Tagged: Science Novel

An Equal And Opposite Reaction

r-avatarEvery writer has to deal with occasional bouts of writer’s block, or lack of motivation, or distractibility.

Squirrel!

This week has been just such a week for Jen. She wants to keep the project moving, but can’t seem to find her way into any of the scenes that are already in stub form. Usually that would mean that it’s time to write more stubs, but we are currently well-stocked. More of the scenes need to be fully written so that we can make sure we’re still heading where the outline says we are.

Luckily for Jen, she has a writing partner. Kent is not suffering from the same malaise as Jen, and has been writing some great stuff, if he does say so himself. Jen happens to agree. But that’s part of the problem, actually. Lately Jen feels like Kent has been using all the good sentences and she’s just randomly smashing the keyboard.

This compare and contrast mindset can be one of the downsides to collaboration. When the stars align, the co-authors drive each other to brilliance. Other times, someone feels like they’ve been left in the dust. Right now it’s Jen’s turn, but Kent had a similar episode as we were finishing up the rewrites on the previous project.

The two of us trust each other enough to talk about these feelings and reassure one another that everything’s golden. As you embark on a collaboration with a new partner it’s something you should keep an eye out for. Collaboration is not competition. You and your co-writer should cover for each other when necessary, and celebrate when everything goes smoothly.

But it’s research!

r-avatarThe new book, like its predecessor, is turning out to require significant research. Whereas the previous one was set in a real city, which meant we needed to get the details right, the new one registers a greater hardness on the sci-fi scale. That means more technical details to get right. So far we’ve needed in-depth information about algaculture, DNA chemistry, prison architecture, and single malt Scotch. (Not to mention a few Russian phrases.*)

This has led to a sense of bafflement at the idea of trying to accomplish anything without the Internet. But if Kent doesn’t soon get some sense of proportion about things, he might have to do just that. Jen threatens to turn off his Internet access a couple of times per week, in hopes of getting him to focus on the actual writing.

Being able to do research on any topic right from your desk saves hours that would otherwise go into trips to the library and other activities. It frees you to do spur of the moment “research” on any incidental question or topic the moment it arises, so you needn’t plan ahead what subject areas to explore.

The downside is that when research is so available it becomes a slippery slope. One quick search for the names of the four whisky producing regions of Scotland turns into a whole afternoon of reading articles, studying maps, and of course shopping for the perfect dram (something just a wee peaty). Staying productive means having the discipline to get in and out of research mode efficiently. In a collaboration, sometimes one partner needs to give the other a nudge back toward the manuscript.

How do you approach research for your fiction? How do you know when you’ve collected enough information to write your technical scenes convincingly?

*Oops! Now we’ve given away the whole plot!

Brave New World

The time has finally come for us to start the actual writing process. We’re finding it slow going, even with all the preliminary work we did. The first three novels we wrote were a trilogy. By the time we got to the third one, we knew the characters better than we knew ourselves. It was dead easy to find their voices and dive in.

After the trilogy, though, we wrote a standalone novel, and had this same problem at the beginning. We just don’t know the characters well enough yet to feel totally at ease writing in their voices.

This is one place where writing with a partner can make things more difficult. If either of us were doing this solo, we could just wing it and see what happens. With two of us involved, and wanting everything to feel seamless, we both feel a little inhibited.

Because Jen is cruel, she makes Kent take on the first scene. It’s up to him to introduce the narrative voice, and the main character’s voice, too. Jen sits there and watches him type, because until she sees what he’s done she can’t write anything. The fear is that we will both write something great, but that the pieces won’t mesh. Instead of chocolate and peanut butter coming together to make a delicious peanut butter cup, we dread ending up with salmon bonbons. Either the fish or the ganache would be delectable on their own, but together they’re something the loser made on Iron Chef.

And so we tiptoe around each other, each of us hesitantly writing scenes and vignettes. When we share them, it is always with a healthy dose of Remember This Is A First Draft and I Don’t Know If This Works.

Fortunately, this weirdness is confined to the character voice. We know for sure that the actions and details contained in a scene will be right, and next week we’ll tell you how.

Worth A Thousand Words

At this point in our process we have most of the preliminary work done, and are simply filling in details as we get ramped up for the actual Writing of the First Draft (cue fanfare of harps). We have our cast of characters, all of whom have fantastic names, and we just need to agree about their physical descriptions so we can both write effectively.

We could just say “Mary has blue eyes and brown hair. She’s tall.” But that leaves too much room for interpretation. We could say, “Mary is pretty,” but, again, that’s too open ended. Both Cate Blanchett and Reese Witherspoon are pretty and blonde, but they don’t look much alike.

Google image search to the rescue! We like to scour the internet to find pictures of people who resemble our characters. It’s not procrastination, honest! Sometimes there’s one person who is a good match, and sometimes we have to make our own Franken-celebrity, combining body parts from several different people to make the perfect inspiration. It’s not as creepy as it sounds.

Once we have some example photos, we are able to envision the character the same way, and describe them consistently. And of course we don’t just say, “Mary looked like Scarlett Johansson,” because that would be cheating.

Mapping things out

One of the most important elements of a compelling story is setting. The locale for your tale is almost like a member of the cast, lending its personality and helping to establish the tone.

As with all other aspects of the project, the setting must be agreed upon by both writing partners. Shouldn’t be too hard, but it’s a good idea to sketch out some maps so you know you’re both working from the same image. Knowing how long it would take to get from A to B can be a vital plot point. If one partner pictures the stadium at the south end of town, and the other sees it as the central fixture of the downtown district, then they’ll surely run into difficulties lining up their edits.

This week Kent drew up detailed maps of the city (see, we told you he contributes!), an exercise that also allowed us to use some of the extra name ideas left over after we chose the appellation for the town. Now that we have that well in hand, with color-coded neighborhoods and labelled points of interest, we’ve moved on to laying out the complex of buildings where most of the events will unfold. It’s based on a real place, and we’re planning a field trip to get a real feel for it and get inspired. Believe me, this is not a place you’d want to visit solo, so it’s further proof that a writing collaborator is a good thing to have.

What’s in a name?

We’re trying to come up with a name for the city where our story takes place.

The novel before this one is set in Manhattan, so there was very little naming of places required. The neighborhoods and streets all have names already, and there are myriad restaurants, boutiques, businesses, and landmarks to call on for flavor. That’s not to say that we didn’t have to make anything up. We invented a few locations to suit our purposes and then we had to name them.

This time, though, we’re back to founding our own city, which gives us the fun honor (or dreaded chore, you decide) of naming absolutely everything.

Naming is a special art, whether it’s characters or places or the story itself. Not everyone has the gift for it. In our case, Jen definitely has the touch. So in our workaday partnership activities, naming stuff is one of her primary duties. (Kent has other talents. Honest.)

But for whatever reason, in this case we’re teaming up on the toponym issue. Jen named the whole cast already, so maybe she was just tuckered out. It’s neat to kick ideas back and forth and watch how your partner reacts. It’s a good way to tell if you’re on the same page in regards to the flavor. If one of you wants to call the place Kitten Basket* while the other favors Death River*, there’s a disconnect somewhere and it’s better to get that sorted out early on. One of the beneficial side-effects to our collaboration and brainstorming has been that the place’s history is starting to take shape, because some of the name concepts are so evocative. But we still haven’t chosen a name!

*Not actually under consideration. Feel free to use it yourself.

We <3 Outlines!

Kent made an interesting observation the other day. He speculated that when authors say they don’t like the outlining process, what they’re really saying is that they don’t like to be reminded of how much work is ahead of them. Novel writing is a lot of work, there’s no getting around it. But to us it makes all the sense in the world to start with a thorough outline. It may seem like an extra step, but it will save you a ton of time in the long run.

As we mentioned last time, we created a multicolored visual representation of our new plot and spent a few hours studying it. Then we went back to brainstorming and long conversations, and we discovered a new wrinkle for one of our characters, a wrinkle that we wanted to incorporate from the very beginning of the story. If we had simply plunged in and written the first draft, when we discovered that this guy needed a little something extra we would have needed to go back and rewrite all of his scenes. Since we’re taking the time to outline, all we had to do was replace a few of our dark green paper squares, and shuffle a few of the others around. Other characters got notes added to their squares where they intersected with Dark Green, et voila! — heartache, recriminations, and carpal tunnel syndrome averted. Go team!

Alas, the ending is still proving elusive. We have something sketched in that feels right, most of the time. Other times it feels too simple. This has led to an entire week of throwing possible endings back and forth at each other. Most are utter crap, but the ones that pass the first nose-wrinkle test get a full discussion. This entails referring to the plot rainbow so often that we’ve just left it out on the floor all week. We’ll need to pick it up before the Pulitzer Committee comes over for tea.

The Plot Thickens

Our walking conferences have continued (when the weather is suitable), and we spend most evenings camped out on the big leather sofa playing “what if.” The results are looking good. We have a plot that flows nicely from beginning, through the middle, and most of the way to the end.

A problem we dealt with on our previous novel was the fear that we did not have enough plot, and we’re grappling with that again. Since the last novel’s first draft wound up at 150,000 words, we’re trying not to worry too much this time. Chances are we do have enough story.

Once we talked through the arcs for all the characters, and sketched in their major actions, we switched from open-ended discussions to a more structured approach. Jen brought out the color-coded note pads (because Kent has a phobia about index cards) and assigned each character a color. Then she wrote out each character action, one per note, and Kent arranged them in a grid.

Kent’s grid quickly outgrew the ottoman, and he had to move to the floor. The sprawling patchwork rainbow of paper squares made a nice visual representation of the plot.

Each character had their own column, with the rows denoting the passage of time. Anytime characters interact, those actions go in the same row. This leaves blank areas when a character isn’t up to anything interesting, and it allowed us to see if we’re staying away from any story lines for too long.

Switching to a different, visual mode of brainstorming is a great way to spot inconsistencies or other problems lurking in what you’ve already come up with. It also has a way of lighting up the creative faculties, which can accelerate things and open up new avenues to explore. It’s a go-to methodology for getting unstuck.

We spent an evening studying the grid and making notes, and now we’re back to brainstorming to flesh out the thin spots. We will probably cycle through the process another time or two before we’re ready to write up an actual outline.

In a co-writing relationship it’s vital that the partners share an understanding of all aspects of plot and character so that they can write toward the same goal, seamlessly.

Early Stages of Story Development

We’re currently hard at work on our new novel, have been for several weeks, although technically we haven’t written the first word. We haven’t even started to create the outline. All that exists in tangible form so far is a few pages of notes.

What have we been doing all this time?

Talking, mostly. The cast is pretty well defined at this point, and we’ve become comfortable enough with the premise to have a shorthand of sorts for referring to it. We’ll choose a character or a plot element to brainstorm about, and set out to walk a lap around the neighborhood. When we get home, there are usually several new additions or amendments to be made to those notes. Some of the new ideas are incompatible with what we already had, but we hang onto it all because we’re not sure yet which version will turn out to be truth.

Yesterday, Kent took a stab at capturing a single, cohesive rendition of the plot we have so far, skipping over all the false starts and mirages. It’s not yet ready to be used as a real outline, but it has already served a useful purpose. Jen went through it and had only a few minor notes, which gave us both confirmation that we really do have the same mental image of the story.

The verbal interaction is fluid and dynamic. In fact, this is probably the stage of the process where a collaboration is most alive, because the process itself consists entirely of talking to the other person. But getting it down on paper creates something concrete that you can analyze with greater precision.

We have about half a plot, so far. The beginning is nailed down pretty well, but not all of the alternatives have been pruned all the way through the middle. As for the ending, well we’re in basic agreement about which characters need a comeuppance and who should get a happy(ish) outcome, and several images have been proposed that could be part of the climax. So, about half a plot. With any luck, it’ll go faster from here on out.

 

Inspiration Strikes When You Least Expect It

In this case, it was on a bus. Jen and Kent took a trip — by bus, ‘cuz they’re such high-rollers — which gave them a bit of time to discuss what their next project should be.

As you may recall, the intrepid duo has been struggling with one of the facets of a writing partnership, namely agreeing on what to write about. Historically, Kent has been more of the big-idea guy and Jen brings characters and relatability. In this case, Jen brought pretty much everything. During the bus ride, she and Kent figured out a premise that unites a whacky (and fairly big) idea she’d mentioned months ago with the character she’s been mildly obsessed with of late. The vexing question of what to use for the hidden reality of the story world finally had an answer.

But wait, there’s more!

The new premise lends itself to a story-within-the-story, which means there is also a role for Kent’s current pet big idea, the one that they’ve despaired of ever coming to terms with. There’s even been talk of some short stories to explore the concept. Everybody wins!

So, yeah. All it took was ten hours on a bus.