Rolling with role reversal

Along with “every word of this book is in the wrong place,” and “we must use every word, twice if possible,” one of the discoveries we made about the music novel was that our main characters’ relationship needed more tension. They get thrown into a harrowing situation that exposes myriad hurtful secrets about their past, and we had them moping for about ten minutes and then laughing it all off. (Well, not exactly. But it was too easy.)

Upshot: one of our jobs during revisions is to roughen up the emotional tenor of their conversations, and shed a little more light on the second guesses and loss of trust that accompany such upheaval. Weirdly, it’s falling to Kent to handle most of it.

We’ve talked before about how each member of a writing duo should focus on their strengths. It’s one of the selling points for having a writing partner: it’s someone who’s good at things you might struggle with. Traditionally, the Rune Skelley partnership divvies up the chores along appallingly stereotypical gender lines. Kent brings the jargon and the action sequences, while Jen humanizes things with emotional cues that are as subtle or as devastating as the situation demands.

That’s why this time through is weird. After we lined up the scenes and made some notes about where the tone was too light or just too vague, it was Kent who felt drawn to those particular edits. Jen not so much.

It seems to be going pretty well, despite the oddness. Kent thinks it’s going a little slow, compared to when he’s in his technobabble wheelhouse. It’s probably healthy for him to get a bit of practice with earth-human feelings once in a while.