Category: Plotting & Outlines

Essential blueprinting for your fiction enterprise.

Why Even Bother With The Rainbow?

All of the semi-serious content on this entire blog could be boiled down to “we believe in the process.” We pretty much never shut up about it. Of course the process has evolved over time. It’s workflow, not dogma. But in our Friday posts we’ve really hammered the point that we think it’s important, and of all the steps it comprises probably the one we’ve nattered about the most is the rainbow.

Recent experience has further solidified our confidence that the rainbow is effective. Because, you see, we almost decided to skip it this time.

The ghost story is something we’ve been brainstorming about for quite a while, long enough that we really feel we’re getting to know the characters. We have tons of notes, which Jen has somehow collated into a synopsis that doesn’t contradict itself. Reading that made us so excited about the story, it was tempting to jump ahead to outlining, or maybe even start generating prose.

We didn’t always have the rainbow. Way, way back when we began writing novels together, we had nothing like our current process. But we did have some guidelines and rituals. For example, we originally did our first drafts longhand, and the act of typing them up created the second draft. We don’t do longhand drafts anymore. Even though it seemed important at one time, we came to see it as unnecessary.

Maybe the rainbow would fall into that same category. Maybe it was time we outgrew it?

Fortunately, we stuck to the process. Converting the information about our story from one form (synopsis) to a different form (a grid of colorful paper squares arranged on the floor) in this case revealed major gaps in the plotting. But, it didn’t turn into a major problem for the project. All it took was a little unscheduled brainstorming and we got the pieces to fit.

Would it have been a disaster if we’d skipped over the rainbow? Probably not. We probably would have seen the issues when we got to that part in the writing, and we still could have devised a solution. Of course, fixing it would have required rewriting a bunch of scenes, and reluctance to make so many changes might have made us less willing to consider taking the best approach. And, when you’re head-down cranking out prose is not the best time to notice large-scale issues. It’s quite possible that we wouldn’t have caught a problem like this until an entire draft was written. Ouch.

We like having a process that keeps us on track. Another thing we clearly remember about our very earliest collaborative experiences is the months-long droughts we would fall into because we’d written ourselves into a corner. Getting stuck might be a sign that your process is letting you down.

The (Too) Many-Worlds Hypothesis

Lately, we’re dividing our time between three fictional worlds (four if you count consensus reality). We’re brainstorming about the Ghost Novels, editing one of the Science Novels, and getting critique feedback about one of the Music Novels.

Back when we started this writing partnership, one of our policies was to avoid splitting our focus like this. We would dwell in one fictional universe at a time. Of course, that was a lot easier to stick to when we only had the one. Our concern, theoretical as it might have been, was that we’d waste too much mental energy switching between worlds. But you know what? It’s not been that hard, really.

A couple of years ago, we felt we had to bend our rules in order to accomplish our goals. It made us nervous, and there was a little bit of a learning curve. But like playing an instrument, or speaking a language, or anything else, it’s a trainable skill. We can do, now, exactly what we assumed wouldn’t work: hold three story worlds in our heads at the same time, and keep them straight.

As we flit about our various universes, we stay together. The critique notes about the Music Novel, we look at together and discuss. When it’s time to do Science Novel edits, we both knuckle down for that. Brainstorming about ghosties is a team sport. We find we can do just about anything as long as we’re doing it together. Probably the only time we’ve sent Kent off to one universe while Jen visited another is when there was cover artwork involved. (And, that worked just fine too. But we prefer to stay in sync.)

A writing partner is someone who’ll straddle three icebergs with you and help you not fall in.

Do You Prefer Tetralogy or Quadrilogy?

Both terms refer to a series of four books, and it seems like that might be where our ghost story is headed.

Our writing output so far consists of three trilogies. A trilogy of trilogies, if you will. It’s all very tidy. But now that the prose outline for our spectral saga is nearing completion we’re faced with a story that seems to want to break neatly into four pieces. And we’re not sure how we feel about that.

Our main work sessions are currently devoted to editing the Science Novels. Since we’re only brainstorming this spooky bad boy part-time, we still have a lot of detail to fill in, but the parts that we do know (and are quite attached to) include four momentous events. The sort of events that would make resounding, satisfying finales. It’s certainly possible that one of them could be adjusted and made into a tentpole moment, the sort of mini-climax that shows up in the middle of a novel to keep readers on the edge of their seats, but we’re hesitant to jump right to that.

We’re still exploring the story and interrogating the secondary characters for exciting backstories. This new story world is expansive and the last thing we want to do is hem ourselves in prematurely. For now we’ll keep talking during our nightly dog walks, and keep expanding everything. By the time we’re ready to make this project our main focus, we’ll have oceans of material to work with. At that point we’ll be better situated to tell whether there’s enough material to fill the spaces between those four big events and make our first Tetra/Quadrilogy.

Let’s hope we don’t have to figure out the word for a series of five.

Goose Wrench Revisited

Our writing armory is fully stocked.

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to…

Nah. During brainstorming we mainly use the Monkey Wrench and the Goose Wrench. The Monkey Wrench is the tool we reach for when things are going a little to smoothly for our characters. It helps us find ways of causing them trouble. The Goose Wrench is a little more nebulous.

The very nature of brainstorming is for things to be loose. There are no bad ideas (except when there are). Use the Monkey Wrench to your heart’s content and throw everything you can think of into the mix. But eventually you have to start making decisions. Each decision narrows the field of options that can follow, which is what you want. You’re only going to be writing a single narrative (unless you’re doing something experimental), so you need a single plot. At each decision point you make a choice, then you get out your Goose Wrench and tighten it down. But not too far. Until you’re very close to done with your outline, you want to leave a little wiggle room. You want to leave things loosey goosey, which is where the Goose Wrench gets its name. As you continue working, things will start to take their final shape, but until then you want to have some slack so you can take some unexpected turns. And sometimes you’ll discover that you’ve written yourself into a corner (except that since this is all during prewriting, you’ve saved yourself a ton of time and work). You might need to go back and rethink some of your earlier choices, like flipping back in a Choose Your Own Adventure Book, and choosing a different path.

As we talk about the Ghost Novels, we’re making liberal use of the Goose Wrench. How many squid attacks will there be? We originally thought there would be three, but maybe it would be better to change things up and make the middle one an ambush by sharks with frickin’ laser beams. Keep it fresh.

A writing partner is someone who helps you choose your adventure.

Everyone Is the Hero of Their Own Backstory

Backstory can be tricky to manage. How much of it to show, and how to present it, are thorny questions. It’s really a matter of drawing a line between those things that you as an author need to know, and those that the reader needs. What goes into that second category is the difficult answer to come up with. Some say that the reader needs no backstory whatsoever, while others say it all depends.

But we’re going to focus on the other side of the equation today. So, which things must you, the author, know about your characters’ backstories? All of them. All the things.

Our approach is to flesh out everybody’s backstories during our preliminary phase, which mostly happens while walking the dogs. (If they get bored with all the exposition, they never complain.) What we’ve learned is that there’s a lot of value in knowing the detailed history of even a very minor character. Naturally, it helps us create vivid depictions, and it allows all the cast members to show up ready for work. But in addition to these fairly obvious gains, digging into secondary and even tertiary characters’ pasts has produced a few interesting outcomes.

  • Minor characters have morphed into major characters.
  • Minor characters’ peccadilloes have answered questions about major characters.
  • Important world-building notes have emerged.
  • We’ve spotted useful plot connections and subplots.

Just remember: now that you know Marcel got in trouble when he was in third grade for trying to cheat on a test, you’re not obligated to tell anybody else.

That Frisson of Excitement

There are many reasons it’s great to write with a partner. We talk a lot on this blog about the practical benefits, but what’s really best about writing with the right partner? It’s fun!

The Ghost Story is in a very preliminary stage right now, so it’s pretty much all brainstorming. It’s fun to make stuff up even when you do it alone, but having someone to respond to your ideas and raise suggestions that you’d never have thunk up makes it a lot more exciting.

On a recent canine-mandated forced march around the village, we were developing Ghost Story ideas and Jen suggested something really cool involving minerals. Kent put a bit of a spin on it, which prompted a further modification back from Jen, and we went back and forth like that until we finished the lap.

And it felt so freakin’ awesome. Yeah, yeah — stronger ideas, teamwork, synergy — but the point of this installment isn’t that collaboration leads to better work. The point is that it makes work a lot more enjoyable.

The right writing partner is someone who makes you want to write more.

A Ghostly Rainbow

It’s hard to refine and improve on something without a sense of its shape. So, to help us visualize our stories we lay them out on multicolored paper squares. It’s become an important part of our process, and some of them have been 15 or 20 feet long.

Fittingly, the first take on a rainbow for the Ghost Story is as pale as bleached bones. And — so far — it fits on the dining room table. Rather than festive notepaper squares, this one uses index cards (which make Kent uneasy, but in this case that just helps set the mood).

The main reason Jen set it up was so we could look at the timeline. It’s a multigenerational epic with a sizable cast (which seems to grow every time we take the dogs for a walk) so there’s a lot to keep track of, and doing it all in our heads was becoming a challenge. We had to make sure that when we put all the events in order, they actually were, you know, in order. Also, we needed a gut-check on how old everybody was when it was time for them to do Significant Things.

So, yeah, technically this wasn’t a rainbow. We didn’t refract the plot threads into different colors and line them up in parallel with each other. It isn’t time for that just yet. But when it is, we’ll give it as much space as it needs so we can bring our ghost tale to life.

Our Days are Numbered

Counting today there are 40 days left in this year.

Thanks to Jen’s diligent work on stubs, we now know we have to write 30 scenes to complete Sibling of Music Novel.

With two of us writing, that’s 15 each.

December 31 makes an enticing deadline, but for our purposes it’s totally arbitrary. Choosing that date just because it’s at the end of the calendar is like deciding on your vacation destination because it’s precisely 100 miles from your house. In a perfect world we’d knuckle down and finish this bad boy before the end of 2019, but we’ve already accepted that this is an imperfect world and that’s not likely to happen. While it’s a bit disappointing to know we’re going to miss such a nice big obvious date, there’s a lot of satisfaction in knowing how much work is left.

In between painting the bedroom and wrangling the contractors we hired to do the projects involving finish carpentry and explosive gases, we kept plugging away at the novel. Kent concentrated on prose composition, and completed several scenes. Jen devoted herself to crafting stubs, and carried that project through to the end of the outline. The other night at quitting time, Kent had just finished his scene and was ready to decompress with a little TV. Jen only had one more stub to go. Since she had momentum, Kent just got out of her way and she finished in record time.

15 scenes each. It’s tempting to try to hit that arbitrary deadline.

A writing partner is someone who helps you find the right balance between writing and real life. And who will clean all the bathrooms before the guests arrive for Thanksgiving.

Deadlines Are Spooky — Sp•°ky!

Late October might seem like a fine time to talk about ghosts a whole bunch, but here in the Writing Cave it’s time for us to lay aside the Ghost Story and resume our focus on the current WIP, aka Sibling of Music Novel.

We really do need to knuckle down and get this draft completed. We recently took stock of how much of the outline remains, and determined that we’re about 75% of the way done with the writing. This was happy news, because from down in the trenches (what, your writing cave doesn’t have trenches?) it was hard to tell exactly what point we had reached. It’s felt like we’ve been “about halfway” for a long time now. Getting a better handle on our progress has also made it easier not to be stressed out over the burgeoning word count. It’s a big’un, sure, but probably not destined to be as outsized as we feared.

But no matter how much closer to done we find ourselves to be, it’s not done done, and unless we do that knuckling down thing it never will be. So, without much further ado, we must get back to it.

A writing partner is someone who buys the Halloween candy ahead of time so you don’t end up handing out individual frozen peas to the kids on your doorstep.

Roadtrip Season

It’s roadtrip season, and faithful readers know what that means: brainstorming! Hours spent traveling hither and yon cut into our writing time, but we don’t let that kill our productivity. We find that extended car trips make a great time to have in-depth discussions about our works-in-progress.

Our current WIP (Sibling of Music Novel) is puttering along smoothly, and while we do need the occasional chat about the details of a scene, there’s nothing knotty enough to fill a couple of hours of straight discussion. That’s a great place to be as a writer. Or as a pair of writers.

So when we need a topic that can fill a few hours, we switch gears to a project that’s in an earlier state of development. And right now, that means the Ghost Story. It’s still fairly embryonic, with many of the kinds of Big Decisions left to be made that are ideally suited to lengthy conversations.

We recently dug out Ghost Story’s dedicated Steno o’ Notes and read through it, and we reviewed the folders of inspiration images we’ve been collecting. With our pumps primed, discussion came easily. Our conversations have already been quite fruitful, and roadtrip season isn’t over yet. We expect to make some real progress on this whole new story world so that it will be waiting for us to dive in once the Music Series is complete.

A writing partner is someone to help you tell ghost stories around the steering wheel.