Tagged: Son of Music Novel

Turning The Corner (If We Can Find It)

r-avatarIn the eternal war between Plotters and Pantsers, Rune Skelley is a stalwart Plotter and ever shall be.

With that out of the way, it’s time to acknowledge one of the advantages enjoyed by our ancient adversaries: Pantsers don’t have to figure out how to switch from the planning mode into actual writing.

That’s where we are now, and it feels like looking for an address in a strange neighborhood. We know our turn is around here somewhere. We’re going slow so we can read house numbers. We’re puttering along in a strained metaphor when we should (probably?) be writing.

On the other hand, Kent observed recently that the current state of Son of Music Novel is analogous to a first draft even though there’s no manuscript per se in existence. It’s not like we’ve been spending all this time just sharpening pencils in the Writing Cave. We’ve accomplished a lot. But, without a manuscript we do not, technically, have a first draft.

The truth is, there’s no such thing as 100% preparedness. Plotters reach a point of diminishing returns when their plans hit a certain level of detail, and that’s the signal to start writing and save further optimization for the revisions stage. Recognizing that signal from the inside is not always so easy to do, and therein lies our dilemma.

This is an area where Kent’s and Jen’s personalities are perhaps too similar. We both like the planning mode, and share some of the same trepidation about leaping in on the writing too soon. If one of us was a Pantser at heart, we’d have a more balanced perspective and might vacilate less about turning this corner. Contemplating just about any other stage in the process, such an odd-couple partnership seems doomed to a lot of frustration. But maybe it can work.

Whichever banner you rally to, Pantsing or Plotting, do you think you could collaborate with a member of the other camp? Could you learn from each other? Leverage your disparate strengths? Or would it lead to a meltdown?

Less-Than-Perfect Telepathy

r-avatarWell, that was no fun. (But we’re feeling much better, now.)

For the new book, we’ve bestowed an odd trait on some of the characters, something that alters their subjective take on the world. As we’ve been mentioning a lot of late, the current priority is getting our ear in for the new cast. We want all the characters’ experiences to shine, but it’s crucial that this one odd trait be vivid, and that it be portrayed consistently. It’s a key piece of pseudoscience and needs to mesh with the flavor of the other speculative elements in the story world. We’re mad planners, and we like to know going in that all the edges are going to line up.

So after several conversations, and a few hours of image searches and other web research, we agreed on the basic parameters. A handful of provisional scenes were already in the can, but for a lack of that odd subjective flavor that we had just defined, so Kent went about retrofitting it.

Turned out that our agreement about the parameters was a bit of a mirage. Kent’s take went way out of bounds compared to what Jen had in mind. Of course, Kent had his reasons for doing things that way, and thought at the time that it was exactly what had been established.

This led to the conversations with no fun in them. It’s uncomfortable to be in disagreement over something you’re really invested in, and Jen and Kent don’t get a lot of practice disagreeing. (We like it that way, but it makes for extra friction when things do go south.) Both partners must seek what’s best for the fiction, and not give in for the sake of harmony. That would be false compromise, which not only hurts the quality of the writing but it also weakens the partnership over time. It’ll make you want to keep score, and you can’t keep score. You can’t carry baggage. You need to find the better answer, the thing that makes you both happy.

Which is what we did. Jen shifted to a different metaphor to articulate what she hoped to see on the page, and suddenly the vision clicked in Kent’s mind. We knew we couldn’t really say “That’s it!” until at least one scene existed incorporating the new idea, so Kent got right to work. Success!

What Color Is The Sky

r-avatarBy now, we have a fairly good handle on the background info, physical attributes, and overall personalities of all the major characters for the new novel. Jen has tracked down reference photos and filled in all the details on the character sheets. But there’s a big difference between knowing all about someone, and really knowing them.

We make use of multiple points of view in our novels, usually switching at chapter breaks and sometimes within a chapter as well. It’s third-person, but not omniscient. This goes well beyond just limiting the facts to those that the POV character could know and not letting any subjective details from the rest of the cast slip through. It’s important that each scene really convey what the world is like for that character. Being able to do that requires that we know them intimately, that they become real to us. And getting to know a bunch of people that well takes some time.

On this project, we’re making a conscious effort to mold our process around what we’ve learned on a few previous books. We really want to have the voices dialed in right from the beginning, because it sucks when you have a hundred pages of great material that’s riddled with a subtle, pervasive flaw. So we’re trying to avoid our past mistakes, like the time our readers didn’t feel connected to our protagonist (whom we absolutely loved and couldn’t get why anybody else could feel otherwise — we had neglected to put her feelings on the page) or the time we went back to the opening scene and discovered that that protagonist was behaving “out of character” (we got to know her properly only after the first part was written).

That’s not to say we had no successes, far from it. A particularly good move, which arose organically and then we recognized and formalized it, is the way we tend to divvy up scenes based on their viewpoints. This allows us to deepen our connections to certain characters, and also lets us each play to our strengths by adopting the characters that resonate with us more. There’s no rule that says “that’s a Kent character; Jen can’t write it,” and by the time we’re done there’s typically quite a bit of overlap, but as a guideline it works very well.

A few vignettes have been crafted for Son of Music Novel, things which might or might not get incorporated into the manuscript. Kent’s next project, now that there’s a bit of raw material and now that some psychoanalysis of the cast has been done, is to revise those maybe-apocryphal scenes so their POV characters’ personalities saturate them. This exercise will give us the benchmark for how the “real” scenes should feel once we begin composing the novel per se. We take a holistic view of getting the voices right. It spans all levels, from mechanicals to vocabulary to reasoning styles and even sensory inputs that are unique to each character. It’s a lot of up-front effort, but it will put us ahead of the game later on.

Lavishly Illustrated Plans for World Domination

r-avatarAs co-writers who work together in the textual medium, Jen and Kent are somewhat unusual. However, there are other storytelling forms wherein laboring in solitude would be the exception. In the case of film, it’s nearly unheard of for one person to create the whole thing.

We’re fascinated by other storytellers’ processes, and recently we had the chance to bask in the genius of Alejandro Jodorowsky (not in person, sadly, but still). By now you certainly have heard about Jodorowsky’s Dune, the documentary of the almost-making of the greatest movie that doesn’t exist. (No? Search it now, then come back. You’ll thank us.)

In particular, we were captivated by the book. (And here we don’t mean the novel he was adapting.)

Jodorowsky compiled his team’s fabulous concept art and shot-by-shot storyboards into a mammoth book for presentation to Hollywood studios. He knew that a vision so audacious would seem unattainable, thus the meticulous (and gorgeous) documentation of how he planned to bring it about.

iu-1 iu-2

The photos don’t convey the book’s immenseness. It’s the size of a shoebox.

For Rune Skelley, Jodorowsky’s presentation book for Dune is inspirational. We have a fairly detailed (and occasionally colorful) process of our own, which is not going to seem very impressive next to what’s mentioned above. But we do put in a lot of effort up front because, when you’re working as a team, whether on a novel or a film, it’s crucial to know that you’re sharing the same vision.

In addition to the used-up steno pad, and the rainbow, and the prose outline, and the nearly-but-not-quite traditional outline, and the stubs, we also pull together piles of other notes and images that connect us to the story world.

Early in the process, we “cast” every role in the book by tracking down pictures of people who could play them. Often these are photos of famous actors, but we don’t limit ourselves when searching. These photos become incorporated into the character sheets that list out other basic data about each person in the story.

Another thing we do is “scout locations,” choosing real-world buildings to serve as templates, or sometimes to play themselves. In son-of-music novel, a family purchases a certain well known landmark mansion. Jen has been doing a little nip and tuck on the floor plan to bring it into line with the new occupants’ needs, while respecting the historical character of the structure of course.

Kent’s done a fair bit of research, most of which is classified. The most enjoyable part was putting together a gallery of fractal images and coming up with a categorization system for them. (He realizes fractals have already been categorized, but not in a way that meets Rune Skelley’s requirements.)

As with everything else about writing our books, we’re mad planners where world-building is concerned. And even when our settings resemble consensus reality — superficially — we devote the energy to make sure we can feel them under our nails.

Failure to Plan = Planning to Fail

r-avatarThe 8-page synopsis we talked about last week has spawned a bouncing baby outline, a whopping 26 pages long (!). Once you get back up from your fainting couch, let us hasten to explain. This is an incredibly detailed outline, including almost everything we know about the story and its characters.

Also, this is not an outline that your English teacher would approve of. It does not follow proper outline formatting. There are many instances of sections having a single subheading (an A with no B, for instance). We’re not concerned with getting a good grade on this, we’re concerned with arranging all of our plot knowledge into something like chronological order. Our notes included a lot of backstory, so we had to determine where in the action it made the most sense to introduce that information.

Some writers might feel like so many steps are unnecessary. Why do we need to have extensive notes, plus a Plot Rainbow, plus a multi-page synopsis, PLUS an outline? (And we haven’t even gotten to stubs yet.) Each iteration presents the plot in a different way, and each exposes areas where there are still questions, or where there is magical thinking going on. A solo writer might get away with being a little more seat-of-the-pants, but when you’re working with a writing partner, it’s vital that you both have a clear picture of what’s going on. You both have to agree on how everything is handled, and you have to be able to put your individual pieces together to form a coherent picture. If you’re working from different sets of assumptions, your prose jigsaw will be extremely frustrating indeed.

Taste the Rainbow

r-avatarAnd as the seasons change, so to does the focus of our work sessions. The majority of our sub-zero, knee-deep-snow-filled winter was spent in the auxiliary writing cave (aka the family room). Along with delicious hot beverages, a wood fire, and cuddling on the sofa, we indulged in copious brainstorming sessions. We filled an entire steno pad with notes before we were done. We used our brand new Apple TV to view some interesting research materials (and binge on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). We talked and talked and talked. And talked.

After all of that, we were finally ready to lay the whole plot out in a colorful grid formation that we call the Plot Rainbow. We’ve talked about the Rainbow before, but here’s a brief refresher: Each major character is assigned a colored column in the grid. We proceed chronologically through the plot, filling in what we know of each characters’ actions on coordinating note paper. Each beat gets its own row.

Here’s what our first pass with Son of Music Novel looked like:Rainbow1

(Please excuse the dog hair. Lady Marzipan is an olympic-calibre shedder.)

This plot has a large number of beats, which made the Rainbow particularly long. We laid it out in the hallway so we would have enough room. That probably looks like a lot of story beats, but we can assure you that they don’t all warrant scenes. Often one scene per row will cover the participation of all the characters. Other times, we make a card to note what a character is doing off-page. It helps us keep track of where everyone is and what they’re up to, even if it doesn’t merit inclusion in the final story.

RotatedRainbowWe spent an evening carefully combing through that first Rainbow, making notes about points that were still vague, or questions that were still unanswered. Then we retired to the auxiliary writing cave and filled in all of the missing information.

When it was time to lay out the rainbow again, we abandoned the hallway. Lady Marzipan is far, far too helpful, what with all the sniffing and tail wagging and walking all over everything, and it was much easier to just shut her out of the room. Conveniently, the auxiliary writing cave is just barely wide enough to contain the entirety of the New and Improved Rainbow. We added columns for a couple of secondary characters (bright pink and yellow there at the right of the pic). We added a few rows where we clarified some of the action. Throughout we edited cards and sometimes even replaced them with updated information. A few holes were filled in.

The New and Improved Rainbow gives a much clearer picture of the story we will write. It even held up to scrutiny when we gave it a thorough going-over.

When we stack it all up, it strains the capacity of the largest binder clip we currently have in the house.Stack

When Jen typed it all up into a semi-coherent prose outline/synopsis it ran 8 pages. Single spaced.

Next week we’ll talk about turning that pile of colorful paper and 8-page document into an actual outline.

 

The Shoemaker’s Elves

r-avatarWe’ve stressed repeatedly the importance of having the right partner in a collaboration. Kent can attest to that. In fact, it’s absolutely magical.

Jen takes longer to fall asleep each night, and often when Kent checks his email in the morning there’s a shining literary gem awaiting him there. This is most likely to occur when we’re in the outlining or brainstorming stages, as we are right now. The other common scenario comes up during revisions, if there’s a thorny spot that we hadn’t quite decided how to handle. Come the light of day, a viable solution has materialized!

Kent tends to be the source of the more conceptual stuff, which has been known to appear to him in dreams (rarely). He’s got more of a knack for premise than plot, sometimes. Once the big, overarching idea is on the table, we work together on figuring out an actual story that can use it. Jen’s focus on getting all the details to line up is essential. (Aside: this description of our writing workflow is exactly the reverse of how we do crossword puzzles. A blank puzzle stymies Kent utterly, but those last couple of stubborn spaces are where he comes into his own.)

It might not be necessary to discuss sleeping habits with a prospective co-author, but you never can tell what will prove vital to your collaboration.

Tightening Up The Geese

r-avatarOur outline is coming into shape. We know the overall structure and we have a reasonable idea of the way everything begins and ends. Of course, the vast majority of the details are still loosey-goosey.

That’s a problem, sometimes. So, as mentioned in the previous post, we occasionally delve into fairly granular levels of detail while working on an outline, even though things can’t be carved in stone yet. We need to manage the looseness of the gooses because there’s a compounding effect to the uncertainty in each scene. “Not sure how this one ends,” becomes, “or how the next one starts.” Leaving everything vague in your outline leaves you with only the mirage of an outline. It won’t have enough structure to serve as a useful guide when you start writing, and you’ll be pantsing it despite all the time you spent supposedly outlining.

So, on a shelf in the same closet where you keep your weasel-stomping boots, you should have a goose-wrench. But whereas those boots are made for stompin’ — no weasels when you’re done — the wrench should be applied selectively, and judiciously. Having some loosey-goosey areas is desirable; you just don’t want the entire outline flopping around. Identify the points through which your story must pass, and crank them down just tight enough so they don’t shift (although the rest of the tale can still pivot around them).

Naturally, this is yet another activity made easier by working with the right partner. Active discussion is an excellent way to figure out which story beats need the wrench, and how tightly to pin them down.

Undisclosed Locations

r-avatarWe continue to have our nightly discussions about the new novel. This past week, we debugged an action sequence that will probably be the tent-pole moment setting things up for the climax. In the process, we ended up kinda-sorta actually writing some of the details, even though that’s not what we set out to accomplish. Things started to crystallize, so we rolled with it.

The thing we did set out to accomplish also came together. Without giving anything away, we can describe the issue. This sequence takes place at an alternate locale from most of the book, a place that’s only known by one of the main characters. So from the moment we decided to set things there, we were saying, “Snuffy offers to let Clarence use the place for the meet-up,” because you see Clarence needs to do things covertly and Snuffy is the one with the connection to a secluded venue. But when we examined this, it didn’t sit right. Not that Snuffy wouldn’t extend the invitation, but Clarence really wants this whole thing kept quiet, so much so that it makes no sense to tell anybody (even dear, dependable Snuffy). We will instead have Clarence opportunistically arrange the meet-up at Snuffy’s place without telling him. The actions fit the personalities a lot better, plus it lays the groundwork quite elegantly for the major misunderstandings and inhuman acts of violence that follow.

It’s still possible to imagine doing some parts of novel-writing solo. The actual writing, for example, and mostly the editing and revising, too. However, for us it’s become nigh-impossible to conceive of coming up with — and ironing out — the plot by any other method than talking it through with a partner. It’s not just load sharing or divvying things up, it’s an interactive process that depends fundamentally on teamwork.

Like Riding a Bike (in the snow)

r-avatarLast week was the first time in what felt like forever that we managed to have a meeting of our critique group. It also marked the first meeting since the shifting of the group’s attention to someone else’s work, which led to some embarrassment when Kent started setting up to take notes rather than give feedback.

But it wasn’t difficult at all to get into the proper mode, and it felt damn good to flex some muscles that hadn’t seen a lot of use in the past year or so. Unless you count the fact that Kent and Jen give each other feedback almost daily… but that’s not really the same thing.

On the way to the car, we were chatting with our fellow author whose latest revisions are now the group’s focus. We talked about process a bit, bringing him up to speed on our status (still brainstorming, but we have about one-third of a preliminary outline now!). The conversation inevitably slid into mutual admiration. He shook his head in bewilderment about how we coordinate everything, while we stood in awe that he does it all by himself.

This week, we generated some (probably apocryphal) prose. It was the first new fiction either of us had written in quite some time, and just like with the crit session it felt fantastic to return to something that we hadn’t done in a while.

The outside temp might be eleventy-below, but with all this newness and fresh starts it’s feeling a little like spring in the Writing Cave.