Category: Revision & Editing

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.

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.

Critique Group Advice – Part 2

As our regular readers know, we believe strongly in not going it alone. For us that means writing together. But even if you don’t have a writing partner, you still need help sometimes, and that’s where your network of fellow writers comes in.

Okay, so you’re going to join a critique group, or maybe even start your own. Fantastic. Last time, we covered some very general ideas such as schedules and ground rules. Now let’s dive into some details.

Practical decisions such as how to distribute work can have a big impact on the effectiveness of the group. What we’ve found to work well is sending out the chapters ahead of time via email. Give your members enough time to read the pages twice if they want, and remember it takes longer when you’re adding notes as you go. In some groups, each author reads his or her own work aloud. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, if you have the time, but we’d caution that the author’s bias and familiarity can mask issues with the grammar. Places where a “real” reader might stumble, whereas the rehearsed recitation will smooth it out.

How many pages to send at one time is also an important question. Smaller chunks lead to more detailed critique, while larger sections let your group’s members get into the flow of the story. The more material you expect to cover in a meeting, the more disciplined you’ll have to be about staying on-topic. (This can be a serious problem at any gathering of writers. We’re creative types; we know lots of things; we love words.)

A final note about the work being brought to group: how complete should it be before you start? There’s no one right answer, of course. Some people like to get hot feedback on a work in progress, or use the meeting schedule as a way to impose deadlines and stay productive. That’s awesome if that’s what works for you. Our personal experience has taught us not to take our stuff in too early. It made us second-guess ourselves too much. The feedback has been consistently more useful to us when it was collected after we had the first draft done.

More of our thoughts on critique groups still to come. Have advice or experiences to share? Add a comment!

Critique Group Advice – Part 1

Our critique group met last night, which is always a highlight of our writing life. Firstly because our fellow writer friends are awesome, and secondly because it’s fascinating to find out what your words do inside other people’s heads.

If you don’t have a group, get one.

There are lots of ways to run a critique group, and our way isn’t the only proper way. But we can offer a bit of advice based on our experiences.

Give it focus. For us this means we tell all prospective members up front that we only critique fiction. Not poetry, not self-help, not cookbooks, not screenplays, not… Just fiction. This isn’t our snobbery showing through (we keep it buttoned up a little better than that). We just realize that we, personally, couldn’t offer top-notch feedback to poets. It would come down to simply whether we liked or disliked each piece, and that’s not very valuable. You could get even more focused and limit your group to a single genre, or to novel-length works, or short stories, only. How restricted your focus is will depend somewhat on the size of your local writing community, and how many members you’d like your group to have. In our experience it works best to have about 5 or 6 members. More than that and it’s hard for everyone to have a chance to give in-depth feedback. Fewer than that and meetings tend to fall apart if even one person needs to miss a week.

Should you meet weekly? Bi-weekly? Monthly? That’s up to you and your group. The important thing is to have a schedule. Everyone can mark their calendars and arrange their lives around your meetings. Plus, a set schedule motivates you to keep working.

Set ground rules. For instance, treat each other’s work as confidential; critique the writing, not the author’s beliefs; keep things constructive and encouraging, but don’t pull your punches about problems you see in the text. Spell out these group expectations. It might feel a little formal, but trust us when we tell you that it’s important. (If you get awesome members, none of it will ever be an issue. But you still need to all be on the same page about how the group operates.)

We’ll talk in more depth about some of those guidelines, and other critique group lessons we’ve learned through the years next time. If you have advice to share, pop it in the comments!

 

Goosing The Descriptions

We talked recently about inadequate preparation leading to deficient descriptive language in the text. Today we examine how sometimes it’s good to avoid getting too detailed too early on.

In the universe of the Science Novels, there’s a thing we’ve nicknamed the Swap-O-Matic. There’s only one, but it turns up several times. And each time it appears, the description is different. Way different. Horrendously deviant. (There’s also another machine that’s similarly chameleonic, but in subtler ways.) You see, there are two of us writing, and we each think we have the “right” image in our heads. Furthermore, over months of writing, our respective mental images have shifted.

And, over the evolution of these manuscripts, the ways we need the machine to behave have also evolved. Now that the end is in sight on the first drafts, we are finally pretty confident that we fully understand this thing’s job. So, now we can reconcile all the comically inconsistent depictions. Essentially, we’ll reverse engineer the Swap-O-Matic.

A couple of weeks ago, we said the goose wrench is usually employed early, to tune up the outline. And for plot-level stuff, that’s true. If the plot has sections that flap in the breeze, we’re not ready to tell the story. It has to be more stable, at least for us. But on a small scale, as in the case of describing a particular apparatus, it can be better to leave things loosey-goosey until late in the game. Had we created an exquisite, authoritative picture of the Swap-O-Matic before we started writing prose — before we knew what all we’d be asking of it — we would have been designing the wrong machine.

Working with a partner creates more chances for inconsistencies, but in the first draft that’s not so bad. It just means more ideas from which you can cherry-pick the best details during revision when you make everything line up.

Fear of Details

Rune Skelley’s process is pretty intensive with the supporting materials, as regular readers here are well aware. It’s a system that has evolved as Jen and Kent have worked together on numerous novels over the years. We talk a lot here about the textual elements: rainbows, outlines, and stubs. What we don’t mention so often are the visual aids, but it turns out those can be just as important.

In addition to seeking inspiration on Pinterest and stock photo sites, and “casting” our main characters by including a pic in their bio, we like to create maps and diagrams. Cities, buildings, ships, underground complexes — you name it, we draw maps of it.

Usually.

It might be because we’re so eager to get the current WIP wrapped up, or maybe we’ve just become a little too comfortable with ourselves, but we neglected to draw any pictures of a key locale that figures in the finale. We talked about the place a lot, made good notes. But Kent noticed something about the first draft that he thinks is due to skipping the actual floor plan: he’s hesitant to enrich the scenes with sensory details.

This is a first draft, and of course we’ll address any such deficiencies during revisions. It’s not a disaster, although it might end up being more work than if we’d prepared the visuals up front. (We’re big on up-front preparation.)

Kent’s theory is that this “fear” of details arises from there being two of us working together without concrete documentation of the locale. We’re each making things up as we go, and we might not make them up exactly alike. Mentioning anything specific, like saying the door is on the right or the table is black, creates a potential continuity issue. The logical conclusion then? Don’t mention any details! That way we can’t contradict each other. We can literally keep our story straight. Straight, and devoid of texture or context.

It’s too vague, too loosey-goosey. If only we had a tool to fix that problem…

Wait a minute, we do! The Rune Skelley Writing Toolbox contains numerous strange implements, among them a pair of wrenches. There’s the familiar monkey wrench, meant to be thrown into the gears when everything feels like it’s running a smidge too neatly, and then there’s the goose wrench. That one’s more subtle, and its job is reduce chaos without making everything too rigid. It’s usually deployed during the outlining stage, keeping the plot from losing its shape, but it can also manifest as visual aids that keep the setting (and characters, and props, and so on) in focus.

Remember, Kent: righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.

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.

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!

Shining A Light

We went to a lighting design center this week, and the main thing that we learned is that a lighting design center is a dangerous place for us to be left unsupervised. In addition to all the stuff in the showroom, they also have big, thick catalogs of amazing and weird stuff that you can hang from the walls and ceilings of your actual house and connect to the wiring therein.

There was a not insignificant chance that we would have decided to remodel our entire house (again) so we could have excuses to buy all the fun things. Perhaps it’s a good thing these items are so expensive, as that might be what brought us to our senses.

We knew what we were shopping for when we went in there: something modern and sleek for above the dinner table. We knew what the dining room looked like, and we knew we weren’t really going to redo it. Yet, all the pretty lights in other styles (craftsman, deco, neo-Victorian, space-age retro, regular retro, and vintage industrial {which, let’s be honest: that’s steampunk}) tempted us sorely. In the end, we stuck to our program if not our budget, and ordered a minor masterpiece of modern elegance that will harmonize with our home’s style.

The experience reminded Kent of something he’s heard said about font design. “Not a bunch of pretty letters; a pretty bunch of letters.” The same applies to the words those letters create.

Writing fiction is a lot like decorating a room. It’s less about how cool, or how gorgeous, any individual element might be. It’s certainly not about how many nifty things you can festoon the page with. It’s about the overall effect. You have to know when a humorous beat is needed, and when to lay off the rimshots and allow the moment to breathe. When you’re choosing a strong verb, you must choose the one that matches the flavor of the scene and the personality of the character doing it.

It’s hard to take out the stuff that doesn’t belong. When it’s good stuff, just not the right stuff to bring the room together, the killing of the darlings can feel literal. But you don’t really have to kill them. Just send them out of the room.

Don’t Fence Me In

We like to work in trilogies. The story worlds and complicated characters we develop lend themselves to longer tales, but not the endless iterations that an ongoing series requires. Three novels is a generous amount of space to explore in and bring everything to a satisfying conclusion.

Many is the time we’ve bragged about our extensive outlining process, but even when you’re as thorough as we are in the preliminary stages you’ll probably find that things evolve during the actual writing. A lot can (and should) happen in 300,000 words, which is why we won’t publish the first book in a trilogy until the third one is written.

The dream would be for the entire triptych to be completely polished before any of it is released, just to guarantee that there are no more changes to be made, that there isn’t a single detail that could be improved. But that’s not possible. First of all because no manuscript is ever truly done. No matter how many times something is edited, there’s always a sentence that could be rephrased or a comma that could be added (or removed depending on which way the wind is blowing). The bigger issue though is that we don’t have all the time in the world. If we want to keep any momentum in our writing career, we need to release new work on a regular basis. And that means the first part most likely gets released before the third is completely done.

Emphasis on ‘completely.’

No matter how well-planned your story is, things will change during the writing. Maybe events will line up better if you adjust the timeline early on. Maybe a character who doesn’t appear until the third book will fit in more naturally if she’s alluded to in the first or second. Speaking of characters, once a characteristic gesture or phrase develops, it’s a good idea to sprinkle it in the early scenes to maintain consistency. Perhaps a minor character becomes much more important than you anticipated, and things will make more sense if their presence early on is enhanced. We sometimes discover that either Kent or Jen has an affinity for a certain character, which means they get to go back and punch things up in the other’s scenes. In the course of research you might discover a fun detail that needs to be present through the whole series. If the first book is already set in stone, it’s quite limiting.

For a satisfying and cohesive reader experience, treat your trilogy like one enormous manuscript for as long as possible.