Ghosts Have Become Less Theoretical

By which we mean, our Ghost Story is becoming more concrete. A preliminary prose outline is taking shape. Jen has taken point on this initiative, and is so far going at it bare-brained. Later, we’ll peruse all our notes and use them to fill in where appropriate.

At this point, the outline covers roughly 25% of the saga that we’ve generated and recorded in a mixture of typed and hand-written notes. The thing about the notes is, they reflect the chronology of our brainstorming sessions, not the saga itself. And they’re riddled with continuity bugs, because we’re still brainstorming.

Even at this early stage, though, arranging our facts into this more refined structure is providing us with new insights. (Insights about fuzzy plot logic, sadly.) Brainstorming is fun, but to do it right you have to be sort of willfully negligent about how any of the shiny ideas could be useful or if they even fit together. So, after several weeks of brainstorming, we’d become a bit attached to a vision of the narrative that’s just not feasible. Oops. It’s much harder to persist in magical thinking when all the pieces are lined up in the correct order. That’s what this prose outline has already begun to help us with. And it’s much easier to put something on the docket for the next dog walk once you know it’s there (or, not there, as is more often the case).

A writing partner is someone who helps you mend the holes in your plot.