That’s What She Said

 

r-avatarOr was it him?

Writing is often a solitary pursuit. When you have a co-author, a lot of the loneliness can be mitigated, but it’s still a good idea to widen your circle.

As we’ve mentioned in earlier posts, we belong to a critique group. Our weekly meetings provide a chance to get out of the writing cave and connect with other writers. We highly recommend finding your own group of authors for in-person meetings. You’ll get help with sticky prose, encouragement and reassurance on your journey to publication, and by helping others with their sticky prose, you’ll hone your mad editing skillz.

When you work as part of a writing team, you get an added benefit to critique group membership: the others will not be able to resist trying to suss out which of you wrote which passage. If you’ve done your job well, they will have a hard time guessing. It’s amusing to watch them, and gratifying, too. If your fellow writers have a hard time determining authorship, it means you’re doing it right.

There will be partnerships that break up the writing tasks along gender lines, with the male author writing the male characters and the female author writing the females. If that’s what works for you, it’s not a problem. It just makes the critique group guessing game easier once they figure out the pattern. In other writing partnerships, one of you will handle the dialog and the other the action, or one may excel at the relationship stuff while the other is a master of intricate plotting.

However you divide the work, you should strive for a unified voice. Make it your goal to stump your readers, even when they are writers that you know personally, that in addition to understanding the rules of fiction writing, know your individual voices and personalities.

Dear Mum

  • k-avatarwoe to all unlabeled invaders!
  • I have posed a little puzzle
  • a momentary feeling of satisfaction
  • I’ll skip the boring details
  • The thrill has remained dormant
  • that is a weird notion

Dear Mum,

Stationed now in the produce department. I’ll skip the boring details. Central Command wants stickers on all the fresh fruit, and woe to all unlabeled invaders! So I have posed a little puzzle for the stockboys. But it only brought a momentary feeling of satisfaction, until the customers started throwing tomatoes. My manager expects morale to improve now that we’re using the new aprons. The thrill has remained dormant. Hoping for reassignment to frozen foods. Need to make contact with the turncoat liaison, and I’ve heard he’s a cool cat. Insurrection is predicted in the toothpaste aisle. That is a weird notion.

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“Devlin is Such a Scamp!”

  • by jenforcing them to drop their wood
  • kissed each other good morning
  • his manhood in public
  • “Stop him! Stop him!”
  • enormous flocks of ducks
  • wolves, ibex, reindeer
  • reacts in a unique egotistic manner

“Devlin is such a scamp!” exclaimed Minerva du Mauvais to Bogman Bill after they kissed each other good morning, chastely, as was their custom. “Whenever he accomplishes something grand he reacts in a unique egotistic manner by exposing his manhood in public while surrounded by enormous flocks of ducks, wolves, ibex, reindeer, and children. The first time he did this it was so amusing! He paraded past a group of villagers out collecting firewood for the coming winter, forcing them to drop their wood in astonishment at the size and beauty of his man-meat, and causing the faint-of-heart to cry, ‘Stop him! Stop him!’“

She smiled indulgently at the memory.

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back in the saddle, almost

r-avatarThis week we finally took some serious steps back toward writing. Because of the lengthy interruption in our routine, we couldn’t just dive straight back in. We needed to do a read-through of the existing material first.

Our current novel is about half done, standing at 75,000 words. That doesn’t mean it will definitely be 150,000 when it’s finished, just that we’ve dealt with roughly half of the events defined in the outline. World-building can be dialed back now, but on the other hand there’s a lot of complicated action coming up. And it’s a first draft, so who knows what might happen in revisions. What we do know is it was a very wise move to get reacquainted with the text, because with that much of it there were a lot of details we had forgotten.

The experience of reading the whole thing rapidly was very enjoyable; dare we say we were pleasantly surprised. It got us talking about the curious tension between author and manuscript. You have to be in love with it, because some powerful force needs to motivate you to take on so much work. But you also need to be your own work’s harshest critic if you really love it, because excising the merely good to make room for something great is also a ton of work. When you’re wrapped up in the crafting of prose, sometimes the big-picture aspects of the project become hazy. You need to get some distance once in a while. In that respect, our longer-than-planned hiatus had a silver lining.

We were each going to read it separately, but instead Kent wound up reading the whole (half) novel aloud. Jen was very appreciative. We made notes as we went, often discussing the book during our evening strolls. We did spot some gaps we’ll have to fill, and we agreed that some of what’s there will need significant changes. Some writers might opt to tackle those revisions by way of resuming the writing workflow, but we’re not going to do that. Now that the whole thing is again fresh in our collective mind, and we have good notes about the things we were concerned about in the first half, we’re going to move forward. That’s what nearly all the writing advice books say, and it’s one case where we firmly agree with them.

Getting back up to speed after a layoff is always tricky. Jen and Kent find that having a writing partner helps tremendously with overcoming the inertia that inevitably sets in. Even if you write solo, it’s a really good idea to connect with other writers somehow, such as through involvement with a critique group. You’ll feel a bit of peer pressure, which in this case is a good thing. With a collaborator, that incentive to be productive is always there.

“Professor Hillcrest, I Believe You Are Mistaken”

  • k-avatartotal perspective vortex
  • hillcrest
  • defiantly
  • brilliant blaze of silence

“Professor Hillcrest, I believe you are mistaken.”

The class gasped at Ryan’s audacity while the professor met his unprecedented verbal challenge with a brilliant blaze of silence. The old man’s cold stare was malicious, but Ryan met it defiantly.

The battle of wills continued, with Hillcrest standing mutely in front of the chalkboard where his fallacious proof went unfinished, and Ryan standing resolutely on the small platform which the professor had, in his arrogance, labeled the Total Perspective Vortex – the only spot in the lecture hall from which a student was allowed to speak.

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Victoria Hesitated

  • by jenhesitated
  • lights
  • lived
  • isolated

Victoria hesitated, staring across the water at the flickering lights. It really wasn’t her place to get involved. She knew she should just ignore the phenomenon and hurry home before her parents got worried. But there was something intriguing about the lights out on the isolated island where nobody lived. What would an extra few minutes matter?

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Collabo DIY-A-Palooza Part 2: Defining Your Process

r-avatarThis is the second post in our Nuts and Bolts series.

We all have different work styles, and there’s no one right way to write. If your style conflicts with your partner’s, however, trouble is going to be the result. Nothing stalls out a collaboration better than toiling over a passage until you’re thoroughly pleased with it, only to hear from your partner that it’s not what the project requires. The upshot is, however much structure you do or don’t like in your writing life, a successul collaboration probably means you’ll need a bit more.

Because you and your writing partner are not Jen and Kent, your optimal process will not be exactly the Rune Skelley formula. But it’s a good place to start and can be seasoned to taste. So, here’s the very broad strokes of How To Do It:

  • concept development (gotta find something you’re both really into)
  • outline (can be more like a synopsis, as long as it’s organized)
  • stubs (the Rune Skelley secret weapon!)
  • composition (turning stubs into scenes)
  • successive editing and revision passes (start with structure and pacing, then tighten up descriptions and dialog, and finally polish the prose)

All of the pieces are important, and we’ll talk about each of them again at some point, but the heart of the system is stubs.

Stubs are a lot like writing prompts, albeit very formalized ones. We’ve talked before about why we like them so much. Here’s the recipe.

  • limit the scope to one scene
  • specify the setting and characters (do this even if it feels too obvious)
  • add continuity notes about clothing, how many bullets are still in the gun, etc.
  • give bland, bald, simple statements of what everyone is feeling, which secrets they do and don’t know at this point, etc. (the stub must not be subtle, nor open to interpretation)
  • summarize the scene’s job, e.g., “this is how Mary finds out Bob is dead,” or “establishes Zeke’s obsession with parakeets”

Why can’t you just jump right into writing the scenes? You can. The reason we recommend creating stubs first is the extra structure. We find stubs are an ideal way to divvy things up between the two of us, and they help us identify places where we might not have exactly the same vision before they escalate into “creative differences.”

“Just Climb Over!”

  • k-avatarmoonless
  • collecting
  • snag
  • climb over!

“Just climb over!“

Trudy gave up fumbling with the latch and heaved herself over the gate. She felt her pocket snag, felt her bomber jacket become a trap, stranding her with one knee hooked over the top of the iron barricade and one foot waving uselessly a few inches from the ground where Emily crouched. The dogs were getting closer.

Collecting mushrooms in their familiar woods on a moonless October night, they had discovered, inexplicably, an ancient wrought-iron fence had separated them.

Trudy slipped one arm free of her coat and dropped beside Emily. She reached through the bars to extricate her pocket and heard a low growl.

Which side of the fence were the dogs on?

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Fin Stared at the “Stereotype Questionnaire”

  • by jencrucifix
  • stereotype questionnaire
  • drugs
  • pose
  • independently

Fin stared at the “stereotype questionnaire.” Was it worth it to fill the whole damn thing out, all 6 pages, for $25? He sighed. He needed the money.

#7 “What traits do you associate with women who use drugs? Check all that apply. Please work independently.”

Fuck it.

Being careful to stay within the ovals, Fin filled out his answer sheet so that the colored dots formed a rudimentary crucifix, with Jesus in a less-than-dignified pose.

He spent the next half hour napping, then handed in his papers and collected his cash.

Next stop: liquor store.

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Spoiler Telepathy

r-avatarAn important way that we’ve kept one foot in the writing universe while distracted from our usual routine is by attending our critique group meetings. In that environment, we are sometimes two people and sometimes just one.

If the work being critiqued is someone else’s, then Kent and Jen each provide separate feedback. Rune Skelley, per se, doesn’t offer any suggestions. However, when it’s Rune Skelley’s pages under discussion, then it’s Rune Skelley sitting at the table. We pass significant looks and sometimes literally pass notes to each other, but Jen usually finds just stepping on Kent’s foot under the table is enough to make her point.

The need for all this clandestine communication arises from spoilers. Maybe not every critique group runs this way, but we like to get “an honest read” on our material. Plot points and character motivations often look quite different when you’re clued in about where it all leads, which means a spoiled reader will see connections that others might miss. To get a feel for whether the story is tracking, we keep our readers in the dark.

But the whole point of the group is to talk shop. Sometimes you want to throw out hypothetical edits and see if people feel they’d improve the flow or clarity. Sometimes you simply need to confirm, “You guys know Wiggins robbed the bank and Jinks is just taking the fall, right?” Delving into real analysis of the text means flirting with spoilers.

This is where telepathy comes in handy. With a quirked eyebrow, Kent can ask if it’s okay to bring up a plot detail, and Jen will know which one he means. We can ride the line to keep our readers honest while still being able to have a conversation with them. And if Kent starts to babble, Jen can always step on his foot.