Slow and Stubby Wins the Race

Jen writes most of the stubs. It’s not like there’s a union rule or anything, it just sorta feels like it. But it works out better that way for everybody most of the time, partly because Kent is prone to getting too wrapped up in the details. Stubs aren’t supposed to be all that detailed.

This week, there was a bit of a role reversal because Kent wrote some stubs. (And Jen wrote some epigraphs, which are usually in Kent’s wheelhouse.) He was supposed to just write a scene, but it’s an actiony scene and the stub Jen handed him said little beyond “they fight.” So, he decided to flesh out the stub first. Then he decided to make it into three stubs.

As he worked, he commented to Jen several times that he was reining himself in on the details. Which made her wonder why he didn’t just get into the flow and write the scene itself. He had his reasons. Basically, the same reason that it ended up being three stubs. They still came out a little too detailed for the Rune Skelley stub specification.

Jen wonders if we shouldn’t just call the stubs the scenes. This could be an elegant way of avoiding Kent’s tendency to overwrite action scenes, and save us the trouble of sanding off all the baroque curlicues during revision. But Kent is pretty sure he can punch them up a great deal and still hand in something relatively aerodynamic.

Having a writing partner means being able to rely on somebody to handle the tasks you’re less proficient at. And when you stray outside your comfort zone, it means there’s someone to coach you.