Tagged: field trip

The Writing Grotto

We’re excited to announce the newest addition to our fleet of writing locations. We’ve spoken in the past of our Writing Cave, and our Auxiliary Writing Cave, and now we’re excited to be posting our first blog entry from our Writing Grotto. Oo la la! How fancy!

The Writing Grotto is outside, and features a fire pit. We foolishly thought we would be able to have a work session there, with full productivity from both of us. It didn’t work out that way. First we had to make s’mores, and then we had to throw the ball for our canine overlords Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord. There was a brief interlude where we negotiated the peace between the dogs and a big fluffy orange neighbor cat who sauntered across Lady Marzipan’s realm.

And then there’s what fire does to Kent. Tending an actual wood fire scratches some deep caveman itch. It hypnotizes him in a way that the gas fire in the the Auxiliary Cave does not, and if you’re not careful he starts to wax philosophical about it. Or maybe that’s just the Golden Monkey talking.

We’re planning to spend more time in the Writing Grotto as the weather gets warmer, and we hope that we’ll equilibrate to it and actually be able to get some work done there despite the myriad distractions.

A writing partner is one who will tell you when you have marshmallow goo stuck to your chin. A good one won’t even laugh about it.

Scouting the Locations

r-avatarWe have a habit we’re trying to break, wherein we do online research to discover exciting locations in which to set our novels, write a rough draft of said novel, and only then visit the location. This leads to edits to punch up the atmospheric details, and occasionally reblock scenes.

Last year we were a little smarter and took our field trip before we finished the first draft. We didn’t need to make any changes, and were able incorporate some fun details to give the work more verisimilitude.

This year we were brilliant! We made our pilgrimage before we set pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.

Son of Music Novel is in the hands of beta readers, and we’re revving up the engines to start composing both Son and Grandson of Science Novel. The location we visited last week is one we’ve been to before — it was our inspiration for the main setting of Science Novel — and we wanted to refresh our memories, get the feel for it again so we can do it justice in the sequels.

Sadly we won’t be able to visit all of our inspiration sites. One no longer exists in the real world, and some of the others are in Russia. We have, in fact, been to Russia, but it’s been a few years, and we stuck to the touristy stuff when we were there. No secret labs or long-forgotten cold war bunkers on our itinerary, alas. But if we ever decide to set a novel in St Petersburg’s Hermitage or the Peterhof Palace, we have a ton of pictures to use for reference.

Pembroke’s Parents

by jen

  • enter the full bloom of his awkward rebellious phase
  • half hidden in a heap of brown leaves
  • carry their lunches in clamshells
  • college campuses everywhere
  • annoyed at the tone taken by the anthropologists

Pembroke’s parents dragged him along on a very long and thorough tour of northeastern universities, convinced they would discover the perfect scholastic garden in which their darling son could enter the full bloom of his awkward rebellious phase under the watchful eye of learned professionals who would keep his intellect from going to seed.

“College campuses everywhere look the same in the fall,” Pembroke grumbled. “They’re all just a bunch of brick buildings surrounding squares of grass half hidden in a heap of brown leaves.” He kicked at a crack in the sidewalk.

Pembroke’s mother did her best to distract him from his sullen mood. “Look Pemmy, the sorority girls here carry their lunches in clamshells! Isn’t that adorable?”

“You sound like a clueless anthropologist, Mom.”

Pembroke’s mother smiled indulgently, but inside she was annoyed at the tone taken by the anthropologists‘ teenage critic.

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We Can Be Taught

r-avatarFor a while now we’ve been flirting with Novel #6, naming the characters, talking about their backgrounds, even brainstorming up some cool ideas for (gasp!) plot. We have a few more loose ends to tie up with Novels 4&5 before we can really immerse ourselves in the outlining of #6, but there’s one big step we were smart enough to take now.

As we mentioned, we took a field trip to the inspiration location for the Science Novel after we finished writing it, and that meant a certain amount of revision. We weren’t slavishly devoted to the real world location, but having visited it we had a better idea of how our version should feel. We could have saved ourselves a lot of rewriting if we’d been smart and taken the field trip early on.

So that’s what we did this time. Even though we don’t have the whole plot mapped out yet, we have a particular location in mind for a lot of the action. Last weekend we visited it, took a bunch of pictures, asked a bunch of questions. We went before the weather got gross and cold, and more importantly, we went before we wrote anything. Before we even plotted the whole thing out. That means that we have a clear picture of what we want to work with. We know what it’s like to move around in our location, what it smells like, how things are laid out. It should help immensely with outlining, and will probably inspire ideas we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t visited.

And that means we can spend the gross, cold winter days in front of the fireplace, cozy with our slippers and hot buttered rum, brainstorming and working with our plot rainbow.

And if we’re really smart, we’ll set the next one in Prague so we have an excuse to go back.

Life Imitates Art

r-avatarAs we mentioned a few weeks ago,  it’s field trip season around the Skelley fiction compound. These recent excursions were great fun, and they gave us a lot of discussion time as we sped down the highway. We did a lot of brainstorming about our next novel, and came up with some excellent ideas. More about that in a future post.

When we go on a trip, Kent is the driver and Jen is the navigator. It occurred to us that this is also how it is when we write. After collaborating on the broad strokes of plot, characters, and outline (choosing a destination), Jen gets down to the nitty gritty of mapping out how to get there. She loves to develop backstory, and she’s always the one in charge of the stubs (our step between outline and first draft), just as she is always in charge of the map. But a map doesn’t do much good without a driver, and an outline doesn’t do much good without a writing workhorse.

During the composition process, Kent keeps his feet on the pedals and his hands on the wheel, and awaits further instructions. He propels the story forward, but knows that he can’t just go in any random direction. There needs to be a plan.

We could drive this metaphor into the ground (see what I did there?). We could talk about how when you’re driving you encounter detours, much as in fiction writing when you explore an intriguing side plot. We could compare traffic jams to writer’s block. We could change lanes entirely and write a big flowery paragraph about the journey being as important as the destination, but we think you get the point.

Much as having a navigator can improve a road trip, a coauthor can make writing easier. They share the burden, and they’re much more fun than arguing with the GPS.

Field Trips

r-avatarIt’s good to get out of the house now and then. Kent and Jen will be taking a trip this weekend to go to a concert, which should be exciting and give them a bit of a break from their routine.

The last time we went to a concert in another city, we used the travel time to brainstorm the ideas which led, ultimately, to our current novel. Jen had a few tantalizing images rattling around in her head; a character’s name, a predicament for her to face, and a quirky trait for a different character. Kent had a pseudoscientific premise. During the bus ride, we found the connecting thread. Not long after that, we had our outline.

Since then, we’ve also traveled to visit the real-world site that our book’s setting is based on. We had looked at photos and read the historical info online, but being there in person is an exponentially richer experience. (Sorry, not telling you where it is. You’ll have to read the book!)

What will this journey offer by way of inspiration or synthesis? We can’t wait to find out!

Inspiration Strikes When You Least Expect It

In this case, it was on a bus. Jen and Kent took a trip — by bus, ‘cuz they’re such high-rollers — which gave them a bit of time to discuss what their next project should be.

As you may recall, the intrepid duo has been struggling with one of the facets of a writing partnership, namely agreeing on what to write about. Historically, Kent has been more of the big-idea guy and Jen brings characters and relatability. In this case, Jen brought pretty much everything. During the bus ride, she and Kent figured out a premise that unites a whacky (and fairly big) idea she’d mentioned months ago with the character she’s been mildly obsessed with of late. The vexing question of what to use for the hidden reality of the story world finally had an answer.

But wait, there’s more!

The new premise lends itself to a story-within-the-story, which means there is also a role for Kent’s current pet big idea, the one that they’ve despaired of ever coming to terms with. There’s even been talk of some short stories to explore the concept. Everybody wins!

So, yeah. All it took was ten hours on a bus.