Stop Laughing Like That

  • Stop laughing like that, you monster!
  • a wash of heat in his genitals
  • if they never killed a fox
  • then her lips twitched
  • and Philip swallowed

“Stop laughing like that, you monster!”

The  sound of Lola’s voice, so imperious, prompted a wash of heat in his genitals. But still he laughed, because a pretty lady in nothing but a fur coat is a vastly entertaining sight. And he was thinking how she would look at this moment if they never killed a fox, never made her coat.

“Philip, find my clothes! This is unforgivable!”

He started to think he’d made her too angry, but then her lips twitched into a lascivious smile, just for a moment, and Philip swallowed.

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Leonard is a Strange Person

  • by jenthe kitchen will have been aired out
  • I’ve been up for x-rays
  • making it a family affair
  • had seen that ghostly face!
  • until it was eleven
  • Leonard is a strange person

Leonard is a strange person. How I wish I never had seen that ghostly face! But see it I did on that fateful February day, along with my wife, my sister-in-law, and my six nephews, making it a family affair.

I’ve been up for for x-rays numerous times since in a futile attempt to discern what Leonard did to us, but so far the doctors have been unable to offer a diagnosis.

Whatever Leonard, that strange person, did it caused us all to become confused about our favorite television programs, and is most confounding.

My poor wife will open the kitchen window for a moment to clear the smell of frying sausages, but will become distracted pondering whether she prefers David Letterman or Conan O’Brien, and by the time she figures it out the kitchen will have been aired out until it was eleven degrees!

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Sharing a Voice

A common remark about our work is that it feels seamless. Our fellow writers express surprise at being unable to pick out which parts Kent wrote and which parts Jen wrote. This is an important element of our partnership, and it’s not something that happens by accident.

Maintaining this common voice requires attention at all stages of the process. It falls out more naturally in the early steps, because we typically work together when developing story concepts and outlining a plot. Once we have the scene list, we break that down so that we each get approximately half, and for the next little while we tend to be working individually more often than not.

Composing separately allows us to generate a draft in half the time, but if we’re not careful it could also allow us to run into big problems. If our interpretations of the target voice aren’t alike, the scenes might not mesh. So we keep each other updated on our progress, and we critique the scenes as they’re written. This keeps us from straying in different stylistic directions, although after working as a team for a few years we can “do the voice” automatically at this point.

Revision is when we do most of the blending. Jen works the scenes that are a little too Kent, and vice-versa, so we don’t leave any loose edges for the reader to trip on. The objective isn’t to take out each partner’s individual flair, but to make sure the combined effect is fluid and harmonious throughout. Sometimes that does require toning certain things down, but only if they were genuinely overdone in the first place.

For example, Kent has a proclivity for ostentatious word usage. Not just trotting out the expensive words like “proclivity,” but also a perverse drive to exploit the most arcane connotations of familiar words. A useful skill for an author, but also a really effective way to limit readership if it’s not managed. And, if it cropped up at seemingly random times it could easily feel like another story invading. Rather than removing all of the fancy verbiage, we make sure it’s evenly represented (at a reasonable level) throughout.

There’s a lot more we could say about this aspect of a writing partnership. After all, being able to work well with each other doesn’t matter if your results feel cobbled-together. So we’ll be revisiting this in future posts.

 

Carlton Rode with Me

  • kissed my hand and ran away
  • Whom will it kill?
  • flung the elevator door wide
  • you breathe carbon monoxide from your lungs
  • the customers murmured
  • reptilian latex sheath

Carlton rode with me to the nineteenth, flung the elevator door wide, kissed my hand and ran away. Did he know something? Should I not get off on the twentieth as I’d planned?

By that point in my contemplations the car had gone up another floor and the door softly opened on its own. With a shrug, I stepped off into the corridor.

“You breathe carbon monoxide from your lungs. Whom will it kill?” I mused aloud. “Are you up here?”

No answer.

A nearby door let into a bookstore. The alien was there, holding a feng-shui guide in one paw. The appendage was covered in a reptilian latex sheath like the rest of the creature.

The customers murmured.

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Cecelia Opened the Door

  • by jensomething else inside that boy’s head
  • the Upright Man’s precious cargo
  • the reality of Paul’s shoes
  • the fir tree smelled
  • felt indecently robust
  • I thought you were in Africa
  • a large number of plastic crates

Cecelia opened the door and saw Paul standing on her front porch amid a large number of plastic crates.

“I thought you were in Africa!” she cried and gave him a hug.

“I was.” He gestured to the crates. “The Upright Man’s precious cargo proved easy to retrieve.”

Cecelia invited her brother inside and waited for him to remove his shoes. The reality of Paul’s shoes is that they were of a highly complicated design and it took a long time for him to unfasten them. She gave up waiting and went to make them some coffee. By the time Paul joined her in the kitchen, the coffee felt indecently robust on the tongue.

They carried their mugs into the living room and sat by the Christmas tree, watching the lights blink on and off. The fir tree smelled like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. It was one of the new genetic hybrids. But Paul didn’t even seem to notice.

There must be something else inside that boy’s head besides the holidays, Cecelia thought. I wonder where the Upright Man is.

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Sharing the Load with A Writing Partner

Last night was an interesting case in our collaboration workflow.

We’re revising the first draft of our third novel, after poring over all the marked-up copies from our critique group and also doing a fresh read-through of our own. The result is that we have about one hundred significant notes marked throughout the manuscript (Along with another couple hundred picky mechanical things).

This book is the last of a trilogy, which means it relies on knowledge from the first two. In an ideal world it would stand on its own, but this is not an ideal world. The need for recap and reminders about previous events applies somewhat in any sizable work, but it’s especially important to manage it well when the information spans more than one volume. Due to the somewhat unusual structure to our trilogy, this problem did not arise in volume 2, which makes this the first time we’ve had to attempt this delicate balance. Too much recap and the reader gets bored, too little and the reader gets lost.

So after flagging all the notes as “recap” or “other,” we discussed how to divvy up the load. One of the main advantages to working with a writing partner is that many hands make light work. With both collaborators working at the same time you can get done sooner. I proposed that I could take all the recaps, because it looked like roughly half of the work and it felt like there would be a mode to get into with it. My writing partner would tackle all the “other” stuff. My theory was there would be less shifting gears if all the recap-type stuff was given to the same person.

My partner was reluctant to embrace the idea, largely because this recapping is new territory for our collaboration. She was concerned that if I started out headed in the wrong direction I might get lost in some backwoods swamp of info-dumps and “as you know Bob.” We talked about it a bit more and came up with a plan that addressed the concerns. Because we don’t have an established model to follow, we agreed that I’d only do one to start off, and then we’d look it over and make sure we both liked the approach.

That first discussion did lead to some minor alterations, and the same thing happened with the next one. We’re finding the right groove, and soon I’ll be able to cook up batches of three or four at a time. Or, if she gets tired of hunting down minor plot inconsistencies and describing settings and character clothing in greater detail, we will be able to trade off assignments and maintain the level of stylistic consistency we need.

Her Eyes Closed, Her Mouth Shut

  • like two chicken pies warming at noon
  • all five of them
  • We just got to see Chicago, by god!
  • amidst his squirrel friends with a bag of nuts
  • gaze pensively off into the mists
  • her eyes closed, her mouth shut

Her eyes closed, her mouth shut. Or maybe it was the other way around. She left her boyfriend to gaze pensively off into the mists amidst his squirrel friends with a bag of nuts dangling from his hand, forgotten.

Like two chicken pies warming at noon with no one around to eat them, so did their hearts beat side-by-side but not together.

This boyfriend was like all the rest — all five of them were listless mist-gazers, pensive and befriended by arboreal rodents.

“This road trip is over,” she declared.

“But why?” the boyfriend whined. “We just got to see Chicago, by god!”

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Desdemona Smiled

  • by jenbut they still had logs enough
  • this was a popular shrine
  • the doorway of the weaving shed
  • platters of root vegetables
  • He is brisk in bed.
  • the stick he was using

Desdemona smiled and gestured to her crotch. “This was a popular shrine when I was younger. Now the fickle young men prefer others. But they still had logs enough for my purposes in the house of the elders, I found.

“Take Igor for instance,” Desdemona said of her most recent suitor. “He is brisk in bed. The stick he was using, if you’ll pardon the expression, gave more pleasure than all the platters of root vegetables stacked in the doorway of the weaving shed for winter ever could. If you know what I mean.”

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Huzzah for Outlines!

Some writers love outlines, some hate them, some simply acknowledge their usefulness. Whichever group you fall into when writing on your own, you’ll find that when you work with a writing partner, an outline is your new best friend.

There probably are successful collaborations that just wing it, but that way is inefficient. In order for both partners to write simultaneously, there needs to be an understanding of where the plot is going. An outline will be your guide, showing you where your scene should begin and where it should end so that it will mesh with the scene your partner is writing. The outline also helps you track your progress and manage your time (beneficial for a soloist, too). It helps you divvy up the work, because you can see which sections feature the elements that each partner has the right “touch” with.

A good friend of ours argues that outlining a story takes away all of the creativity and spontaneity. We say that’s just not true. An outline should only constrain your wildest impulses while still allowing you creative freedom. You know that your scene begins with your hero and heroine having breakfast at a diner and ends with one of them being kidnapped off the street. That leaves a lot of room in the middle for you to be as inventive as you want to be.

The conversations that lead up to the creation of the outline are where you get to go crazy. Brainstorm as many plot twists, character quirks, and complications as you want, then work with your writing partner to cull the best and shape them into a story you both love.

The level of detail in your outline will depend on the type of story you are writing, the number of characters you feature, and the needs of your collaboration. Don’t get hung up on formalities. There’s no reason to force your story into a traditional outline form, with roman numerals and multiple nested subsections. Do that if you want, or structure it more like a synopsis. It can be a series of short paragraphs, or one huge string of “and then this happens, and then this happens.” It can be as detailed or as sketchy as you and your writing partner want. The level of detail can even vary throughout. Perhaps there’s a big scene where you can picture in your mind exactly how everything happens. Go ahead and include all those delicious details in your outline. But if there’s a scene where all you know is that it gets your antagonist from Point A to Point B, that’s fine too. That’s where you (or your writing partner) will get to be creative later. And remember, you can always revise the outline as you write.

All We Had To Eat

  • which stank as if hyenas had once lived there
  • a little knob on its side
  • scraped off the rhino skulls
  • meat and berries
  • voles, grouse, foxes
  • their hair was curly, but only loosely so
  • consisted of a skin loin cloth

All we had to eat was meat and berries, which had to be scraped off the rhino skulls. One skull had a little knob on its side, and Edgar claimed it for his own exclusive use. Mine was yellowed, an ancient specimen which stank as if hyenas had once lived there. Already I’d lost twelve pounds.

I was on the trail of voles, grouse, foxes, or fish when I discovered the other encampment. Their hair was curly, but only loosely so. I drew a map on the only suitable material I possessed, which consisted of a skin loincloth.

It was at that moment, scribbling away with a dirty stick at the underside of my meager garment, that I first laid eyes on Minerva.

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