Category: Composition & Progress

Sometimes A Writer’s Best Tool Is A Shoehorn

Even with a process that’s as overengineered as ours, sometimes things get missed. Despite all the meticulous planning, despite the extra set of eyes, we sometimes end up needing to retrofit something into the prose that we considered finished.

Now, a lot of sources of writing advice would say “never look back,” and that in such cases you should just make a note about it and keep going. There is the danger of working endlessly without ever actually reaching the end, that polishing Act I can become one’s way of procrastinating about finishing the story. Here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, LLC, we don’t let that worry us too much. We have plenty of other ways to procrastinate!

Without giving anything away, there is a late event in the outline that we’ve known about all along, but what we overlooked was a bit of specific groundwork to support it. Once we decided on what those missing details should look like, Jen made a stub for it. Only this stub wasn’t numbered, because we didn’t know exactly where we’d be putting it. Figuring out where that would be, and then wedging open a spot so it could fit, turned out to be the trickiest part. Kent looked at the completed scenes that were from the proper POV and involved the right locales and so on. Our game plan was to just inject a paragraph or three into one of those. That didn’t turn out to be feasible, so it became its own scene. Which meant we needed to frame it, give the POV character a motivation other than “make this exposition sound casual.” Which led to a smoother arc for that character.

We certainly could have left it for the second draft. But, that late event is kind of a big deal so it’s good for our peace of mind to know that it really does work. If we’d been like a shark and just kept swimming forward, we would have been writing tons of stuff on the basis of an untested assumption that it would end up working out. So if it hadn’t, if we had somehow goofed up our timeline and there was no way things could work like we wanted… Well, best not to contemplate such a universe.

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep moving ahead, but will also go back with you if that’s what it takes.

“Most of the Time, You’re Right” He Admitted

Outlines are good. Stubs are good. Something we probably don’t mention enough on here is that the invisible in-between step is also good. A lot of realizations happen while converting the outline into stubs. We realize that certain scenes aren’t really needed, and we realize that there are gaps we need to fill. During outlining it might have seemed crucial to include the fact that Muriel goes for a manicure, but that doesn’t mean we’re obligated to create a scene just so we can show that.

Now, because building stubs is Jen’s job, she’s the one who usually comes to such realizations. And because she’s an awesome writing partner, she runs her intended changes past Kent first. Which is great. But Kent does find himself trying to strike a delicate balance during those chats.

It’s always a safe bet that Jen’s idea is a good one and will improve the novel. Therefore, Kent nearly always ends up agreeing with what she’s suggesting. The trouble is, when someone seems to automatically agree with whatever you say it feels like they’re not really listening. Kent likes to demonstrate that he’s listening and show some investment in the outcome. He likes to have an opinion. But overdoing things in that direction causes problems as well. It’s not that there’s really such a fine line between pushover and pompous ass, but at times it can feel that way.

It’s always good to be able to articulate why you like something, not just, “It was good.” (This is good to keep in mind for critique as well.) “You’re right, we don’t need the trip to the salon — showing Muriel admiring her nails later conveys it with one line instead of a whole scene.”

A writing partner is someone who listens to their writing partner.

Eerily Close To The Conclusion…

…of the first draft of As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel Number One.

Jen is working on the final batch of stubs, which will take us through the climax and then out the other side to the denouement. Kent meanwhile has been writing the scenes that lead right up to the climax. We’re probably around 75% of the way through, which maybe doesn’t qualify as “eerily close” but it does feel like we’ve hit the home stretch.

The manuscript’s word count is just shy of 112,000. Our list of things that we need to punch up and/or mention more often stands at about two dozen, so it’ll be interesting to see how big the second draft ends up being. We expected these books to be smaller than our usual, in fact we worried about them coming out too small on account of the series being broken up into four rather than three novels. It’s looking like we had nothing to worry about!

A writing partner is someone to make the journey with, however long it turns out to be.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Travelog…

We know you’re all desperate to see more of our vacation snaps, but you’ll have to wait one more week because we have an exciting announcement: As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1 has passed the 100,000 word milestone! (101,313 to be exact.) We plan to pop the champagne tonight since we don’t generally work on Fridays. The advice is to write drunk and edit sober, but why waste the fun on a work session?

Hard To Believe, But It’s True

Hey! We’re getting really close to done with the first draft of As Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1. This fact sort of snuck up on us.

Even though we’ve surpassed 92,000 words, and even though we’re definitely on final approach for the climax, and we know these things and talk about them daily, still it feels to us like we’re trying to get started working on this book.

Why do we play these mind-games on ourselves? There could be a couple of reasons.

For one thing, we have struggled to establish a good work rhythm this year. In theory, we write every day except Friday (that’s our night off) but in practice it hasn’t turned out that way a lot of weeks. We did some traveling, and we did some pet-sitting so our kids could travel, and there just seems to always be something coming up to interfere. Plus, we took a pretty lengthy break from writing prose while we planned out this new series. We were still working, but most of it took the form of conversations. We could do it on long drives, and we could do it during dog walks. So we got out of practice with the “butt in chair, fingers on keys” mode of composition.

Anyway, the lack of momentum means needing to get back on the horse, which feels like starting over and contributes to that distorted sense of still being at the beginning of the journey.

Also, and probably related, is the fact that we did indeed plan out the entire tetralogy. There’s a ton of story that we know about but haven’t begun to write yet, because this is only the first book! But on some level, it probably skews our perspective on our progress because all that additional narrative for the remaining books is looming in the back of our minds. We should focus on the fact that we’re 80 or 90 percent of the way done writing this draft. Instead we feel like we’re about 20% of the way through because we’re using the whole series as our yardstick.

A writing partner is someone who occasionally taps you on the shoulder and points out how far you’ve come together.

The No-Look High-Five of Writing With a Partner

Speaking of Sssssynergy!

Jen needed to create the next batch of stubs, so meanwhile Kent was still writing prose and using up the leftovers from the previous batch. This is a normal mode that comes up from time to time in our workflow. Depending on how many new stubs Jen decides to make, and how fast each of us is going, and whether there’s a comet or an eclipse viewable from Earth, there’s usually a bit of a fudge factor. Sometimes Kent runs off the end of the existing stubs, and sometimes Jen rejoins him in the prose-generating hamster wheel sooner than that.

But once in a while we time it perfectly, which is what just happened. Jen completed the final new stub during the same work session that Kent wrapped up prosification of the last of the old ones!

Go team!

A Time of Miracles

The holidays are upon us, and — truly — what better time could there be to try to get back on track with our writing schedule?

We do have a plan. It’s time for Jen to fry up another stack of stubs, whilst Kent cranks out the final few scenes from the previous batch. If he wraps that up before the new ones are ready, then he can pick up where he left off on the prose outline for Book 2. Once the fresh stubs come off the griddle, we’ll both lean back into wrting those scenes, moving Book 1 closer and closer to completion.

All of that while simultaneously keeping up with all the preparation and cleaning and shopping and halls-decking and visiting for the assorted high feasts and celebrations of the season. Plus, you know, adulting just like during any other month.

Our hope is to build up a bit of momentum and hit the ground running in the new year. It’s an audacious dream, but if it doesn’t quite work out then we’ll just resolve to knuckle down and get with the program in 2023.

A writing partner is a gift that gives all year round.

Don’t Double-Team

We tend to each “adopt” a certain subset of the cast. Then as we sort through the stubs, we know which of us is the default assignee based on whose viewpoint each stub is from. But that relies on one of two things: either one of us feels strongly drawn to that POV, or one of us has written several of that character’s scenes already to establish a pattern. Well, the current batch of stubs brings in someone new and it’s making our load distribution calculations rather interesting.

It’s sort of a perfect storm, because there’s a POV that’s new, and we both sort of vibe on it, and also it has several scenes. In the end, we did split them up between us.

But we gave ourselves one rule: we couldn’t both be working on the same new POV at the same time. We’d each be inventing this person’s voice, and they wouldn’t match up, and then we’d have the challenge of getting them synced. The restriction really only applies in these very early appearances for the new viewpoint.

So, as it happened Kent jumped on his new-POV scene first. Jen is working with one of the existing characters’ POV in the meantime.

It’s possible to imagine making the opposite strategy work — both writing partners could deliberately work on the same voice in parallel, and then use syncing them up as a chance to see the character from unexpected angles. We feel there are too many pitfalls lurking in that approach, but different things work for different people.

A writing partner is someone who harmonizes with your voice.

All About Give and Take

A member of our critique group has sent pages out, and we’re very excited to read their material. It’s great to have something to analyze besides our own words once in a while.

The obvious way you benefit from being part of a critique group is that you have extra sets of eyes on your pages. Getting feedback about your work is crucial. But, you can also learn a lot from being the one providing the feedback, if you put forth the effort to do a quality job of it.

Good critique isn’t proofreading. It gives the author a map of where their words took you at each stage of the journey, where you felt different emotions, when you had felt like the logic didn’t add up, which moments were your favorites. Why you love (or love to hate) the characters. And by articulating these thoughts about another’s manuscript, you’re sharpening tools for use in your own writing.

Do you have a critique group? Use the comments to tell us what you like best about belonging to it.

Stub Resistance

Last week we extolled the virtues of stubs. Everything we said about them is true, but they aren’t magic. So this week we’ll talk about how sometimes it’s challenging to apply the stub system in practice.

Some stories seem more resistant than others to having their parts written out of sequence, and Untitled Ghost Novel Number One is such a story. The stubs themselves are not unduly difficult to create, but during our conversations about how to assign them, we got stuck a few times. It felt a bit like trying to assemble a piece of furniture without the instructions. We wondered why that might be happening this time around.

One possibility is that there are fewer parallel plot threads in this one than in many of our previous projects. It’s pretty much all one thread geared around the main locale. So, we can’t have Jen take care of the scenes on Bespin while Kent deals with the action in the Dagobah system.

Another potential explanation is that so much about it is new. It’s the first time in long while that we’re creating a new story universe for ourselves, and it’s a pivot into a new genre for us. Whole new cast, new plot, and new world-building with new constraints. So, it feels like asking for one thing too many to also jump ahead in the timeline.

As noted in a recent installment, we’ve had some trouble keeping to our writing schedule. Apparently sometimes writing at all is kinda hard, so perhaps it’s not the story. Maybe it’s us.

It’s quite possible that we just occasionally get a little precious about things, and blow momentary setbacks out of proportion. The good news is, we got over ourselves and got on with the job. Stubs really do work. Even if they’re not magic.

A writing partner is someone to help you line up the pieces when your Pröze-Eppik seems like it came from the meatballs-and-furniture emporium.