My, This Slope is Slippery

Back in the day, Rune Skelley could be found hard at work in the prose mines nearly every single evening. We toiled behind our keyboards night after night, weekdays and weekends, only taking time off for real emergencies. We got a lot done, but we also burned out. We didn’t want it to be as catastrophic as the time we remodeled our master bathroom and got so burned out we abandoned the project for six months and just used the bathroom in the hall, so we modified our schedule.

It started with taking Friday evenings off. We allowed ourselves some time to relax. Most of the Go! Go! Go! attitude came from Jen, so to ease her into the “weekends aren’t the enemy” mindset, we started by watching movies that could count as research. When she saw that we were able to take an evening off once a week and not lose our momentum, that rule relaxed and we now watch whatever the hell we want.

Things started to slip a little bit during the early days of the pandemic. We had dinner with Jen’s mom once a week, but at the same time we stopped having weekly writer’s group meetings so we told ourselves it all balanced out. Even though in the good old days, the only reason we didn’t have to work on Writer’s Group night is that Group counted as work. Visiting Jen’s mom, not so much.

And then we spent a solid year outlining the Ghost Series. One of the best things about brainstorming is that you can do it anywhere. Another of the best things about it is that it doesn’t take long to get into the right gear to do it. Work sessions can be short and still be quite productive.

All this slipperiness on the slopes started to turn into an avalanche when we were hit with a double whammy: we started having regular (though virtual) group meetings again, and we started actually writing Untitled Ghost Novel #1. Suddenly we couldn’t work in the car on the way to and from our family dinners, and we had another evening commitment on our schedule, and the short work sessions we’d learned to sneak in between episodes of Supernatural and Ted Lasso weren’t cutting it. Sad to say, instead of knuckling down we are now more likely to come up with excuses to skip writing sessions. “Would you look at that? It’s so late. There’s no point in trying to get the fiction engines spooled up now! Better just go watch Severance.” “We’ll get in a good long work session on Saturday (as long as the weather prevents Kent from doing yard work).” “It’s my birthday, and I want to just chill and eat cheesecake.” “It’s the dog’s birthday and I just want to chill and eat cheesecake while the dog wears a funny hat.” etc.

Untitled Ghost Novel #1 is coming along, but not as quickly as it ought to. We had a Very Serious Talk about it today and vowed to do better. But we did not pinkie-swear. When we pinkie-swear you’ll know we really mean it.

A writing partner is someone who values your pinkies as much as their own.

 

“I’m Not Leaving This Pod”

  • by Kentwith a warrant and a helicopter
  • seven totally different stories
  • (slightly less enthusiastically, to be honest)
  • strange yet becoming coiffure
  • “I swallowed it,”

Tune in next time part 716      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I’m not leaving this pod unless you come back with a warrant and a helicopter that will take me away from this doomed gasbag,” John said petulantly.

“You’re the one who doomed it!” I yelled, wondering why his list of demands didn’t include clean pants.

“Am I?” He squinted at me. “Or is someone trying to frame me? If you ask seven different people what happened you’ll hear seven totally different stories. Those people will be happy to assure you their version is the truth, and I’ll say mine is too (slightly less enthusiastically, to be honest).”

“Why are you stalling?” I demanded.

“Do you think I want to be here?” John whimpered. “Do you think I was eager to sign up for this mission? Knowing it meant I would die on a zeppelin? But the orders were delivered by a fetching operative with a strange yet becoming coiffure, who convinced me it’s an important assignment and my fate is small in comparison. Harmonia and Contraria getting into a skirmish won’t even make headlines. But this thing getting blown out of the sky with a Plentylvanian noblewoman on board? Amid so much Svenborgian intrigue of late? That will alter the course of history!”

I shook my head in disgust. “You got played. I mean, does anyone else even know there’s a Plentylvanian on board this vessel?” I skipped over the part where I hadn’t known about it myself until ten seconds ago. “John, they teach this stuff first year at The Academy. Why would you swallow such an obvious ruse?”

“I swallowed it,” he began, “because…”

Whatever he was about to say was drowned out by klaxons.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Mother’s Temper Should Not Have Surprised John

  • by jenI come from the land of plenty
  • the slimy creature refusing to budge
  • Do you not think something’s missing, brother?
  • prioritizing your coital carnival
  • gold-painted, life-size statue of his voluptuous wife

Tune in next time part 715      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Mother’s temper should not have surprised John, and while it is quite frightful, I would expect a seasoned espionage agent like him to have more intestinal fortitude. The sight of my nemesis with a load in his ceremonial jammies ought to make me smile, but instead it made me wary. What exactly had Mother done to him?

Through the escape pod door I heard her say, “I come from the land of Plentylvania, a descendent of the royal line. I can’t believe I’m married to the slimy creature refusing to budge from this escape pod and fix his error.”

Mother a Plentylvanian? The idea was shocking. And yet…

I remembered working on a family tree project with Jason, tracing our line back many generations on Father’s side. Mother’s side was starkly empty. “Do you not think something’s missing brother?” Jason asked. Now it all fell into place. Plentylvania was a small country, completely surrounded by (and always at war with) Svenborgia.

The escape pod door slid open and Mother confronted me. “I couldn’t help but witness your parade of children. It’s clear that you were prioritizing your coital carnival instead of countersurveilling John like you were ordered to do.”

“None of this is my fault,” I insisted. “Get out here, John, and restart the engines.”

“All I ever wanted,” whined John, “was to be the kind of guy who had a gold-painted, life-size statue of his voluptuous wife in his office, and now I’m going to die in a zeppelin.”

“Not if you restart the engines.”

“And stop pissing off your wife,” Mother added.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

A Stub By Any Other Name

Here on this blog, we like to sing the praises of the components of our writing process. One that’s particularly helpful to us, and thus gets a lot of mention, is stubs. Which means we get to say “stub” a lot. “Stub stub, stubby-stub stubs. Stubbed stubbing stub stub. Stub.” It’s concise and descriptive, but it’s really not a very pretty word.

Maybe we should do a little rebranding. If it had a sexier name, maybe we’d get invited do guest lectures. Let’s see… if prose is the flower, that makes this a bud. Hmm. “Bud bud buddy-bud” isn’t much of an improvement. Perhaps it could be a scene seed? Or a sceneling? Perhaps not, on both counts. Well, a good stub has a lot in common with a good recipe. Should we call it a prose recipe? We probably should not.

Maybe there’s a way to make the existing name seem hip. What if it was a clever acronym? Technically a backronym, but we don’t need to dwell on that.

S.T.U.B. = Story Template Unit Block
S.T.U.B. = Short Tactical Utility Belt
StUB = (St)ory Unfinished Bit
STuB = Synopsized (Tu)lip Bulb
S.T.U.B. = Synthetic Text in an Unlit Basement

What is becoming increasingly clear is why we focus on the writing, and seek help from others for the marketing.

It doesn’t really matter what they’re called — stubs are great. A good stub makes you feel prepared to write the right scene, much the way a cook can rely on a recipe. It tells you what you’re going to need and why. In a partnership scenario it’s especially valuable, the same way the recipe can assure success whoever’s turn it is to make dinner. (All joking aside, stubs really could be rebranded as “prose recipes.” We just aren’t going to be the ones to do that.)

If I Didn’t Stop John

  • by Kentcould not have depicted yon mountains
  • How far up does that thing go?
  • blowing smoke rings
  • this is not a wine for drinking
  • lumpy inside the pants

Tune in next time part 714      Click Here for Earlier Installments

If I didn’t stop John from using an escape pod, there would be no way to make him restore control of the vessel. We would cross into Harmonian airspace and start a war. My best hope was that Mother was with him, slowing him down.

None of the escape pods had jettisoned by the time I reached them. That was the good news. The bad news was that I had no idea where John was, if not in an escape pod. I was about to turn back when I heard bickering from one of the pods. I peered in through the viewport and saw John and Mother facing each other, framing a jagged, snowy mountain range through their pod’s windshield. Had I been the most talented painter in the world, I could not have depicted yon mountains more aptly as a metaphor for the conversation I was overhearing.

It seemed that John’s sabotage panel on the dance floor had disabled the escape pods along with the airship’s main controls. Mother’s temper was sorely elevated. One might ask, about her temper, “How far up does that thing go?” and I could tell you truthfully, “All the way.” I remember more than one occasion when she was blowing smoke rings out of her nostrils, and once, from her ears.

I didn’t want to, but I rapped on the glass. If the look on Mother’s face had been wine, the label would have carried a warning label like “this is not a wine for drinking, it is a wine for cleaning battery terminals.” For the first time I noticed that John was not angry. His face bore the look of someone who was feeling lumpy inside the pants, and probably smelling up that escape pod.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

The Make Everything Sound Dirty Code

  • by jenwhich people tend to find charming
  • visible from our tower
  • greases itself daily
  • an abrupt turn on Tuesday
  • but he never showed

Tune in next time part 713      Click Here for Earlier Installments

The Make Everything Sound Dirty Code is the sort of code which people tend to find charming when they first hear about it, but grow to despise when exposed to it in the field. It poisons your mind, and soon everything, no matter how innocuously intended, takes on a lascivious double meaning. I don’t like to even think about it. “That’s what she said,” I muttered. It was starting already! “If this keeps up, I’ll scream — name of your sex tape.”

Fleur looked at me pityingly. A uniformed woman ran up and handed her a slip of paper. “We’re being hailed by Harmonian Air Traffic Control,” she whispered.

I read the message over Fleur’s shoulder. “Contrarian Airship, you are visible from our tower. As you know, our landing strip greases itself daily as a defense against invasion, and our heat-seeking missiles are cocked and ready. Turn back now.”

My brain was reeling with innuendo. Greasy landing strips, fully-cocked missiles. Fleur could see the panic in my eyes, and did the favor of slapping me across the face.

“Thanks,” I said. “I needed that.”

“Airships are slow-moving,” Fleur reminded me. “If we want to avoid war with Harmonia we need to execute an abrupt turn on Tuesday, no later than 1:00 in the morning.” As she finished speaking, all the grandfather clocks aboard the zeppelin struck midnight. “And now it’s Tuesday. We have to get the engines started again, pronto.”

I looked around for the groom, but both he and bride were nowhere to be seen. “Where is John?” I asked.

“He went down that corridor.” Fleur pointed.

“Toward the escape pods?!”

“Of course he saw them during the safety drill, but he never showed any interest in premature evacuation.”

“That’s. What. She. Said.”

I ran after John at top speed.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Balancing Act

Have you heard the good news about stubs? The scene-by-scene synopses that form a handy-dandy bridge between the outline and the finished prose are invaluable to our process. Think of them as the beta version of your first draft.

In addition to obvious things, like blocking scenes and deciding where they will be set, stubs are a great way to debug the plot before it’s written. Take our current Work-In-Progress, the Ghost Novel. The section of the outline that we’ve reached could appear on the page in any number of ways. As Jen wrangles its ungainly shape into stubs, she’s working hard to streamline it. Most scenes will end up doing double, triple, (quadruple?) duty, providing a much richer reading experience. The process also allows us to make sure point of view is distributed fairly evenly among our characters. Sometimes there’s a legitimate reason to stick with a certain character’s take on events for a good long stretch, but quite often it’s more interesting to switch it up and see through someone else’s eyes. Working in stub format, it’s a lot quicker to play around with structure until we hit upon the most exciting option.

A writing partner is someone who encourages you to experiment until you get the right answer.

“I Was Nearly Murdered”

  • by Kentsomeone I don’t trust
  • having an innuendo-filled conversation
  • equal parts fever and swamp
  • Americans with a full set of teeth
  • murdered by hand

Tune in next time part 712      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I was nearly murdered by hand-delivered harpoon” is something not many Americans with a full set of teeth can honestly say. “My best friend tried to murder me thusly, and went on to marry my mother” sounds like ravings that would be equal parts fever and swamp gas. Welcome to my life.

“None of the officers know how to regain control of the ship,” Fleur said in a low voice. “We need to know who programmed this control panel, so they can tell us how to override it.”

“I know who it is,” I said wearily. I was in no mood to talk to John. The fact that I’d need to use words like “buttons,” “airship,” and “dance floor,” all of which were part of the Make Everything Sound Dirty Code, didn’t help. “Let’s track down the happy couple. Looks like I’ll be having an innuendo-filled conversation with someone I don’t trust.”

bonus points for using them in reverse order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

I Took in the Scene

  • by jensilently wondering
  • he likes to sing along
  • the third weapon
  • fusillade of cheerful inquiries
  • impaled his foot

Tune in next time part 711      Click Here for Earlier Installments

I took in the scene, silently wondering what sort of idiot would install a zeppelin control panel on the dance floor. I decided it was an idiot so idiotic he likes to sing along to songs he doesn’t know the words to. That’s his first weapon: being annoying. His second is failing to understand that he’s not the smartest guy in the room. And the third weapon in this idiot’s arsenal is a fusillade of cheerful inquiries that distracts the actual experts from their jobs and allows something like this to happen. Nay, forces. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this was no mere act of stupidity, but one of sabotage!  And I knew just who the saboteur was, too. When we were at the Academy, I impaled his foot with a harpoon during training and he’s never forgiven me (even though I got extra credit for it). He’d followed me throughout my life ever since, threatening me with harpoons (the fourth weapon in his arsenal), stealing my girlfriends, and now, finally, marrying my mother. I didn’t know when he’d had the time to visit the shipyard where Royal Contrarian Airships are built, but it had to be him. John was just the sort of idiot to install a zeppelin control panel on the dance floor of the very airship upon which he would later hold an elaborate wedding reception.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

The Season of the Stubs

We’ve got about 20 scenes in the bag so far on the Ghost Novel. With the two of us both creating prose, we’ve made decent progress despite the ceaseless distractions of the world today and the summertime schedule disruptions of road trips and family get-togethers.

In the past week, however, this double-fisted writing approach has not been available to us. The first batch of stubs had 21 of them in it, so we’re very nearly out. Therefore, while Kent plugs away at those last couple of scenes we have stubs for, Jen has shifted her focus and is generating the next batch of stubs.

We always have the entire outline written first, so in theory Jen could do the stubs for the whole book all at once. In practice, though, we’ve learned that it’s good not to get too far ahead of ourselves with that. Our understanding — of the characters and of the story world’s physics — deepens as we write. Which means, the assumptions baked into a stub get farther and farther off-base the farther downstream we go, until eventually we would have to just throw the rest of them out and redo them.

It’s paradoxical that the outline stays fairly solid while the stubs go astray. Yet that’s what happens.

So, Jen does them in batches. How many in a batch? There’s no set number, but it’s generally in the 15-20 range. That’s enough to keep us busy for a while, but not so many that we have the sort of problem mentioned above. We like it when a batch gets us up to a landmark event of some kind in the plot. The quicker the stubs are locked down, the sooner she can get back to writing prose alongside Kent.

A writing partner is someone who can shift gears based on where you are in the project.