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Dimitri “Have pen, will travel” Ly is a writer, editor, illustrator, podcast host, and webmaster. He works on pieces for websites, magazines, universities, DVD releases, private corporations, and government services.

When he isn’t doing all that, Dimitri is in the fascinating and highly coveted world of freelance fiction writing.

This is Part 2 of this interview, where Dimitri speaks about his audience, as well as the collaborative and developmental process involved in his writing. Read the first part of this interview here.

DAN: What’s the stigma with writing for kids or teenagers?

DIMITRI LY: You could go to a university and ask the students studying literature who is going to write the great Canadian novel and everybody is going to raise their hand. Not many of them are going to say “I want to write for whatever kids TV show is on air right now.” Or “I want to write a book that’s based on a franchise that I can’t stand right now.”

I mean certainly [there’s no stigma] with the people that I work with, because we are all in that market, and we are quite happy with it. It’s a lot of fun. But it’s when you talk to writers in other fields, certainly with writers who are waiting to be discovered, and you say “I write this thing.” And they say “Oh, that thing that my kid watches?”

But you know, somebody has to entertain your kid with words. And it’s nobody’s number one thing. If you write for kids you tend to go for the young kids, not for the tweens, which is anywhere between 11 and 13, which is sort of an undesirable audience for some reason.

D: As an audience, that age-group must be quite fickle given its entire population changes completely every two years…

DL: Yeah, you end up changing projects pretty quick, but that’s one of the great things about it.

With what I do, these are not my characters, these are not my creations, and I’m giving my take on them within really tight constraints.

The fact that in three years time I’ll be working with other characters in another universe and being given other toys to play with, it’s sort of a good thing.

Even when you really like the characters you are working with, there’s always change on the horizon, so you know that you won’t get bored.

D: So let’s talk about that freelance fiction approach: There’s a universe that has been created for these characters, from a TV show for example, and you come along and you write prose that could end up as a book series or a spin off…

DL: Yeah, a book series, comic book series, although comic books have a different way of getting started, but it’s mostly books.  The publishers will have a deal with a studio for whatever materials that accompany a theatrical or TV release, to have that synergy, you know because when you’re that age, 11-13, when you like something, you like everything about it and you want to get everything you can.

So the idea is to capitalise on that. A lot of that is flat out adaptation. For example, there will be an episode of a TV show that the audience really likes, so you do a novelisation of that episode.

But then once you’re established, and that happens quite quickly for an author of that kind of material, you’ll be allowed to play with it and do your own thing. But usually you start off with an adaptation.

D: And how does the process work in terms of parameters for storylines and characters, so they can’t appear in a situation and suddenly adopt unusual behaviours, like being stranded on a desert island and becoming an insatiable cannibal for instance  -  Does it work by you pitching story ideas or does your agent come to you with a story?

DL: Both happen. When I have done my own thing a lot of companies have given me a really large document that tells me what I can and can’t do. It’s a brick and it’s very specific, which is great because you don’t lose time writing things that are going to be rejected.

And writing for the tween audience can be weird because to a certain degree you’re dealing with an audience that’s ready to deal with certain concepts, but their parents may not be ready for them to be dealing with those concepts. So the restrictions are set to a level that’s a little less evolved than the audience that you’re writing for.

But kids that age want to explore, so if you write a standard kid’s story, they’re not going to appreciate it and it’s not going to sell.  As a writer you get used to writing in a certain kind of code, for example by making allusions to things but at the same time flat out denying that that’s what you’re talking about.

There was one franchise that was particularly good at doing it, and they really taught us how to take what can’t be said and make it into a joke in itself. Doing that helps us handle things we aren’t allowed to talk about in a way that kids can still relate to.

There is that challenge, but it’s not a job where you write alone. There’s always a whole group of people who have figured out how to get around things in an inoffensive way.  And I don’t object to those restrictions in any way, I think they make a lot of sense.

D: You write in collaboration a lot?

DL: A lot of the people I write with are television writers who do other stuff on the side. Television writing is not something you do alone; there is collaboration not just with other writers, but also with producers and actors. After several seasons the actors will know things better than them at that point, so they are used to being collaborators.

But there are also a lot of writers who are very protective of their work, and the thing with a lot of writers, and I don’t want to sound like a jerk when I say this, is that they can be too closed to feedback.

Say a writer has this brilliant idea but they are hesitant to share it because it’s so brilliant, even though you might be in a position to help them get it off the ground, and when they do tell you the idea and you say “You know, there’s this problem with it, and there’s this restriction with it,” the first reaction with a lot of writers is “That’s a problem with the audience, not with my idea.”

I think that’s missing the point of writing to a certain degree. But it’s a common attitude, and it’s almost our first instinct.  I’m a little bit like that too. Sometimes I think “No, this is brilliant! People are stupid!” and then after I think about it I realise that’s not really a productive attitude.

And yeah, I have had ideas and written a first chapter and had it sent back and they’re asking if I’m out of my mind. I have difficulty sometimes and it’s completely motivated by ego, and I always feel a bit ashamed of having let my ego get the better of me for a day or so, and you look back and realise it was a day you could have been making money.

It’s an instinct you have to be aware of and you have to fight it.

D: Planning must help you to write intelligently and successfully?

DL: You hear about all these authors who had characters that they didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing until the draft was complete. But I can tell you that I have never written successfully that way. Every time I try it, it always leads to a draft of a novel that is never completed, for me anyway.

For, say, a TV franchise, you block. You know that you are going to finish in 22 minutes; you need to know that your first act is going to be finished in around seven or eight minutes, so you have to block it out.

And I never start writing a single word of prose until I know exactly where I am going. I usually have a five, sometimes a seven act map if it’s a bit more complex, but I know what the characters are going to do and I know what chapter is going to have what beforehand.

And then I proceed not to follow it!

D: And this process you learned on the job?

DL: A lot of it I learned from working with television writers. People were very helpful and they would look at what I was doing and say, “You’re doing this upside down. You’re going to take too long. Write backwards, put the final line here, otherwise you’ll never get out of it.”

People were really helpful in re-educating me on how to write. I know it’s not the right word, but all of the ‘artsy’ ideas were kicked out of me when I started writing for studios.

Thanks to Dimitri for taking the time to speak so openly about his writing.

Further to this interview and in addition to the tips already given about writing specifically, Dimitri shared some great tips and really interesting thoughts on freelancing in general.

You can read those here.