“Jessamin’s Twin is Benjamin”

  • by jenpolitical performance art
  • puked up feathers
  • Just be glad you don’t have to wear them.
  • cold, damp, and comfortable
  • complete with all the hot-dog inspired accessories

Tune in next time part 597    Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Jessamin’s twin is Benjamin,” I said. “Where she excels at villainy, he’s obsessed with political performance art. The last piece of his that I saw had him wearing a wad of puked up feathers to represent America’s relationship with the Canary Islands. Before his performance he said to me, ‘Just be glad you don’t have to wear them. They’re cold, damp, and comfortable enough to not cause lasting damage, but just barely.’ I told him nobody was making him wear them, and he told me I was wrong. His muse demanded that he dress that way, complete with all the hot-dog inspired accessories, and the mittens.” I shook my head.

“Why are you telling me about Benjamin?” Tessa asked.

“Wherever Jessamin goes, Benjamin follows. We’ll likely run into both of them and I want you to know what to expect.”

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Does Everybody Plot Like This?

We’re curious about something, and hoping some readers will chime in with ideas. The basic question is, “Are we weird?” We already know we are, in numerous ways. But we would like to know if it applies specifically to how we plot our stories.

The way we do things, we always nail down the What first, and mostly the Who, then the Why and How are the last parts to come into focus. That is an oversimplification, of course. The details of a What will often shift once we know the Why that goes with it, or a What might get assigned to a different Who, and so on. But in broad strokes, first we figure out the events and then we go back to study them and refine them.

It makes us feel like investigators. We know what happened, and we have a fair idea who did it, so we’re trying to learn what makes them tick. Get under their skin and understand how they’d be capable of such behavior. Ultimately the key need for us is to know these characters utterly, to be able to see and smell and touch their world. Although it might seem backwards, we find that having the plot mapped out first lets us know the characters more deeply by the time we start composing actual prose.

So: does that seem like a weird way to handle things? Or, is it (shudder) “normal”?

A writing partner is exactly as weird as necessary.

Maybe This Was A Lucky Break

  • by Kent“Now, there’s an exhibition of ball control,”
  • a girl who’d never been touched in a barn
  • also making tiaras
  • iconic red and white stripes
  • if thrown at your brother’s head

Tune in next time part 596    Click Here for Earlier Installments

Maybe this was a lucky break for me in my pursuit of Jessamin. This time she wouldn’t know I was so near. There was no way she could have known I would be arriving here, when I hadn’t even known it myself. But it was hard to shake the feeling that it fit her pattern perfectly for her to have gotten here first.

As thoughts about my villainous sister swirled in my head, I shifted my damp clothing around in hopes of drying it faster. Tessa sat in silence for a long time, until at last she said, “Now, there’s an exhibition of ball control,” at which I glanced down and noticed for the first time how close to her nose my giraffe bikinis were.

“Pardon me, not much room to operate in here.”

“No, it’s quite alright. The animal print is… evocative. I mean, did you think I was a girl who’d never been touched in a barn?”

I looked pointedly at the print on my briefs. “Must have been a tall barn.”

She nodded. “It had four levels. The animals stayed on the first two, and the upper ones were used for offices and also making tiaras for the animals to wear. But, none of this is important right now. What are we going to do when we get to Twerkistan?”

I recalled the last time I’d actually been in the same room with Jessamin, that she had been wearing the iconic red and white stripes of the family banner as a cape, and holding a conch shell in her hand. And she’d asked me, “Did you know that a shell like this, if thrown at your brother’s head, will knock him out long enough to get you a decent head-start?”

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“There’s No Time to Explain”

  • by jengiraffe bikini
  • making laser noises from the shadows
  • thick, plastic liquid that hardens in a few hours
  • brothers and sisters I’ve apparently never met
  • gripping the animal by its dainty hooves

Tune in next time part 595    Click Here for Earlier Installments

“There’s no time to explain,” I said. “We have to get to Twerkistan.”

“We can’t.” said Tessa. “The weather is awful, and all you’re wearing are giraffe bikini briefs.”

I sighed. “You’re right. I wish my clothes would dry faster.”

“So since we do in fact have the time, why don’t you tell me who you think the cop is.”

“She’s not really a cop. She just likes to dress like one.” I tried to think how best to describe her. “Her name is Jessamin. She’s my sister, and she’s a villain. I’ve been chasing her for years, and she’s always one step ahead of me, making laser noises from the shadows and laughing. Once she broke into my room and dipped all my most precious things in a thick, plastic liquid that hardens in a few hours.”

“You have brothers and sisters I’ve apparently never met,” Tessa said.

“I have brothers and sisters I’ve never met. My parents got around.”

I shuddered at the memory of my stuffed pegasus, once so soft and cuddly. I pictured Jessamin preparing to encase it in plastic, gripping the animal by its dainty hooves, a wicked grin on her face.

But what was she doing interfering with a police investigation in Twerkistan?

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How Old Did You Say You Are?

The Ghost series is shaping up to be a generations-spanning saga. That’s a fair description of most of what happens in the Writing Cave, so we’re used to setting up timelines that show when all our characters are born and (often) when they die.

What is a little different this time is that we’re starting off with the full knowledge that what we’re building is a generations-spanning saga, so our pre-writing process is being applied to the whole series. We mentioned already that picking up Book 2 immediately revealed unresolved questions in our “exhaustive” plotting of Book 1. That hasn’t really stopped. Book 2 planning is well along at this point, but today there was yet another example of something that we thought was already settled showing itself to be up in the air.

It’s those birth and death dates this time. Not all of them (whew!) but a few, and one character in particular whose age matters to the plot.

This made us glad that we are planning out the whole series up front, of course. If we had written Book 1, it would be a lot more work to adjust someone’s age. And if we’d published it, then we’d be stuck.

A writing partner is someone who ages like fine wine. (And helps you organize your multigenerational epic, too.)

Tessa Leaned Her Head to the Side

  • by Kentnot allowed to wear pants
  • there are no rules when you’re moving backward
  • moving at a sloth’s pace
  • darker than the Devil’s ass
  • accompanied by a reporter and police officer

Tune in next time part 594    Click Here for Earlier Installments

Tessa leaned her head to the side, pondering. Then she gave it a fetching little shake.

“Fingertips, in the library?” I waved my hands so emphatically that I banged them into the walls of the outhouse. “Add that together and you can only get one answer: biblio-zombies. People who died with unfinished reading.”

“Wouldn’t that be most people?”

“Well, there is a bit more to it of course. Necromancy, of the kind where you’re not allowed to wear pants. And if you accidentally put pants on, you have to walk backward because there are no rules when you’re moving backward. But the zombies are fragile, dropping pieces even when they’re moving at a sloth’s pace. The wretched things, borne of magic darker than the Devil’s ass, and their fingertips are the most delicate of all.”

Tessa looked worried. “This all sounds weird, even for you.”

“Look at the article,” I implored. “It’ll say that the wizard wore a robe — no pants — and I’ll bet anything our nimble photo-ratface was involved.”

She consulted the page again. “It says the wizard was accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Suppose the reporter is our paparazzo. How does the cop figure?”

My jaw clenched. I had a fair idea who that was, too.

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“I’m Not Fond of the Smell in Here”

  • by jenenhanced by the extreme slipperiness
  • Then again, maybe it’s the perfect place
  • the librarians themselves did not have the slightest idea
  • where these fingertips came from
  • to believe in magic

Tune in next time part 593    Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I’m not fond of the smell in here,” I said as my nose wrinkled. “Twerkistan is primitive as cities go, but it’s got to be better than this poop shack.”

I opened the door and stepped out into a burst of sleet, which, enhanced by the extreme slipperiness of the Bumpbengryndian snow, dumped me on my ass. I grabbed the doorframe and pulled myself back in, saying, “Then again, maybe it’s the perfect place to ride out this storm.”

Tessa slammed the door closed. I stripped off my now-soaked clothes and began the very slow process of drying them by the heat of the miserly oil lamp. Tessa took up the newspaper that was on hand for use in butt-wiping, and read to me an article about a gruesome discovery at the Twerkistan public libraries. “The librarians themselves did not have the slightest idea where these fingertips came from, or whose they were. But they quickly grew tired of finding them in the card catalog drawers every morning. Usually not ones to believe in magic, they made an exception and called upon a local wizard for help. After his visit, there were no more fingertips in the card catalog. Instead they were found, first thing each day, stuck to the keyboard of the public computer.”

A shiver ran down my spine — not one caused by the icy conditions outside. “Fingertips! You know what that means.”

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When “Mysterious” Doesn’t Cut It

Ghost Story progress update: we have preliminary rainbows for all four books, and the Book 1 rainbow has been expanded considerably. We are now working on building out the rainbow for Book 2. It’s going very well, but we have discovered that we struggle to make firm decisions where a particular character is concerned.

This person’s column tends to be a bit sparse when we first lay out each rainbow. It’s someone we originally pictured as an enigmatic background figure, who would just turn up to chuckle darkly now and then. Turn up at significant moments in the story, of course. Well, we need to understand what’s responsible for the timing of those appearances, which means we need to know more about this character.

It hasn’t been any problem at all to invent fun backstory. The problem has been winnowing down the fun ideas to just those that don’t contradict each other, and arranging them into a coherent line through the plot. Those conversations are filled with too much “maybe this” and “maybe that” and not enough “okay, that’s settled.”

But we are getting there. It’s just turning out to be tougher to get to know this person than most of the rest of the cast. Which isn’t surprising, considering that the first thing we pinned down was “enigmatic.” How right we were.

A writing partner is someone who’ll help you dig up all the dirt about your most uncooperative characters, and then sift through it for treasure.

“None of Us Know”

  • by Kentweird hiccup action
  • spontaneous in origin and artistically harmonized
  • Are you two brothers?
  • kinda fun, in a spill-proof way
  • slaughter any scouting parties we encountered

Tune in next time part 592    Click Here for Earlier Installments

“None of us know exactly how many others exist,” the Tessabot explained. “We’ve just run into each other now and then and shared info. My nickname is…” She rolled her eyes. “Do I have to tell you?”

I nodded.

Her voice dropped so much I could barely hear her say it. “The Toot Fairy.”

“Did you say ‘Tooth Fairy’?” I asked hopefully.

“No, the Toot Fairy,” she repeated. Each time she said the name there was some kind of weird hiccup action on the word ‘toot.’ She sighed. “There’s no real system to the nicknames; our goal was for them to be spontanous in origin and aritistically harmonized.”

“How about if I keep calling you Tessa?”

She nodded gratefully. “Even though it does sometimes give me an identity crisis.”

“That I can relate to,” I said. “Having a twin. As kids we seldom went around together, but anytime we did people would see us and ask, ‘Are you two brothers?‘”

She laughed.

I said, “We really do need to reach Twerkistan. Never mind the photographer, it’s a matter of basic survival.”

“Speak for yourself. I can last indefinitely in the wilderness. Being a TSS-A Unit has its advantages, and can be kinda fun, in a spill-proof way.”

“Spill-proof? And here I was counting on you to slaughter any scouting parties we encountered on the way.”

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The Isles of Bumpengrynd Were so Small

  • by jenwasn’t on any contemporary maps
  • a dismal little oil lamp
  • her American counterpart, Dr Roverpants
  • through brute force and righteous anger
  • every modeling agency, every dance academy

Tune in next time part 591    Click Here for Earlier Installments

The Isles of Bumpengrynd were so small and remote that the capital city, Twerkistan, wasn’t on any contemporary maps you could find on the internet. So of course this desolate rest stop lit only by a dismal little oil lamp was utterly vacant. The Tessabot sighed and plopped down on the primitive toilet. “Why are we even chasing this photographer?” she asked.

“To stop him from selling the pictures he took of us.”

“Why does it even matter? You can deny everything. You have a twin and no one will be able to tell which T-SSA Unit I am.” She went on to tell me about her American counterpart, Dr Roverpants, a Tessabot I had never met. That made at least three of them, and this Tessabot had ridiculous nicknames for the other two. Dr Roverpants, through brute force and righteous anger, took over every modeling agency, every dance academy, and the majority of the escort services in Miami. The one she called Professor Twinkletush was the one I’d seen thrown off a rooftop in Valentine Village.

“How many of you are there?”  I asked. “And what do the others call you?”

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