Category: Writing as a Team

Two people writing as a team can have advantages over soloist authors. But to have a fruitful writing partnership we must adopt a process that utilizes our strengths, and we need a relationship that’s strong enough to support the endeavor. Here’s where we explore the matter from various angles.

The Surgery Was a Success!

It took a week longer than we had hoped, but Jen just completed an editing pass on the Science Novel. It had been through the ringer at least once before, and she still managed to smallerize it by 7,000 words. Meanwhile, our current manuscript-in-process, Grandson of Science Novel, has topped 11,000 words, most of them from Kent. It feels really good to have such a solid start on the new book. It feels even better to have a net gain in word count. We’ve added more to this series than we’ve taken away.

While Science Novel lays in the recovery room for a bit, waiting for the bandages to come off, Jen will turn her attention to Divided Man Book 3. It’s called Elsewhere’s Twin, and its release date is on the horizon. We’re hoping to go through the whole thing twice more before sending it out into the world, which means we have no time to waste.

That extra week we devoted to Science Novel makes the schedule a little tighter than we would like. Jen won’t get any downtime between the projects to clear her head. She’s already eyeing up a fresh scalpel. The last time through Elsewhere’s Twin she was still wielding her chainsaw. This time should see fewer huge cuts and much more finessing. Another difference is that this time, Kent will follow along a few chapters behind Jen with his own surgical tools. Having a coauthor means having more eyes on the words at every step in the process. It means a better finished manuscript.

Prosing Has Commenced

Grandson of Science Novel is underway!

As we talked about a while ago, we rainbowed and outlined the two sequels in tandem. The first draft of Son of Science Novel is complete, although we are still tinkering with it. But for the immediate future, our focus will be on book three of the series.

Jen has been a stubbing maniac. She set herself a target of writing stubs up through a certain point in the plot, and this week she attained it. Yay! The word count just for this first wave of stubs is over 18,000. Yowza.

Meanwhile, there were enough stubs stockpiled for Kent to jump in and begin writing actual scenes. He had some leftover assignments in the other two Science Novels, but now all that’s cleared away and the first couple of scenes are in the can.

The trick, at this point, is to get ourselves into a good rhythm to keep cranking the words out. Real life and Netflix have a way of interfering with our good intentions, but we will see it through. As a team!

MST3K

We were so excited to participate in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstarter! We got swag, and emails from Joel, and everything! But now that the new episodes are available on Netflix, they’re something of a drain on our productivity. The urge to binge them all is strong, but we’ve been taking a somewhat slower approach so that we can savor each one, and to make them last. But now we’re almost done. Sniff.

Somewhat to our horror, we had each seen two of the movies in their non-MST form. We have a soft spot for Copenhagen, and so had actually watched Reptilicus on purpose. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Reptilicus is basically Godzilla in Denmark, and it’s the first movie tackled in the new season by Jonah and the bots.

Avalanche was the surprise. Jen and Kent have been married seemingly forever, and it’s hard to remember sometimes that we actually had separate childhoods. But we did! And those separate childhoods each included the viewing of the Mia Farrow/Rock Hudson classic Avalanche. Fate.

A few nights ago we finally reached the episode where we are listed in the credits, and it’s a doozy. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2, starring David Carradine for some reason. The fight choreography is stunningly inept, the “humor” even more so. Do yourselves a favor and watch it! Be sure to stay for the credits where you can pause it and see Rune Skelley’s name. I’m sure you’ll be almost as excited as we were!

But seriously, you should watch the whole series. It’s awesome!

Giants of Science (Novels)

We passed some nice milestones recently in the auxiliary writing cave. Our base of operations shifted there while we collated and discussed the critique input we collected on Science Novel, and even though we would rather have done that work over the winter (because the auxiliary writing cave has a fireplace) it was still a nice change of scene.

Now we’re back in the primary writing cave, gearing up to dive into the Science series. Maybe “come at it broadside” would be more apt, seeing as we’ll have three books in play simultaneously. Now that the critique info is digested, Jen will begin an editing pass on Science Novel. Meanwhile, Kent will be making additions to the first draft of Son of while Jen lays the groundwork for Grandson by cooking up its first batch of stubs. It’s a form of cookery where all the plates are spinning, evidently.

The last time we tackled three books all at once was when we did the covers for the Divided Man series. Based on how that turned out, we might want to start making a habit of it.

Size Does Matter

We are so close to done with the first draft of Son of Science Novel we can taste it!

Jen wrote the final scene yesterday, but we’re not actually done. Kent has one more scene on his plate that will fall before the last scene. Um. Obviously.

Here’s the thing. This draft is going to come it at around 95,000 words. That’s a lot of words, right? That’s a very satisfying, lengthy novel. We should be happy! The problem is that Science Novel, the book that this is a sequel to, is currently 121,000 words. That’s quite a discrepancy!

While Science Novel has had some edits, there is certainly still some flab there to be carved away. It will get smaller. But so will Son of SN when we edit it. The discrepancy will remain. Jen has this hangup about all the chapters in a book being roughly the same size, and all the books in a series, too. The key word here is “roughly.” No matter how much Kent teases, she doesn’t actually want all the chapters to be exactly the same length. But they should be able to measured with the same yardstick.

Since Jen is the keeper of the outline, and the creator of the stubs, she has seen this word count disaster coming for a while now and she’s been running around like Chicken Little. Now that the end is in sight, Kent has finally begun to believe her. We’ve given a lot of thought to the ‘problem,’ trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Every novel we’ve written previously has come out well above 100,000. Hell, the one before this (Son of Music Novel) came it at 182,900 (which we are not going to round to 183,000 goddammit). Our current draft feels like the runt of the litter.

The problem is not lack of plot. We have enough plot to choke a horse. Before we started writing, we were concerned that we might have another monster on our hands. It would be nice to think we’ve just improved our craft so much that we have transcended the need for editing, but the sky in our world is blue, just like yours.

We have identified a few places where we need to expand things, and we think we’ve discovered a hole that needs to be filled. It’s not 25,000 words worth of stuff, but it might get us up to the magic 100K.

Our current plan is to have Kent write that one last scene that is not the last scene, and then read the manuscript through, looking for what’s missing. It shouldn’t take long, since it’s so damn short.

A Character By Any Other Name

It’s been more than a year since we’ve outlined a new book, which means it’s been more than a year since Jen’s had a chance to name a whole bunch of characters. Sure, incidental naming opportunities arise during the writing, but it’s just not the same, you know? Sometimes even Kent is allowed to name one-off characters, even if he tends to name them all Cheryl/Sheryl for vague and mysterious reasons.

With Jen this whole naming thing is a sickness. We aren’t having any more kids, and most of our household tools and appliances already have names. So what’s a girl to do?

If that girl is Jen, she keeps a running list of appealing names so that when it finally is time to spec out a new cast, she’s prepared.

But she also gets really excited each time March rolls around and the Name of the Year competition gets underway. For those of you who are unfamiliar, NOTY is the most amazing March Madness style bracket out there. They spend the year collecting outrageous and fantastic names from around the world and pit them against each other, letting the public vote. The public doesn’t always get it right, unfortunately. I mean, can you believe that last year’s final wasn’t between Dick Tips and Sweet Orefice? Or that, if the winner had to be one of the Pope names, that Pope McCorkle III beat out Taco Pope? I’ll say it again: Taco Pope.

Anyway, this year’s competition is well underway, and already some great names have fallen. But many truly astonishing ones remain. Go check it out!

The sorts of names that end up in the NOTY brackets, amazing though they are, are not really the sorts of names we want for our characters. But each time the voting opens up for a new round, Kent and Jen scurry to their computers and cast their ballots. And then they discuss their votes. A good deal of the time they agree on which name is truly superior, but when they disagree it’s because Kent is wrong. He has a sweet tooth for rhyming names and terrible puns, and seeing evidence of his terrible terrible taste reassures us that we’ve made the right choice in letting Jen be the primary namer in our writing team.

The Home Stretch

The end is in sight for two of our current open projects, and it feels damn good. Tenpenny Zen has been resting quietly in a drawer, awaiting its publication date later this month. We’ll pick it up this weekend and give it one final read through to make sure our last round of edits didn’t introduce any embarrassing typos, but other than that the manuscript is ready. Kent spent most of this week’s work sessions hammering out the back cover copy. It’s a completely different style of writing, and we haven’t had a lot of practice with it yet. Kent persevered even when Jen wrinkled her nose at some of his early efforts, and we’re quite pleased with the result he arrived at.

With all those pieces falling into place, expect the cover reveal next week. It’s gorgeous!

While Kent was toiling away on one type of nonstandard prose, Jen was intent on another. Two nights ago she finished writing the stubs for the rest of Son of Science Novel. Up until now the ending was basically “stuff blows up.” We knew who survived and who didn’t, other big picture things like that, but now we know most of the details. Not all, obviously. That’s what the actual writing is for. But now we have the finale broken down into beats, and we know whose point of view we’ll experience those beats through. It’s a complex series of events, and having this roadmap will make the writing go a lot faster.

With any luck (and fewer distractions now that Tenpenny Zen is all but finalized) we’ll be in a good position to sail through the rest of Son of Science Novel’s first draft.

Either of us working on our own would not be able to accomplish nearly as much as we do working together. We find having a writing partner invaluable. How about you?

A Plethora of Piñatas

So you’ve just finished your first draft. What happens next?

Obviously you celebrate, but after you sober up or get back from Disney World or whatever, then what?

Then you put that manuscript aside for a while. You do other things and try to forget everything you wrote so that when you do look at it again you have critical distance.

Critical distance is among the most important skills for an author, and also among the most difficult to master. It’s what allows you to stand in the reader’s shoes, what enables your own work to surprise you sometimes. And that’s crucial when you’re ready to edit. You need to be able to see the plot holes, the out-of-character moments, and the places where motivation is thin. You need to be able to spot the story beats that are obviously contrived.

That last one can be tricky because all the story beats are contrived, obviously. You wrote them.

So, like we said, you need critical distance. How do you achieve it? Just reading something else is good, but what you want to do is fully engage your faculties. Reading is too passive for this. Nothing will restore your own work’s ability to surprise you faster than editing or writing a different piece. It’s not enough to just look away from a project for a while. You need to actively push other stuff through the system. You need to overwrite that part of the hard disk.

We’ve had a lot of success achieving critical distance by having three series, each set in its own story world. While Miss Brandymoon’s Device was resting between editing passes, we could write the Music Novel. While Tenpenny Zen was tucked away in a drawer we could plot out the entirety of the Science Novel. We’ve been rotating through those three series for a couple of years now, and it’s worked well. Now that we’re publishing the Divided Man series, though, we suddenly have fewer open projects.

It’s really exciting to have our work out there in front of people, and it feels really good to have the end in sight for that series, but it does mean that we need to figure out what our next new thing will be. We don’t want to turn around one day and find that we’ve run out of material, and we need to always have something on the back burner so that there’s always a productive way to get that necessary (dare we say critical?) critical distance.

The Best Kind of Busy

The Writing Cave has been a buzzing hive of activity lately, and it keeps getting busier. So busy, in fact, that some of our operations spilled over into the Auxiliary Writing Cave.

We’re in the midst of writing Son of Science Novel while actively editing Tenpenny Zen (sequel to Miss Brandymoon’s Device), and planning the edits for the third book in that series. When we’re not doing any of that, we’re in early discussions for the third Music Novel and the big scary question of Whatever Comes Next And Probably Will Be Kind Of Supernatural. (Wow! We’re going to have to come up with a more concise name for that!)

As if all of that wasn’t enough, there’s a new demand on our time, and it’s one we weren’t entirely prepared for. Fan mail.

Woe is us, right?

A few months ago we went to see David Sedaris, and we were very impressed with how available he makes himself to his fans. He’s there before the show signing books, and he stays after until everyone in line has had their turn. He talks to everyone and it’s a very friendly interaction.

We decided that that’s how we want to engage with fans of our writing. Right now the flow of emails is just a trickle, but we have little doubt it will eventually become a tsunami. It’s important that we work it into our schedule now so that it becomes a habit.

If you want to fawn all over us, or berate us, or just say Hi, email us at HeyRune@runeskelley.com or just hit up the comments. We’d love to engage with you!

Becoming More Human-like

Writing is many things, but maybe more than anything else it comes down to recording — and transmitting — the experience of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. That’s the essence of “show don’t tell.” And it’s the essence of voice in your fiction.

Kent reflected on this, and on our process and all the different sets of eyes he’s looked out through, and formed the opinion that the act of writing has increased his capacity for empathy. For context, his workplace nicknames have included Spock, Data, and more recently, Sheldon. (His high-school nicknames were less flattering.)

He’s convinced that empathy has become easier for him, sometimes involuntary, and he blames it on the writing. It’s also possible that it’s just a symptom of getting older, or a side effect of spending so much time with someone as compassionate as Jen.

Writing is many things, but most of all it’s projecting yourself into another being. The reader has a keen nose for puppet strings, so the writer must cut them without the character falling limp. You can get away with a little pretending, a little imitating, but it won’t carry you far. To win the reader’s trust, your writing must contain the characters’ honest fears and hungers.

It ends up giving a writer lots of practice standing in others’ shoes. And if you’ve never had a nickname based on an inhuman creature devoid of emotion, you probably have a good head start!