Tagged: rainbow

A Ghostly Outline

The rainbow for Book 2 is proving to be a lot of work, but we’re certainly glad to be identifying all these gaps now rather than later. With as many times as we’ve done the rainbow process, the challenges of this series have been something of a surprise.

We think a big part of it is the fact that all four books are in play during this pre-writing stage. It means that when we lay out the rainbow for any one of the books, we’re also aware of the other segments that make up the whole, giant thing. It’s like the ghosts of the rest of the books haunt the discussion.

Too bad we don’t have a room in our house that’s big enough to lay out the entire tetralogy-spanning Bifrost. The Auxilliary Writing Cave is sufficient for only one at a time. On previous projects we’ve spread out rainbows on the dining table or down the hallway, but those aren’t wide enough this time around. Oh well.

A writing partner helps you keep track of hundreds of colorful paper squares and the supernatural realms they represent.

When “Mysterious” Doesn’t Cut It

Ghost Story progress update: we have preliminary rainbows for all four books, and the Book 1 rainbow has been expanded considerably. We are now working on building out the rainbow for Book 2. It’s going very well, but we have discovered that we struggle to make firm decisions where a particular character is concerned.

This person’s column tends to be a bit sparse when we first lay out each rainbow. It’s someone we originally pictured as an enigmatic background figure, who would just turn up to chuckle darkly now and then. Turn up at significant moments in the story, of course. Well, we need to understand what’s responsible for the timing of those appearances, which means we need to know more about this character.

It hasn’t been any problem at all to invent fun backstory. The problem has been winnowing down the fun ideas to just those that don’t contradict each other, and arranging them into a coherent line through the plot. Those conversations are filled with too much “maybe this” and “maybe that” and not enough “okay, that’s settled.”

But we are getting there. It’s just turning out to be tougher to get to know this person than most of the rest of the cast. Which isn’t surprising, considering that the first thing we pinned down was “enigmatic.” How right we were.

A writing partner is someone who’ll help you dig up all the dirt about your most uncooperative characters, and then sift through it for treasure.

Proof of Concept

Once again the plot rainbow proves its worth. Last weekend we pushed ourselves to finish filling in the rainbow for Book 1 of our in-progress Ghost Series. It deviates from the rainbows we’ve created for previous novels in that it’s wider and shorter, but it still covers the floor pretty effectively (and flummoxes the dogs). We’re not completely done with it yet, just done enough. The broad strokes are all there, and some of the nuance. We’ve considered most of the beats from multiple angles and filled in the big holes. Now we’ll move on and do the same thing for the other three planned books in the series, getting them all to the same level of ripeness.

At least that was the plan.

We were really pleased with how thorough we were. “Wow,” we thought. “That’s one nicely detailed plot outline!” And then we gave each other high-fives and drank some champagne, etc etc. And then we spent half-an-hour numbering all the cards and stacking the whole thing neatly so that the dogs could walk around the room again. It was all terribly satisfying.

And then, Boom. On literally the first day of work on Book 2 we discovered something lurking in the notes that needs to be introduced in Book 1.

Sigh.

Luckily it’s not something that will require us to rethink half of the plot, or anything dire like that. It’s a detail that needs to be included, and we need to give serious consideration to how certain characters will feel about it.

Discoveries like this are why we’re working the whole series at the same time. We’d really hate to have the first novel entirely written and then discover we’d left something out. It’s also why we are so enamored of our plot rainbow process. It’s much easier to shift a few pieces of colored paper around on the floor (while fending off a corgi) than it is to rewrite a chapter or two.

A good writing partner is someone who will sacrifice herself to keep the dogs happily snuggling on the sofa while you crawl around on the hardwood, narrowly avoiding paper cuts.

A Rainbow Is Multifaceted

Plotting out the Ghost Series continues, which lately has consisted of intense bouts of rainbowing. We found a story beat that we could beef up, and in the process of adding it we had a minor epiphany about what makes the rainbow such a powerful tool.

Each POV character gets a column/color, and each story beat gets a row. That means for one beat we need to make cards for every character who participates. In this case, that was three characters. It might feel like inefficiency to have to jot things down in triplicate, but that’s the thing — it wasn’t just writing out the same info multiple times. The cards were all different, because they represented the event from different points of view: the character who tells the lie, the character who believes it, and the true target of the subterfuge.

Having to account for events from these various angles really helps us envision their impact. It also helps us plan whose POV to use for the actual prose. We wrote up three cards, but we won’t need to write the scene three times. (That would be inefficiency.)

The rainbow is inconvenient sometimes. It takes up a lot of space. The dogs walk on it, and shed on it. (And one of them will eat it, if given the chance.) Inserting a story beat means shifting lots of other cards to make room. But it’s worth it to get an adjustable visualization of the story that you can look at together with your writing partner.

Why Even Bother With The Rainbow?

All of the semi-serious content on this entire blog could be boiled down to “we believe in the process.” We pretty much never shut up about it. Of course the process has evolved over time. It’s workflow, not dogma. But in our Friday posts we’ve really hammered the point that we think it’s important, and of all the steps it comprises probably the one we’ve nattered about the most is the rainbow.

Recent experience has further solidified our confidence that the rainbow is effective. Because, you see, we almost decided to skip it this time.

The ghost story is something we’ve been brainstorming about for quite a while, long enough that we really feel we’re getting to know the characters. We have tons of notes, which Jen has somehow collated into a synopsis that doesn’t contradict itself. Reading that made us so excited about the story, it was tempting to jump ahead to outlining, or maybe even start generating prose.

We didn’t always have the rainbow. Way, way back when we began writing novels together, we had nothing like our current process. But we did have some guidelines and rituals. For example, we originally did our first drafts longhand, and the act of typing them up created the second draft. We don’t do longhand drafts anymore. Even though it seemed important at one time, we came to see it as unnecessary.

Maybe the rainbow would fall into that same category. Maybe it was time we outgrew it?

Fortunately, we stuck to the process. Converting the information about our story from one form (synopsis) to a different form (a grid of colorful paper squares arranged on the floor) in this case revealed major gaps in the plotting. But, it didn’t turn into a major problem for the project. All it took was a little unscheduled brainstorming and we got the pieces to fit.

Would it have been a disaster if we’d skipped over the rainbow? Probably not. We probably would have seen the issues when we got to that part in the writing, and we still could have devised a solution. Of course, fixing it would have required rewriting a bunch of scenes, and reluctance to make so many changes might have made us less willing to consider taking the best approach. And, when you’re head-down cranking out prose is not the best time to notice large-scale issues. It’s quite possible that we wouldn’t have caught a problem like this until an entire draft was written. Ouch.

We like having a process that keeps us on track. Another thing we clearly remember about our very earliest collaborative experiences is the months-long droughts we would fall into because we’d written ourselves into a corner. Getting stuck might be a sign that your process is letting you down.

The Dog Ate My Homework

Our house is overrun with adorable furry demons whose job it is to make it difficult for us to accomplish our writing goals. When the Bandit Lord is not pulling us away from the Writing Cave for a potty break, Lady Marzipan is barking at mysterious intruders only she can sense.

We spend a good deal of time now refereeing the canine drag races that occur in our hallway, and around our sofas, and under the dining room table, then back through the kitchen and down the hallway, with a quick detour into the futon room and back again, around and around. We also spend a good deal of time convincing his Lordship that he shouldn’t chew on the molding, and cleaning up the soggy confetti that he makes out of the cardboard he is allowed to chew on.

And now, instead of just eating up all of our valuable writing time, they’ve moved on to eating our actual writing. We talked before about setting up our new plot rainbow on the table in the dining room, and how well that was working. But then we made the mistake of leaving the sliding door open for a while and the wind (it must have been the wind and not Lady Marzipan’s tail) blew a few of our colorful squares onto the floor. Where they were promptly confetti-ized.

Jen made replacements. It happened again. Sigh.

With visitors coming this weekend we had to clear the table off, so the rainbow is currently safe in a neat pile, secured with a rubber band. The next time we spread it out we’ll have to get clever, buy a couple dozen little paperweights or something.

In the meantime, we bow to the whims of our merciless overlords. Just look at them — so intimidating!

Brainstorm Until It’s Not Fun Anymore

In our preliminary brainstorming sessions for the current work in progress, the ideas were coming out faster than we could jot them down. We couldn’t help but come up with tons of good ideas, like there simply were no other kinds of ideas. The recent brainstorming sessions, on the other hand, have been characterized by phrases like, “But I don’t think that will really work,” and “Not that we would actually want to do it that way.” The few ideas that we did feel good about were things we’d already come up with at least twice, according to our notes.

This is a signal that it’s time to stop brainstorming. Early on, everything is wide open and there’s lots of room for ideas. But the more you flesh things out, the more constraints are piling up. Any really new idea that you throw in will be the enemy of something else that you’ve already decided you like. If you aren’t sure if you like your story that way, then by all means keep storming your brains. But if you have a good basis for a story that you’re looking forward to telling, then move on to another step in the process.

For us, that means laying out a rainbow. So that’s what we’ve been doing, although we’ve broken with tradition by using the dining table for this one rather than doing it on the floor. (Our helpers are far too enthusiastic about rainbows, alas. Plus, floors lack much to recommend them, ergonomically.)

And — it worked! Being able to visualize the flow and structure of the story immediately shook loose a new set of good, usable ideas for us. They’re not only good, they’re compatible.

Working with a partner makes brainstorming much more fruitful and enjoyable, but don’t overuse it. Documenting and visualizing your progress is always helpful, and it becomes essential when you have a partner to communicate with.

 

Fear of Details

Rune Skelley’s process is pretty intensive with the supporting materials, as regular readers here are well aware. It’s a system that has evolved as Jen and Kent have worked together on numerous novels over the years. We talk a lot here about the textual elements: rainbows, outlines, and stubs. What we don’t mention so often are the visual aids, but it turns out those can be just as important.

In addition to seeking inspiration on Pinterest and stock photo sites, and “casting” our main characters by including a pic in their bio, we like to create maps and diagrams. Cities, buildings, ships, underground complexes — you name it, we draw maps of it.

Usually.

It might be because we’re so eager to get the current WIP wrapped up, or maybe we’ve just become a little too comfortable with ourselves, but we neglected to draw any pictures of a key locale that figures in the finale. We talked about the place a lot, made good notes. But Kent noticed something about the first draft that he thinks is due to skipping the actual floor plan: he’s hesitant to enrich the scenes with sensory details.

This is a first draft, and of course we’ll address any such deficiencies during revisions. It’s not a disaster, although it might end up being more work than if we’d prepared the visuals up front. (We’re big on up-front preparation.)

Kent’s theory is that this “fear” of details arises from there being two of us working together without concrete documentation of the locale. We’re each making things up as we go, and we might not make them up exactly alike. Mentioning anything specific, like saying the door is on the right or the table is black, creates a potential continuity issue. The logical conclusion then? Don’t mention any details! That way we can’t contradict each other. We can literally keep our story straight. Straight, and devoid of texture or context.

It’s too vague, too loosey-goosey. If only we had a tool to fix that problem…

Wait a minute, we do! The Rune Skelley Writing Toolbox contains numerous strange implements, among them a pair of wrenches. There’s the familiar monkey wrench, meant to be thrown into the gears when everything feels like it’s running a smidge too neatly, and then there’s the goose wrench. That one’s more subtle, and its job is reduce chaos without making everything too rigid. It’s usually deployed during the outlining stage, keeping the plot from losing its shape, but it can also manifest as visual aids that keep the setting (and characters, and props, and so on) in focus.

Remember, Kent: righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.

Archeology

r-avatarThe spring cleaning bug bit Jen this year. We’ve both known for a long time that the writing cave was way overdue (yes, it was way overdue a long time ago; we were verging on eligibility for a depressing reality show appearance). The excavation is well underway and has led to some very interesting finds.

In addition to the kids’ old school papers and mementos, manuals for appliances we junked years ago, and other miscellany, Jen uncovered some primitive forms of writing from many eons ago when Rune Skelley first formed. Deciphering these ancient inscriptions taught us much about the way of life as it was practiced back then.

We used to do our first drafts longhand, on lined paper. We’d use the process of typing them up as a chance to do minor edits.

We used to print out each draft and do all our revisions on paper. Any lengthy new or altered passages, we wrote out longhand, just like with a first draft.

We used to dive in and make up the story as we went. There would be a premise, and some notion of the inciting incident, and a shadowy impression of where it should all lead. Then we’d just go for it, and when it wasn’t quite right we redid it. Then we redid it again. (And again.)

As we moved away from so much handwritten output, we had a stage where we would write scenes, dozens of scenes, and then print them out and fan them on the floor to decide what order to put them in to form a story. Then we’d write whatever new material was needed to spackle over the seams.

We found a binder that Jen created for the Music Novel, containing notes about the whole cast and the band’s discography. Several characters’ names are out of date, as is the whole plot, but the inspiration is still there, still resonating.

We’ve come a long way, from such primordial techniques to our current state of rainbows and wrenches. It’s good to be reminded of how things once were, if only to be glad you don’t operate under such conditions anymore.

Another Major Milestone Passed

r-avatarOur double-complete rainbow is double-completed!

A few nights ago, we laid out the rainbows for both of the sequels to the Science Novel, with one flowing directly into the other. At that point, the second one was only about two-thirds done, but we were hot on the trail of a plot wrinkle that would give shape to the remainder of the story. So by the end of that session, our colorful array of paper squares reached its final form.

Our next step was to sleep on it. Not physically on the rainbow, of course. But this did mean that Lady Marzipan had to be banished from the Auxiliary Writing Cave for another night so we could leave things laid out. The next evening, Jen read off the first rainbow a row at a time while Kent typed up a synopsis of sorts, something we refer to as our prose outline. If Kent didn’t need to sleep, we might have powered through and done both of them, but Lady Marzipan had to stay out for yet another night. But finally, next time, we got there!

Typing up the prose outlines moves the story development process into a new phase. It’s not just transcription; it’s a chance to catch gaps and inconsistencies — looking at things through a different lens — and start getting a feel for the rhythms of the stories.

So what’s next? We lay them aside and work on something else. Specifically, we’re assessing critique notes on the Music Novel. We like to give stuff some time to rest as part of our process, and we don’t like to try to work on more than one book at a time.