Just Hold Still, Dammit!

Jen and Kent are hardcore plotters, expending a ton of energy at the beginning of a project to get every last wrinkle ironed out. It is the Skelley way. It makes it a lot easier to divvy up the writing later if both halves of the partnership have a rock solid understanding of how all the pieces fit together.

But back to that “expending a ton of energy” part. Jen is currently in the midst of creating the actual outline. You know, the kind with roman numerals and all that jazz. It’s something she usually enjoys (don’t judge), but this time it’s frustrating her. Events in the timeline keep oozing around and refusing to hold still, and Jen really feels like they ought to know their place by now.

Our process is long and arduous, but not particularly complicated. Usually anyway.

• Step one is a lengthy series of conversations where we talk through the whole story and take copious notes.
• Step two is combing through those notes to put everything in order and discard the bits that are obsolete.
• Step three is to polish the results of step two into a prose outline. For this novel (Sibling of Music Novel) that came to 24 pages (12,000 words), plus an additional couple of pages of notes on the setting.
• Step four is not always necessary, but we dusted it off for this novel: an actual calendar to track events. Jen went through the prose outline and distributed the events on the calendar to make sure everything lined up properly. Everything seemed to be swell until she started:
• Step five, which is the current step — the Real Outline. This is the step where the actual structure of the novel starts to come into focus. We look at how the events will break down into actual scenes. There are plenty of facts that we know about the story and our characters that are important, but that don’t justify their own scene. So as Jen works her way along, she’s looking for dynamic and interesting ways to convey some fairly mundane (for now) facts so that they won’t come out of nowhere later when they matter, and feel unearned.
• Step six will be using the outline/glorified scene list to create the mini scene synopses that we call stubs.
• Step seven will be the actual composition.

Each step along the way clarifies our story’s structure, uncovers plot holes and magical thinking, and helps us get to know the characters. By looking at things from so many angles, at so many differing magnifications, we find the weak spots before we start to write. It’s a lot of labor up front, but it saves a ton of work in rewrites.

The problem Jen’s encountering is that the events she so painstakingly placed on the calendar in step four are getting shuffled around in step five. It’s nothing so earthshaking that we need to rethink the plot, it’s just that now the calendar will need to be updated to reflect the actual actual flow of events, and that makes Jen sigh.

Having a writing partner means having someone to soothe your fevered brow while you shake your fist at the universe you created.