Tools of the Trade

r-avatarAs we get deeper into the plotting of Son of Science Novel, we’ve been experimenting with some new (to us) software: Aeon Timeline. It’s a very flexible tool for, well, making timelines.

Last week we talked about how we think we have all our new characters’ backstory figured out. In order to test ourselves and make sure there were no holes, inconsistencies, or open questions, we laid out the backstory in our favorite Rainbow formation. Each character gets a column in their own color, and each row represents a story point. It took two work sessions in the auxiliary writing cave to get the whole thing in shape, and to answer the questions we uncovered along the way. And to drink the mulled wine and the raspberry lambic.

When we were happy with the Backstory Rainbow, Jen set about entering all of the data into Aeon Timeline. The result is easy to browse, and doesn’t require immense amounts of floorspace.

Our writing software of choice is Scrivener, which Aeon is supposed to sync with. We say “supposed to” because we haven’t tried it yet. It will be interesting to see just what the two programs do when they talk to each other, and testing it now at the beginning of a project makes a lot more sense than pulling the trigger on a work in progress.

What writing tools do you prefer? Tell us in the comments.

It Wasn’t The Plan I Thought We Were Going With

  • k-avatardenied having the dumpsters emptied
  • muffled in a dark cloak
  • they fled incontinently
  • step out of the queue
  • felt a fleeting pang of regret

Tune In Next Time Part 47                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

It wasn’t the plan I thought we were going with, but suddenly it was the plan we had.

While Lyudmila kept Jinx Damocles hanging by a thread, I pulled bins down from the shelves, looking for one containing something other than more bins. I ignored Jason’s sibilant protests and searched as quickly as I could.

“Wait! I have it!” Jason hissed. “Don’t wreck the place.”

He waved for me to follow him. I felt a fleeting pang of regret for abandoning Lyudmila, but she had her hands full. Upstairs was a peg-legged man muffled in a dark cloak, and two diminutive people in black bodysuits. “Splinter cell representatives,” Jason lisped. From a cabinet he took a small black book. “Logbook,” he explained.

A ponderous groaning noise came from the basement, startling the lone pirate and his two ninja companions. They ran outside, meaning to steal Lyudmila’s chopper. But when Time and Trouble snarled at them, they fled incontinently across the street. I laughed and shook my head. Taking the book, I said, “I can take it from here. You have to maintain your cover.” Jason nodded.

Two blocks away, people were lined up at a barber shop. I veered to the opposite sidewalk as I saw three men step out of the queue and head my way. Yet another faction had entered the game: the sanitation workers union. Unless their beef was with me, personally. It was possible. They took the blame for the Pensacola Debacle after I denied having the dumpsters emptied behind the stadium.

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Lyudmila Beckoned To Me

  • by jengirlfriend and your sister
  • more involved than he was willing to admit
  • only has one birthday a year
  • casting frightened glances back over their shoulders
  • took them to a nearby orange grove

Tune In Next Time Part 46                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Lyudmila beckoned to me with her crooked index finger. While my uncle Jinx Damocles continued unpacking the nesting boxes, she and I quietly moved from the sofa and into the shadowy corner of the basement room.

I felt her warm breath on my ear as she whispered, “I always wanted to be your girlfriend, and your ‘sister‘ over there,” she indicated Jason with a roll of her eyes, “was always in the way. Not to mention Tessa of course.”

“Jason is bad news,” I whispered back. “Where trouble’s concerned, he’s always more involved than he was willing to admit. We need to watch our backs.”

I tried to imagine how we looked to Jason from his seat beside Uncle Jinx. Probably like two fools casting frightened glances back over their shoulders.

Jinx Damocles’s voice rang through the basement, “Here is the message we must decode: What do you call a man who only has one birthday a year?”

“That’s easy,” I said, moving back to rejoin him, hoping Lyudmila remembered enough of our pillow talk to catch my hidden meaning. “That means that Jorgensen has the coordinates and the jewels. He took them to a nearby orange grove, the one the coordinates referenced, and buried them.”

Lyudmila looked at me with wide, wide eyes. There were no orange groves in Rhode Island where we currently were, of course. I nodded almost imperceptibly, directing her to make her move.

She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a look that said, “if you insist.” I waited for her to use her contortionist skills to befuddle Jason enough that I could overpower him, but instead she moved closer to Jinx Damocles. Before I could say anything to stop her, she reached down his pants and took hold of the Sword of Damocles.

The rest of us froze, stunned.

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Getting More Excited Every Night

r-avatarWe have turned a corner in plotting Son of Science Novel, and it feels so good. We no longer have to say, “Let’s try to focus on plot-level events instead of backstory,” because (as we knew would happen) our knowledge of the new characters’ histories is now sufficient that the story proper has started to come alive.

One key to reaching this turning point is that we’ve started to give our new characters some stressors and time constraints. The protagonist from Science Novel was, of course, our seed for the new story threads, but it took a while for other characters to really activate. Now they have pressing issues of their own, not just a static collection of wants that our returning protagonist will bump into. They’re not just waiting for their turn as a foil anymore, but are part of a story that would be happening even if this person from a previous book didn’t stroll through. (But of course, she does, and that makes things ever so much more interesting!)

Kent has noted of a couple of particulars, “That’ll be fun to write!” Those tend to be the ultra-geeky ideas. Jen is building up our repository of reference photos for the new cast members, a process that sometimes causes us to re-envision these people. It definitely helps us feel a connection to them.

The best part is, our momentum is building as our investment and excitement build. We still have a long way to go, but we’ve crested a steep hill and right now we’re picking up speed as we coast down the other side. The wind in our hair feels great!

We Accompanied Uncle Jinx

  • k-avatarin harrowing detail
  • it would have caused bleeding
  • an avid gambler
  • (Perhaps typewriters
  • But if she told Mrs. Dunne about the toothbrush

Tune In Next Time Part 45                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

We accompanied Uncle Jinx to the church basement, where it seemed he was now living. Jason had been installed as a priest in order to keep a lookout for enemies who might infiltrate the congregation. Lyudmila tried to ask him about the ninja pirate splinter cell, but he hung his head and made no reply. At least now she knew which of us was which.

Sitting on the aquamarine faux-leather sectional, we sipped green tea while Jinx Damocles explained in harrowing detail how he lived through the plane crash and made his way out of the remote mountains, forced to barter his left arm for a ride in a cannibal’s canoe. Then his months of “rehabilitation” in the care of Ophelia Dunne, wife of a notorious dental hygienist and an avid gambler. Mr. Dunne provided him with floss and a toothbrush, of course, but the brush had brass bristles. Had he used it, it would have caused bleeding gums. Jinx confided in Stacy, the hygienist’s housekeeper, about his torments. But if she told Mrs. Dunne about the toothbrush, it came to nothing.

The hygienist used a label maker to punch out long, cryptic messages to his overseers. (Perhaps typewriters were deemed a security risk.) From a shelf on the wall, Jinx Damocles took down a bin labeled “kittens and spiders.” Removing the lid, he showed us that it contained a series of ever-smaller bins, nested like dolls. The second was labeled “musical turtles of electromagnetism.”

“Now that you’re here,” he summed up, “we can crack the code.”

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I Lost a Lot of Sleep

  • by jenI lost a lot of sleep
  • save for spasmodic jumping
  • sing and rejoice
  • According to your own statistics
  • already shedding clothes

Tune In Next Time Part 44                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I lost a lot of sleep a decade ago when I heard that my beloved Great Uncle Jinx’s plane went down in the Andes. I don’t remember much about what I did with all those hours of insomnia, save for spasmodic jumping back and forth between the two twin mattresses, my cell being too small for effective pacing. Seeing him alive now should make me want to sing and rejoice, but instead it filled me with questions.

“According to your own statistics, Uncle Jinxy,” I said, very carefully not lisping, “we stand a better chance outside, where we have room to scatter.” I knew damn well that Jinx Damocles believed no such thing. This was a test to smoke out yet another potential impostor in a week already too full of them.

Jinx Damocles stared at me with his one good eye. “If that were your plan, you’d be already shedding clothes.”

I grinned. It was really him!

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Our Plot-to-Backstory Ratio is Now Favorable!

r-avatarNow that our note-taking has reached the point where we had to order refills for our favorite pen, Jen decided it was time to get everything from the steno pad typed up and organized. Which led to the happy surprise discovery that the preponderance of our notes have to do with the actual story, rather than the backstory.

During our conversations from which these notes are generated, we tend to spend a lot of time on the stuff that’s led up to the point where we will join the story, the “how did they get that way” of our various new cast members. While it’s vital for us to have a sense of history with these characters, we’re acutely aware that hardly any of the details will make it into the manuscript, and so we became concerned that these rabbit holes were distracting us from plotting the story.

Getting a rough plot laid out really didn’t take all that long. But as soon as we started drilling down on a story beat, we had to answer questions that hinged on backstory, and that meant coming up with said backstory. Then we’d climb back up and look at another story beat, which necessitated another round of backstory development. A few such sessions quickly resulted in continuity problems within the emerging backstory, and resolving those sent tremors up into the plot. It’s taken a few iterations, but the first half(?) of the plot is now stabilized pretty well.

The metaphors above might suggest pickaxes and helmets with lamps on them, but our tools of choice during this work are in fact two kinds of wrenches.

“You’re Not Going to Fall For That, Are You?”

  • k-avatarwith a purposeful grimace
  • going off one after the other
  • played some all-night poker games
  • also called “blood sugar”
  • if the plane crash hadn’t killed him

Tune In Next Time Part 43                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“You’re not going to fall for that, are you?” I asked Lyudmila. She kept glancing back and forth between us, her initial shock and confusion replaced with a purposeful grimace. “Come on,” I said, “listen to him. He’s the one lisping.”

“That proovthe nothing,” Jason retorted. “We’re twinnth! We both lithp!”

“I’m not lisping now,” I pointed out. That Lyudmila was still struggling with the situation had alarm bells in my head going off one after the other. In sunnier times I’d played some all-night poker games with her, so I knew it was hopeless trying to read her expressions. Jason knew it too, which was why he still wore his malevolent grin.

Maybe those card games held the key to convincing her, though. Jason knew about the games, and had probably memorized a tally of who’d won every pot, but perhaps his sources hadn’t explained to him the peculiar house rule of jacks-over-queens, also called “blood sugar” or “sang-sucre,” that had wrecked so many of her full houses through the years. Still, she was always the winningest player at the table.

Before I could offer a poker-related anecdote that would confirm my identity, we were interrupted by a shadowy figure. “All of you, into the basement. There’s no time to waste,” said the familiar, grizzled voice. In silhouette, he could clearly be seen to be missing his left arm. Things were more confusing than ever. It was our great-uncle Jinx Damocles, whose presence in a church would have been surprising even if the plane crash hadn’t killed him.

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Despite Jason’s Protestations

  • by jenunder the influence of a magnetic force
  • spasmodic efforts to smile
  • all alone — at night
  • the jury convicted Kelly
  • We passed upon the stairs

Tune In Next Time Part 42                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Despite Jason’s protestations, Lyudmila and I were under the influence of a magnetic force that drew our lips together again and again. Some might call it love, but I knew better. We made out in the entryway of the little church while my brother glared at us and made spasmodic efforts to smile, trying to look like he didn’t really mind, but he and I are twins and I could tell just what he was thinking. He was plotting to get me away from Lyudmila, and everyone else. He wanted me all alone — at night preferably, when the darkness would cloak him more effectively than his ostentatious stage garb ever could, and in that darkness he would make me pay for what had happened with Tessa, and what was happening now with Lyudmila, and most of all for everything that befell Kelly, the love of his life. It wasn’t my fault the jury convicted Kelly and not me, but Jason would never listen to me about that. We passed upon the stairs in the courthouse after my testimony, and that’s the last I saw him before today.

When finally I had reviewed all of the details of that sordid event, and when I was done kissing Lyudmila, I turned to him and said, “Jason.”

His lips twitched into a twisted grin. “Who are you calling Jason, Jason?”

Lyudmila gasped and took a step away from me. Her eyes flitted between me and my duplicitous twin, not knowing which of us was really Jason and which of us was really me.

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Try Looking At It From My Side

r-avatarAs we steam along on story development for Son of Science Novel, occasionally our brainstorming sputters a bit. One reliable way to get the juices flowing again is to pick one of the secondary characters or villains and take a brief stroll in those shoes. It always shows us gaps that would otherwise be hidden, giving us fodder for discussion and interesting problems to solve.

Remember to make everyone in your story world a full citizen. The allies and enemies are not merely there as foils for the protagonist. They don’t vanish the moment the action moves away from their vicinity.

Try telling the tale in the villain’s voice. It will help make sure the bad guys’ actions are coherent and give your heroes worthier adversaries.