Tagged: Son of Music Novel

Embiggening

Son of Music Novel (Book 3 of our Music Series), is a chonk. A whopper. A massive tome. And we’re currently making it bigger. The enhugening is happening on the micro scale, the macro scale, and everywhere in between. On the smaller end of the spectrum are the missing words we’ve since found and inserted in their proper places (thanks beta readers!). Next along, size-wise, are the places where our readers asked for clarification or additional detail. A sentence or two, maybe a paragraph. Nothing scary on its own, but it starts to add up. Largest of all will be the new scenes. Yes, even as big as this puppy is, our beta readers felt there were a few story beats that needed a little more attention. Kent already tackled one of them, adding two pages to an existing scene, and blending the edges expertly. The other two will be entirely new scenes, and as such they’ll need stubs before they’re written. Which means that Jen will need to write the stubs, which she’ll get to as soon as she tackles a few more of the medium-size changes.

What goes up must come down. Even word counts. Our next step will be to roll up our sleeves and start the sometimes messy process of editing. We’re just fattening the manuscript up so we can make a good meal of it.

 

Writing Cave Progress Report

Update on the Music Series: After completing the read-through for the whole trilogy, we made a few tiny little adjustments to Book One. We then collated all the input from our critique group and beta readers for Book Three, and all the stuff we wanted to take action on has been transferred into the live Scrivener project. It was a few dozen items, mostly pretty small. We say it was a few dozen because Jen has been knocking things off the list at a truly impressive pace. Meanwhile, Kent dug in on a couple of the not-so-small issues and has made great progress on them. Fewer items getting checked off the list, but a comparable degree of progress.

We did discuss working on Book Two after we got Book One tidied up. Because, you know, they go in order that way. Here’s the thing. Book Two is the one we wrote third. Thus, it hasn’t had as much time to rest, and we haven’t had a chance to circulate it for feedback. Therefore, we’re still doing this series inside-out.

“I’m Not a Monster”

The conventional definitions of the words show us what distinguishes a monster from a villain. A monster is a frightening and destructive creature, while a villain is a person who commits evil deeds.

They both have their place in fiction. Just don’t mix them up. If your hero really needs a villain to oppose, but you provide a monster and call it a villain, there will be imbalance. Remember, the villain is the hero of their own story. Another way to think of it is that a villain is an actual character, with a complex interior state. Good villains have a powerful drive, and are capable of emotions besides inchoate rage and savage glee. But, let’s give the monsters their due. A powerful and relentless foe, something that doesn’t need a reason to want the hero dead, can create a lot of tension if properly cast.

Enough with the theoretical stuff. Why bring any of this up right now? So happy you asked!

Our read-through of the Music Series is getting close to done. We just passed the middle of book three, and there are exactly three books in the series, so. Getting close!

As we might have mentioned, we’re really pleased with the state of all of these books. One of the points of pride is that the adversaries take a variety of forms. There are villains, and there are monsters. There’s even a villain who repeatedly denies being a monster. (While demonstrating so eloquently that sometimes people can be both.)

What type of adversary does your protagonist need? What kind of tension will keep your readers turning pages?

Reminders For The Reader

We have a lot on our mind (the single, shared Skelley hive-mind) as we do our read-through. Among the many things we’re keeping an eye on is whether we succeed in keeping the setting and the characters vivid and lively for the reader the whole time.

How much description is too much, and how many reminders should there be about certain details, is a challenge every author has to deal with. Description is a fundamental element of prose, but it can slow down the story. What you’re really seeking is balance. That search is a place where beta readers and critique groups can provide really useful feedback, but ultimately it’s the writer’s call to make.

There are no straightforward rules for this. The right answer depends on the type of story, what part of that story you’re looking at, and what your readers really want out of the book. Sure, if you figure out the right search terms, you’d surely land on someone’s list of rules for exactly this, but they’d be of dubious value. (Whereas if you keep reading our blog, you’ll get pure gold, of course. Anyway.) Rune Skelley keeps these two guidelines in mind:

  1. the less ordinary the details, the more reminders are warranted
  2. prevalence in the text should line up with what’s significant for the characters
  3. (bonus guideline) remember that you’re never going to please everybody

Point number one relates to world building. It’s not just important to say, somewhere, “oh by the way the sky has polka dots.” You have to keep the place and its denizens feeling real for the reader.

Point number two is one we pay careful attention to here in the Writing Cave. Just because something is a fact doesn’t mean it needs to be brought up. Focusing on which details the characters care about helps the reader really get inside their skin. This is also a way to bring a sense of wonder into a familiar or ordinary setting, by helping the reader see it through someone else’s eyes.

Point three simply acknowledges that this is all subjective. You collect your feedback, and Reader A tells you the recurrent descriptions are like a pleasant leitmotif running through the prose, while Reader B says he started skimming whenever it felt like things were sliding toward reminder-town. Meanwhile Reader C asks why you waited until page 200 to mention the sky having polka-dots, when actually by then it’s been described seven times. However, if multiple sources agree that something’s either too heavy or too sparse, then you should probably make adjustments.

All through the writing of the first drafts of these books, we fretted about this ongoing description issue. Kent was pretty convinced that we were going to need to add tons of reminders. But at this stage, almost three-quarters of the way through our reading of the trilogy? We’re both quite happy with the overall state. Editing will most likely involve sprinkling in a few more mentions of certain things, but it’s in a good place already.

A writing partner is someone who helps you get a feel for how to help readers inhabit the story’s world.

The Art of Reading Through

In our big Music Series read-through, we’ve crossed the midpoint of book two, which pretty much means we’re halfway through the trilogy.

Something we chatted about recently is that there’s a balance we need to strike between getting done reading the damn thing and not missing important points that need discussion. This one hasn’t been edited at all yet, or even shown to any beta readers, so there are things that need work. But we’re not in revisions mode yet. We need to complete the read-through of all three books first.

The whole point of the exercise is to get the entirety of the trilogy into our minds in order to plan our edits holistically. Increasing the interconnection across the books, and strengthening the payoffs in book 3 by laying the right groundwork in books 1 & 2. As we look for ways to tighten up the narrative, we need to keep an eye on scenes in all three books so we don’t orphan anything. The big structural adjustments have to be made first, then we can work on polishing the prose.

A writing partner is someone who helps you stay on track when you’ve got roughly half a million words to wrangle.

Braiding Them Ever More Intricately Together

We’re still working on our epic read-through of the entire Music Series, which will help prepare us to do edits on books two and three. But, even though Book One has already had a lot of editorial attention, we are also on the lookout for a certain breed of change that we might entertain there as well.

Now that all three of the books are written, we have the ability to enrich the foreshadowing for key events and strengthen the themes running through the whole series. So-and-so ended up being a more important character in the later books? We can tweak how the early appearances are handled. These crackpots hanging out in the margins are just a random rabble, except, hey, maybe… Wait, is that a granite countertop, or stainless steel? (Oops.)

We have no intention of doing anything drastic. We have enough work ahead of us as it is, thanks. But small changes can sometimes go a long way to unifying the members of a series. The big attraction for us is that it makes us look smarter, but there really is a payoff for the reader as well. The story world feels that much more real, that much easier to fall into. And on a reread, clues will jump out that you didn’t know were clues at all the first time through.

A writing partner is someone who helps you do sneaky, crafty things for your readers’ benefit.

The Rereadening Commenceth

Now that the draft of Sibling of Music Novel is complete, we have begun our read-through of the entire Music Series, starting of course with Book One. We wrote and revised that one first, then Book Three, and then did a bunch of stuff for the Science Series, and then wrote Book Two (aka Sibling). We didn’t really do it all in that order on purpose, but the upshot is that it’s been a good long while since we really delved into that first book.

And you know what? It’s good!

Okay, we are a bit biased about that. But seriously, it feels so good to be reading that one again. As mentioned above, this book has already been through some pretty heavy editing, so it’s in a nice polished state. And the story is just a lot of fun! (Although, the point where last night’s reading session left off was decidedly tense. Our characters would not say there was anything fun going on at that particular moment. We tell them “Just doing our job,” but they still hate us.)

We’re really looking forward to the day when all of you can read this book, too. That day gets closer all the time!

2020 Vision

As we sit here in the Writing Cave, planning out our next writing moves, it’s becoming clear that 2020 might be a year that very little actual writing gets done.

We set January 31 as the deadline for Sibling of Music Novel, a target which seems easily reachable. There are two scenes in progress, and five more after that waiting to be written. Easy peasy. After a small champagne toast, the rest of the month will be spent going back through the manuscript and filling in the placeholders, fixing things we changed our minds about halfway through, and addressing all the other little fiddly things that we know need attention. It will still technically be a first draft, but it will be a pretty clean one. That’s how we like ’em.

To celebrate the completion of the Music Trilogy we’ll pop open the BIG bottle of champagne.

As of February 1 (assuming all goes according to plan) we will have four completed novels that are in need of major edits. For the past few years we’ve concentrated heavily on the writing side of the equation, and now it’s time to turn that around and get some things polished up and gorgeous.

We have two Music Novels and two Science Novels to edit, and we have yet to decide what order we’re going to do them in. On the one hand, we’re pretty immersed in the Music story world at the moment, so it makes sense to stick with that. On the other hand, Sibling needs some time to rest before we can effectively edit it, so it makes sense to switch our attention to the Science story world. Plus that’s the one that our critique group is looking at right now. But the Music Novel is the one our agent is shopping around, so maybe we should stay focused on that?

Around and around we go.

Wherever we decide to start, each novel will go through several stages of editing, and will rest in between.

And in the background we’ll still be tinkering with ideas for the Ghost Series. Jen is a little concerned about what our workflow will look like if we finish up everything else before we start on the ghosts. At various stages of our process we find it helpful to switch our attention to a different project to let our batteries recharge. What will happen if we don’t have anything else to turn our attention to? Kent is a little concerned about having an ever-increasing pile of first drafts that never get readied for publication, and he points out that there will inevitably be projects after the Ghost Series, so when we need a break we can figure out what the next one will be and work on that.

These best laid plans might all fly out the window when our agent sells Music Novel, because then we’ll have plenty of distractions, what with selling the movie rights, and going on all the talk shows, and hobnobbing with celebrities, and buying yachts and all that.

Happy 2020 to all of you!

2019 Preview

Last week we recapped our 2018. Now it’s time to look ahead and see what the coming twelvemonth will hold in store.

Our top priority will be writing Sibling of Music Novel. The first round of outlining is essentially complete, which does not mean we are yet in possession of anything that resembles an outline. But it does mean we’ll be ready to begin the actual writing pretty soon. Hard to say how long that will take. Our past few projects have been all over the map. Hopefully we can be speedy this time!

After that, we have a couple of good candidates for our attention, depending on which story world we want to focus on. We can stay with the Music series and do an editing pass on Son of Music Novel, or we can pivot back to the Science series where there are two manuscripts that need such treatment.

Deciding which of those worthy endeavors gets our attention first will depend on how our near-future publishing strategy shapes up. 2018 was the year we got an agent, and 2019 will be the year that we adjust our routines accordingly.

And, that means as of now we don’t have an answer for “What book(s) will you release in the coming year?” Everything’s topsy-turvy! But we can say for sure that we’ll be sweating in the writing cave. (Not really, though, because it’s air conditioned.) We will let you know what’s coming just as soon as we find out ourselves. Watch this space for updates.

To sum up, we expect to be busy!

A toast: May this, the year two thousand nineteen, be generous and gentle to you and everyone you love.

Forecasting 2018 (In Which Jen Tries to Keep Her Expectations Realistic)

Dire warnings of Bomb Cyclones and blizzards have been echoing around the writing cave, and while we aren’t in the path of any of the really nasty stuff, we’ve been locked in a deep freeze since before Christmas and it’s showing no signs of lifting. Today’s high is supposed to be 7º!

Since the weather forecast blows (both literally and figuratively), let’s see if things look sunnier in the fiction mines.

Grandson of Science Novel is moseying along toward the finish line, and finishing it up is our first order of business. In her secret heart Jen is dying for a deadline, but she’s terrified of missing another one. For now we’re winging it without. She’ll probably declare a deadline when we’re close enough to the end to touch it, and claim that she’s had it in mind all along. And Kent will humor her.

Once Grandson is done, the whole Science Trilogy will be in the can. Our major goal for the year is to publish the first one. It’s been edited a couple of times already, but there are many steps before it will be ready for its debut, and those will eat up a lot more time than Jen expects them to.

While the Science Novels rest between edits, we will devote our time to outlining the novel we are currently calling Sibling of Music Novel. As you may recall, we have the Music Novel, and Son of, written in full, but now we’ve decided that Son is really the third book in the series and we need to plug that hole in the middle.

If, after polishing Science Novels and writing Music Novels, we have any extra time, we’ll get started on brainstorming our Ghost Series.

We currently have no release dates to announce, but when we do, you’ll be the first to know. Check this space for updates!

And Happy New Year to you!