Balancing Act

Have you heard the good news about stubs? The scene-by-scene synopses that form a handy-dandy bridge between the outline and the finished prose are invaluable to our process. Think of them as the beta version of your first draft.

In addition to obvious things, like blocking scenes and deciding where they will be set, stubs are a great way to debug the plot before it’s written. Take our current Work-In-Progress, the Ghost Novel. The section of the outline that we’ve reached could appear on the page in any number of ways. As Jen wrangles its ungainly shape into stubs, she’s working hard to streamline it. Most scenes will end up doing double, triple, (quadruple?) duty, providing a much richer reading experience. The process also allows us to make sure point of view is distributed fairly evenly among our characters. Sometimes there’s a legitimate reason to stick with a certain character’s take on events for a good long stretch, but quite often it’s more interesting to switch it up and see through someone else’s eyes. Working in stub format, it’s a lot quicker to play around with structure until we hit upon the most exciting option.

A writing partner is someone who encourages you to experiment until you get the right answer.