Tagged: Son of Music Novel

At The Risk of Sounding Immodest

r-avatarAs we close in on the official completion of the first draft for Son of Music Novel, we’re jumping around in the manuscript to take care of miscellaneous things we’ve made notes about over the course of getting here. It’s a shift in perspective, giving us a more longitudinal view of the work in a way that even the read-through didn’t.

And it’s really, really cool.

Probably the most common phrase in the writing cave these days is, “Oh, we are good!” The prompt for such exclamations could be a bit of clever foreshadowing, or imagery that amplifies theme, or a character whose depravity manages to shock us anew every time.

There are different philosophies about how an author should feel about his or her own work. Some say it’s important to love your art, and others say it should sicken you. Our process really wouldn’t work if we didn’t love what we create. Of course we need to achieve critical distance and make the tough calls about what to cut, but that’s why we build in a resting period as part of that process.

Anyway, we love this book. We think other people will too.

When the Time is Right

r-avatarThe first draft of Son of Music Novel is 99% done. (Amazing how the last couple of percentage points take so much  longer to complete!) Soon we’ll be ready to start taking it to critique group, which is very exciting. We’re really looking forward to getting input from a bunch of very smart fellow writers.

This time out we’re following the same policy we had great success with on the Science Novel: waiting until the draft is entirely written and the known issues are dealt with before taking it in. That allows us to keep input in perspective because we can weigh comments against what we know about how the various arcs ultimately play out. Sometimes it’s a good thing if readers get pissed off! The fun is in watching them take the ride.

Certainly, there are other ways to manage critique. Past experience has taught us to prefer this method. The Music Novel itself is a case in point. With that one, we started taking it to group when we hit approximately the halfway mark. That was intended to give us time to reach the end before our critiquers caught up, and in that regard it worked fine. Thing is, we then did a major restructuring that rendered much of the original input moot. Fortunately, by the time the second version was ready we had new critique group members available, meaning there were unspoiled readers by whom we could gauge the success of our changes. It’s very hard to look at successive drafts as if for the first time.

In the primordial phase of our fictive endeavors, when crude stick-figure drawings of mammoth hunters first appeared on the walls of the writing cave, we used to take stuff in whenever we had stuff. Often this meant a new chapter would go through group before we’d even written the next one. The drive to produce something so you can take it in is a plus, but we ran into some serious downsides. Premature input can be very distracting. Even with an outline telling you, broadly, where things end up, it’s easy to fall into trying to “fix” your critiquers’ attitudes about particular characters or events. You might even be talked into departing from your carefully planned outline.

Talking to your critique group about a work in progress can lead to inspiration. Critique’s a collaborative process, after all. Knowing that other people are taking your story to heart, investing energy in understanding it, is very motivating. Depending on your process, you might thrive on the in-the-moment feedback, or even depend on the influx of ideas that arise in discussion.

Are you in a critique group? (You should be.) How do you get the most out of it? What works best with your style?

Happy Gobble-Gobble Day

r-avatarWe completed a read-through on Wednesday, including the discussion and collation of our copious notes from the various copies we had going. The book feels good. Actually, it feels great! (Our bias is duly acknowledged.)

To everyone, we hope you enjoy safe travels and harmonious companionship this holiday.

Time to Pop Some Champagne!

r-avatarSo hey! Guess what! The first draft is complete!

Kent wrapped up the last of the scenes that needed to be written, not to be confused with the last scene in the story, which Jen had already done by then. The book’s a beast and a half, and it’s done. We feel really good about it, very proud of what we’ve accomplished. Rune Skelley isn’t anybody’s idea of a fast writer, but the books are taking us less time to create as we get more practice and our process becomes second nature.

Okay, okay. It’s not done done. As with its predecessor, this book has a meta-narrative running throughout, and that’s not all done. And it doesn’t make sense to push onward with that part until we’ve done a read-through, so that’s the next step. Normally we like to let manuscripts rest before the first read-through, but in this case we don’t want to spin up any new projects yet. So, right back in.

Which means maybe that cork should stay in the bottle just a little longer. No point doing the reading if we won’t remember it tomorrow.

A Little Pantsing Can’t Hurt Too Much, Right?

r-avatarMan, we are closing in on the conclusion — make that the action-packed conclusion — of Son Of Music Novel. We’re so close. The scene Kent is working on is that last big chunk of writing, although we have stubs for a few more scenes that are mostly denouement. (Also, there’s a feature of the Music Novel that recurs here, and for which we need a significant amount of text. Jen’s made an excellent start on that.)

All this adds up to a strong likelihood that our manuscript’s completion will fall during NaNoWriMo. Ah well, if our baby’s a Scorpio we’ll love it anyway.

Kent’s working from a stub that turned out to be a little light on details. It was fine up to a point, and then it got vague. The way we chose to deal with that issue (once we figured it out) was to have Kent beef things up in the stub first, rather than just winging it and going straight to prose. Either way could work, and our way we knew there was a small amount of extra writing to be done. It was tempting to see that as nonproductive and skip it, but experience has taught us that we’d end up with more rewriting if we succumbed to that temptation. Better to do a few hundred words up front, knowing they’ll never be read by anyone outside of the writing cave, than to write thousands of words thinking that they’re counting toward completion only to find that they don’t work, and then do another batch.

You might be wondering how we ran into this problem, given our fervor for a stub-based methodology. It was kind of a perfect storm. The later in the story we get, the less need for worry over derailing things. This lack of worry is great from a stress-management perspective, but it can lead to cutting corners. And as it turns out, there is a second edge to that “close to done” sword: things need to start coming together, not keep ramifying. You’re on final approach, and you have to make sure you won’t run out of runway. Another factor here is that the vague area of the stub was mostly kinetic, which makes it easily glossed over. But the action in question incorporates thematic elements and needs to cover specific beats for the character arcs. It’s not just, “make up something exciting and interesting,” it’s “do that, within all these nuanced constraints.”

It seems glaring in hindsight, but until the prose was well underway we thought the stub was pretty solid. Fortunately our work style involves lots of conversation and we figured out the issues without losing any ground. Kent does seem to have a Zeno’s Paradox thing going on, where each evening he manages to write half of the remaining words in his scene. Jen’s not the kind of co-author who’ll sit back and let that run its course, so one way or another that cycle will break pretty soon.

Happy Friday the Thirteenth to all our triskaidekaphobe friends! And all you triskaidekaphiles, too.

It’s Not Safe To Go Alone

r-avatarThe end is in sight!

Son of Music Novel is nearing completion. We only have to write 5.5 more scenes before we reach the finale. That means that we really need to figure out the ending now.

Gasp! You say you don’t have an ending? That’s not entirely accurate. Months ago when we were brainstorming and outlining this beast we had a vision of the ending. We knew in broad strokes what would happen, and that vision has not changed. But now it’s time to fill in the details.

We’ve talked in the past about the importance of having pretty much every detail planned before you start writing, which is especially important when you are writing with a partner. Endings are a little bit different for us, though. We like to leave a little wiggle room so that as we develop the characters throughout the novel we can tailor the ending to them.

Well, now it’s tailoring time. Kent was finishing up a scene and Jen had just filled in all the stubs leading up to the grand finale. Since Kent was occupied, Jen got out her measuring tape and her pin cushion and scissors and took a stab at brainstorming the ending. Alone. It did not go well. She was coming up with brilliant insights like “When the disaster strikes, the characters can be inside or outside.” She was not wrong.

By the time Kent finished his scene, Jen had found a different little project with which to occupy herself, so Kent took his own stab at storyboarding the ending. Alone. Like an animal. His contributions were something like “The disaster could be a fire. Or a flood. Or a tornado. Or a volcano. Or a giant squid attack.” All exciting scenarios to be sure, but he wasn’t really getting anywhere with his list.

So then we started talking to each other. We’ve said a million times that communication is the key to a successful writing collaboration, that two heads are better than one, and we’ve just proven ourselves right. Go Team Skelley!

As soon as we started talking, the ideas started flowing. In less than half an hour we’d devised something brilliant. And it still looks brilliant a few days later! At the end of August we set ourselves a goal of having the first draft done by the end of the year, and it looks like we’ll actually be done much sooner than that (if this didn’t just jinx us). Either of us on our own would be screwed, but together we can work miracles!

Two Brains Are Better Than One

r-avatarSo we’re motoring right along, finishing scenes at a healthy clip, when Jen suddenly pulls the handle on the emergency brake and we come clattering to a halt. The problem? Oh, only a fairly significant plot hole. Nothing major.

It wasn’t as bad as “plot hole” might make it sound. We knew where the characters were, and we knew where they were going to end up, and here in the writing cave we knew that it would work just fine. But on the page we left a couple of steps out of the journey and someone was bound to notice. Luckily for us (this time) it was Jen that did the noticing, which gave us the opportunity to backtrack a little bit and throw in some road signs to help the reader understand how the characters end up in the right place.

Having a writing partner is a distinct advantage. Our problem would have been harder to fix if it hadn’t been discovered until the draft was finished and in the hands of test readers. Or even worse, what if it managed to sneak through the whole editorial process only to snag paying customers?

As authors it’s our job to make the story world feel as real as possible, and it’s a job that’s a lot easier to do when you have access to two brains.

Manuscript Out of Order

r-avatarThere’s no rule that scenes must be written chronologically. There are cases, though, where that’s what works best. Scenes that link tightly, places with fast pacing, or sections of the outline that leave things a little too vague (yup, that even happens here in the writing cave sometimes).

Our current chronology constraint has to do with the emotional tenor of the material. To know how the characters should treat each other in Scene D, we must first write Scene C, which is dependent on Scene B, and ultimately Scene A. None of which is an issue for a solo author; the scenes all have to get written at some point. But when two people are coordinating their efforts, it becomes a problem.

This longish series of interdependent scenes impacted our workflow by interfering with our usual habit of divvying up the work so Kent and Jen both have scenes to write. Those four scenes became a one-lane bridge, because the work in the queue had to be assigned to one person.

By happenstance, the scenes in question were assigned to Kent. (Actually, they were assigned that way by Jen, but there was nothing malicious about it.) This somewhat aggravated our workflow dilemma because he is the less-speedy member of the writing team. It started to seem like Jen might be stranded on her side of the river for quite some time.

Fortunately, Jen is resourceful. While Kent wrote all those scenes, she flitted throughout the first draft to take care of things we had in our notes. Punching up theme, keeping the continuity in line, honing the characters’ voices. Now we have that much less to worry about when it’s time for a second draft. And Kent has passed the baton; now it’s Jen’s turn to write the next scene, if she can remember how.

 

Writing Cave Status Report

r-avatarRune Skelley’s habitat has been a rather hectic place of late. In addition to the recent travel and interviews that we mentioned the past couple of Fridays:

  • We heard back from two more Science Novel beta readers with much positive input
  • Yesterday’s #PitMad kept us nicely distracted on the twitters for a while, pitching the Trilogy and the Music Novel
  • Jen analyzed the outline of Son of Music Novel and terrified Kent with the number of words we should expect to write by the end of the year to meet our deadline
  • We allocated the next handful of stubs — we will be able to work in parallel for the foreseeable future so our productivity should take an uptick (unless this jinxed it)
  • We’re shortly off to a conference, our first in a while

All the schedule disruptions, while they slow down our prose generation, are also positive things in their own right. So we have mixed feelings about them. Maybe if they didn’t travel in packs…