Wolf Interviews: Redd Oscar
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You can find his work at ReddOscarWrites.
How long have you been a writer? What made you decide to publish with substack rather than through a more traditional publishing process?
I started writing everyday in early 2017 when I was 24. I had attempted NaNoWriMo a few times since 2012, when I was at university, but it had never stuck as a habit. By 2017 I'd graduated, had a job, then gone back to university to do a Masters and this sudden need to write fiction bubbled up within me. Maybe it was procrastination from essays and my thesis or perhaps it was 'a calling', I don't know but either way I have written almost everyday for 6 years. This was only 2 years after I'd started reading fiction. Being very late to reading anything other than Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Narnia, and Calvin and Hobbes, meant I had some catching up to do. Fortunately 2nd hand and ex-warehouse book shops are very cheap in the UK. I would take a tenner and buy 5 books from The Last Bookshop in Oxford and read them back to back. Return and repeat. I made my way through many of the SF Masterworks collection, classics, and Japanese fiction the first 2 years at a pace of about 1 book a week. Before reading I played A LOT of video games almost all single player story and/or lore heavy. Lots of RPGs. Books are a natural companion/alternative to these types of games. More recently I've been playing games like Europa Universallis IV, Rimworld, and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. These are quite complex simulation/strategy/pseudo-RPGs with almost no story but a living world were each game is radically different and creates stories just by being played. If you're not feeling creative setting up a colony on the Rim and seeing how it goes may just spark a couple ideas. Or read history if games aren't your thing, history is often wilder than fiction especially in the intricate details. I have a fondness for English and Chinese history, but Rome and Greece are up there too. In fact something I've wanted to tackle in fictional form is the Diadochi, the successors to Alexander, but it would be an enormous series with hefty research. I'd probably go the Guy Gavriel Kay route and write historically inspried fantasy to give myself breathing room on 'the facts' of it all. Similar to what I'm doing with one of my current serial The Civil War.
Originally I had no inclination to publish anything anywhere, I was quite happy learning and writing as a hobby, but that quickly ended when it seemed writing was well suited to the sort of life I wanted to live - regardless of the slim likelihood of achieving it. I'm awful at having 'work-life balance', I don't want it. I like thinking about the nuts and bolts of writing, the stories, new stories, old stories, critiques, all the time. But, then, I like thinking about philosophy all the time (my degrees are in this). I think about art a lot (I paint portraiture). If I don't have something to gnaw on I become irritable, video games and books are the two medications when I need to chill out, though I didn't start reading anything other than philosophy until my twenties as I said above. Making money from writing, well that's a different matter, what one wants and likes is seldom what one gets and the only remedy is hard work and luck. My first goal was 1 completed first draft of a novel. This took 3 attempts, the first was as a 'pantser'; no plan, no plot, just a blank page and a vision. That sputtered out by 20,000 words. The 2nd attempt went much the same way as I thought the problem was the idea, it wasn't. The 3rd attempt was planned and that worked. I thought through the whole story in a 10,000 word plan and turned that into a 100,000 word novel. It's terrible BUT I achieved the first goal. Next was improving at the craft and for that I needed at least 1 million words of fiction. So I wrote 6 more novels, each one improved. The second one was re-written in the edit and available is on SubStack, though I think it is awful nowadays. The fifth I sent to various agents and got some feedback along with rejection letters. This was good, this was progress, but in 5 years that's all I had. Close to 1 million words and a couple of emails. From stories of Brandon Sanderson or Alastair Reynolds or David Gemmell I knew it was a long road to becoming a published author but now very few agents in the United Kingdom have submissions open anything more than a couple weeks a year, they can take 6-12 months to respond, and an agent will see 2000+ submissions and take on up to 5 authors a year. From there you aren't guaranteed a sale and it is recently become the case that publishers will do little to no marketing for most debuts. Meaning the benefit of tradpub is less than it was 10 years and substantially diminished from 2 decades ago. All of this made me think I'd be dead before getting published so I should take things into my own hands and as fate would have it I'd recently heard of SubStack. Brooding on your own death is a good way to inspire action, give it a try. I didn't know about Wattpad and some other places for fiction but SubStack seemed better than Wordpress or Blogger, even in the early days. I figured I could grow an audience while still submitting to agents. In reality I had no idea what I was doing and had signed myself up to learn a bunch of skills without knowing it, marketing, promotion, community building. As it turns out I would need this as a tradpub author anyway. I'm still learning. While I plan stories (spoilers for a later question) I did not plan how to build a business, foolish I know. Though in my defence selling fiction as a "news"letter was rare and the nearest comparison would be Wildbow's Worm and the plethora of fan-fiction.
mentioned this in a Note a few weeks ago that there is no plan for SubStack fiction because no one's done it yet - from 0 subs to full income - so the path is being made as we go. I should have still had a plan, at least one on learning marketing, Tweet writing, etc. I am writing full-time but I don't have a full-time income, yet. Hindsight, blahblahblah.I haven't sent a submission to an agent in over a year and I probably won't in the near future. There's many online magazines that have appeared which publish the genres I write, so that is a potential avenue. I can see SubStack becoming YouTube for writing, but that only works if the recommendation algorithm is up to snuff, the recent changes to the app are a step in this direction as is setting up paid subs through the app.
I think the idea of substack as youtube for writing is interesting. I'm less optimistic but I do enjoy the platform and it's certainly spurred me to write more than ever before. I also think we're in a place right now in publishing that shows the traditional method isn't working so well for readers, writers, or publishers. If substack were to close up tomorrow, where would you take your writing?
Having the emails of my subscribers is the advantage and means I could shift to Beehiiv, Patreon, or similar tomorrow (though I've never used either so there'd be a steep learning curve). The problem would be growing to a sustainable income, as it is currently and everywhere, but I'd have to dust off the Twitter, Instagram, and probably get a Threads account. The problem before Notes was converting Twitter followers to SubStack subscribers, convincing people to move from one site to another is difficult. More so with apps. The web appears to be heading towards a collection of walled gardens where moving from one to another is rare. I don't have an answer to how to build an audience. Another option is shifting to audiobooks and publishing on YouTube, though it would be a lot more work. Other options, like Kindle (ebook and physical), are already on the table for the future. Submitting to the plethora of new (and old) magazines is also on the near horizon. There's an argument to say I should be doing everything all the time to maximise reach but I know I am better at focusing on one thing at a time.
It's always interesting to me when writers come from backgrounds outside of fiction. I think it often leads to more interesting dimensions to work. And as a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay, I'm always interested in his approach to fantasy and history. What do you consider a differentiator between your work and the work of other SFF writers?
Around half of my reading is non-fiction, and old non-fiction at that, in philosophy (mainly; metaphysics, metaethics, ethics, aesthetics, political and metapolitical), history, and anthropology. This trio provides a bird's eye view of the world until you get into the grittier parts of each subject and find the personal. I strive to combine all of that in my fiction. A good chunk of my library is second hand books no longer in print and similar rarities so I try and include elements of these too. For instance a scifi series I'm currently working on combines the French Revolution, Ancient Greek Naval Warfare, and Warhammer 40K. It started with the statement 'The wrong side won the French Revolution.' The aim is to show all the atrocities of Robespierre, the tyranny of the Directory, the rise of Napoleon, all the while investigating the cause of the revolt. It has 3 point-of-view characters, the rightful heir, the leader of the revolt, and a Napoleon-esque figure. I want to be as empathetic to each side with all the nuance of the philosophical arguments and realities baked into brutal ultraviolence spanning Mercury to Pluto. It is half-finished and I'm aiming to have at least 75% done (of the whole trilogy) by end of NaNoWriMo 2023. I would argue this combination of subjects creates distinctive work and the style is more pulp than literary to allow the reader to come to it on their terms. You can read into it if you want and, hopefully, find more or you can enjoy the story for the fun of it, completely up to you.
You've published several novellas and short stories. Where would you recommend a new reader begin with your work? Why?
The quick answer is with the latest season of One Shots and serials. At time of writing that is Autumn 2023 with the 10 chapter serial, A Slow Ascent of Madness, and The Civil War, the serial that was meant to be a One Shot, starting with Assassination of an Emperor. A Slow Ascent of Madness is a Lovecraftian horror following a newly married couple chasing wealth with a baby on the way. The Moves of the Civil War is a Romanesque low fantasy charting the Civil War between Emperor Maedicius III and Consul Livicus, all political intrigue and intense battles. Why these? Because my latest work is my best work (long may this continue to be true). There are older stories I'm happy with like Our Sable Moon, An Abundance of Order, A Lost and Tainted Soul, and The Bard's Tale, to name a few and I encourage old and new readers to check out everything.
The long answer (for the reader) is to read the free One Shots (there's 9) but if I had to recommend three then go read Our Sable Moon, A Lost and Tainted Soul, and Duties of a Grave Keeper to get a feel for what and how I write. From there read the novellas Mori vs the Oni Part 1 and The Civil War (ongoing). If you like all that there's 30+ more One Shots and 6 novellas for paid subs, including Mori vs the Oni Part 2. The One Shots range from fantasy to scifi, horror to fairy tale. Novellas fall into scifi, horror, and fantasy.
When you begin writing a story, how much planning goes into it? Do you have a preconceived idea of the length before you begin?
A lot. I like planning (I did not plan these answers, this all off the cuff, edited, and spliced as I go). I like researching, though this often happens while writing as it's needed. Character names, places, intricate lore details are developed along the way for the most part. Recently I've written vignettes from the perspective of a historian of the world to figure out the setting. I almost always start with a setting and an event rather than a character. Around 1/3rd of the time I have a message/theme or question in mind that the story is exploring, or outright stating, which will guide the plan but usually the message appears in the writing and is clarified in the edit. Sometimes the plan will be a couple sentences and other times it will be a 1000 words long, that's just for a short story. For novellas I break it down into chapters, usually 10 or 12, and figure out a rough ending from the beginning. Endings are crucial because without something to aim for (and this goes for any length of story) a writer risks meandering and including superfluous and unnecessary elements. I have to be very careful when writing chapters 5-7 of novellas because of this. This middle hinge is where the widening story begins to narrow down, questions start to be answered, the setup is done and now the payoff must begin. It's tempting to keep making the story bigger, to add more complexity, but you have to resist otherwise your story will never end. The problem with answering questions in stories is it can reduce the mystique for the reader. People like mystery, it's fun to read and it's fun to write, and when you start answering everything it risks losing the allure. Two tricks. 1 - Don't answer everything. Easy. 2 - Start late and finish early. Starting late means to start the story as close to the end as possible, finishing early is wrapping up ASAP from the adventure concluding. Do not linger. This creates the feeling of expansiveness either side of the story.
For novels this is a little different as having a gradual introduction and soft ending is quite common in fantasy and some scifi. Though, generally, I'm not a fan of the 200 pages were farmboy learns to fight and meets all the people of his village. It can be done well but starting a book with glacial speed needs a stellar hook.
Anyway, back to the question, yes I have a preconceived idea of length. Sometimes I'm wrong and what I thought was 1000 words is actually 6000 but typically a novella will be 10-12 chapters roughly 1500-2500 a chapter. Short stories I aim for 2000-4000 words. 2000 words is a pleasant size as it's a ten minute read and that seems to work well for SubStack. I do write longer One Shots, my Tarok the Wanderer stories stretch to 6000, but longer tends to garner fewer readers. The more I write the more accurate I am. Shorter is harder. The Fictionistas prompts have a limit of 1000 words and I always max out after cutting and restructuring the original plan.
At the start there was no way of knowing how long something would take, or should take. A big task I have in editing one of my scifi novels is cutting down all the superfluous writing because I didn't know how to portray certain elements or types of scenes (e.g. battles) creating meandering scenes which are bloated. It's not, necessarily, about doing more with less but more a consideration of the reader's time (and my own).
Novels are similar apart from size. Plans can push up to 20,000 words going chapter-by-chapter. A lot of the structural worldbuilding is laid down at the beginning and detail is added along the way. I start with the visible iceberg and in writing it fully develop the hidden iceberg sometimes down to centuries of history, specific laws, designs of coins and other stuff that is unlikely to appear in the final story. I've drawn characters too, painted one of them. Tangent: I have a very long term aim were I do everything for a book from writing it to cover design to the map inside and even little chapter icons and illustrations throughout. These would probably be released as limited print hardbacks.
That longterm aim is what Tolkien did, though most of these illustrations and covers were only released much later. But I think people enjoy that sort of thing.
I think so too and there's a small, passionate group of readers who will fully immerse themselves in your world. All you have to do is find them and keep crafting.
Since you do so much planning, how much discovery happens during the writing itself? I ask because I write purely by discovery (I once set out to write a short story that is now a 400,000 word novel). Do your characters or worlds every twist in surprising directions?
Wow! That is a long short story, very interested in hearing how that came about. Discovery is often in the details. For instance in A Slow Ascent of Madness I had a midwife in the plan but no details, they only appeared in Chapter 5 and in fact she wasn't meant to appear in that chapter at all but the story demanded she did. Another example are the Cooper Brothers in A Slow Ascent which came about while writing. They aren't in the plan, I haven't edited the plan to include them, so we shall see where and what comes of them.
In writing The Wanderer I had an ending in mind but near the end of the first draft had an idea for a different ending. I ended up writing and publishing both.
The Civil War is unplanned. I have no idea where it's going, I have no idea who wins, I have no idea what the twists and turns are. There are a couple of scenes I have in mind but that's it and honestly it's equal parts exciting and terrifying, which are basically the same emotion anyway.
I treat the plan as the main discovery phase for the main character/s and the central plot. The side characters and subplots often develop when writing the first full draft. Second draft is then for cleaning up, making sure subplots are completed, and that things fit together, character arcs make sense, characterisation is consistent, etc. Third and fourth edit are polish.
The reason I plan so much is to get it out of my head. Once it's on the page I can think about something else, whether it be adding to the existing story or creating a new one. I don't like having too much on the go at the same time, planning allows me to work on 3 or 4 things at once without my head exploding. As well as putting something down, forgetting about it, and returning to it later (sometimes years later), having a massive worldbuilding file and notebooks is invaluable for that.
Final thoughts?
Surprised I managed to answer everything without mentioning Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Aristotle, or Heraclitus. Success, or maybe I missed some vital essence. Romance came up, it always does. Thank you, Edward, for hosting, I've had a great time reading all the interviews thus far and look forward to future ones. As always a massive thank you to my readers, the lurkers, the likers, and the commenters, without you I'd just be screaming into the void. If you haven't subscribed, now is the time. Check out my fiction at ReddOscarWrites.
Saturday is the last day of the Pay What You Want subscription offer to Wolf!
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Some free books for your trouble: