Tagged: rainbow

Rereading The Rainbow

The past couple of weeks have seen a happy uptick in our productivity. We got into a bit of a rhythm with our work sessions and had some very fruitful discussions.

Revisiting the rainbow for As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2 gave us a chance to peek around a whole bunch of plot corners. Jen was very interested in avoiding surprises as we work on prose, which have tripped us up a bit in past projects. So, looking around the corners was the whole mission here. We were able to flesh out the through-lines for a couple of characters and unkink the timeline. Those conversations really jumpstarted things as far as being able to focus on the project, which made it much easier to (mostly) stick to a schedule from one day to the next.

Did we see around all the corners? Probably not! But we know we’re a lot better prepared than we were before.

A writing partner is someone who helps you avoid getting ambushed by your own plot.

As Predicted

Way back in January we made a writing plan for 2021. Let’s see how closely we followed it.

In true oxymoronic fashion, we wanted to start by finishing something. Editing the Science Novels was handily done, so — Check!

Next was plotting the Ghost Series, which gets another check.

And here’s where things fall apart a little. We were a smidge optimistic when we made our plan, and thought we’d have enough time left in the year to start the actual writing. Hilariously, we left open the possibility that we’d need to decide what to do after we finished the first Ghost Novel. Ha ha! Building four plot rainbows took longer than anticipated, and the actual composition hasn’t begun yet. But slow progress is still progress, and we’re very excited about what’s in store.

One other item on our To Do list that still needs to be addressed: deciding what will come after the Ghost Books. Extremely preliminary discussions on that topic have begun. A good writing partner is someone you enjoy having discussions with, no matter how preliminary they might be.

Toodles 2021

Pull up a comfy chair, dear reader, and together we’ll review what we blogged about over this past twelve-month. Are you comfortable? Would you care for an adult beverage before we begin?

We started the year by pontificating about Point of View. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that we have strong opinions on the matter.

We closed out edits on our Science Novels as we closed out January, and our Ghost universe took over all of our work sessions. It involved a lot of brainstorming and plot-rainbowing. And we started watching Supernatural — an activity we’re still engaged in (there are a lot of episodes!).

And speaking of televisual entertainment, in March we offered up an incomplete list of our quarantine viewing material. And even now, 9 months later, we still haven’t braved a movie theatre. We enjoyed Only Murders in the Building, recently finished up the newest seasons of What We Do in the Shadows and the Great British Baking Show, and are almost done with Schmigadoon!, DreamCorp LLC, and Party Down. We recently watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the umpteenth time (inspired by watching Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made), and our most recent DVD was Harold and Maude (technically a rewatch, but it had been so long that Kent didn’t remember seeing it).

The dogs made a cameo appearance in April, then we went on to wax rhapsodic about our plot rainbow again some more. We were very proud of the concept we had for the ending, which has since gone through several further iterations. It’ll be interesting to see how much it further it morphs by the time we write it.

The joys and tribulations of plotting an entire 4-book series at once occupied much of May. And then our kids came for a visit!

The halfway point of all that outlining came in June, and that’s also when we started talking about redecorating the Writing Cave. We’re happy to say that the outlining is now complete. The Writing Cave reno, not so much. The big stuff is all done and the room is totally usable, but the finishing details are stalled.

In July we were a little hung up on how complicated our plotting process is, so we added a new member to our SkelleyCo writing team: our beloved white board!

When August rolled around we got started on Book 4 (the final Ghost Book for those of you keeping track at home). It’s kind of enormous, and we had to chop all of our paper squares in half so all the characters would fit on one side. We fretted that the 400 magnets we bought might not be enough. Fear not – we had a whopping 13 or 14 magnets leftover at the end.

September was light on blogging because we were shoulder-deep in the Writing Cave renovation, but we did manage to debate whether or not it was possible for a character to be too villainous. Conclusion: yes.

The end of plot-rainbowing was in sight in October, and we continued our passionate love affair with our white board. That thing is truly worth its weight in gold. And in addition to that we found time to update our Stichomancy Writing Prompt Generator.

In November we finally finally completed all the plotting for the whole entire Ghost Series.  But that doesn’t mean we’re ready to start writing just yet. When we aren’t hosting visitors or helping our children move, Kent is working on maps and Jen is typing up the world’s longest, strangest outline (the old-school kind with Roman Numeral and regular numbers,  and letters both capital and lowercase). The actual writing should commence soonish. Maybe in December, maybe in January.

And finally, in December we said a tearful goodbye to a beloved member of our critique group. It can’t be said frequently or forcefully enough: Fuck Cancer.

At the End of the Rainbow…

… awaits a pot of more work. Yay!

Now that our rainbowing is completed for all four ghost books, it’s time to start writing. Writing an outline, that is. Also some character sheets, and probably a map. (Sounds a little like we’re playing D&D, which is another form of collaborative storytelling. Hmm.) Actual prose needs to wait just a little longer.

To celebrate the milestone, we took Friday night off and watched a movie. Er, we usually give ourselves Friday nights off. And this movie was, technically, research. But we did get take-out, including dessert.

A writing partner is someone to snuggle up with on the couch to watch a movie that played long, long ago, at the theater where you both worked at the time.

Rainbow is Wide, Rainbow is Long

The plot rainbow is constructed from rows and columns. Which is which largely depends on whether we’ve laid it out on the floor or on our snazzy new whiteboard. But either way, a stripe of any given color represents an entity’s timeline, and a stripe that cuts across all the colors perpendicularly is a story beat.

The colors are out of order? You’re out of order!

Generally, we build up the rainbow by beats. “What’s everybody up to at this point in the story?” This approach feels natural for us during the early to middle phases, while the structure is incomplete. But once we have most of it set up, we find it very useful to run through each color the whole way from start to finish. Often cards will get added this way that had been missed during the beat-by-beat phases.

It’s important not to start thinking you have to fill in every space in the grid. Only create cards for the information that matters. It needn’t be anything that will become an actual scene, though. And by following each character’s journey all the way through the overall tale we make sure that their story arcs all make sense. In effect, we’re going through the whole cast in turn and asking what the novel would look like if they were the main character. Coming at it from these different angles really helps find the places where things might not join up smoothly, and it’s super easy to make adjustments to the rainbow. Much more so than in rewrites!

A writing partner is someone to criss-cross the rainbow with you.

It Tastes Like Victory

The plot rainbow for Ghost Book 4 is complete. And freakin’ massive. Our whiteboard is 4′ x 8′, and the rainbow covers the entire front and more than half the back. It’s really something.

So — the entire Ghost Series is plotted. It feels great! It’s also intimidating because these novels are what we’re going to work on for the next few years. No pressure.

Amazingly, we’re still really psyched by the story we’ve specced out, even after spending 3/4 of a year immersed in it. Before we can actually start the prose composition there are still a few steps we need to complete:

  • photograph, number, document, and file the Book 4 rainbow
  • watch a couple of movies for research
  • review the Book 1 rainbow, and expand as necessary
  • turn the rainbow into an outline
  • finalize character and setting sketches
  • write the first batch of stubs

Then we’ll be ready to really start. With all our pre-work, the writing itself should go pretty smoothly. It’s a good thing we didn’t just jinx ourselves!

A writing partner is someone who knows the proper counter-jinx techniques and rituals, and will perform them with you.

The Plot Rainbow is Like The London Tube Map

One of the techniques we rely on heavily for our pre-writing process is the rainbow. It gives us a map to follow. Each row uses a color to represent a character, and the columns reflect the passage of time. Because our stories tend to be large and complex, our rainbows can get pretty unwieldy, taking up the entire hallway, and, more recently, forcing us to use both sides of our ginormous whiteboard.

The power of this tool is that it helps us visualize the flow of the story, to spot characters who are underutilized and debug the timing of events. It’s proven itself to be well worth the hassle. But, keep in mind that the rainbow isn’t a calendar. The objective is to focus on the important beats, which means the columns’ durations are all likely to be different. The rainbow distorts time in a manner reminiscent of how the map of the London Underground distorts space.

london tube map
The iconic London Tube Map designed by Harry Beck.

By discarding concern for geographic accuracy, the London Tube Map becomes more meaningful by showing more stations. Riders need to know which stations are on each line, and in what order. That’s enough for them to use the system to get where they’re going. Do the people riding the tube sometimes need more spatially rigorous information about these places? Surely. That’s just not the job of this particular map. Likewise, writers do sometimes need specific dates. Fortunately, we have calendars for that.

That the columns of the rainbow grid aren’t fixed units of time is not a bug. It’s a feature. But like any other part of the process, having an extra pair of eyes will definitely come in handy to make sure everything’s lining up. A writing partner is someone to help you keep all your stations on the proper lines.

Threading The Projector

The rainbowing for Ghosts Book 3 is coming along nicely. Hard to know just how close to done with it we really are, but we’re dealing with events near the climax now so it sure feels like we’re almost done. Thing is, there are colors of this rainbow that have so far received scant attention. It’s going to take a few more trips through the whole thing to get it sufficiently pinned down.

This saga has a lot of moving parts. As Jen put it, we need to figure out how to thread the world’s most complicated projector, but then we’ll get a really cool movie.

It’s a lot of work. We like to advocate doing that work up front, but the work’s still there all the same. We’d be lying if we said that a front-loaded process magically eliminates all the chores. What it does is protect us from writing ourselves into a corner. Sad experience is a great teacher: we don’t want to do that again. Being stuck for six months wasn’t fun. All this pre-writing might take just as long, but it is fun! We’re not stuck. We’re just enjoying the freedom to change our minds about who lives and who dies. (It’s a ghost story, so those words start to lose their meanings, but you get the idea.)

A writing partner is someone who’ll help you solve the puzzle of how to make your story the best it can be.

Two Down, Two To Go

The plot rainbow for Ghost Novels, Book 2 is done. On to Book 3!

This is the second pass on each of these rainbows. When we first generated them, we were looking at things from a pretty high altitude, and this time through we’re zooming in on things. Rainbow number two doubled in size this time around. By the time we were ready to number the cards and pick it up to make room for number three, it barely fit in the Auxiliary Writing Cave’s designated Rainbow Assembly Zone.

Now we have number three spread out in the same spot, and it looks so dinky! But we know there’s a ton of info we haven’t incorporated into it yet. The next step is to review all our notes about this book, then we can start adding cards to enrich this rainbow with details. In all likelihood, this one will also end up straining the capacity of the Assembly Zone.

A writing partner is someone who builds rainbows with you, and then helps you make them bigger and brighter.

Picking Up The Rainbow

Last weekend was a little bit busy and a whole lot wonderful, because both of our offspring came to visit — because we’re all vaccinated! And they brought their significant others! And their pets! We had quite the houseful.

All of this meant that the Auxilliary Writing Cave was needed for other things, which necessitated putting away the rainbow. We’re able to keep making headway on the story even in its absence, but will soon need to lay it out again.

Because not all the columns are filled for every row, laying things back down accurately can be a challenge. Eventually we’ll number the cards, but if we do that too early we end up re-re-renumbering them and that gets messy. The solution we’ve come up with is to pad everything out with blanks before we gather it up. That exercise also puts a point on those columns that have a lot more blanks, which sometimes is just the way things go but can indicate that we need to pay more attention to certain cast members.

A writing partner is someone to help you keep your rainbows in order.