Andrew Lloyd Webber Read the Theater Reviews

  • by jenthey’ve ruined my show
  • sang the last line of the song
  • that fateful morning
  • no one mocked his old lady voice
  • you are so flamboyantly much
  • hung from hooks

Andrew Lloyd Webber read the theater reviews with a sinking heart that fateful morning.

“They’ve ruined my show!” he cried.

“You are so flamboyantly much more important in your own mind than you are in the real world,” goaded his daughter Catherine.

Andrew looked at her and noticed for the first time that tiny wooden fish hung from hooks in her ears.

Catherine grabbed the paper and read the most scathing lines of the review out loud. “Gary Sinise was not the best choice for the role of Grandma Kittywhiskers. I’d like to say no one mocked his old lady voice, but I can’t. The crowd erupted in giggles repeatedly, most notably at the end of ‘Crazy Cat Lady Blues’ when he sang the last line of the song a cappella.”

Andrew hung his head in shame.

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Save It For the Sequel

r-avatarAs we’ve been editing the music novel (hacking our way through dense word jungles with a machete, burning whole scenes to the ground, etc) we keep finding ourselves in conversations about ways to complicate the story world.

Believe me when I tell you that this particular story is complicated enough. We have eight point-of-view characters and a couple of subplots. The premise behind the story, the dark twist we’ve given our fictional reality, is one of those deceptively simple ideas. When it’s first explained it makes perfect sense, then you start to think of the implications and ramifications, and you drown in a tsunami of questions. That’s a good thing, because it gives us lots to write about. The characters get to ask those questions and propel the plot.

The Big Idea of this novel is truly expansive, and we could write hundreds of stories set in this universe. The problem is that right now we’re only writing one. That means that we need to keep it focused on one main plot and not clutter things up with every little idea we have.

As we mentioned, we do have plans for a sequel, so some of our Really Coolest Ideas™ will end up being used there. As we keep reminding ourselves.

Before we started these edits we had a debate about which project we should work on. We almost brainstormed and outlined the sequel instead of diving in on the edits, and it’s a really good thing we didn’t. I think we both overestimated how well we remembered the events of this novel, for one thing. For another, the discussions we’re having now are sparking a ton of ideas for the followup that I’m not sure we would have come up with otherwise.

We have a few more weeks of work to do on the music novel before we move on, but we’re both getting excited about the possibilities for Music Novel 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s great to have a writing partner to share your enthusiasm with.

Stewart Left His Crowbar

  • k-avatarleft his crowbar
  • it is a machine
  • fish taco
  • tragic, funny, sexy, hilarious
  • hair in his fast

Stewart left his crowbar tangled in Myrtle’s hair in his fast getaway from the scene. He hoped she wouldn’t follow him again, that this was the last time he’d have to kill her.

He ran into the nearest bar, desperate to warn the occupants. “In a few minutes, a crazy lady will come in here. But it is not a lady. It is a machine. A tragic, funny, sexy, hilarious machine.” Other than a few chuckles, he got no reaction from the career drinkers. Stewart slunk to a deserted, shadowy corner to think.

Sure enough, Myrtle entered moments later, still trailing the crowbar.

Oh god, Stewart moaned, open mic night.

Myrtle mounted the stage, the heavy steel rod clanking with each step. She leaned up to the microphone and sighed, “What has two eyes, a tail, no legs, and hot sauce?” Stewart gulped. The spell was cast.

In one voice the rest of the patrons said, “A fish taco.”

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Ed Attended the Matinee Performance

  • by jenEd combed the circus
  • like dead men’s knuckles
  • a boiled egg rolled away
  • the unlucky and the morally dyslexic
  • came up to his armpits
  • a small pudgy thing with a huge curved bone

Ed attended the matinee performance of the Circus of the Unlucky and the Morally Dyslexic and had the misfortune to be pulled out of the audience by one of the clowns, a small pudgy thing with a huge curved bone through his nose, and a rainbow wig. The skit he was shanghaied into ended with the audience roaring, and Ed buried in a pile of food that came up to his armpits and soiled his new souvenir t-shirt while a boiled egg rolled away and was trampled by a miniature pony. Its crackling shell made a noise like dead men’s knuckles.

A female clown led Ed backstage to get cleaned up, and they began a passionate affair. Every evening after the final performance, Ed combed the circus girl’s hair in a display of affection.

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Rolling with role reversal

r-avatarAlong with “every word of this book is in the wrong place,” and “we must use every word, twice if possible,” one of the discoveries we made about the music novel was that our main characters’ relationship needed more tension. They get thrown into a harrowing situation that exposes myriad hurtful secrets about their past, and we had them moping for about ten minutes and then laughing it all off. (Well, not exactly. But it was too easy.)

Upshot: one of our jobs during revisions is to roughen up the emotional tenor of their conversations, and shed a little more light on the second guesses and loss of trust that accompany such upheaval. Weirdly, it’s falling to Kent to handle most of it.

We’ve talked before about how each member of a writing duo should focus on their strengths. It’s one of the selling points for having a writing partner: it’s someone who’s good at things you might struggle with. Traditionally, the Rune Skelley partnership divvies up the chores along appallingly stereotypical gender lines. Kent brings the jargon and the action sequences, while Jen humanizes things with emotional cues that are as subtle or as devastating as the situation demands.

That’s why this time through is weird. After we lined up the scenes and made some notes about where the tone was too light or just too vague, it was Kent who felt drawn to those particular edits. Jen not so much.

It seems to be going pretty well, despite the oddness. Kent thinks it’s going a little slow, compared to when he’s in his technobabble wheelhouse. It’s probably healthy for him to get a bit of practice with earth-human feelings once in a while.

The Sheep/Goat Mutual Aid Society

  • k-avatarhis own club lashed out
  • the street sneezed
  • warm salty water in my mouth
  • and crouched while she drank it
  • she was a limp doll

The Sheep/Goat Mutual Aid Society printed a scathing pamphlet about Harvey, and his own club lashed out with a retort in the form of a full-page ad that Sunday. All was politics as usual, until either a Sheep or a Goat used a blowgun to take Harvey out of the picture.

Harvey lay there, and the street sneezed under him. The poison of the dart twisted the world into rippling fever-dreams, and he could only lay still and wonder if he would survive.

So much warm salty water in my mouth, Harvey thought. He couldn’t breathe. But a cat trotted up to him, and purred in his ear, and crouched while she drank it.

Having saved his life, she was a limp doll across his chest.

 

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The Latest Fad Religion

  • by jenthe most fabulous unheard-of things
  • I love my gold!
  • “Remote control, perhaps?”
  • discontinuous orthodragonality
  • some dank, phosphorescent cocoon
  • stirred the subatomic dough

The latest fad religion, Discontinuous Orthodragonality, is quickly replacing Kabbalah among the Hollywood elite. Orthodragonality priests remind the rich and famous that dragons are known for hoarding treasure, and preach that greed is desirable. They encourage Orthodragonality neophytes to become comfortable proclaiming, “I love my gold!”

Their sermons recount tales of the most fabulous unheard-of things, like the ancient silver dragon who sat in some dank, phosphorescent cocoon and stirred the subatomic dough for one week until the world was created.

At the end of the services, the believers rise together to sing a hymn, such as the all-time favorite about the mystery of how the dragons control the universe, entitled “Remote Control, Perhaps?”

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Size Matters

r-avatarWe’ve been harping on and on lately about how big our current project is, which raises the question of why we don’t make it two books.

Two books is something we thought about early in the editing process, after all, we’d have two 90,000-word novels. That’s damn respectable. Turns out there are a host of reasons we’ve opted to not go that way.

First, it feels lazy. We want a good book, not an easy book. That means we need to work hard to craft something beautiful and meaningful, no matter what the size. If all we did was lop it in half, it would feel like cheating, and we’d have two not-great books.

Second, even though it’s long enough to be two books, the plot is not really structured in a way that makes it easy to bisect. As originally written, the story proper took place over one week. We had a large amount of backstory that was told through flashbacks. There was (in our opinion) a really clever structure to the flashbacks that, at the time, we felt justified the use of so many. Our readers, though, did not agree. We had six, and none of them picked up on the clever part, which begs the question of how clever it really was. Since our original vision was a bust, we decided to just tell the story in order. Radical, right? But the scenes that were flashbacks in the first draft weren’t enough to carry the first half of the novel. They were a few isolated incidents, but they weren’t close enough together to be easily connected with a line. Now we’ve written new material to close up the gaps and make the line clear, which is what makes it so damn long. In theory we could chop it at a big tentpole moment and give it a cliffhanger ending. But we don’t wanna. That’s not the way the story is meant to be told. We also don’t want to pad out the first half with artificial plot complications just to make it seem like it deserves to be its own story. That’s not how we roll.

And third, we have ideas for another book, ideas that work well as a sequel but not as the third in a series. When there’s only one point of reference, the second point can go anywhere. But when you have two references, anything further really ought to follow a predictable pattern.

Jen and Kent are very happy that they each have a writing partner they can talk about this kind of thing with. They pity the poor solo authors who have to figure it all out on their own.

The Kremlin Cupolas Shone

  • k-avatarslapped the monk’s face
  • stop shooting, you fools!
  • most novices ate it with relish
  • work intelligently, rather than spectacularly
  • the Kremlin cupolas shone against a pale summer sky
  • “Go ahead, kiss her.”

The Kremlin cupolas shone against a pale summer sky, and bells rang out the lunchtime hour. Since its conversion into a  monastery, the former fortress boasted far fewer tanks, and marginally better food.

Brother Ivan wished the cooks would strive to work intelligently, rather than spectacularly. Years of eating the ornate fare left him bored by all the gold leaf and sugar sculptures, although most novices ate it with relish.

The walls shook, signaling that some of those novices were skipping lunch to play in a tank, and had found some ammunition. “Stop shooting, you fools!” screamed the abbot as he charged outside.

After the meal, Ivan strolled in Red Square with Brother Boris. They came upon a pretty young lady with a sign reading, “Smoochies, $1.”

“Go ahead, kiss her,” Ivan suggested. The woman slapped the monk’s face. “Pay first,” she insisted.

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For the First Time in My Life

  • by jenswooning to the floor of the hospital
  • I was committing a sin
  • fantastically gilded and filagreed
  • stifling fumes from the damp earth
  • mute and inglorious
  • would a number of men so dragged a corpse

For the first time in my life I was committing a sin, and I decided that I wanted to do it memorably, and commit the most fantastically gilded and filagreed sin in history, a sin that would leave battle-hardered surgeons mute and ingloriously swooning to the floor of the hospital where they would breathe deeply of the stifling fumes from the damp earth and wonderingly ask one another under what circumstances could or would a number of men so dragged a corpse as artfully as I, metaphorically speaking.

 

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