes to act that we live in the most dangerous time or whatever, but you look back and it's like, man, like our parents or... or ah I mean, how long did the Cold War go on? You were you were getting nuclear drill drills in school and like basically living on the verge of of nuclear and annihilation.
Speaker: and now we have kind of these all these new fears, whether it's AI or... you know, getting invaded by the freaking United States of all countries and like like things like that, where it's just like, wow, like there's just so many new existential threats to deal with.
Speaker: And you definitely see that having a major effect on on what types of horror become popular or just what types of media in general. Like it's it's been super strange seeing like, like I grew up listening to like crazy metal bands and that kind of went away for a while and then COVID happened and now all the younger kids are like listening to these bands that like, you know, you'd see them do like the Biltmore Cabaret and now they're doing like Rogers Arena kind of thing. And it's just, so I think there is definitely a, an appetite for, for darker media.
Speaker: And I don't know, maybe it's just cause it's taking things that freak us out and putting it into a controllable medium. You said something I want to i want to scratch out a little deeper about the idea of the existential fear versus more of the acute fear. And you listed these things that you know are sort of existent existential to us, but are acute to other places. And and these these these fears kind of shift. Do you find yourself building your own kind of creative impulses? Or are you personally drawn more towards the existential or the esoteric more than the kind of the acute direct fear or danger?
Speaker: I think for me, i think the direct fear needs to be there to really engage me. I think if something exists, there's great stories that exist almost purely in the existential and like philosophical type horror. For me, it's like if there isn't a concrete, relatable threat happening, like somebody's knocking at the door and they might be a monster you need to hide, like I need stuff like that to just really actually...
Speaker: grab me viscerally as opposed to just intellectually. But at the same time, I think there's there's almost a There's this idea that I've heard going around, and and I've said it myself, where it's like, oh there's like a lot of horror that's like, oh, the real monster is the trauma, or the real monster is the grief, and people are kind of like, oh, that's all horror is ever about, which, fair, but then at the same time, I feel like, man, like writing horror without exploring trauma, it's kind it would be like right it it would be like writing a romanticcy without exploring romance. you know like It's just such an integral emotion to the genre that...
Speaker: it feels so strange to not explore it. Now I'm not the biggest fan of like, oh, the real monster was actually grief or trauma all along. That can be done well and it has been done well, but I also like the threats to be physically real as well.
Speaker: but Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an interesting, ah if you think about the history of horror too, the the idea of like, what isn't ah a manifestation of grief? you know i was i was reading a book about the history of Frankenstein Because I'm really fun like that. And it was basically talking about the the loss of Mary Shelley's children in her life, that she was using this story to process her grief around that and because of what was happening in in in her body and in her life. And and so it's like that, I don't know think this is a ah word, but the the metaphorizing or the metaphor allocation or whatever it is, metaphoricalizing of grief has been with us since we've been trying to scare each other, right? You know?
Speaker: Have you found yourself, you know, not to be like, tell me about your trauma dump on me, but like, you know, but like, do you, do you find yourself processing that through your own writing as well? Yeah, I think it's almost, it's kind of impossible not to, i find, especially the older I get. I think when I was younger, one of the things a lot of people say is like, write what you know.
Speaker: And I think that's a misunderstood quote a lot of the times, including being misunderstood by me. But especially when I was younger, I felt like I don't want to write what I know. I want to write about aliens or want to write about like, you know, crazy things I've never experienced. And...
Speaker: And I guess now the older I get, it just seems like I keep writing about what I know. So it's like, okay, I guess there was something to that advice. But I don't even think that quote is necessarily saying don't write about aliens.
Speaker: It's saying finding something human and relatable and grounded in that in that topic. It's the you know the Steven Spielberg, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, or the creator of Last of Us had a quote saying like putting...
Speaker: simple plots, complex characters, which I definitely don't follow, but that is ah that is, there is some strength to that for sure, especially for more classical narrative. And yeah, so it's it's like inevitable that parts of my own life kind of bleed into the work.
Speaker: This is maybe another kind of angle of the same question, but where do you find The fears that you're clocking these days, where do you find them kind of manifesting out of? You know, are they are they things like, you know, things that happen in your life? are they Are they, you know, the news? Is it kind of like other people's fears that are transitioning over to you? oh When you think about the things you're worried about today, where do you find those generating from?
Speaker: It's definitely something that's evolved over time. i think a lot of it is i don't It'll just be like I'm walking, i'm at home alone at night, and then a random...
Speaker: thing comes like I was at an uncle's house one time and the door was open you know about like half a foot. And I just imagined a woman suddenly putting her face there saying, there's more than one of me, you know and then running away. And that just popped into my head and like freaked me out. And so sometimes it's as random as a very hyper-specific thing. And then other times it's more existential or more societal. Like in the case of caretaker deals with like obviously financial issues.
Speaker: instability and struggling to find a job and all that kind of stuff that I was dealing with more in my in my 20s than I am now but it's not it's something I never really think about consciously it's just kind of like what is grabbing me right now and I'm gonna write about that and then usually if I trust my instinct other people will find it engaging as well what was something that really scared you as a kid that you still kind of hold on to as a writer I was like existentially terrified of aliens for for most of my, like it a very long time. And it started with it started with the movie Lilo and Stitch, which was a fantastic animated film. And it wasn't anything in the movie itself. Well, it sort of was. It was at the end of the movie, the kind of my maternal grandmotherly alien relationship
Speaker: I can't remember their name, but it doesn't matter. but But the alien basically says something like, oh, yeah, we were there when with the Roswell crash or something. And I didn't know what that was. So I asked my dad about it. And he's like, oh, yeah, it's just this thing that happened in the fifty s where the government said a UFO crash and a bunch of people said they saw aliens. And then the government came out and said it was actually an experimental balloon.
Speaker: And that's what it was. And then i was like, wait, what? And then I saw pictures from it of the of the alleged autopsy, those those black and white photos that look... which is one They're just such fascinating pictures because you look at that you watch videos of people, like visual effects artists, analyzing it. And they're all just blown away by it. like You've seen the guys who did like Jurassic Park. These are the best of the best. And they're like, wow, this is...
Speaker: this is some of the best prosthetics I've ever seen in like a thing. And this was made in the 50s. And like seeing that as a kid, it's very like unsettling. and And then also growing up like religious was that idea of aliens having existing. And then there's also God. It just didn't really fit. Like why would there be these misformed giant head little things running around and it didn't fit Yeah, and so that's really just stuck with me. I'm not as freaked out anymore, but it is like it is the one bit of like lore that it has the most stuff that if you go down the rabbit hole, it's easy to be convinced there's...
Speaker: some there there. Sure. As opposed to other rabbit holes I've gone down, for sure. There's a great quote. I can't remember who said it, but someone much smarter than me. You know, there was a quote along lines of either we're alone in the universe or we aren't, and either answer is the most terrifying thing and the most terrifying thing possible, right? um You've reminded me of of my childhood fear of aliens, but it was it was but prompted by a much more graphic movie. I saw Fire in the Sky when I was way too young. Way too young. Yeah. hu and I don't know if you're familiar with that movie, but it is not... It's not a good watch. It's not a fun time watch. yeah Those scenes are disturbing. as The abduction scenes are disturbing as an adult. Like, that's extreme. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah My ah my my but dad was not what you would call a discerning censor for movies. um So it was... Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: A lot horror that I've been reading recently, and actually i would I would definitely classify the caretaker within this realm, it really pivots around the idea of trust. You know, who you let in, who do you believe, how do you trust what's happening to you?
Speaker: Has writing about that theme kind of changed how you find yourself trusting people in your life? Or is it the other way around? You know, the way you trust is manifesting in your writing.
Speaker: I think it's another case of like just writing what but freaks me out. And so like i i like always overthinking every social interaction I have where I will kind of hyper read into tiny little things.
Speaker: And the worst part is not when I misinterpret. It's when I find out later that the little thing that I picked up on was correct. And like that's always disturbing because it's like You know when somebody like says something and you're just kind of like oh, I'm overthinking it. They didn't mean it that way or whatever. And like, it's like, no, they really did. And they really, you find out like weeks later, like, oh no, that's what they actually meant. yeah And then it's like, oh my, it's like, how many other things did I misinterpret? Or like, I guess I'm right about every single time I've had that. And it's so, it's so confirmation bias because for every, for every one time I'm right, there's
Speaker: thousands of times that I completely misread it, you know, and it's it was actually the opposite scenario. And so that it's a matter of like trusting other people, but more so just trusting your own, your own judgment.
Speaker: And that's something I really when I'm thinking about scares in a sequence, I really find the harder it is to categorize what type of threat it is, the scarier it is for me. And you can't exist in that space forever, although I probably did with We Used to Live Here at least. But I think i think it's still fun to just have like, okay, this guy's coming at you with an axe and he's going cut off your head. like that That can be a very engaging read or movie.
Speaker: But the thing I always talk about is like, it's a lot scarier to me you, I don't know, you're driving down the road at night and you see a guy try to run after your car with an axe or whatever and and you get out just in the nick of time.
Speaker: That's scary, obviously. But what's scarier is you, I don't know, you see like a car broken down on the side of the road and there's a woman screaming for help and then you stop and then you start seeing people in the woods and you're like, wait, are these people working? You know, because now you're put into a situation where Which is a real thing that unfortunately, you know, like that's the thing that happens, especially in in less stable countries where people will kind of set up the things where it's like oh, somebody looks hurt and then you go and then you get robbed or whatever.
Speaker: And playing on those emotions of wanting to be a good person and wanting to help people and having that exploited or misunderstood is like very, very un unsettling to me. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: fear as a kind of, ah um,
Speaker: As a sort of a unifying emotion, I find it's one of the few emotions that that people really love sharing, um even though it is such an isolating, you know, separating emotion. It's ah it's something that we we really love to share, whether it's through, you know, movies, stories, campfires, and books, or obviously book clubs, you know. um what is it What is it about fear that you think people enjoy being? Or what do you think it is is it about fear that kind of brings people together or unifies them through that experience?
Speaker: I think have a friend who picks on me because I say primal all the time, but it is it is a very ah primal ah emotion to be, know, you're out of woods with your with your with your caveman buddies and you hear ah ah branch snap and the bushes start rustling and then a harmless little rabbit jumps out and then you all start laughing. And I kind of think that's really, that is the basis of what horror is Even, know,
Speaker: and I just saw Resident the new rein Evil movie, and i I've seen seen it twice now, and with both audiences, I paid more attention the second time to the audience, and it was really fascinating seeing the the squeamishness turn to laughter, to squeamishness to laughter, in ways that, like, like there's a scene in that movie that is...
Speaker: insanely disturbing and like breaks a lot of rules of what you're not supposed to do and the way Zach Krager deals with it afterward is he has that character reacting to it in a way that is very human and grounded and immediately made the audience burst into laughter at after something that was like Really extreme, which is like insanely impressive to see. And and I think that just shows ah like how much of a master of his craft that guy is because he's able to to break a rule like that and then make the audience burst into laughter. And that's also the talent of Austin austin Abrams, I believe his name ah is, who's just obviously incredibly talented.
Speaker: But i think at the end of the day, that is kind of, on a basic human level, it is just kind of being able to, it's getting that dopamine release of the rabbit jumping out continuously because you know it's a movie and you're kind of just sitting there and reading it. And even when you kind of forget, you then put the book down or you turn the movie off and you get that like relief of having just escaped a bear without actually being in threat of getting caught by a bear and... I mean, it's why roller coasters are so popular and theme parks and all that as well.
Speaker: So, yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting thing around around um the safety of the experience, right? And and and and i I wonder sometimes about um the ideas of like media literacy and the sort of, the without being too hyperbolic, the sort of war on critical thinking that seems to have gone on in the education system over the last 40 years and the idea of how how um involved people can become in these in this media and how sometimes we can kind of forget that it's actually fake that it's all make-believe and that just sort of ends up informing how we we show up I guess what I'm scratching is is the idea of like the the the fear that isn't real that we've been kind of manifest into the real world and we kind of make real
Speaker: you know I've definitely had people, like I was just, I'm just writing a document because I write documents on my website for like short story stuff on the side and I am writing a document right now that I'm like, man, is this like too, is this too direct and is it going to put and thoughts into people's heads that I don't necessarily, I want people to be scared and I want them to have a fun time, but I don't want them to.
Speaker: be put into like an existential dread of of things. And, but then there is also that agreement between reader and author that like you are coming here to be scared. And that's if, if you aren't being scared at least a little bit, I'm not doing my job, you know? So be it'd be like going to a standup show and getting mad that it made you laugh.
Speaker: It's kind of ridiculous. but I think it is something I think about a lot and I guess they call it cognitohazards, if you know that term, where it's things that like once you know them, it kind of really messes with your head and it can be dangerous to know them.
Speaker: And there are certain cognitohazards that I've hit in my life, and I'm like, I just wish I didn't know that. There was something we we were talking about just but just before we started recording. We were talking about, um I read that um that book, Nuclear War, a Scenario.
Speaker: It's ruined my year. Like, it's really, it really, like, oh my God. And I was reading it while like things were ramping up. ran And it was just like, I was just like, oh my God, we have a buffoon behind this arsenal. And, you know, and so knowing that has, has just completely altered how I engage with so many other things in my day. um You know, you're talking earlier about like back in the day, people were afraid of nuclear war. We should still be. Yeah, totally. I think that's kind of what a'm meaning around like, am I manifesting that fear or is that a pragmatism?
Speaker: You know, is that a, is that an alertness or is that a, uh, almost like a, am I, am I making it more scary than it needs to be? Right. I think, yeah, I think it boils down to is it's something you can control and if you can't control it, then it's maybe ignorance is bliss in those scenarios.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't know. It's an interesting thought. Uh, But yeah, I think at the end of the day, i think you have to, there is that, again, there's that unspoken contract between reader and author and fiction and reality. And I think once once you start, this is not what you're saying, but I think there are like, even growing up, there was like, oh, like writing about about serial killers is going to inspire real real serial killers. Or like Michael Myers in Halloween inspired real real killers. And
Speaker: I think if you look at the stretch of human history, that stuff has been happening forever, unfortunately. And so it it seems like it's more the other way around, that it's the it's going to happen whether or not people write about it or not. Now, there could be a conversation about glorification or or oversimplification, and then that's that's a whole other topic.
Speaker: But I think once you once you accuse one form of art of doing that, then every single form of art is now under fire. You know what I mean? So it's like... And even with things like, I don't know, like how people cope with certain things and like there's things in caretaker that are incredibly dark and I put a content warning in there because of it. I think that's how I process things in my own life and that's how I cope with them. So for that to be taken away from me or any other authors or any other creative medium, it's going to come out in other ways, you know, it's, it's, uh,
Speaker: I think, again, going back to extreme metal, I think, like, when growing up to that, I felt a little guilty listening to that because it felt like, you know, people thought it was sounded satanic or whatever. but it's like, man, I cannot think of a more healthy way for a young person to vent anger than starting a band and screaming into a microphone. Just make art. Yeah, instead of taking it out, and I don't know, like...
Speaker: In other unhealthy ways, like, and I think horror is another, it's just like a great way to kind of vent the darker aspects of humanity on a page in a harmless way. And so I think the good that comes from that far outweighs any potential, any potential downsides for sure. Yeah. I mean, if I've learned anything from my years and years and years of therapy.
Speaker: It's the idea of like, you know, there isn't a, there isn't a bad emotion. There's what we do with our emotions. And, you know, we're not taught what to do with our anger. We're not taught what to do with our sadness. We're told, ignore it, repress it. Right. You know, and that makes it worse. Right. You know, but, but I think these, these people who are using their anger any healthy ways by making art, by expressing it in ways that aren't, you know, an anger doesn't have to be violence. Right. It's just that if we don't know what to do with it, it becomes right. 100%. You know, and so, so what they do with it is they make art. And I think that's, you know, yeah, that's, that's,
Speaker: The best part about that is that there's no, there's it's not like capitalism. There's no zero sum game there. there's There's always room for more, Building on that a little bit, actually, of the idea of your relationship with your audience and your readers, you know, when a reader tells you your book scared the shit of them or whatever it might be, right? what What do you consider that connection? Like, what is that to you?
Speaker: and And does it to you feel like ah like a relationship or or what is that connection for you?
Speaker: it's very it's It's a very strange thing that I'm still not quite used to. It's like, oh man, and like I didn't sleep because of your book. And then it's like you almost want to like apologize.
Speaker: But I think i've now it's happened enough now that I'm just like, oh, this is the... Again, it's that agreement I talked about and people people come to these books for that experience. And anytime I have been like, oh, i don't know if I should apologize. They're always like, no, like, thank you. Like that kind of thing. like That's the way I read it. yeah The only time I would feel bad is like I've seen it at some indie bookstores where they put it like the mystery section or even like literary fiction.
Speaker: Then I feel like genuinely bad for some. Because it's like you did not sign up for this. You know like this is not you were expecting like Margaret Atwood or something like really, really classic. Let me correct the record. Not Margaret Atwood. Murder, She Wrote. i don't know why i got that. It will start with an M. yeah On the other side, you know for you,
Speaker: Who are, who's your community? Who are your people? You can name names if you want to. It's not, you know, it's just, who do you go to to keep you grounded when you're spending your days, you know, dreaming up all these horrible things and then you're torturing your characters? How do you stay grounded and who keeps you down?
Speaker: I think I have friends that aren't in the medium and like that's always really, really nice. i went to my buddy's wedding in LA and like he's ah he has like a PhD in chemical engineering and like a bunch of other, and like everybody there was like a doctor and stuff. And so that was really...
Speaker: They were like, oh, cool. you write But, you know, it was nice to just be around. Like, like they that was cool. I think I have a niece and nephew as well, and they're very they're very humbling. Like, even when when we got, like, New York Times bestseller, my sister told them, and they're just kind of like, cool. Like, they don they don't know what that means. So it's, like, very that. from That's more of the, like, not getting a big head about it perspective. But then I would say, like,
Speaker: I tend to gravitate towards like lighter media at the end of the day because I'm like doing dark stuff all day, so I'll find like a chill... I'll play like Animal Crossing or Pikmin or Super Mario or or just go for a walk with my dog, and have two cats as well. So, yeah, that's all very grounding.
Speaker: shifting here slightly just because I know a lot of people are really interested in in your journey kind of through your, you know, you the writing journey, kind of how you got to to where you are. And, you know, you started writing for online ri online audiences who, you know, they react in real time, right? It's kind of the beauty of of it.
Speaker: In a lot of ways, I find, you know, writing on Reddit or writing just online in general is kind of the closest thing a writer can get to like stand up comedy because of how much closer to real time it is. For you, what did that kind of teach you about writing kind of with people instead of just sort of for them?
Speaker: I think having that immediate connection with an audience and then also writing for an audience where you're on Reddit, which you're competing with the rest of the internet. I've said it before, but it's like you're competing with cat videos. So it's like you really have to grab people's attention.
Speaker: There's some people that kind of balk at that and they're like, oh you mean like it needs to be like Subway Surfer, 18 billion things happening every two seconds to grab. I don't think that's the case. I think for me, it really taught me, especially as a starting out writer, is...
Speaker: People have so many things they can be doing with their time in this day and age, for better and for worse. what You need to give them a reason as soon as humanly possible to keep reading whatever it is you've wrote for them.
Speaker: And I find myself included when I started out writing, but I see a lot of it, whether it was in film school or whether it is online, there's a lot of younger or debut authors that they almost feel like entitled to people's attention in a way where it's like, I'm going to write the first opening of my book is going to be like 10 chapters, just setting the town up. And it's like, which can be fantastic. And I, like, like I love, but like, I love, um,
Speaker: I started reading Dandelion Wine. It was beautiful, but like that's like one of the best of the best of the best. And I think when you're when you're starting out and you're competing with so many other people, everybody is, especially if you're trying to like go the more traditional route, whether you're selling to a publisher or whether you're even just trying to do the short story route that I did, selling to Hollywood, if it's not grabbing somebody by the first page, they're probably just going to stop reading.
Speaker: and And I think that That's something that became important to me in my work. And that doesn't that's not to say you need to start with like an explosion and a bunch of crazy stuff happening.
Speaker: It can be as simple as, i don't know, was it The Outsider, Albert? kind wait Right, it's like, I think my mom died this week. I think it was Wednesday or maybe it maybe it was Thursday. And that's immediately like, oh, whoa, this is a character I want to know more about. Totally. He doesn't even know. His mom just died. He doesn't even know what day it happened on, and he doesn't seem to really care.
Speaker: It can be something as epic and grand as the Dark Tower. you know the The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. Greatest opening line. Yeah, so good. like It just immediately puts this image in your mind. You have a protagonist and an antagonist, and you have like...
Speaker: And so I think for me, more and more, like I get people asking me advice, like, well, what should I do? I'm like, I'm not, I'm sending out to publishers and I'm not getting responses back.
Speaker: And that would be the number one thing is like, try to, from the first line, like really, I think that ah in a way it's almost easier. i don't want to undermine it by any by any sense of the word, but it's like that should almost be the easiest place to grab somebody's attention because they're ready. They're sitting down.
Speaker: They're looking at it. And especially especially in pros, you kind of have the advantage of you can kind of start. I'm not saying do the like flash forward thing, like then go three weeks earlier or whatever, because that can be annoying as well. It can be done well, but usually I don't i don't like that either.
Speaker: But you can do the event. Like we used to live here as an example. We start with the family at the door and ah they want to take a look around the house and they kind of reluctantly let them in. And then as they're looking around the house, the the beauty of prose is you can kind of subtly kind of sit in the back door and be like, oh, this is the room that we were cleaning up because we just bought the house or whatever. So you can get the scene that we've all seen it a billion times of the horror movie of they move into the house, they're going to renovate it.
Speaker: I feel like the audience doesn't need that anymore. And even the book I'm working on right now, it's like a kind of an entity haunting a family. Potentially anything could change. Don't lock me into this. But like there's so many things. It was actually the book Incidents Around the House that really inspired me for this book. And in that book, it's a very classic like, ooh, the imaginary friend and the kid.
Speaker: And it's very, very quickly into that book that the parents accept that this thing is real and they, he kind of, there's a bit of a debate, but they really like, he really, I think it's like probably a quarter of the way in where the parents are like, okay, this thing is real and we need to deal with it.
Speaker: And that was super refreshing because it's like, I've just seen that debate story done so many times. That's what stretches out the whole middle. Yeah. And that, yeah again, that can be interesting and that can be done well, but yeah there's a very that and then just trying to end things on reasons to get people to keep reading so i think I might have talked about this on the panel but it's the idea of like a good cliffhanger versus a bad cliffhanger and so like a A bad cliffhanger is you have your your main character comes home at the end of the day and then opens the main bedroom door and then he gasps. You see the camera here and then it cuts to black and you don't know what he saw. A good cliffhanger would be he opens the bedroom door, then you cut to what he sees and...
Speaker: you know, oh there's blood everywhere, his family was murdered, or what whatever, his wife's cheating on him, anything, and now it's like, okay, now what's gonna happen? And i think finding moments like that to end every chapter on and then even on a more micro level, don't overthink it while you're writing, obviously, but every paragraph, and every, like, just kind of these little things that momentum into the next into the the into the next because once you start losing that you start losing the reader and um and i think that's fair especially with a genre like horror ah people are coming to it to be scared and i need to trust that the author can deliver that as as soon as possible without it being over the top you know there's there's something really to be said around this idea of like you know when you talk about things like hooks i know myself included, ah I've been very reluctant.
Speaker: I've been resistant to it. I've been resistant to the idea of when you post online, you're supposed to have hook in the first three seconds. And when you, you know, when you, you know, a script has to have a hook in the first five minutes. And if you lose them, you're lost forever. and And there's a resistance to it, but then there's also, there's a pragmatism to it. And I do think that, you know, when I'm teaching, it's like, it's a reminder that it's like,
Speaker: you kind of have to you have to be able to play by the rules before you can break them, you know? and and And there's such a desire to... um There's a desire to prove that you have a unique, special, never-been-seen-before quality or thought or idea, that you never bothered to learn how to actually play by the rules.
Speaker: But i then I think that when you see someone... play by the rules and still surprise you, still create something unique. It really shows that it's like, no, those are those are rules for a reason, you know?
Speaker: Aristotle still, you know, he sucked as a guy, but his writing was very important, you know? That is unfortunately a common theme in reality. Right, right, you know? Yeah. But it's like, it's like those rules still work, right? And the more you can use them to your advantage, the better, right?
Speaker: Because there are also ways to not then start with a blank page. You're never starting with a blank page if you're going back to the lessons and going back to the rules, right? Can you tell me a little bit about building out from that? So you're, you know, you're posting online, you're posting on Reddit, you're kind of building a little bit of ah an audience.
Speaker: What was it like kind of fostering that writing community? What was your experience in sort of fostering that community and in in whether in joining it or or starting a new one? and and And how have you been kind of nurturing those connections from that first that first connection?
Speaker: I think, again, it's like you said, there's like it's the closest you can get to stand up where you're you're getting such an immediate visceral reaction to stories and seeing comments on them right away.
Speaker: And it's something that I encourage like any, especially if somebody is into genre fiction, is to to post on Reddit and to post on these websites because it's you're kind of knowing if things are working, you know, and you can do it anonymously, which is like a huge amount of pressure off. um And i think for me, having that immediate feedback, even when it was only like two people, it was just like, oh like somebody would be like, oh, I can't wait for the next part or whatever. It was just like, okay, there's my there's my reason to to keep writing.
Speaker: And even when that didn't come, it was just knowing like, hey, at least somebody's reading this and putting it out there. and having that external accountability was massive. So like my first series on there, I was posting every Tuesday, and I didn't know what the next part was going to be. was just kind of making up as I went along, which I don't necessarily recommend, but it it seemed to have worked out a little bit. And for me, it was just like I just told myself, I'm gonna post on Tuesday, and I'm going post next Tuesday, and that was the schedule I made for myself. And having even two people expecting it,
Speaker: was enough external accountability to keep on posting it. And then as it it just kept growing from there, obviously. But I think that it's just such a powerful medium. And I think when I do get so many people asking about like traditional routes through publishing and stuff, it's just such a different world anymore. like You don't necessarily need to go through the traditional gatekeepers.
Speaker: And so many authors... You don't even necessarily need to go traditional publishing. I personally know tons of authors from from these subreddits that have, like, they're able to make their entire living just doing self-published books and, you know, maybe run a Patreon and that kind of thing. And, and yeah, and that's that's the great thing.
Speaker: And then to add to something I said earlier, too, it's like if you do, if you are able to find foster that community and able to build a career out of that, then you can go back and do the weirdest stuff that you wanted. to you know You don't have to do that immediately grabbing the hook, intense you know whatever story. like You can, and then people will also trust you more because like people like Stephen King or you know like Hemingway or whoever, Margaret Atwood, all these authors...
Speaker: They can get away with a lot of stuff that a debut author can't because people have read their books and they trust them. So whereas like when you're coming out of nowhere, you're asking a lot of the audience to to trust you. Totally.
Speaker: What do you think writers owe each other if they owe each other any
Speaker: I think it's a, so one thing, another thing I hear a lot, whenever I'm writing a new book, I try to read and watch as many things in that space as possible.
Speaker: And I've had other people say like, oh, well, aren't you worried about like, you know, absorbing something, whether intentionally or otherwise, and using it in your in your own work.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I'm more worried about doing something that's already been done 50 times before and I didn't know just because I hadn't read up on that that genre. and so And then I'm also worried about if I am absorbing something, i real which everybody does, everybody does it, you just to put in a nod of respect to that thing. So like a big example with We Used to Live Here would be a House of Leaves, obviously. It'd be like,
Speaker: I'm not an academic writer, so I can't put a citation in the book saying like, this is inspired by Houselie. So instead I'll be like, oh, you know what? On the forum, there's going to be somebody named Navidson, which is a character from that book.
Speaker: And that is kind of the acknowledgement of respect that I am heavily inspired by this thing and I'm drawing from it in tons of ways. And then here's my nod of respect.
Speaker: And then also to be like, also go read this other thing because it's It's freaking awesome. And it's the scariest book I've ever read. I've never finished it because it's absolutely. feels like you might lose your mind if you do finish it. Yeah. um Yeah. And so I think if anything, there's that.
Speaker: And where so as far as owing things to other writers, I think it's being honest about when you are influenced by something and then also not letting that.
Speaker: discourage you from writing because I think I spent most of my teens and 20s where it was like every idea my brain would be looking for things to shoot it down to be like oh it's too similar to this or like oh they already did that and this and that kind of thing but if you wear that on your sleeve you know it's it's you people are so forgiving yeah I mean like look at Tarantino right like that's like the top example of it where he's like very blatant about it but like even in more subtle ways I mean, the example is like, imagine if Jordan Peele didn't write Get Out because he thought it was too similar to being John Malkovich.
Speaker: Or if he didn't do Us because he was like, oh, well, they already did this in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or whatever. It's like, which of course sounds ridiculous, but that is how I thought in my 20s. Like if I had come up with those ideas in my 20s, I would have been that insecure and nervous that I have been like, oh, maybe I shouldn't write this after all.
Speaker: And it's just such bad, it's such a bad way to look at things and it becomes an excuse to not write. anything originality is overrated and like i think my career is a perfect example of that and there's people that write you know they call me out for being too similar to house of leaves and you know fair enough but like hey i i'm able to write for a living so it's like i'll use the money to wipe my tears i guess you know like uh not that i'm not i'm bloated right you know what i mean but yeah amazing How do you protect your attention and and kind of like the part of you that writes? I know earlier you had mentioned like you don't have access to your social media. and so I'm curious, like what what do you do to protect your attention and your ability to to write?
Speaker: I always like to cater my answer to people that have to work other jobs and stuff. Cause now that I am fortunate enough to be able, I just wake up in the morning, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to block off two hours. And that's the only time I can write, which obviously i couldn't have done for most of my life when I was working a normal job. So I would say like,
Speaker: A half an hour is a lot of time. You can get a lot done in half an hour, and that can easily drain just scrolling on YouTube. I still do it every day to this day where it's like I just spent half an hour not even watching videos on YouTube, just scrolling through and reading the headlines of the video.
Speaker: So you can get a lot done in a half hour. And so if you just take take a half hour, treat it as like – Put it in your calendar as like ah as if it was a counseling appointment or as if it was something you paid to go do. like Then find a time. yeah Everybody has at least half an hour. Unless you work in film, then maybe that's another problem. this But most even on weekends. And so that was the thing. Finding half an hour and treating that as even go 15 minutes, five minutes, whatever it is. And...
Speaker: Not having your phone in the room is is so, even if you have the willpower to not look at it, most people, the it's like it's going to be like an open tab just drawing battery power from your laptop. There's something to me about it. like There's ah there's ah a buzz in the room. when my Even if it's like just imaginary, it's like somatic. it's Totally. If it's in the room, I can feel this buzz in my molars. Yes. So i yeah like if I put it away, Turn it off, yeah put it in a drawer, yeah get ah buy like a $10 lockbox for it on Amazon or whatever. like Just get it, just contain it like it's a contaminant. That's important. And then if you're working on a laptop, I always have...
Speaker: A separate profile just for writing and I try to block as many things as I can on there and even that wasn't working for me because I'm like oh well I need to have a browser for if I need to run into research so even that now I switch to an iPad but any you could get any tablet like there's tons of super cheap tablets on the market that have insane battery power you can get wireless keyboards for them.
Speaker: and you can just get them secondhand. And I find that that is so much easier to lock down because the thing about a laptop is you can't really, you still need it for emails and all that thing. Whereas if you have like a little tablet on the side, that that's been a game changer for me because i' may I've just been able to download these insanely strict apps that it's like literally I only have my writing thing on there. And then for the research excuse, what I've started doing is being like, I don't know this thing.
Speaker: I'm going to write it down and then do research in a separate way. time right otherwise you're just gonna get pulled into and it becomes yeah so those are those are like the main things chewing gum is another one like that's become a hack what's the what's the reason I don't know I've just started chewing gum and that's like really helped me focus and so is it it maybe it's like a connection did you ever smoke were you ever a smoker when I drank when I was in high school right yeah but I think there's something about having that like distraction to do Because there's some weird, like, like I used to smoke and there's like, i i miss it if only for the for the almost of it. Totally, yes. And the like synaptic shift that comes from it, you know? Yeah, when you like don't know what to do with your hands after you stop. Yeah, it's like, put in my pocket. Yeah, maybe it's something like that.
Speaker: And then I think just lying to yourself is like a gaslight yourself. So like there's so many narratives about that's a that's a funny way to say it. But you know what mean? There's so many narratives I've had about myself my whole life where it's like even like, oh, I'm scared public speaking or, oh, I'm not comfortable in front of crowds.
Speaker: And this is something that's not going to work for everybody, but for some reason, just just lying to my, I'm being like, you know what i'm fine in front of crowds. You know what, i actually I actually am the person that can sit down and focus for just 30 minutes at a time and write.
Speaker: That has been massively massive for my productivity. That's a trick I used to teach my students all the time. I used to teach she'd like soft skills and stuff like that. yeah and And I'd always say, you know you know they'd always go, oh, it's fake it till you And it's like, yeah, but it's deeper than that in that it's like you are what you tell yourself you are.
Speaker: and And the thing is that nobody's born confident. Nobody is born believing in themselves. Nobody knows what that means, right? So it's it's a muscle. It's a practice. And so if if I'm sitting here silently telling myself, man, I suck. I'm an idiot. I'm such a loser. like It's going to like...
Speaker: you know Totally, yeah. But you can't read my mind. You have no idea what I'm thinking right now. So if I'm telling myself, man, I'm so good at this. I'm the best podcaster that has ever lived. like I'm so good at this, and I rule. like it's like What's funny is that it's like its it's in instant it's it's going to somehow trick me into actually doing a better job. Totally, like i yeah. i like Even just saying that joke, I started sitting up straighter. you know like it's like It's this weird thing that happens, right? you know So it's like, it yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: It's that thing of, always call them skating rinks. You know, you get the grooves. I got that from my mouth guard. Dentists call those skating when you grind. They call them skating rinks. I was thinking about that in your brain.
Speaker: It's like the more you do yeah thing, it grinds skating rinks. like the same narrow pathways again and again. Yeah. um And then the last thing I would be like, just 30 minute chunks.
Speaker: It's like I do Pomodoro technique and that has been crazy helpful. And then I have a notebook where I like, every time I do a 30 minute thing, I put down a little check mark in a square and I have a bunch of circles filled with like check marks and like having like a physical, tangible thing that kind of records that I'm doing things, um I find really helpful. You don't have an empty checklist at the end. Yes. you've seen, you've done stuff. Yeah. so it's like a And you have, it is like ah it is like an external,
Speaker: whom parent being like what have you done having external things that exist outside of your mind to sort of be a record that you're getting things done it's very motivating for me yeah I only have one more closing question but before I get to that I was wondering do you do either of you have any questions you'd like to ask Marcus or anything you like but I was listening to the your audio book the sea and the what is it called oh please remain seated yeah yeah yeah And I'm just curious, like how you, i guess, or how you do go in between like long form and short form.
Speaker: I've read a lot of your Reddit stories and I'm just curious how you kind of set yourself up to like if you knew that you're going to do the more short story ask or if you kind of were like, oh, no, I'm done here. I don't want to add any more. Or, yeah, I'm just curious about your process. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: I think for me, like most content I've done on Reddit is short story, except for the one really long series that I did. And even both We Used to Live Here and Caretaker both started out as short stories, borderline novella length things. And...
Speaker: I think for me, because I don't have a good attention span, i even as much as I lie to myself that I do, that's still one thing that's true about me. i think it is a lot easier for me to jump from short story to short story because it's like, oh, well, um do this thing and then it's done. And you can also get a little crazier with a short because the audience isn't required to, you're asking them to stick around as long. So they're willing to do something.
Speaker: weirder stuff you know like they're willing to you can write a story that's like from the perspective of ah of a tree getting chopped down and people will be like that's that's cool that's nice 500 words but you couldn't do a novel about that unless you're like in you know ray bradbury or something but um i think what i really am starting to love about long form especially now that my third book is it's originating as a novel and it's never been, it's not a short that I'm adapting that I already wrote. It's very fun to,
Speaker: You can just add so much more detail and density to the characters. So when bad things start happening, it feels that much more visceral. I think, I mean, i think just look at the comparison between movies and TV shows, right? Like there's very few movies where a character dies and you will like scream at the screen. You might be like really emotionally affected by it.
Speaker: But like, I personally can't think of a movie where that's happened, but like Game of Thrones, the Red, you know, there's scenes in Game of Thrones where you're literally screaming at the television and you feel like sick about it for days after it happens. And I think that's just because you've spent so much more time with these characters. And so it feels like somebody you actually knew died, even if it was glurp glurp from the whatever kingdom, you know, so That's a really fun thing about long form. So I love aspects to both for sure.
Speaker: Well, Marcus, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. it's it was always you know This is my second chance getting to chat with you, and it's been great. ah yeah yeah yeah we're just Likewise. We keep building on it. you know um um i I tend to end regular interviews with a question about friendship, which is a very left-field question for our topic, but but um but you know we'll we'll dive into it anyway. um i always like to leave listeners on on ah kind of an actionable thing that they can try out. And so i always like to ask,
Speaker: What is something that listeners could do this week to try and be a more effective friend, either to themselves or to their community at large?
Speaker: I think like for me, I mean, just tying it into the caretaker. Yeah, totally. Seems kind of tacky, but like, I think for me, like the, that book is about kind of finding something to take care of and finding purpose in that. And for me, it was learning to treat myself like, I mean, it's a trope, but it's like treating yourself like somebody you're responsible for taking care of. And like, I think a lot of people are,
Speaker: they are willing to not treat themselves the same way they would treat a friend. You know, there's like, even the way we talk to ourselves, it's like if a friend came to you with these problems, you would never say the stuff you tell yourself. Like, you're such an idiot. I can't believe you did that. I can't believe you said that. You would never talk to a friend that way.
Speaker: And that doesn't mean you have to be coddling to yourself or you have to be dishonest to yourself. But I think if you are the type of person that feels uncomfortable,
Speaker: think like advocating for yourself it's important to do that in order to help other people because if you're not taking care of yourself you're not going be able to take care of anybody else you know and so I think that was something it took me to my like late 20s early 30s to learn and and yeah so no matter how down you are on yourself or how much you may dislike yourself or think you don't have anything to offer to the world you do and that starts with kind of finding ways to help yourself and yeah, I don't know, kind of generic advice, but. I love it. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you so much. Marcus Cleaver, everybody. what a guy. ah And I, the my the new joke is I i haven't had a sign off. I've never, i've been doing this show for seven years. I still haven't figured out a sign off. And the new one is, the new winner as is now. Okay. Anyway, a bye. yeah
