Tagged: Son of Science Novel

You Are Now Free to Move About the Cabin

We’re doing a read-through of the whole Science trilogy, as a step in the process of releasing the first book of that series. Our intention is to have all three of them fresh in our minds while doing final edits on book one. That way, we will be able to cinch them into a tighter whole as a series.

While writing them, it was hard not to end up with our noses down in the weeds. As we zoom over the tale in this marathon read-aloud, we’re seeing it from a much greater altitude. Kent losing his voice is a small sacrifice in exchange for such a boon, or so Jen assures him.

The three novels are at quite different stages of development. The first one, as we say, is going into final edits. Meanwhile the other two are basically raw* first drafts, and aren’t even arranged into chapters yet. Their scenes are (mostly) in the proper order, but we have been noting places where stuff will need to shift. In some cases it’s that info must be revealed out of chronological order, and in others we’re tweaking the rhythm of the POV transitions.

Having a writing partner means there’s someone to read your stuff out loud to you, at least until his voice gives out.

*Given our extensive pre-work regimen, all of our first drafts are technically medium-rare.

Srsly, They’re Almost Done

Progress update on Son and Grandson of Science Novel: they’re still almost done.

All the outstanding comments in both projects have been cleared. The placeholders are filled in, and descriptions punched up and made consistent, and nearly all the new scenes have been written. It seems like for every scene we knock off the list, there are two more getting added. But this hydra will be slain ere the month is out! Forsooth!

Writing books two and three in tandem, and now simultaneously, certainly wasn’t the least stressful approach we could have taken. There were advantages, such as being able to get deeply enmeshed with the cast and the story world, and fine tune both books for thematic resonance and high-level plot development. But it made for a really long trip. We’ve got ourselves pretty well adapted to completing one first draft and then switching into a different mode for a while. Doubling the duration of that prose stretch — spoiler alert — made it twice as long! We’re jonesing pretty hard to focus on something else.

We’ll have the books done soon. Meanwhile, have a picture of the two best, craziest pooches we know.

Lady Marzipan and her consort, the Bandit Lord

Pass the Spackle

We’re still making progress on these first drafts that have occupied us since, seemingly, time began. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we reached the end but still had a few holes to fill in. Since then we’ve made progress toward that goal. Not blazing progress. It’s more of a shamble, which we’ll blame partially on project fatigue and partially on life getting in the way.

The latest deficit to grab our attention is emotional holes and placeholders. Places where we’ve written, “She was angry,” or “He was sad,” or even “What they saw was very interesting,” but there’s no detail, no followup. The moments aren’t expanded or lived in, they’re just inert. It’s the classic trap of telling rather than showing, and we’re working hard on shifting the balance the other way. That’s what’s been occupying Jen most recently.

We also noticed that we had two particular characters who never shared a scene, and it felt like they should. The challenge was making their meeting relevant to the plot. They couldn’t just get together for a drink and chat about sports. It had to mean something. So Kent tackled that and finished it up last night.

If we fuck around with these first drafts much longer they’ll no longer be first drafts, which means that we might need a couple of you guys to come over and take them away from us. New life goal = not letting it come to that.

It’s About Fucking Time

Last night we wrote the final scenes for Grandson of Science Novel! Yay! Go team!

Clearly Jen’s original vision of finishing by the end of 2017 was wildly optimistic. Some might even say delusional. No matter. It’s done now.

Or rather, the main composition is done. There are still a few comments we need to address in both this one and its predecessor, Son of Science Novel. And a few little holes in both to fill in with details. But! We reached the end!

We’ll take the weekend to celebrate, then dive back in next week and knock those last items off of our To Do list in short order. And it will feel so fucking good! We’ll get to put this story world down for a little while and turn our attention to other things. And when we come back we’ll be refreshed and ready edit and perfect it.

Now, where’s that champagne?

Double Double Toil and Trouble

You know how much fun it is to set up a new computer? Well, multiply that by two and you’ll get an idea of how last weekend was for us.

Our old computers were still running fairly well, but they’re eight years old and we were concerned about them suddenly dying on us. To avoid being computer-less and bereft we splurged on replacements and spent several days loading files and updating programs and creating a new backup and all that awesome technical stuff. It was almost too exciting. Even Kent, who is a big ol’ nerd, was getting sick of all the techno-funtimes. We’re still catching our breath.

But now that we’ve come out the other side, we’re quite pleased. The new machines are faster, and since we’ve hooked the old ones up as secondary monitors we have acres of screen space. It’s quite something to behold.

The upgrade process derailed our writing progress temporarily, but we’re now back up and running. Both Son and Grandson of Science Novel have passed 110,000 words, which feels pretty amazing.

Having a writing partner might mean doubling your computer budget, but it also means doubling your successes and having someone to celebrate them with.

Don’t Go There

We’re getting really close to completing the first draft of Grandson of Science Novel. We have also been tinkering with Son of Science Novel a bit in parallel. Is it still a first draft, or have we begun revisions? That’s a deep question, and is not the topic of this week’s post.

The topic is, how much does the main character know about the dark dealings of the villain? Is it possible for the hero to know too much?

This villain does some really ugly shit. Quite a variety of badness, actually, most of it in secret of course. The good guys have to dig to find out just how awful their adversary is, and in the current draft they uncover the shittiest deeds. But, we’re going to pare back the amount that they’re able to learn. They’ll know enough.

There is a school of thought that would say this is a mistake, that every source of conflict and tension has to be maxed out. Um, no. The sources of conflict and tension that you want to capitalize on are only those that form the basis of the story you’re telling. If you have, say, ten things happening that might drive conflict, all of which are pushed as hard as you can, then the two or three that resonate with your theme are drowned out.

This does not mean that you shield your character. It’s not about avoiding real conflict, but about making choices of what conflicts your character will face. In our case, to give our hero this knowledge would force the entire rest of the plot to be about that. It’s so awful, so upsetting, that it then must become the thing driving the hero to seek justice, or else we pivot to a story of guilt over not seeking justice. Or else (if we try to pretend these issues aren’t there) we get a story with a main character who seems unconcerned about injustice.

The tale in which our hero knows those details is a different story than the one we’re telling. Of course, the villainy itself remains. That’s not up for debate. All we’re doing is withholding some information from our protagonist, which lets us put her into more nuanced peril (moral and mortal).

When you need to figure out the thorny dilemmas of your characters and your plot, it’s very helpful to talk them through with someone who’s familiar with the project. Just another way that a good writing partner makes everything better.

Level Up!

Last night we (finally) passed the 100,000 word mark in Grandson of Science Novel. It feels great, even though we aren’t quite finished. As we mentioned many times, Jen had it in her head that we’d reach this milestone by the end of 2017, which puts us a month and a half behind her (totally arbitrary) deadline. She went into a bit of a tailspin when it became clear we wouldn’t hit the target, and Kent had to step in and take over as head cheerleader and whip-cracker. It’s a good thing he did. It kept us moving forward, and we’ve made a lot of progress.

But we’re still not done. Son of Science Novel came in a bit short for our tastes, but this one is on track to be about 120,000 words, which is a very comfortable place to be. We still have about 20 scenes to write. They’re stubbed and ready to go. We should get to the end pretty soon.

“Pretty soon” is a hard concept for Jen to deal with. She craves a yardstick by which to measure our progress. We do our writing in a program called Scrivener, which has a cool tool that lets you set your word count target and deadline. It then calculates how many words you need to produce per work session to meet your goal. While Jen needed a target, we knew she would be some combination of depressed, frustrated, and furious if we missed another one on this project. Our solution was to set the bar comically low. We chose a deadline way, way too far in the future, which puts the bar we have to clear each night so low that we basically can’t help but trip over it. There have been a few days where we bruised our ankles, but in general we’ve been pole-vaulting way over it.

Having a writing partner means having someone to share the load so that you don’t always have to be the one in the driver’s seat.

Progress Update II: The Progressening

We’re still rolling forward on Grandson of Science Novel. Well, Jen is. Her current scene, and the next couple after that, are our current bottleneck. So Kent’s occupied with comments from earlier in the story.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that we didn’t say “earlier in this book,” and in fact the comments in question apply to Son of Science Novel. The three Science Novels are all one massive story, collectively, and because we embarked on the writing of books two and three back-to-back it has really felt like we’re writing a single 200-kiloword tome. It’s interesting to revisit stuff from the middle book, now that we’ve gotten to know the characters that much better. The ability to do that is one of the reasons we structured the project as we did, so that we could take advantage of opportunities to tie all three books together more tightly.

That’s just one of the ways we try to go the extra mile. We do it for you, to give you a story world that extends beyond the edge of the page.

Forecasting 2018 (In Which Jen Tries to Keep Her Expectations Realistic)

Dire warnings of Bomb Cyclones and blizzards have been echoing around the writing cave, and while we aren’t in the path of any of the really nasty stuff, we’ve been locked in a deep freeze since before Christmas and it’s showing no signs of lifting. Today’s high is supposed to be 7º!

Since the weather forecast blows (both literally and figuratively), let’s see if things look sunnier in the fiction mines.

Grandson of Science Novel is moseying along toward the finish line, and finishing it up is our first order of business. In her secret heart Jen is dying for a deadline, but she’s terrified of missing another one. For now we’re winging it without. She’ll probably declare a deadline when we’re close enough to the end to touch it, and claim that she’s had it in mind all along. And Kent will humor her.

Once Grandson is done, the whole Science Trilogy will be in the can. Our major goal for the year is to publish the first one. It’s been edited a couple of times already, but there are many steps before it will be ready for its debut, and those will eat up a lot more time than Jen expects them to.

While the Science Novels rest between edits, we will devote our time to outlining the novel we are currently calling Sibling of Music Novel. As you may recall, we have the Music Novel, and Son of, written in full, but now we’ve decided that Son is really the third book in the series and we need to plug that hole in the middle.

If, after polishing Science Novels and writing Music Novels, we have any extra time, we’ll get started on brainstorming our Ghost Series.

We currently have no release dates to announce, but when we do, you’ll be the first to know. Check this space for updates!

And Happy New Year to you!

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

December is coming to a close, which means it’s time for our annual Year in Review post, 2017 edition.

At the beginning of the year we rather optimistically predicted that we might finish up both Son and Grandson of Science novel, and at least get a start on the third Music novel. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! We were so fucking naive!

While we did manage to get the last two Divided Man books polished and released, we didn’t even come close to finishing the Science novels. Jen was already frustrated at our lack of completion last year, so just imagine how thrilled she is now that it’s a whole year later and we’re still not done!

So what did we accomplish, if not everything on our wish list?

In January we had a belated launch party for Miss Brandymoon’s Device, and fretted a bit about what we would do once we finished writing our current trilogy of trilogies. February was spent editing various Divided Man books.

March brought the release of Tenpenny Zen. Yay! 

In April we seem to have wrapped up the first draft of Son of Science Novel, and were somewhat disappointed by its size. In the months since, we have added a bit more to it and, you’ll be relieved to learn, it now checks in at just a hair over 104,000 words. That’s still a bit slight, but is much less frightening. It’s now closer in size to its Mama.

Along with flowers, May brought major edits to Elsewhere’s Twin, and an important decision about the Music novels. And some delicious Greek food.

June was full of chainsaws — real ones, this isn’t an editing metaphor. When we got done bitching about that, we diagnosed some of what was missing from Son of Science Novel and finally got started composing Grandson.

By early July we’d already banged out 11,000 words for Grandson, which begs the question of why it’s still not done. Some of the blame should lay with Elsewhere’s Twin, which needed more edits before its release.

In August we took a road trip to attend a concert, and had a wonderful time. The band was great, and we used the car time to brainstorm ideas for the Middle Music novel. We also topped 20,000 words on Grandson of Science.

All we could talk about in September was the release of Elsewhere’s Twin. Have you seen the gorgeous cover? Our first trilogy is complete! We felt quite the feeling of accomplishment. We’re very proud of those books and all the work that went into them.

October had the new novel’s word count at 40,000, which is nothing to sneeze at. It also had us jetting off to Europe, which we didn’t talk about until November because we like to keep you guessing. And as soon as we got back from overseas, we turned right around and ran off to a writing conference.

And here we are again, back in December. Grandson of Science Novel is sitting pretty at 70,000+ words, which many people would consider novel-length. Just not us. Apart from that being far too short to fit in with our other work, we’re nowhere near done telling the story we set out to tell.

Our 2017 was quite successful, with the editing and publishing of two novels, the completion of a third, and a really good start on a fourth. Just try telling Jen that. She needs to recalibrate her expectations to be more in line with reality, and Kent is doing his best to help her with that. Maybe 2018 will be the year she finally gets it figured out.