The Skelley Fiction Roadmap

We mention stubs a lot, but it’s important to understand that we don’t just pull them out of thin air. The process has steps that go in a certain order, becoming more detailed as they progress.

Our first major step is a rainbow, which is how we collate the random notes from one or more steno pads we fill up during our brainstorming sessions. (So, those steno notes are prolly our real first step. But you know how to write in a notepad, we think.)

The rainbow is a color-coded representation of the major story beats. Each square of paper is approximately equal to a scene.

(Details about how we build and use the rainbow can be found here.)

The rainbow gets turned into an outline, which doesn’t follow the strict formatting you learned in school. If we were to write a hitman novel, it would look something like this:

And that gets turned into a stub. We fill in the template and write a scene synopsis like so:

The meat of the stub is the scene synopsis: a page or so of text that lists all the major events and how they make characters feel. (Our real stubs are generally longer than the above example.) The stub is not the scene; it’s the instructions for building it. The stub is allowed to tell instead of showing, in fact it’s encouraged. Don’t get fancy here.

When the actual scene gets written based on this, phrases like “Thomas is confused” would be replaced along the lines of, “He stared at Mary, whatever she was saying drowned out by a litany of objections to her very presence. She didn’t have a key, for one thing. He’d never told her his address, for another. And she fucking well knew she’d be waking him up.” (Snuck a little “… and cranky” in there too.)

We find the word count goes up by a factor of at least four, sometimes more like ten, when progressing from stub to scene. Any salient info that isn’t actually in the scene should still be noted in the stub. This is what we usually use the “Remember” line for in the template. If Mary hasn’t eaten in two days, mention that. Even if she’s not the POV character.

What to leave out of the stub: description, mainly. Mention only the specific details that are key to the scene’s meaning and mission.

If You Have a Crystal Throne

  • by Kenta game you can play at parties
  • “Seems kind of hinky to me.”
  • unwittingly volunteered
  • something to console my growing fears
  • Ahem: Frozen Yogurt Robot

Tune in next time part 408      Click Here for Earlier Installments

If you have a crystal throne, and your guests are sufficiently uninhibited, then there is a game you can play at parties that bears much resemblance to what Tatiana and I were doing. John and the Mints hung around to watch. I would have preferred a bit of privacy, but Tatiana appeared to relish the attention.

When John commented about part of our performance being especially interesting, the Mingus puppet replied, “Seems kind of hinky to me.”

Upon receipt of my DNA, Tatiana dismounted primly and said, “Next Wednesday, then. Don’t be late.” While she gathered her clothes, I looked to Myndilynn and John to find out what I had unwittingly volunteered for. They exchanged knowing glances and cryptic nods, in Myndilynn’s case also quite coquettish, dashing my already faint hopes of hearing something to console my growing fears that I was, once again, tangled up in deep political maneuverings of which I had no grasp.

“Does he have everything he will need for Wednesday?” John asked. “Here’s the list of supplies.” I began getting dressed, warily monitoring the conversation.

Myndilynn sneered. “That’s so out of date. The most important thing is missing!”

John shrugged.

Myndilynn huffed and Mingus said, “Ahem: Frozen Yogurt Robot.”

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Unlike My Twin, Who Was America’s #1 Wedding Rapper

  • by jendisliked attending weddings
  • invited a tyrant
  • the scent of roses
  • you never know when something like that could be true
  • need a longer snake

Tune in next time part 407      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Unlike my twin, who was America’s #1 wedding rapper, I disliked attending weddings. I avoided them whenever I could, and there were many times I wished I could have avoided my own, since it invited a tyrant of a father-in-law into my life. Fleur and I had married at the White House, and the scent of roses always reminded me of those long, long days of Contrarian ceremony in the Rose Garden with the Warlord glowering at me. I bring this up to illustrate how different Jason and I were on a fundamental level. I tried to explain to Tatiana that while the stars might think I was a suitable substitute, she really ought to think things over before jumping into parenthood with me. I ended my speech with, “There are so many cautionary tales about evil twins, and you never know when something like that could be true.”

But she just smiled at me and said, “You’re both evil in your own way, and right now I just need your DNA.”

While I’d speechified, Myndilynn had somehow gotten Mingus off the crystal throne, leaving it free. They stood off to the side, both nodding coquettishly. Tatiana began a short, sultry strip tease that quickly got my attention. By the end of it we were both nude. She reached for my Little General and said, “It looks like I don’t need a longer snake charmer’s dance. Shall we?” And she seated me on the throne and climbed atop.

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Anatomy of a Stub

Here’s the template we use for our stubs.

Placeholder text

Keeping it simple allows this template to work for just about any story we want to tell. But it’s easy to customize if you want to. Adding the date of the scene might be handy, for example (especially if you’re writing a time-travel epic).

You fill in as much or as little of the table as each scene requires. If you want to pin things down more before you move ahead, the structure is there for you to use. If you don’t feel a need to specify what the weather is like, no one will scold you. The value in using a template is so you don’t have to waste mental energy stressing about what you might be forgetting. You can just fill in what you feel is important.

But, that innocuous line that says “placeholder text” is the most important thing.

Think of the stub like a recipe for the scene. The table is the ingredients list, but you still need the instructions for how to bring the dish together. That’s what the synopsis provides.

We tend to write them in present tense. They’re pretty much just a flat recitation of events, and they include a lot of glib statements about characters’ interior states. We don’t try to get fancy too much here; we save that for the real prose.

When it’s time to follow the recipe and write the scene proper, we often find that the stub’s synopsis started earlier than we really need. There’ll be a paragraph or two of backstory and then a phrase like, “So now he’s running for his life and wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.” That’s typically where we begin the scene.

What do we leave out of stubs, apart from fancy expressive language? Dialog, for the most part. But it’s not rare for lines in the stub to get pulled verbatim and put into our characters’ mouths. We say we save the flashy stuff for the “real” writing, but you know, you listen to the muse when she sings. The other big thing we omit form stubs is description. Here again, though, it does creep in. Plus we have the “sensory details” line in the table.

Bottom line: do what works for you. Let your tools evolve with your process. If you don’t work scene-by-scene, then stubs don’t relate to your workflow at all. But for us, they’re a perfect fit. We find stubs to be an indispensable aid in working with a partner.

I Hoisted My General Trousers

  • by Kenthalf the scientists were seasick
  • “Ooo boy!”
  • scourge upon our taste buds
  • found the voicemail hilarious
  • It wasn’t.

Tune in next time part 406      Click Here for Earlier Installments

I hoisted my General trousers. “Let me see that chart.” I crossed to John quickly and snatched the parchment out of his hands. It was not an ancient document, merely something handwritten on rough paper. Much of it was smudged and very little of the penmanship was passable.

“The research team deserves a medal for this,” John said. “The only coordinates from which they could get the readings were in the remotest part of the ocean, and their vessel had no electrical subsystems. Yet they completed this document, without access to computers and even though half the scientists were seasick.” He laughed. “Ooo boy!” He mimed throwing up, laughing some more. “These science-nerd types, they’re not sailors, apparently.” His sound effects as he acted out another geysering stream of vomitus made everybody wince, the psychosomatic bile rising as a scourge upon our taste buds.

He took out his phone. “You gotta hear this,” he said. “One of them called me, soon as they reached shore. I am so glad I missed the call because it meant I got this message. Oh, it’s a keeper.” He then played us a five-minute recording of a quavering voice giving what amounted to a routine field report which just happened to include mention of a couple dozen people barfing a lot.

By the redness of his face we knew John found the voicemail hilarious. It wasn’t.

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I Didn’t Have Time for Any Rap Battles

  • by jenwithout an inflatable octopus
  • raised a single finger and
  • pregnant with her first child
  • , along with my underpants.
  • except when it suited him to be Russian

Tune in next time part 405      Click Here for Earlier Installments

I didn’t have time for any rap battles. I needed to know what my brother Jim was up to. With a sad shake of my head I said, “I’m afraid I can’t perform without an inflatable octopus. It’s in my contract.” I raised a single finger and mimed signing the important paper.

“We’re not asking you to rhyme,” the giant Mingus puppet said. “At least not right now. I thought our message to you was clear. The star charts all indicate that today is the best day for Tatiana to become pregnant with her first child, and that you are the only suitable candidate.”

Not this again! Before I could even voice my protest, Tatiana yanked down my General trousers, along with my underpants. “You said we could use your crystal throne for this,” she said to the Mints.

Myndilynn gave a coy nod.

“Just a second,” I said, dropping the lisp. “There’s something you should know.” I reached for my pants.

“That’s not Jason,” Mingus said, as Myndilynn gave her head a sultry shake.

Tatiana looked me up and down. “If the star charts don’t mind, neither do I.”

John strode out from behind the crystal throne, consulting a large sheet of parchment. I should have known he’d be involved in this. He’s always been super into astrology, except when it suited him to be Russian Orthodox to keep himself in his grandfather’s will.

“The times of their birth are within the same 10 minute window,” he said. “The stars will allow the substitution.”

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All Things in Moderation

Many times we’ve touted the advantages of the scene-by-scene synopses that we call stubs. They’re great, especially when you’re working with a coauthor. We could just use the outline, treat it as a scene list, but in our experience it’s better to flesh things out a bit further than that before divvying up the work. For one thing, a line-item in our type of outline isn’t necessarily a scene. For another, the stub format prompts for mood, setting and sensory details, and characters’ interior states. Taken all together, our stubs could be considered a first draft. A rather slapdash first draft, with a ton of tonal variation, but still.

So if stubs are so great, why don’t we spec out the whole novel in stub-form before we begin writing? In our experience, certain plot and character issues don’t present themselves until the actual writing is happening. If we race ahead and make stubs for the whole novel, there will be a lot of reworking to do when we set fingers to keyboard and discover in the fifth scene that something doesn’t work the way we envisioned.

As a recent example, we were going to use Saks Fifth Ave as a location. “Hey,” we thought, “all those big NYC department stores are pretty much interchangeable, right?” Heh. No. So even though we liked the physical locale of Saks better, we ended up switching things over to Bloomingdale’s, for reasons. That cast ripples through a whole bunch of scenes, but since Jen hadn’t made stubs for more than a handful of them, it saved a lot of work. We pulled up the outline and untangled things there.

You’ll find your own rhythm, of course. What works best for us is to make stubs in batches of about 20. Beyond that the details get a bit too hazy.

Having a writing partner means having someone to hold your European Shoulder Bag™ while you’re trying on clothes at a crowded Manhattan department store.

From the Pier, Tatiana Escorted Me

  • by Kentnothing but dark memories
  • many lives, or only one
  • She nods flirtatiously.
  • back into the family business
  • My colleague won.

Tune in next time part 404      Click Here for Earlier Installments

From the pier, Tatiana escorted me across the black beach and into a cleft in the sheer rock face. The hidden doorway she opened revealed stairs, but not going up toward the stolen zeppelin. We descended for quite a while, my uneasiness growing. I had never met Myndilynn Mint, but I knew Mingus before he married her. We did one mission together, of which I have nothing but dark memories. What had he told his wife about the experience? Had he thought I betrayed him? It surely must have seemed that way at the time. But Myndilynn thought it was Jason being brought before her, which might work to my advantage. In the spy biz it’s good to have many lives, or only one identical twin you can impersonate to evade your enemies.

The stairs bottomed out at last in an echoey torchlit passageway. A minute later I was in an audience chamber where Myndilynn sat upon the lap of the wooden puppet of Mingus, which sat upon a throne of crystal.

“You wanted Jason brought to you immediately?” Tatiana addressed to the woman in the puppet’s lap. The answering nod reminded me of something about Myndilynn. She nods flirtatiously. It seems to be something she doesn’t realize she’s doing.

I doffed my hat with the badge that said “General” and bowed from the waist. Trying not to overwork the lisping, I said, “I assume you are trying to pull me back into the family business?”

Myndilynn nodded again, with that sly quirk of her eyebrow that always happens concurrently. But it was Mingus who spoke, his familiar baritone voice jolting me as I watched the puppet’s jaw flop around in crude synchrony with the words.

“We’ve missed your talents, Jason. I had a colleague who also rapped, but he was greedy and challenged for full control of the wedding division. My colleague won. Former colleague, of course.”

I pretended to stare at the puppet, but my concentration was on Myndilynn. Her mouth didn’t move. And how would she match his voice so exactly?

“Now that you’re back,” Mingus went on, “all will be restored.”

It had been only a blind guess that Jason was mixed up in Ventriloquist Syndicate affairs. Now to maintain my charade, I would have to keep up the bluff.

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Before the Next Wave Crashed

  • by jenShe was fair-skinned and red-headed
  • the other side of the pilings
  • working on a furnace
  • which is a fun thing
  • Mr and Mrs Mint

Tune in next time part 403      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Before the next wave crashed, I clambered to the top of one of the smaller boulders. From there I made my way higher until I was clear of the surf. Hopping like a nimble parkour aficionado, I summited the rock pile and caught my first glimpse of what lay beyond. It was a lagoon ringing a beach of black sand, which in turn ringed the island’s central steep mountain. Sharp dorsal fins cut the choppy water. High above me, the zeppelin my brother had commandeered was being reeled in to the makeshift gangway.

A woman on the beach spotted me. She was fair-skinned and red-headed, like Tessa and all of her sisters. But perhaps her milky complexion was due to the grease paint of a mime. It was hard to tell from this distance. I was wary. The woman walked to a small jetty and untied an outrigger canoe from the other side of the pilings. She shoved it into the shark-infested lagoon, hopped in, and started paddling directly toward me.

When she was 10 feet away from me she stopped. “What the hell are you wearing, Jason?” she asked, dispelling any lingering fears that she was a mime.

I looked down at my bedraggled uniform. The peacock vest had not survived my swim unscathed. Feathers were dripping and drooping everywhere.

“I’ve been working on a furnace,” I lisped.

“All the livelong day,” we said together, which is a fun thing under most circumstances.

She laughed and maneuvered the canoe close to me so I could board. Her prowess with the oars told me that this was most likely Tatiana. In addition to being the sister in Tessa’s family born just after Titania, she was a crew champion at the Academy, and specialized in maritime skullduggery. What she wanted with Jason was anyone’s guess.

As she rowed us back to shore, she said, “Mr and Mrs Mint have been waiting for you.”

My blood ran cold. Myndilynn and Mingus Mint were an infamous pair. Myndilynn was a seemingly sane woman, except for the fact that she was in a relationship with a life-size wooden puppet replica of her late husband Mingus. When the real Mingus was alive, she would sit in his lap and he would pretend to puppet her. After Mingus died under mysterious circumstances, Myndilynn saw no reason to change things. She built a replica of Mingus and still sits in his lap, pretending to be his puppet.

Mimes were bad enough, but those silent bastards in league with the Ventriloquist Syndicate? Unthinkable.

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Awkward Pauses

Our WIP is part of a trilogy with a sizable cast, including multiple POV characters. In this book, there are several new viewpoints. Some of them are new characters altogether, while two others in particular have been on the page before. But, we’ve never ridden around in their heads until now.

The brand-new characters’ viewpoints have turned out to be easier to write than the returning ones, which surprised us. But with one set it feels like being a stenographer scrambling to keep up as the dialog flows, and with the others it’s as if they keep glancing over to be prompted for their lines.

The reluctant duo are beginning to loosen up, though. The more scene-time they get together, the more their personalities solidify. It’s a matter of us as authors getting to know the characters better, but it feels more like the other way around. It feels very much as if the characters are becoming more relaxed around us.

One possible explanation has occurred to us for why it was the returning cast members we ran into this with, rather than the entirely new ones. Part of our process involves role-playing as our characters, typically when we go out for dinner. And this is something we made heavy use of with the newbies, but did far less of with those we had worked with before. It seems we slightly underestimated the magnitude of making someone a POV character. (Sorry, guys.)

A writing partner is someone with whom you can pretend to be fictional characters, in public.