Tagged: Science Novel

Method Acting

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A character in Novel #5 is a novelist. Her works take place in a harder-scifi story world, more disconnected from consensus reality than Rune Skelley likes to have things. Excerpts appear as epigraphs with each of our chapters. It gives us a way to sneak in thematic messages and accentuate events going on in the main narrative, as well as helping to flesh out the character who “wrote” them.

The person who actually wrote them is a character, all right, and he got into character to do it.

Our fictional novelist, for reasons too complicated to go into here, prefers not to see her output. To emulate her process, Kent put his wireless keyboard in his lap and turned his chair to face away from his monitor. Not seeing the words made it easier to resist tampering with each sentence too much, and promoted a more deliberate style of composition. It did slow him down, though. The impact on productivity might be too severe to apply this trick for an entire novel, but when focusing on short passages it is a simple way to alter the way you relate to the words.

We wanted the epigraphs to sound like they were written by someone else. Changing the work conditions helped ensure that the output was distinctive. Matching the conditions faced by our character made it easier to think like her.

Genre Unconventional

r-avatarWhen writers look back at their old output, they can experience a variety of feelings. If it’s really old stuff, then they’ve probably forgotten all about it and can see it almost like a “real reader.” Touring through all the posts on the Skelleyverse recently, we got to ride the ups and downs of seeing so much of our writing as if for the first time. We also discovered some things about ourselves as writers.

While our novels stick to a certain sub-set of science fiction, our prompted posts inhabit many genres. We added tags for the most frequently used, including romance and horror. And we added the gonzo tag, exclusively (so far) for Kent’s use. Either he routinely gets stuck with the more difficult stichomancy prompts, or Jen is just a little bit better at beating hers into coherency.

Exactly what kind of science fiction is found in a Rune Skelley novel?

Our stories aren’t set on alien planets or at distant points in time. Monsters and wizards don’t stroll the streets; the laws of physics apply, as far as the general populace can tell. But there’s a secret ingredient, something sliding under the veneer of normalcy. The protagonist is (un)lucky enough to be aware of this hidden reality, which is of course unique to each Rune Skelley universe. These things aren’t hidden as in being buried or masked. They’re intertwined with the familiar environment. In some cases, there’s no way for the protagonists to share the secret even if they want to. Other times, protecting that secret is the protagonists’ main goal in life.

This setup saves us a bit of labor on traditional world-building, because we don’t need to tell you what color the sky is. But the trade-off for that lies in needing more demonstrations of the deeper nature’s implications.

We’ve alluded a few times to our recent project being further toward the hard end of the scifi scale. The main reason it ended up that way has to do with what type of secret ingredient its world needed. In the trilogy and in the music novel, the special nature of the story worlds is a paradigm shift, an everything-you-know-is-wrong proposition. But in the latest book, it’s a what-if question on a less cosmic scale, but with staggering consequences. The tale’s plausibility relies more on technical points of known science than the others.

None of which is meant to suggest we have any kind of problem with other sub-genres, or other genres for that matter. But if you peruse the prompts for examples of how we cope with those other forms, you might see why we like to stick to what we know best.

Look Back in Wonder

r-avatar2013 was a great year for Rune Skelley. Our major accomplishment (apart from keeping this blog up to date) was completing the entire first draft of a novel. We took a look back through our Friday collaboration posts here on the Skelleyverse to get an idea of how long the process actually took.

The first mention of Novel #5 comes on September 14, 2012, when we bemoan the fact that we’re having trouble deciding on a story concept. Kent has a Big Idea, Jen has a character name. Turns out both will end up in the novel.

Then, less than a month later, we have a solution! All it took was a long bus ride and a Jack White concert. Thanks Jack! Next time, please play for more than 45 minutes, okay?

By late November we’re pleased to have roughed in about half the plot, and by the end of the month, we’re covering the floor of the family room with a color-coded plot diagram.

In early December we’re struggling with the ending. We seem to lick that problem pretty quickly, because the next week we’re talking about naming our fictional city, and the week after that we’re drawing maps.

Early January 2013 finds us scouring the internet for pictures to represent our characters. It’s starting to feel a bit like we’re stalling, doesn’t it? I mean, this idea has been kicking around since September!

Finally – January 25th we’ve begun writing Novel #5. Go team!

Through February we seem to struggle with distractions large and small.

March finds us 50,000 words in, and working to detangle a tricky timeline knot. We’re collaborating well, though.

We didn’t mention this project at all during April or May, and in June we tell you why. An outside project had our attention. And then it was the new season of Arrested Development that took the blame.

By the middle of July we were getting back into the swing of things, starting with a read-through of the work-in-progress.

In August we were hitting our stride again, and almost done with the first draft!

In September we finally finished!

Of course, that was just the really rough first draft. It needed a bit of work before we could feel good about showing it to our critique group.

In October we were working on some retcon based on a field trip, and getting on each others nerves a bit.

And by the end of November, we had written up all the supplementary materials the novel called for, and were already getting feedback from our critique group.

Whew! A marathon! An entire novel written in under a year! The first mention of the idea was in September 2012, and the rough first draft was completed in September 2013. The sharable first draft took a smidgen longer, if you want to get technical.

Soon it will be time to do it all over again. We’re deep into edits on Novel #4, sometimes called the Music Novel. It has an actual title, but we’re feeling protective at the moment so you’ll just have to wait. As we mentioned, this novel was kind of a mess, so we’re afraid the editing process will be lengthy. But as soon as we’re done with that, we plan to start developing Novel #6 in earnest.

It will be fun to track our progress here, so we can look back over it when we’re done and (hopefully) marvel at how quickly it all comes together.

Happy New Year!

It Takes Two to Tango

r-avatarGood news everyone!

We are thisclose to putting our current first draft to bed. The text of the story itself has been done for a couple weeks, and we’ve even started to get feedback on it from our critique group. So far so awesome.

The only thing we have left to write are some supplementary materials, which we talked about a little bit last week. Kent has been reveling in this opportunity to explore the original story spark that morphed so completely to become our finished novel. His excitement is contagious, and Jen has joined in to a limited extent. We anticipate needing less than 1000 more words and the whole thing will be done.

And then we get to celebrate!

Celebrating your milestones is an important part of the writing process. You need to reward yourself for a job well done, and it’s much more fun to do that with a partner. And we don’t even mean that in a salacious way — we mean with your writing partner. Sure, your spouse or your buddy can lift a glass with you to toast the completion of your new story, but they probably don’t have a full understanding of how satisfied you feel, how proud you are, or just how difficult the road there was. When you have a coauthor, that person is with you every step of the way. You’ve had each other’s backs through the whole long slog, now you can let loose together and get freaky!

Just how freaky do Jen and Kent plan to get? Well, there are some movies that have been clogging up the TiVo for a while. Plus this Day of the Doctor thing is happening. And next week is Thanksgiving.

I hope you’re not scandalized.

Next up, after our Authors Gone Wild break: plotting out the new story idea, followed by extensive edits of a previous novel that’s been waiting patiently on the back burner.

Fictional Fiction

r-avatarJen and Kent work hard to blend their writing styles into a seamless Rune Skelley voice. Rune Skelley, though, is not content with a single voice.

Each of our books has called for the inclusion of writings by authors in the story’s fictional universe, and we’ve had a marvelous time differentiating those voices. The fictional authors have writing styles that don’t sound like Rune Skelley. Neither do they sound like Jen, or Kent. Or like our other fictional authors.

As we’ve mentioned, our current novel started out as an idea born of Kent’s fevered imaginings, an idea that didn’t really speak to Jen. We found a way to work around that, and now Kent gets his reward for compromising.

In the story world, there is an author whose novels embody Kent’s original idea, and now Kent has free rein to bring that idea to life. He is encouraged to dive as deep into the hard scifi well as he wants. And since we’re only going to be including excerpts from our fictional author, he doesn’t have to worry overmuch about plot.

Lest it sound like Jen never gets to do the fun part, she already came up with the titles for all ten of our latest made-up author’s novels (and one short story). That “idea that didn’t really speak to Jen” seems to have been whispering in her ear over the past couple of days. Having the names of all the books that will provide the excerpts gives Kent inspiration for the story lines and themes they contain. It’s a neat example of the symbiosis in Rune Skelley’s writing process.

Sunshine and Roses

r-avatarMost of the time, our process works really well. We might have mentioned it, in fact I’m sure we sometimes come across a little boastfully about it. “Watch how we make everything look easy.” Well, usually it is pretty easy. We mesh, so we can devote our energies to coming up with nifty concepts and stellar prose. (Modesty isn’t one of our strengths.)

There are some bumps in the road now and then, we must confess. Right now we’re revising a first draft, which in our case means we’re working in different parts of it and then synching up. How we sync up is that we dictate our changes to each other. It’s a good system, even if not the most efficient in terms of time. The benefit is that all the new stuff gets read aloud, and we have the opportunity to critique it while it’s fresh. The problem that came up recently was that we got out of sync with the synching up.

Kent’s engines sometimes take longer to warm up than Jen’s, and his powers of concentration can be iffy at certain times of day. So it has happened, rarely, that Jen went on a tear with numerous small edits while Kent scowled at his screen for a while. Jen had good stuff to share, but the repeated sharing broke Kent’s fragile grip on the changes he was trying to make.

Those bumpy stretches are few and far between on our writing-collaboration journey. But they do happen. Working solo, you never have to worry about distracting your partner, because there is no partner to distract. But you do have to avoid other sources of distraction, and there’s no one to give you a gentle nudge in the third hour of reading web comics when you’re supposedly writing. The plusses of teamwork far, far outweigh the occasional minuses.

Field Trips

r-avatarIt’s good to get out of the house now and then. Kent and Jen will be taking a trip this weekend to go to a concert, which should be exciting and give them a bit of a break from their routine.

The last time we went to a concert in another city, we used the travel time to brainstorm the ideas which led, ultimately, to our current novel. Jen had a few tantalizing images rattling around in her head; a character’s name, a predicament for her to face, and a quirky trait for a different character. Kent had a pseudoscientific premise. During the bus ride, we found the connecting thread. Not long after that, we had our outline.

Since then, we’ve also traveled to visit the real-world site that our book’s setting is based on. We had looked at photos and read the historical info online, but being there in person is an exponentially richer experience. (Sorry, not telling you where it is. You’ll have to read the book!)

What will this journey offer by way of inspiration or synthesis? We can’t wait to find out!

Retcon Done Right

r-avatarFor those of you unfamiliar with the term, “Retcon” means Retroactive Continuity. It is the alteration of previously established facts, usually in a long-running comic book series or TV show, but it can happen in book series also. Or worst of all, within a single novel.

Retcon can take the form of additions to the backstory, subtraction from it, or alteration of specific facts.

The most egregious example of alteration retcon that we can think of right now: Greedo shooting first. By changing the sequence of events in the Mos Eisley cantina, George Lucas hoped (presumably) to make Han Solo a more sympathetic or heroic character. Instead, he gutted Han’s entire character arc. Never forget: Han shot first!

Retconning early in the editing process is a necessary evil. If you do your job right, no one will ever be the wiser. Kent and Jen are at the point in their editing process where they’re reading through the first draft and making notes about things to change and improve. A first draft is, by its very nature, rough. There will be things that the author changed on purpose partway through, and there will be other inconsistencies that were inadvertent, especially when you have two authors working together. Whether or not you changed Bob’s eyes from blue to brown on purpose, now is the time to go through and make everything line up.

In our current case, it’s a little more involved than eye color. We have an elaborate setting that is based, in part, on a real location. In our brilliance, we visited this real-world location when we were thisclose to finished with the first draft, instead of at the beginning. Couple our more intimate knowledge of the location with the fact that we now know what areas our characters will visit, and what actions they will perform there, and we are faced with quite the editing task.

Jen fired up PhotoShop and updated the map and the floorplan to reflect the changes to the layout. We discussed at length which doors are always kept locked, and developed a backstory to account for why any particular door is or isn’t. We simplified certain things and complexified others, all with the goal of having a world that makes sense for the story we have chosen to tell. We went through the whole manuscript and marked all the passages that feature description of this location, and we are now faced with the unenviable task of retconning all of it into one big ball of consistency.

Hold us.

 

Who’s Counting?

r-avatarOf the myriad ways to measure your productivity as a writer, one of the most straightforward and objective is your word count. It’s also a significant metric for classification and marketing of your work, because different genres and formats each have their own traditional sweet spots. And it just feels great to tell people that your novel is more than 100,000 words, because they react as it that means it’s good. Perhaps the reaction is more properly construed as, “You must take all this very seriously,” or, “Wow, you really don’t have much of a life.” But it feels good all the same.

The danger of obsessing about word count, of course, is if the writing’s no good you’re just generating more of something no one will want. Your focus should always be on quality, not quantity. In fact, using fewer words is often a hallmark of stronger writing. Brevity is the soul of wit, or so it’s said. (Clichés count double!)

We recently celebrated the completion of the first draft of our new novel, which we accomplished faster than any of the previous ones. Practice makes perfect (remember to double that one, too) but a big part of the reason might have been Kent’s drive to “win” the word count. His claims of victory look reasonable on the surface, but he’s neglecting to include the words in the stubs, all of which go in Jen’s total.

People working together toward a common goal aren’t supposed to be competing with one another, yet they often are. If it produces conflict in the partnership, or if you’re taking the batteries out of each other’s keyboards, then it becomes counterproductive. But up to a point, some good-natured rivalry can be highly motivating. That’s how Kent sees things anyway. He knows if he can keep up with Jen he has something to feel proud of. Working by yourself, you have no one to set the pace.

How do you measure your progress? What makes you feel energized about writing?

Clink the Champagne Glasses

r-avatarPerhaps the best part of collaborative writing is having someone to toast with when the work is done. Around 10:00 last night, Kent wrote the final words of our first draft! Woohoo! We popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and celebrated in style (if “sprawled on the sofa watching a movie” qualifies as “in style”).

Two weeks ago we had 14 scenes left to write, and now they’re all checked off. The manuscript came in at just a hair under 110,000 words, which is in line with most of our work.

Of course we can’t rest on our laurels for too long. There’s still plenty of work left to do to get this novel in shape. We’ve been debating our best course of action, whether to immediately go through and address the things we know are issues, or to let the manuscript rest for a little while before doing a full read-through and then tackling the edits. Both approaches have their merits. In the first case, the work is fresh in our minds and it should be easy (ha!) to fiddle with the things we’re not happy with. In the second case, if we step away and lose our infatuation with it, then when we come back we will be better able to see over-arching issues. In either case, this will only be the first of several editing passes. There’s still a lot of work ahead.

Luckily for us we each have a partner we can rely on when the work is tough, and celebrate with when we reach milestones.

Go Team Skelley!