Tagged: As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1

The Haunted Writing Cave

Dear reader, we haven’t been completely honest with you. On the blog, we regularly refer to the first book in our ghost series as As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, and, well, that’s a bit inaccurate. It’s had a working title for quite a while, which we use in file names, and amongst our beta readers. It’s a pretty cool name, and it doesn’t fall into the “Sounds like a Nancy Drew Book” trap. But it also doesn’t fit nicely into a set of like-minded titles for the remainder of the series.

As we’ve mentioned in the past, we like for our series titles to coordinate. This bad boy is quite singular. We’ve batted ideas around, and came up with a matching bookend for the last in the series, but the two dudes in the middle are still waiting (im)patiently.

Naming our three earlier series was much easier. Maybe we should blame this very focused and specific form of writer’s block on the vengeful spirits of our less-fortunate characters.

A writing partner is someone who will hold your hand when things get scary. Or when you’re just unwinding and watching movies.

Another Road Trip

Kent and Jen spent another few hours on the highway recently, and as we often do we made use of the time to converse about a writing project. In this case, it was As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1, and the feedback we’ve been getting about it.

We tossed around various proposals for addressing the comments. For each idea, we rated it as “radical” or “reasonable.” For example, some of the suggestions would entail not only rewrites for Book 1 but replotting the whole series. Too radical. On the other hand, just changing whose POV certain scenes come from? That’s eminently reasonable, perhaps too much so. It might not go far enough. After all, we do want to successfully remedy the issues. At this point, we’ve narrowed it down to three options, and will probably implement two of them in combination. The third one’s more of a departure from our usual style, but it has us fascinated. We’ll experiment with it before we decide whether to use it for real.

Having a partner makes these brainstorming situations so much more productive. You get twice as many ideas to work with, and you have someone who understands your process to help you analyze them. Someone whose investment in your voice and in the quality of the final product is in tune with your own.

A writing partner is someone to keep you company on the road of life.

Seeing Patterns

While we type away on As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2 the feedback has stared coming in on As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1, and we have detected a potential pattern. Well, a couple of patterns. For one, our readers are saying a lot of the same nice things about the writing. For two, and more important, they appear to be in agreement about some opportunities for improvement.

Getting feedback is essential, but it takes a little practice to learn how to apply it. The temptation can be to try to “fix” everything that each critiquer pointed out, but you’ll end up running in circles that way when they all bring up different, often contradictory things. So, don’t let the trees block your view of the forest.

What’s important is patterns. If more than one person mentions the same thing, it’s probably significant. During the critique group meeting, did anyone go, “Oh yeah, same here,” when someone else raised a point? Then that point’s probably important. Sometimes you’ll have to analyze the aggregate notes to find the pattern. And sometimes you’ll have just make your own decisions about which suggestions make sense to you. You’re allowed to disregard anything anyone says. Better to leave your own mistakes in the story than to swap them for someone else’s.

Going over the feedback with a partner is extremely helpful. They bring another set of eyes and ears to catch those patterns, plus they’re a sounding board for figuring out which ideas help the story and which ones don’t. Working with a partner gives you a backup gut-check about which notes to disregard.

A writing partner helps you detect patterns in the data, and helps you understand what they mean.

Down The Rabbit-Hole Again Some More

We’ve found ourselves doing more research than usual for the Ghost Novel(s). Wouldn’t want to allow any inaccuracies in our depiction of ghosts, which of course explains why we felt the need to take a deep look into:

  • lava tubes
  • sex magic
  • acorns, culinary uses thereof

…And many other topics besides. Like, it’s a long list. Whenever we spend any significant energy on looking something up, we make a note of it. We’re fascinated by the variety of stuff that winds up on the list. We’re fascinated by how hard it would be to predict what is going to show up on the list, especially considering that we really did have a solid idea of the story before we even started prose composition on it.

A writing partner is the only other person who wouldn’t think your research list was evidence of a diseased mind.

We’re Up!

Our critique group’s most recent meeting (which we hosted at our house) took us up to the finale of the other member’s manuscript that we’ve been discussing. So, now it’s our turn in the hot seat once again.

Critique sessions are a whole separate animal from having beta readers (which we do, also). There are lots of different ways to run a group, but here’s what works well for us.

  1. choose one manuscript to focus on
  2. the author provides a chunk of pages in advance, and whatever guidance they wish regarding the kind of feedback they’re looking for
  3. at the meeting, each member shares input and suggestions, asks questions, etc. about those pages
  4. avoid spending a lot of time on typos and other picky things

Note that this means no one can read ahead, so the author can gauge how well the clues are working, how readers feel about the protagonist at each stage, etc. It’s up to the author how much to reveal, which questions to answer, and so on. Rune Skelley tends to be very tight-lipped. We enjoy getting the rest of the group trying to guess what we’re up to.

Another thing that’s up to each author is whether to bring stuff in before the whole book is written. We’ve done it both ways, and found reasons not to share works-in-progress for critique anymore. For us, the feedback only muddied things at that stage. But some folks thrive on it, and use the requirement of handing out pages by the next meeting as a motivational tool. Do what works for you.

The best part of any critique group meeting is when members start debating what the pages mean and basically forget that the author is there. As the author, that provides a ton of insight into what’s working and why. It’s also nice when your fellow writers come right out and tell you what they thought was effective, or where they felt something needed more work. Just be sure not to settle for “it was good” — these are your colleagues, so they should be able to articulate their reasons for responding a certain way.

A writing partner is someone who kicks Kent under the table when he’s about to blurt out a major spoiler.

System Is Working As Intended

For the Ghost Series, we made a very deliberate choice to get all four books figured out before writing any prose for the first one. Our approach is to consider the project as one big story. Ideas that arise later on in the process might necessitate laying some groundwork in earlier books, and we aimed to give ourselves the most flexibility to do that without getting stuck in an infinite loop of rewrites.

Without an over-arching plan, without making lots of decisions up front, what would happen is we’d wrap up Book 1 and send it out for feedback, and then meanwhile we’d be working on Book 2 and discover a bunch of shiny new ideas that don’t match what we’ve written already. Meaning when our beta readers send us their comments, half of them have been obviated upon arrival. And once we started in on Book 3, the same situation would replay — only twice as bad, because now we’re trying to retroactively account for stuff in two prior books.

Ask us how we know. (Never mind; we’re about to tell you anyway.)

Our previous series grew organically. We’d write a book, and then discover that there was more story to tell using that world and those characters. So we’d write another book, and then another. So far, that progression has always led to trilogies. In one case, we did actually plan out books 2 & 3 in tandem rather than separately. We were starting to get the message even then. With the Ghost Series being a tetralogy, the benefits of advance planning are multiplied because so are the impacts of doing it inadequately.

So, we did a lot of planning. Lots of writing sessions that produced no writing per se.

At this point, we are working on Book 2. And so far? No major revisions have come up for Book 1. Several minor changes, and we’ll surely have more tinkering to deal with. But it’s likely to all be small-scale stuff like which tarot card gets drawn, rather than anything huge like swapping which characters are living and which are ghosts.

A writing partner is someone who helps with all the pre-writing as much as with generating pages of manuscript.

Look Back in Awe

As we’re sure you’ve noticed, 2023 is nearing the finish line. That means it’s time for us here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, LLC to review what we accomplished throughout the year.

Our main goal for the year was to complete the first draft of As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, and that gets a big ol’ checkmark. The first draft was in the can by late summer, and we managed to squeeze in a couple of read-throughs and a sort of mini-edit to address the issues we uncovered. It might not meet the technical definition of a second draft, but whatever you call it, we’re happy with where it stands right now.

Our second goal was for Kent to retire, and again we accomplished it! (Well, Kent did. Jen cheered from the sidelines.)

Our third goal was to travel, and holy shit did we do that. We got to within 800 miles of the North Pole!

We forecast that we might edit one of the Music Novels if we wanted a substantial break from writing about ghosts between As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novels #1 and #2. That was not necessary. The timing worked out nicely to put #1 to bed shortly before heading out on our Epic Arctic Exploration, and that adventure provided more than enough of a break.

It took longer than we liked for us to get our brains out of vacation-mode, and acclimate to all Kent’s new free time. We’d optimistically anticipated working 4-5 hours a day and having the productivity of the gods. It didn’t quite work out like that, but toward the end of the year we did settle into a pretty good daily schedule that we hope to expand on in the coming year. There will be some challenges to that, which we’ll talk about next week in our preview of the coming year.

Happy new year!

 

ETA: we finished the year with 7287 words in Book 2

With Both Hands, And…

A map is a very handy thing for a writer. It can help you gauge how long someone’s journey would take, or remind you of the river between points A and B. If you’re using a real-world locale, then you’ll want to keep your depiction in line with reality. If your locale is your own invention, then you’ll want to keep your depiction internally consistent.

Way back at the start of things for As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, we created a map of the main setting, which is a place we made up. Over the course of actually writing that book, we annotated the map with a great many pencil marks showing adjustments and additions. It’s become sort of a mess.

So, as part of our preparations for diving into prose on As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2, Kent is updating the map so we have a clean version to work from. The more we write about the place, the more we learn about it ourselves, so we assume we’ll need to do more map updates when we get to books 3 and 4 as well.

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep your bearings.

Boo!

We’ve been immersing ourselves in the supernatural as we work on our ghost story, but perhaps we took things a bit too far. Netherwordly manifestations sprang up at the HQ of Skelleyco Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises. But the creepiest part? Every child in the vicinity seemed impelled to approach. Impelled by a hunger, a hunger for… candy.

Last year we missed trick-or-treating because we were in freakin’ Transylvania on Halloween. So this year we brought our A game. Not that we merited anything better than honorable mention in our neighborhood. The bar is set crazy high. We did have a great time, as did Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord.

decorative tombstones

front door flanked by skeletal bats

a corgi and a golden retriever in bony costumes

What we did not do was get much writing done. Doorbell was kept pretty busy.

A writing partner is someone who holds your hand when things get scary.

Ghostly Progress: Book Two

As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1 is in the hands of our beta readers. We have turned our attention to Also-Untitled Ghost Novel #2.

Book One had rested for a few weeks, so we began with another read-thru of that installment. It was even better than we expected (not that we’re trying to influence our beta readers). Kent had been fretting over possible pacing issues in the first part, but it flowed very nicely. There are a few pages of heavier-than-necessary exposition here and there, but those will be easy to deal with. (To be clear, such infodumps are always Kent’s doing.) So, having made some notes, we moved on to the next step.

Utilizing both whiteboards, we set up the rainbow for Book Two. Perusing it was quite entertaining, because Jen’s got quite a wit, but also a little surprising. There were some placeholder character names, and some plot beats that have been superseded now that we actually wrote Book One.

We also have a long-form synopsis, which we usually refer to as the prose outline. That was created later, in parallel with the manuscript for Book One, so it should be up-to-date. Guess we’ll find out.

A writing partner is someone to accompany you on a journey of (re)discovery.