Tagged: Music Novel

The Expanding Skelleyverse, er, Universe

r-avatarMost of our time in writing cave lately has been focused on revisions of novels 4 & 5. But when we take Lady Marzipan out for a stroll we have other things to talk about. And lately, those conversations have often revolved around what we might do for novels 6 & 7.

Our ideas are shaping up as sequels to the books we’re currently polishing. It feels great to brainstorm and be able to just make stuff up, after being so intent for the past year or so on the minutiae of the Music Novel and the Science Novel. However, because we’re dealing with sequels, there are definite constraints. As Jen put it, we need to find ways of expanding the story world without changing its fundamental nature.

We come up with lots of cool ideas that would wreck the integrity of the story world. (Kent comes up with them. He can’t seem to help it sometimes.) It’s not really an issue of continuity, it’s more a matter of tone. The sequel should be of the same subgenre as the preceding book, and the stakes should be on a similar scale.

Our story worlds have certain rules, not all of which are demonstrated explicitly in any one book. We like to keep things broad and flexible until events force a firm decision. As we make up a new story and new characters, we periodically paint ourselves into a corner — if we allow X to happen here, then Y would never have been necessary and the main characters wouldn’t have met. Unless we also say Z… This is the process that leads us to the new wrinkles of our story-world physics. We can also just decree new facets, of course, but we like following the characters into trouble and then debugging the scenario. It ensures that all the world building we do is relevant, and it keeps us focused on showing the characters’ stories instead of telling the overall plot. It keeps things grounded and relatable.

This approach also helps keep us stocked up on new concepts, in the form of the ideas that don’t fit into the carefully constructed, shared delusion that is any particular Rune Skelley novel.

 

Reinventing The Wheel

r-avatarOur process is now firmly established and fairly predictable. But every book is different. And when you forget, they remind you. Just when you think you know what to expect, it’s back to the drawing board.

The later stages of revision, for us, include deweaseling and line editing. Both are fine-grained views of the text, and we’ve discussed the possibility of combining them so we can save ourselves one whole pass through the manuscript. So far, at least, we feel it’s worth the additional time to do it in two passes because they’re really not all that similar, mentally. It’s beneficial to look at every sentence several times, in different lighting.

When we went through this process with the Music Novel we trimmed out a significant percentage of the words. Now, we’re going through it with the Science Novel and finding that those results are inapplicable. There are fewer weasel words in it to begin with, apparently. The line editing is also much more challenging, and it’s leading to more… negotiations than last time.

All authors see changes in their style over time. More practice should mean cleaner, crisper writing at each stage. When two people write together, their combined experience is reflected in the manuscript. What Kent and Jen have found is that they can each now “do the voice” whereas in the early days they had to go over each other’s work to bring it into line. Interesting that this maturation seems to be leading to new difficulties during revision.

Overall, though, it’s a huge win. We might be finding issues in our workflow that weren’t there before, but we’re also getting from concept to completed draft to polished manuscript with much less effort and in far fewer iterations. Working well as a team has a lot to do with that.

Better Than Talking To Yourself

r-avatarFor once the timing worked out really well. Our critique group gave us their final feedback on Novel #5 (the Science Novel) just a few weeks ago, shortly before we finished nailing down the edits for the Music Novel. That means that we’re going back through their comments while everything is still fresh. It’s relatively easy to recall the conversations we had during our meetings as they lavished praise (and, admittedly, the occasional not-so-glowing remark) and we took notes. When we encountered a point we had a question about, the work was still clear enough in our group’s minds that they were able to clarify their original idea.

Before we looked at our critiquers’ comments, we read through the manuscript for ourselves, looking at it with fresh eyes. We were quite happy with what we saw. We talked along the way, and made some notes about plot points we want to strengthen and characterizations we want to clarify. Once our own thoughts were down on paper (or, in pixels), we spent a week reading through all of the notes we took during our critique group meetings, and reading all of the comments they wrote in the margins of their comment copies. We chose to disregard the diagram one member drew of the intersection where she had a showdown with a street sweeper, and likewise the lessons on how to write our characters’ names in Korean. Interesting as those were, they are irrelevant to the Science Novel.

The process of looking at a novel’s worth of critique all at once can be quite overwhelming, and it’s an excellent example of why having a writing partner can be a good thing. During group meetings, we all try very hard not to argue or answer back to the critiquer. Unless you’re planning the world’s most complicated and tedious book tour, the work needs to stand on its own. With a coauthor, you have someone to talk through each point with outside of that setting.

Some of it is fun, like when a reader asks a question that you know is answered in the next chapter, or when all of the readers get the “Hell yeah!” moment just like you intended. And some of it is not so fun, like when a reader stumbles over something you were sure you made quite clear. With a collaborator, you’re not stuck just talking to yourself. Your partner is there to help you make sense of the comments and decide which items are in legitimate need of extra work, and which ones can be chalked up to the readers only looking at one chapter a week.

 

Stomp!

r-avatarIt was tedious and time-consuming, but last night we finally finished stomping the weasels in the music novel. Weasel words are useless little things that take up space and bloat a manuscript while adding no nutritional value. Words like “that” and “had” and “then.” Removing them is sort of like combing out nits. Kent and Jen sit together at one desk, sharing a single monitor, and make monkey noises at the text. We look at every single instance of each trouble word and debate its merits.

Often no discussion is necessary. Kent and Jen agree that a particular “just” stays or goes. Other times there is dissension and a heated debate develops. So far we have not needed the intervention of an impartial arbitrator, but we have come close.

The de-weaseling process is one a solo author can go through, but a writing partner makes it much more efficient. Of course when you’re working on your own you won’t get into any arguments, which we will admit has its appeal. When you work with a coauthor, though, you cover for each other. There will be work sessions when one or the other of you isn’t feeling particularly ruthless. That’s when your collaborator takes the lead, leaving the weasels no safe harbor. Your manuscript will thank you.

Through the judicious use of weasel-stomping boots, we removed 652 instances of “that,” and 468 of “had.” All told, we cut over 5000 garbage words from our prose. It’s leaner and meaner now, and that much closer to publishable.

Music To My Ears

r-avatarWe’ve been deep in our music novel for the past few months, and just last week we reached the conclusion of Novel #5 in our critique group. This led to a lively discussion about endings in general, and the parallels between fiction and music composition.

There are many different approaches to endings, and different kinds of readers prefer different ending styles. What they all have in common is that readers seek a feeling of completion, that a “good” ending must be “satisfying” — whatever that means to each individual.

In music, this feeling of completeness is dependent on resolution. If the song changed key somewhere along the way, it will feel unresolved until it returns to its home key. The repeat structure, the lyrics, all kinds of elements of the music can contribute to this sense of resolution, of things coming together. This isn’t to imply that the only valid endings are those with complete resolution. Far from it. Some songs end on the up-beat and leave the listener ringing with unresolved energy. There are false endings, and slow fade-outs, and many other conventions.

Just like a good story ending, these various ways of handling resolution play with our instinctive, intuitive drive to have things tied up neatly. Sometimes the power of the ending comes from the elegance with which this denouement is achieved, while in other cases the conclusion’s ambiguity is what makes it stick with us, like the song that bounds up for its final beat, and never comes back down.

Tricky endings are definitely a place where it’s necessary to know the rules before you try to break them. Done poorly, they just feel flat. Like the author just stopped typing and called it “the end” without addressing questions raised along the journey. An ambiguous ending with no cathartic climax (aka, the European ending) isn’t right for every story, but then again not every tale calls for a big showdown. Just like not every song wants a gradual diminuendo, and not every song wants to end with a cymbal crash.

Look at the threads that make up your story, at the choices that haven’t yet borne fruit, and construct an ending based on satisfying your readers. Or, leave just the right questions ringing in their minds.

Granularity

r-avatarWe completed the read-through on the music novel, and we also took care of all the minor notes we came up with along the way. Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game: stomp the weasels! The object is to make sure we’re not overusing the words we have learned that we have a tendency to overuse. We have a list of about three dozen(!) words, which are symptomatic of passive voice, wishy-washiness, and general wordiness.

Scrivener, our writing tool of choice, has some very nifty search capabilities that are making us more productive this time around. In the past, we’ve literally color-coded our entire text by doing find/paste, which is as tedious as it sounds. Scrivener saves us that hassle. For example, we can use its regex feature to quickly highlight all the -ly words, and with just a few tweaks to the regular expression we can tell it to omit things like “jelly” or “only”. We love it!

This is an interesting phase of our process, because it’s pretty much the only time when we work off the same monitor. Rather than splitting it up and each of us de-weaseling half of the book, we look at it together and discuss which instances of “that” should be removed. Sometimes it’s not as simple as keep/kill a particular word; sometimes we find whole sentences that can come out or need to be reworded. The level of magnification at this stage is much greater than on the read-through, so it calls our attention to different aspects of the text.

We’re still in the early part of this (very large) manuscript, but so far we’re quite happy to see that we have fewer weasels lurking on each page than with our earlier efforts. On the other hand, we were sort of counting on making a meaningful dent in the word count in the course of culling those weasels, which it seems might not really happen. But it is giving us an even tighter, leaner book. There are fewer weasels, but still too many. Fortunately we have our special boots for this very job.

They Say Size Doesn’t Matter

r-avatarAs predicted, we were not ready to start our read through of the music novel last week. The good news is that we started it last night! The main thing that slowed us down was the need to write imaginary record reviews. The first step in that process was accomplished ages ago when Jen developed the band’s discography. Next came discussions about the band’s sound. Then we had to find the right voices (the reviews aren’t all by the same person, natch). It turns out that music reviews are a completely different style of writing than straight-up fiction, even when the music itself is fictional.

All this to say that the second draft we started reading last night is 187,251 words long (!!!).

Gulp.

They say size doesn’t matter, but this is a bit daunting. Conventional wisdom has it that it’s hard to sell any novel over 100,000 words. There’s allegedly some wiggle room in that number when it comes to science fiction and fantasy, due to the need for more extensive world-building. And that we have in spades.

During last night’s session we got about 50 pages in and removed about 10 words. At this rate we’ll have it whittled down to a mere 187,000 by the time we’re done!

As we read we’ll be looking at the pacing, and the tension level. If those 187,000 words are all good ones, and they propel the story the way they should, then there really isn’t a problem.

At one point Kent predicted/worried that we might hit 200,000, and we still might. It’s unlikely that we’ll need to add any new scenes, or beef up existing scenes to the tune of 13,000 words, but there is still one aspect of the novel that’s not quite finished. In our other books we have epigraphs, snippets at the beginning of each chapter that expand the story world. This novel will (probably) not have epigraphs. Instead it has other supporting documentation that currently accounts for 20,000 of our words. Now that the second draft is so much longer than the first draft, we will require more of this supplementary material, which we lovingly call the Wingnut Chorus. We won’t know how much until we get the story part of the novel edited and divided into chapters.

To get a feel for the flow and pacing, we need to read quickly, like a real reader will. We hope to be done within a week. And then the next round of edits can begin. Luckily we have each other’s shoulders to cry on.

Future Looks Bright

r-avatarWhen you’re writing about the far future, you can get away with practically anything. But the shorter your jump forward in time, the trickier it is to portray. You’re on the hook to describe what’s happened with cars and phones, and offer some social commentary. And you have to do it all with a fine-bristle brush, no broad strokes allowed.

We like to stir up a brew that closely matches what we encounter when we’re brave enough to venture forth from the writing cave. That is, the consensus reality of our characters is a close match for that of our readers. We’ve delved a few decades into the past, and ventured sideways somewhat, but our novels have all avoided the future.

Soon, though, that will have to change. The sequel to the music novel will concern a new generation of characters, and the plot sort of demands that they not be little kids. And wouldn’t you know it, that lands us squarely in the “trickier” kind of future.

Perhaps it will feel like a natural step for us. Novel #5 was, after all, significantly harder sci-fi than anything else we’ve done. Working together we’ll create the future our characters must struggle in.

Squirrel!

r-avatarThings have been very slow in the writing cave recently. Ever since our triumphant return from our European tour we’ve struggled to get back into our routine.

It’s easy to come up with excuses. There were birthdays in the extended family. Our son plays in approximately a dozen different bands and orchestras, and they all have concerts this time of year. Spring finally arrived, and yard work along with it. Our puppy Lady Marzipan is an unholy terror if she doesn’t get two long walks a day. The TiVo’s getting full so we had to watch a movie (or two). Kent’s car gave up, so we’ve been shopping for a replacement. The teenager had tickets to a concert in Philly, so of course we both had to go along. I mean, there’s an IKEA!

What it comes down to is we’ve reached the stage with the music novel where we’re looking for any excuse to look away (have you seen this thing on youtube?). It’s a terrible feeling because we are so close (so close!) to being done. We’re each in the midst of a pass through the manuscript, looking for places to beef up certain aspects. If we can chain ourselves to our desks long enough to finish that, then I think we’ll turn a corner. The next step will be a read through, which (if we’ve done our jobs correctly) will be enjoyable. It will prove that all of this work was worth it.

Having a writing partner can make dealing with these slow times easier. We sympathize with each other when it’s frustrating. When one of us has a productive day it can inspire the other. And, with Lady Marzipan enforcing our walking conferences, we have someone to talk to about how little we’ve been getting done.

Goal: By next week’s collaboration post, we will have finished this round of edits.

Odds of success: It’s a longshot.

He Looked at Her Comma

r-avatarThe revisions on the music novel keep moving, not very fast, but moving. Our focus has been on heightening descriptions. Jen is concentrating on the characters, and Kent is working on the setting.

At least that’s the theory. Funny thing when you scrutinize your text, you keep finding things that could be better. Little sentence structure improvements, little punctuation tweaks, wordiness, these are all things you should be on the lookout for. Of course, they are a perennial distraction from the task at hand.

We sync up our edits verbally at the end of the night, which is a technique we find very helpful for keeping both writing partners hooked into the text as it’s evolving. Lately our work sessions have culminated in conversations like this.

Kent: “Add a comma after ‘her’ in the fourth paragraph.”
Jen: “Wow, that really makes the city come to life.”

Hard to pin down which of the five senses is invoked by a comma.