Tagged: Son of Science Novel

Hindsight is 2020

Every January we like to make a writing plan for the year, and when December rolls around we reread it and laugh. Except not this year. Somehow our 2020 prediction was pretty spot-on. We planned to quickly finish up the first draft of Sibling of Music Novel, and we did. We planned to spend the rest of the year editing our various other first drafts, and we did. We perhaps didn’t get quite as far as we expected, but we’re close. I guess the pandemic was good for something.

The other thing we hoped to do was get a good start on brainstorming our Ghost Series, and we even managed to do that despite a near total lack of road trips. Generally we use car time for lengthy conversations about our works-in-progress (it’s not like there’s much else to do), but this year lockdown kept us home. Lucky for us we have a couple of fuzzy roommates who insist on daily walks, and don’t care what we talk about while we’re doing it. We logged many many miles on the streets of our neighborhood, and have many many notes about ghosts and the humans who love them. Or is it fear?

As this year limps to a close we’ve started talking about our goals for next year. We’ll share our plans with you in January when they’re more solidified.

So many people struggled this year with loneliness and boredom. We’re so thankful that we have each other and this all-consuming pastime we can share. Our writing projects kept us sane and busy and fulfilled, and they brought us a lot of joy in a really shitty time. Things are finally looking promising for the world. The vaccine is coming. The new administration is coming. Just a few more months until the world starts to get back to normal. We might not mind too much being cooped up in our Writing Cave, but we’re really looking forward to that.

Looking Back at 2020 aka The Darkest Timeline

We here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises are ready for 2020 to be over. So ready, in fact, that we’re starting our year-end review now, a couple of weeks early. Who’s with us?

Remember the Beforetimes? When there were things worth celebrating? We started 2020 on quite a high note. Renovations wrapped up on the Auxiliary Writing Cave, complete with hidden bookshelf. We wrapped up the first draft of Sibling of Music Novel. We were planning a trip to Romania and Hungary. Things were looking so rosy.

We spent February rereading our Music Series, and practicing the mystical art of placing chapter breaks and perfecting pacing.

In March we lamented our missed vacation (spoiler alert: still on hold), explored how many reminders readers need versus how many they appreciate, and debated the difference between villains and monsters. In 2020, Covid is the main monster. There are many, many villains.

By April we’d started actually editing the third Music Novel, the biggest bad boy who ever bad-boyed. First we made it bigger, then we made it smaller. It was a whole thing, and we got quite philosophical about the whole process.

May brought more editing, and a cryptically described disagreement between the two of us. So cryptic that we don’t actually recall what we were at loggerheads over. Which is a good sign for our partnership, both marriage-wise and coauthor-wise.

No summer vacation for us! In June we just took innumerable walks around the neighborhood with the dogs, using the time to dig into our next project. It has the incredibly creative working title “Ghost Series.” You’ll never guess what it’s about.

By July, we were done with both Son of Music Novel, and the minor touchups we wanted to give Sibling of Music Novel. And we watched Hamilton.

The rereading and editing of the Science Novels started in August. Kent’s voice got quite a workout, because when we wasn’t reading the trilogy aloud, we were still talking about the Ghost Series on our daily walks. We wrapped up the month discussing how much of a character’s backstory an author should know.

It seems we didn’t have a lot to say about editing the second Science Novel in September, because all of our posts are about how excited we are about brainstorming the Ghost Series. We did spare a few minutes to talk about the joys and wonders of a good Goose Wrench.

Fittingly, October was also a time to talk about our ghosts. We even had a spooky encounter on one of our nighttime walks. We updated our writing prompt generator, and dealt with a minor case of burnout.

November had Jen finishing her edits on Son of Science Novel and starting in on Grandson. Kent followed not too far behind. We had Quarantine Thanksgiving without our kids, and engaged in a little bit of self-promotion.

Which brings us up to the present day. Kent is getting his geek on, drawing a cutaway view of a major setting in Son of Science Novel (standard floor plans are for chumps!), while he lets Jen get a little further ahead in her edits of Grandson. He’ll soon have to put his shiny toys away and pick up his flensing tools.

Looking back over this past year, we were surprised to see nary an update to our chain story’s Dramatis Personae, so look for that sometime soonish.

2020 was certainly not the year we wanted it to be, but it wasn’t all bad. Even spending all day together every day since mid-February, Kent and Jen still actively enjoy each other’s company. May you be as lucky in your choice of spouse and/or writing partner.

It’s All Over But the Map-Drawing

Son of Science Novel is fully edited! Huzzah! When we started in on it, we did some serious thinking about how to reorganize the beginning. That work made the novel much better, but no shorter. Once things were in their proper order, we reread the first half to make sure we were pleased (we were). Next up: line-editing. As we nipped and tucked our way through the novel, we found a handful of small points we wanted to clarify and expand. Nothing big. We also didn’t find anything big to remove. All told, Son of Science Novel ended up about 5500 words shorter than when we started. That’s about one chapter, the way we do things.

Looking at the big project board on the wall, the only things left undone are the finalizing of a couple of floor plans and maps. Everyone loves maps in a novel. They’re like catnip for readers. Science Novel Sr has three, one of which can be reused here (and in Grandson when we get there). That leaves us with two or three locations it would be fun to represent cartographically. And if maps are catnip for readers, they’re crack for Kent. His inner-dungeon master gets all twitterpated at the very prospect.

A writing partner is someone who helps you create settings worthy of being mapped.

Belly of the Beast

The finale of Son of Science Novel has a lot going on. There’s physical peril, and emotional stakes, and a lot of difficult moments for all of the characters. The reader gets to witness the action through the eyes of both the good guys and the bad guys. It’s quite spectacular, if we do say so ourselves.

As part of our quest to streamline things where we can, and make the novel the best it can be, we started to wonder if maybe a certain side-thread through the ending was maybe superfluous (well, Kent did anyway). We spread the scene out on the exam table and took a close look, and we found many items in favor of keeping it.

Its setting — we’ll call it the Elephant Graveyard — is threaded throughout the novel, and comes up again in Book 3, so giving it a job in the climax feels right. The characters that go off to the elephant graveyard need to have jobs to do, and this fits well with their skillset. If we remove their side quest we need to find a different way for them to contribute to the action, and that would mean replotting the whole ending. And we’re really, really happy with the other parts of the ending. Like, seriously thrilled. But must important is that the elephant graveyard gives the characters a really nice moment, and puts a nice bow on the arc that one of them has traveled through the novel. Plus it sets them both up nicely for the third book. So the thread is definitely staying.

But the fact that we, as the authors, had doubts, means it’s not as strong as it should be. We need to do a better job of sketching that character’s arc so that when the reader gets to this part they can’t look away.

The Big, Giant Science-Trilogy Reread

Book one of our Science trilogy is in a fairly polished state. It’s been through our critique group and some beta readers and has had a couple of editing passes.

Books two and three, on the other hand, are still basically first drafts. Our next project will be to edit them into shape. So, first things first: we need to cram that entire three-book saga into our heads. This epic read-through is a little more than halfway done, and Kent’s voice is still holding up pretty well.

What’s neat is that we’ve been away from this story world long enough that there are lots of little rediscoveries for us in the text. They’re mostly fun little reminders of how good it is, but there are also some opportunities for improvement. It really is proving to us the value of letting something rest before you try to edit it. The awesome and the not-quite-awesome both just leap out in a way that they can’t when it’s too fresh.

A writing partner is someone who will read 1500 pages out loud to you.

2020 Vision

As we sit here in the Writing Cave, planning out our next writing moves, it’s becoming clear that 2020 might be a year that very little actual writing gets done.

We set January 31 as the deadline for Sibling of Music Novel, a target which seems easily reachable. There are two scenes in progress, and five more after that waiting to be written. Easy peasy. After a small champagne toast, the rest of the month will be spent going back through the manuscript and filling in the placeholders, fixing things we changed our minds about halfway through, and addressing all the other little fiddly things that we know need attention. It will still technically be a first draft, but it will be a pretty clean one. That’s how we like ’em.

To celebrate the completion of the Music Trilogy we’ll pop open the BIG bottle of champagne.

As of February 1 (assuming all goes according to plan) we will have four completed novels that are in need of major edits. For the past few years we’ve concentrated heavily on the writing side of the equation, and now it’s time to turn that around and get some things polished up and gorgeous.

We have two Music Novels and two Science Novels to edit, and we have yet to decide what order we’re going to do them in. On the one hand, we’re pretty immersed in the Music story world at the moment, so it makes sense to stick with that. On the other hand, Sibling needs some time to rest before we can effectively edit it, so it makes sense to switch our attention to the Science story world. Plus that’s the one that our critique group is looking at right now. But the Music Novel is the one our agent is shopping around, so maybe we should stay focused on that?

Around and around we go.

Wherever we decide to start, each novel will go through several stages of editing, and will rest in between.

And in the background we’ll still be tinkering with ideas for the Ghost Series. Jen is a little concerned about what our workflow will look like if we finish up everything else before we start on the ghosts. At various stages of our process we find it helpful to switch our attention to a different project to let our batteries recharge. What will happen if we don’t have anything else to turn our attention to? Kent is a little concerned about having an ever-increasing pile of first drafts that never get readied for publication, and he points out that there will inevitably be projects after the Ghost Series, so when we need a break we can figure out what the next one will be and work on that.

These best laid plans might all fly out the window when our agent sells Music Novel, because then we’ll have plenty of distractions, what with selling the movie rights, and going on all the talk shows, and hobnobbing with celebrities, and buying yachts and all that.

Happy 2020 to all of you!

2019 Preview

Last week we recapped our 2018. Now it’s time to look ahead and see what the coming twelvemonth will hold in store.

Our top priority will be writing Sibling of Music Novel. The first round of outlining is essentially complete, which does not mean we are yet in possession of anything that resembles an outline. But it does mean we’ll be ready to begin the actual writing pretty soon. Hard to say how long that will take. Our past few projects have been all over the map. Hopefully we can be speedy this time!

After that, we have a couple of good candidates for our attention, depending on which story world we want to focus on. We can stay with the Music series and do an editing pass on Son of Music Novel, or we can pivot back to the Science series where there are two manuscripts that need such treatment.

Deciding which of those worthy endeavors gets our attention first will depend on how our near-future publishing strategy shapes up. 2018 was the year we got an agent, and 2019 will be the year that we adjust our routines accordingly.

And, that means as of now we don’t have an answer for “What book(s) will you release in the coming year?” Everything’s topsy-turvy! But we can say for sure that we’ll be sweating in the writing cave. (Not really, though, because it’s air conditioned.) We will let you know what’s coming just as soon as we find out ourselves. Watch this space for updates.

To sum up, we expect to be busy!

A toast: May this, the year two thousand nineteen, be generous and gentle to you and everyone you love.

2018 – The Year That Was

To the shock of both of us, last year’s forecast for 2018 was spot-on. We wanted to finish up the Science Novels, outline the middle Music Novel, and begin talking about the Ghost Novels, and that’s pretty much what we did. The one place we missed the mark was in predicting (or hoping) that the first Science Novel would be released in 2018. It wasn’t. But we have the best excuse! 2018 was the year we got an agent! And that put our self-publishing plans on hold while we talk to him and figure out what makes sense in this new landscape.

Here’s how we spent 2018 on the blog:

January and February were devoted to writing Grandson of Science Novel, whining about missing self-imposed deadlines and target word counts, a brief break to clean our desks, and an update to our chain story’s cast of characters.

In March we mused about whether a protagonist should learn of ALL of the villains evil doings (“No.”) And we had the joy of setting up new computers.

April brought several rounds of critique group advice, and we finally reached the end of the first draft of Grandson of Science Novel. Break out the champagne!

But don’t drink too much, because we still had some work to do before the Science Novels could all be considered Done Enough. We spent May plugging holes and strengthening descriptions. Oh, and we got a puppy.

On June 1 we declared ourselves done for realsies, and hit the ground running on that Music Novel outline.

July and August were devoted to brainstorming, outlining, and research for Sibling of Music Novel.

In September we pulled back from Music Novels and dove straight into the Science Novels again, reading through all three of them in preparation for edits and cover design.

The Science Novels remained our focus in October as we worked to get them ready for our beta readers. Plus we passed a major milestone: 1000 blog posts!

When the Science and Music Novels are done, our next project is going to involve ghosts. We spent November taking various road trips and using the time on the road to lay the groundwork for this whole new story universe. Plus we tossed some old audio equipment outside during a blizzard and took pictures of it. As you do.

Which brings us up to the present. December. We GOT AN AGENT! And since he’s going to be selling the first Music Novel for us, we really need to turn our attention back to that series and get the middle book done. We were a bit rusty when we sat down to our brainstorming, but with a little bit of WD-40 and a couple of jumper cables we’re now purring along like a vintage muscle car.

We hope your 2018 went well, and your 2019 goes even better. Happy New Year!

Stereos in the Snow

When we designed the covers for the Divided Man series, we worked on the three of them simultaneously. It was a good way to produce a unified result, with the content, colors, layout, and typography working together so the books really looked like a set.

We liked how that went, so we’re following the same methodology for the Science Novels. For books one and three, the main images were downloaded and then manipulated in Photoshop, much as with the earlier cover designs. But we just couldn’t find a stock image anywhere that really worked for book two.

So, we took our own, snapping extreme closeups of an old amplifier from our music room. The initial candidate gave us very encouraging results, but we felt dissatisfied that there wasn’t any ice in the image (probably because we took the pic on our dining table). Pervasive cold is an important thematic element in the story that should be reflected on the cover, plus it would help connect the imagery for the other two books. Kent tinkered with adding ice and snow textures sampled from many of the same images that we’d already auditioned and rejected, but it wasn’t coming together. The effects he was getting didn’t match what Jen saw in her mind’s eye.

A confluence of propitious events followed. Jen tracked down a source for salvaged electronics, where she purchased another techie gizmo for us to photograph. This also prompted us to scavenge our to-recycle pile. That turned out to be a been-recycled pile, and therefore it didn’t exist. Rats. But, Jen’s mom was looking to clear out some old stereo equipment that no one had used in years, so we grabbed it.

And then, best of all, it snowed. We took all our delightfully obsolete treasures out on the deck and let nature heap them with eleven inches of snow. We also spritzed them with a squirt bottle to help things along. The neighbors, if they noticed, didn’t say anything.

The final cover image will be an amalgam created from portions of several of the pictures Jen took. It’s not done yet, but already it looks awesome.

Reweaving the Very Fabric of Time

Well, at least in our novels.

With our epic read-aloud of the Science Trilogy complete, we’re sprucing up  the middle book just a bit before handing it off to our beta readers. While Kent composes new epigraphs (and rests his voice), Jen tackled breaking the narrative into chapters, largely so that Kent would know how many epigraphs he needed to write.

The second and third books in the Science Series were written back-to-back, and in our rush to get the third one underway, we stopped while the epigraphs were still only half-formed. (For anyone who doesn’t know, an epigraph is a little snippet or quotation that goes at the beginning of a chapter. Oftentimes authors will choose quotes or song lyrics that have thematic resonance; We write our own and attribute them to in-story sources.)

Chapterizing, though, is something we always do after a draft is complete. Most authors we talk to write their novels in pre-chapterized chunks. That method doesn’t work for us. The very idea feels somehow artificial. Here’s the highly scientific process we follow: Write each scene on its own and string them all together, so that a Skelley first draft is just one enormous blob. It’s easier for us to divide the blob into 20 or 25 roughly even chunks when we see how big the blob actually is. It’s verrrrrrry important to Jen that the chunks all be approximately even, so the chapterizing generally falls to her. Kent sometimes teases her about getting out the calipers and micrometers to ensure perfection.

There’s more to it than just word count, though, otherwise it would be easy. So easy even Kent could do it. In order to pull the reader along through the story, each chapter should end on something dramatic. Some writing advice will tell you that not only every chapter, but every page, every paragraph, every sentence, nay! every word and syllable should end on rising action, propelling your story to the speed of light and giving yourself and your readers tension headaches from all the stress. We like to give everyone time to breathe. Just not, you know, at the end of a chapter.

As written, Son of Science Novel was not cooperating when it came to roughly even chapter breaks. Either the size of the chapters varied too much and made Jen’s eye twitch, or they were of nice enough length, but ended on a soft, gentle note that was a little too settled and made us both frown. The solution was to fuck around with the flow of time, of course. The story involves characters who are on separate continents for a while, their actions untethered from each other even as they are propelled toward each other. It’s that “untethered” part that makes them portable. Jen was able to shuffle the order of a few scenes, and everything fell into place. Now each chapter ends on a line that compels the reader to keep reading,

We’ll have to read through the first half again before we hand it to our beta readers, to make sure that it all still makes sense. But that’s alright, because it’s a really good book!

Having a writing partner means having someone to make fun of your more OCD tendencies while fully trusting you to make the right edits anyway.