Once More, From the Top

In broad strokes we know how the Ghost Series will end. Broad strokes don’t quite cut it, though, do they? Endings are important, the final ending most important of all.

There are, generally speaking, three different ways to structure a series. The first approach is to take a big story and cut it into bite-size pieces. The second is one in which each book is a self-contained story with a distinct beginning and ending, with little forward movement or continuity from installment to installment. Third is the approach we prefer to write, a sort of hybrid of the first two. There’s an overarching story told through the whole series, but each novel tells a distinct section of that story. It’s not that each book stands on its own, but that each tells a satisfying story on its own. But that means that, by the time a reader gets to the end, it needs to build to something truly spectacular. The ending needs to mean it.

As we talk through the four books we’re planning for our Ghost Series, we keep circling back to the finale, filling in more detail. The most recent time we talked about it, we hit a bit of a wall. The fresh insights weren’t flowing. So, heeding our own advice, we set the ending aside and circled back to the beginning again. And lo! Looking at those two points back-to-back was just what we needed to do. It shone a spotlight on some thematic things that were there all along, just below the surface. As soon as we dragged them out and dusted them off, it sparked all sorts of ideas. Concrete ideas about actual actions our characters will take! Not that they’ll be happy about it, of course.

We’re certainly not done with the ending. It will continue to grow and evolve as we work our way through the four books. By revisiting it from time to time throughout our process, we can refine it, and keeping it fresh in our minds gives us something to aim for as we plot.

Four novels worth of story is a ton to keep track of, but having a writing partner makes it a little easier. And a lot more fun.

My Outdated Woodchuck Lore

  • by Kentwhich is really my finger
  • roommate is tracking your pee schedule
  • saddest rendition of 12 Days of Christmas
  • some kind of caveman toilet
  • shoveling eggs into your gaping maw

Tune in next time part 590    Click Here for Earlier Installments

My outdated woodchuck lore was of little use to me now, and likewise my infallible direction finder, which is really my finger after I apply a bit of saliva, meant nothing when we had tracks to follow through the snow. But if there’s one thing they drill into you at the Academy, when the librarian is siccing ninjas on you to collect late fees and your roommate is tracking your pee schedule for purposes you don’t care to understand, it’s how to persevere in a desperate trek on improvised snowshoes.

To keep our spirits up as darkness fell, I began the world’s saddest rendition of 12 Days of Christmas. I was up to “11 ladies glancing away in remorse” when we abruptly reached the end of the trail. The foul photog’s footprints just stopped.

“Did you see a helicopter,” I asked Tessa, “or a really, really big owl?”

She shook her head, then pointed to the left. In the shelter of a copse of fir trees was what looked like some kind of caveman toilet. It was unoccupied, but surely seemed to be the best clue available. So we approached it.

“I bet you wish we were still on that boat,” she said.

“Nah. I wish we were on a cruise ship.”

She snorted. “I can just imagine you at the buffet, shoveling eggs into your gaping maw for hours on end.”

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Dashing Through the Snow With a Robot

  • by jenleft to the mercies of savage beasts
  • stand on the equatorial line
  • all of them ablaze
  • midnight gardeners
  • how many woodchucks

Tune in next time part 589    Click Here for Earlier Installments

Dashing through the snow with a robot simulacrum of my true love by my side reminded me strongly of senior prom at the Academy. As per tradition, everyone in the running for Prom King and Queen were taken by helicopter to a remote wintry location and left to the mercies of savage beasts. The first male and female students to make it back to the Academy and stand on the equatorial line in the courtyard would be crowned prom royalty.

That year, Tessa (the true, human Tessa) and I were the winners. I remembered with pride the two of us ascending to our thrones, surrounded by great bonfires, all of them ablaze with leaping blue flames. I could still hear the Academy’s midnight gardeners debating how many woodchucks it took to chuck wood for so many fires.

I knew the answer, of course. I was the Prom King.

I still remembered the answer to that riddle, but I doubted it would do me much good in my current circumstances.

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Proof of Concept

Once again the plot rainbow proves its worth. Last weekend we pushed ourselves to finish filling in the rainbow for Book 1 of our in-progress Ghost Series. It deviates from the rainbows we’ve created for previous novels in that it’s wider and shorter, but it still covers the floor pretty effectively (and flummoxes the dogs). We’re not completely done with it yet, just done enough. The broad strokes are all there, and some of the nuance. We’ve considered most of the beats from multiple angles and filled in the big holes. Now we’ll move on and do the same thing for the other three planned books in the series, getting them all to the same level of ripeness.

At least that was the plan.

We were really pleased with how thorough we were. “Wow,” we thought. “That’s one nicely detailed plot outline!” And then we gave each other high-fives and drank some champagne, etc etc. And then we spent half-an-hour numbering all the cards and stacking the whole thing neatly so that the dogs could walk around the room again. It was all terribly satisfying.

And then, Boom. On literally the first day of work on Book 2 we discovered something lurking in the notes that needs to be introduced in Book 1.

Sigh.

Luckily it’s not something that will require us to rethink half of the plot, or anything dire like that. It’s a detail that needs to be included, and we need to give serious consideration to how certain characters will feel about it.

Discoveries like this are why we’re working the whole series at the same time. We’d really hate to have the first novel entirely written and then discover we’d left something out. It’s also why we are so enamored of our plot rainbow process. It’s much easier to shift a few pieces of colored paper around on the floor (while fending off a corgi) than it is to rewrite a chapter or two.

A good writing partner is someone who will sacrifice herself to keep the dogs happily snuggling on the sofa while you crawl around on the hardwood, narrowly avoiding paper cuts.

We Were Indeed On Contrarian Soil

  • by Kent“Hey! Great minds, yeah?”
  • raising her voice and swearing at me
  • adding it to my vocabulary
  • in the most embarrassing place
  • wants the elephant rather than the cash

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We were indeed on Contrarian soil. The shrine to Buzzlyncia meant these had to be the Isles of Bumpengrynd. They were a remote protectorate, claimed by William Penn VII mainly because no one else wanted them. The old saying is true: a Contrarian Warlord is a guy who wants the elephant rather than the cash.

Now that I had deduced our location, I knew we had to head west across the island to reach the only population center of any meaningful size. Twerkistan was built with the most demoralizing materials and situated in the most embarrassing place — at the base of a deep crack between two hills, where a geothermal vent emitted sulfurous fumes.

The paparazzo’s tracks in the snow led due west, so I knew he must already be hurrying back to Twerkistan. “If we hurry, we can catch him,” I said. The Tessabot nodded savagely and took off, calling the photog something so inventively obscene I needed a moment to decipher it before adding it to my vocabulary. This meant I wasn’t keeping up, so Tessa employed a stream of motivational profanity, raising her voice and swearing at me this time.

The snow was wet and heavy, slowing us both down. Especially me. But a few minutes into our trek we spotted a figure far ahead of us. Too far to have any hope of overtaking him under these conditions. Simultaneously, Tessa and I siezed branches from nearby trees and wove them into makeshift snowshoes.

“Hey! Great minds, yeah?” I said.

“This is basic Academy stuff,” the Tessabot replied. “Now, save your breath for running!”

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I Watched the Boat Sail Away

  • by jena journalist will leap from a bush
  • poured out of her mouth like bees
  • teeth are pointy
  • I know I got high
  • just inside the tree line

Tune in next time part 587    Click Here for Earlier Installments

I watched the boat sail away into the setting sun. When I could no longer see it, I turned to study our new surroundings. I am always wary in a new location. My family is notorious, and I am married to the Contrarian Warlord’s daughter. I never know when a journalist will leap from a bush and wave a camera or a microphone in my face. It happens all the time, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in this tale of mine.

The beach was pebbly. Beyond the high-tide line, snow blanketed everything, obscuring the terrain, the greenery, and any lurking journalists. I led Tessa along the shore, searching for any signs of habitation. The first thing we found was a fountain with a statue of a nude woman in the center. Icicles poured out of her mouth like bees from a bursting balloon, and the carved balloon she held above her head was full of stinging insects.

“Wow,” said Tessa. “Her teeth are pointy!” She seemed to miss the significance.

“I know I got higher scores than you on the SAT,” I said, “but surely you recognize Buzzlyncia, the Contrarian goddess of Tabloid Journalism.”

“Are we in Contraria then?” she asked.

Before I could answer I caught sight of movement just inside the tree line, and then the unmistakable whir and click of a high-speed camera shutter. “Cover your face!” I cried. “They’ve found us!”

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A Rainbow Is Multifaceted

Plotting out the Ghost Series continues, which lately has consisted of intense bouts of rainbowing. We found a story beat that we could beef up, and in the process of adding it we had a minor epiphany about what makes the rainbow such a powerful tool.

Each POV character gets a column/color, and each story beat gets a row. That means for one beat we need to make cards for every character who participates. In this case, that was three characters. It might feel like inefficiency to have to jot things down in triplicate, but that’s the thing — it wasn’t just writing out the same info multiple times. The cards were all different, because they represented the event from different points of view: the character who tells the lie, the character who believes it, and the true target of the subterfuge.

Having to account for events from these various angles really helps us envision their impact. It also helps us plan whose POV to use for the actual prose. We wrote up three cards, but we won’t need to write the scene three times. (That would be inefficiency.)

The rainbow is inconvenient sometimes. It takes up a lot of space. The dogs walk on it, and shed on it. (And one of them will eat it, if given the chance.) Inserting a story beat means shifting lots of other cards to make room. But it’s worth it to get an adjustable visualization of the story that you can look at together with your writing partner.

I Looked At Tessa, And She Shrugged

  • by Kentfeels like the action of an insane person
  • She made a pig-sound.
  • lounging on a large boat with a man
  • seashells in their pocket?
  • YouTube channel where he showcases his favorite accordion songs

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I looked at Tessa, and she shrugged. I scowled at her, and she smirked.

“Shouldn’t we argue the point?” I asked. “Debarking upon these unknown shores feels like the action of an insane person.”

She made a pig-sound. It was extremely lifelike, doubtless a high-quality audio file stored somewhere in her databanks. And it was obviously all the answer I would get. She was tired of lounging on a large boat with a man who wouldn’t tell us his name, tired of hearing me play the bongos. I looked at the chilly peaks jutting from the waves just ahead of us, and tried one more time.

“Who wouldn’t rather be dropped off someplace tropical, where they might find soft sand between their toes and seashells in their pocket?”

She shook her head. I could tell she knew something about this archipelago.

The captain found a place where he could get close enough for us to avoid getting wet as we alit on the rugged coast. He never did reveal his name, only the link to his YouTube channel where he showcases his favorite accordion songs.

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I Had Been on the Academy’s Beatnik Team

  • by jenplease sing that
  • signal when you want me to stop
  • I just don’t feel like giving hugs
  • lasted for two weeks
  • a snow-covered archipelago

Tune in next time part 585    Click Here for Earlier Installments

I had been on the Academy’s Beatnik Team, but it had been years since I’d tapped the skins. To stall I said, “Please sing that request, Captain.”

He slid his sunglasses down his nose and glared at me until I got myself seated comfortably crosslegged with the bongos nestled between my knees. My fingertips tingled in anticipation. “Wave to signal when you want me to stop,” I said, and began. The rhythms came back to me immediately. It was way-out, Daddy-O. You dig?

The captain waved his hand in my face and I finished with a flourish. “You can ride with me,” the captain said, standing. “I just don’t feel like giving hugs or kisses or anything like that.” He went to the railing and untied the boat from the pier.

We left the harbor of the piratical island with no difficulties at all, which was a welcome surprise. Our journey lasted for two weeks, and I never learned the name of either the yacht or her captain. But I did play a lot of bongos.

At the end of our two-week sail we spotted a snow-covered archipelago, unfamiliar to me and to Tessa.

“This is where you get off,” the anonymous captain declared.

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How to be a Bad Writing Partner

Sometimes, despite everyone’s best intentions, a writing partnership doesn’t work. Maybe you can’t agree on what genre you want to write in. Maybe you have vastly different ideas about how gritty your prose will be. Perhaps one of you wants to write in first person while the other wants to use third person omniscient. Or maybe one of you sneaks into the Auxiliary Writing Cave and chews up the timeline. Or the other other one of you walks back and forth across the plot rainbow while wagging your tail, scattering the carefully constructed grid into chaos. What we’re saying is, maybe dogs don’t make the best writing partners.

Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord are great at getting us out of the house for a daily walk-and-talk that would make Aaron Sorkin proud, but beyond that they’re pretty lousy writing partners. They insist upon pats and belly rubs, which keeps us from typing. The Bandit Lord enjoys lap time at our desks, but only if he can monopolize at least one hand, again interfering with typing. They both enjoy snuggling on the sofa while we brainstorm, but get offended if we need to move in order to reach a notebook or laptop.

We even need to use restraint when reading our work aloud. The Bandit Lord is a very sensitive young man, and if Kent puts any emotion into a scene where a character is mad or upset, he gets very concerned. Lady Marzipan once stretched very exuberantly and managed to poke the power button of our battery backup with her toenail, crashing both computers instantly.

On top of all that, they’re lousy editors.

Despite the nightmarish conditions here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, we’re actually ridiculously fond of our furry tyrants and wouldn’t trade them for any other writing partners. We’ll just have to start using the baby gate to keep our papers safe.

 

The Bandit Lord hard at work at his desk.
Lady Marzipan in a staring contest with her laptop.