Tagged: Son of Music Novel

Fools Rush In

r-avatarRune Skelley uses an extensive outlining process, predicated on the theory that well begun is mostly done. We devote a large amount of time up front and reap the benefits later. Kent finds this philosophy a natural fit for any kind of moderate- to large-scale project, because it’s a key tenet of best-practices software development: don’t rush into coding, because changes are much more expensive to do in code than on a whiteboard. And there will be changes.

So in fiction, don’t rush into prose. Writing is rewriting, and it’s wise to budget your heavy lifting for the places where it will pay off. Think of it this way: you’d rather spend money on an addition for your house than shoring up a sagging foundation. You expect the foundation to be solid, and if you need to work on it after the house is standing then something has gone terribly wrong.

It’s easy to imagine scrapping an entire chapter, say, once you discover where a story is going. That could happen no matter how detailed your outline was, but it’s more likely you’d be scrapping a line from your outline and never need to compose the chapter in the first place. There are more insidious traps that lack of preparation can create for you, though. Worse than a superfluous chapter is one that’s needed, and has much in it that you’re in love with, but suffers some systemic flaw. The main character’s voice finally coalesces in your head, and now there are passages that simply aren’t in that voice. The subject matter of a conversation needs to change, but you already worked so hard on that dialogue that you can’t hear it any other way.

There are people who extol writing with less structure, and there certainly are writers who have success via a totally unstructured process. Words like “fluid, creative, unhindered,” tend to get thrown around. Just bear in mind these three things:

  1. a sound plan is not the antithesis of creativity; you still need to make stuff up, and an outline doesn’t breathe life into your characters for you — you still have the opportunity to perform
  2. in the words of Dwight Eisenhower, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” a phrase which here means your outline will certainly undergo substantial changes once you get started writing, and that’s okay
  3. given a large enough sample of writers, you could find successful ones following any process imaginable; choose or invent a process that speaks to you, but don’t be swayed by anybody else’s results

We’re not asserting that the best writers never have to throw anything away, or he writes best who writes least. Far from it. In addition to an outline, we often generate many pages of apocrypha, prose that’s never intended as part of the manuscript. It helps us get our ear in for the voices, among other things. A lesson we’ve learned is that it’s better not to use our first chapters as the getting-acquainted phase of that relationship, for the reasons mentioned a few paragraphs ago. It’s a ton of work, no mistake, but it’s a smarter-not-harder scenario. Having a good process increases the rewards, although it won’t necessarily reduce the efforts.

How do you approach the initial stages of a new project? What level of structure works best for you?

Roleplaying In Public

r-avatarOne of the great joys about working on a new novel (#6!) is getting to know the new characters. It’s also one of the biggest hurdles to clear before the prose will come together. Until you bond with these imaginary people, writing feels like putting words in their mouths. They say the lines, but after delivering each one they look over at you to see what’s supposed to happen next.

Kent and Jen have a few tricks they use to speed up the getting-acquainted stage with a new cast. Of course there’s tons of discussion and note-taking, filling out character sheets, learning the facts of their backstories. But facts can be dry and uninspiring. To get a richer feel for these characters, Rune Skelley likes roleplaying.

The other night, two characters from Rune’s upcoming sixth book strolled into iHop. Sure they looked like Jen and Kent, but rest assured that’s not who they were. Something even less obvious to casual observers was the temporal distortion bubble: the two individuals conversing across the booth were younger versions of themselves. A phase when they were closer, compared to the present-day events of the novel. When they could relax around each other, just chillin’ and being fictitious at a pancake joint.

Jen and Kent use roleplaying quite a lot. Another new character is a killer with a particular technique, which needed to be, um, road-tested. (A little.) It’s also useful for debugging dialogue and validating motivation, things that can come up in later stages of the writing.

Both Kent and Jen have a bit of theater background, and spent years playing Dungeons & Dragons and other FRPGs. Adopting another persona might be a bit easier because of that experience, but it’s just a matter of practice to get comfortable with it.

A solo author could of course make like Travis Bickle and role play in a mirror, but having a writing partner means you always have a costar on hand to make you feel less ridiculous.

Do you use roleplaying as part of your writing process?

Substance Over Style

r-avatarOur current round of brainstorming is pointing out yet again why having a coauthor is such a marvelous thing. We’ve been kickin’ it old school, writing out notes longhand in a steno pad. It’s a great way to wake up different parts of the brain, but it’s also a great way to get a hand cramp. On those days when your fingers need a break, your collaborator can pry the quill from your gnarled fist and take over the scrivening duties. As long as you both have moderately legible handwriting, you’re saved!

A good writing partner has many uses besides that overly literal interpretation of the term. We know in broad strokes how the plot of our new novel will go, so right now we’re concentrating on fleshing out the major characters, filling in their backstories. Most of what we’ve been talking about won’t appear on the page, but it will inform the characters’ actions. We need to know who these people are and how they got that way. It’s the only way to make them feel real and fully formed. Details from their pasts often prompt plot points when we get to the outline stage.

So we’ve been flitting from character to character, having a grand old time gossiping about their secrets and what-have-you, until last night. That’s when we realized we’d been avoiding talking about the villain. He’s not a total stranger, mind you. We know several very important things about him, like his name, and what he’ll be doing in the novel. We know that he’s a very bad person, we just didn’t know how he got that way.

After chatting and throwing out wild ideas we whittled our list down to two possibilities. Option 1 has a really striking visual, and can probably be made to play nicely with the facts we already “know” about this guy and his MO. Option 2 is a bit more mundane, but opens up some really nice avenues for a character arc and some theme elements.

Obviously we chose Option 2, but the striking visual of Option 1 was very enticing. It’s over the top and gross and operatic. It represents a chance to really show off. It’s got style. Repulsive, dangerous style. Jen was having a hard time letting go, but luckily she has a writing partner. Kent was able to stuff his fingers in his ears and ignore the siren song. He argued for Option 2, for boring old plot momentum and character cohesion. And he’s right. The story overall will be much better if we opt for substance over style.

Never fear, Option 2 isn’t actually boring. It’s plenty disturbing and violent and sick. It’s just tame in comparison to the much bloodier Option 1. And we’ve filed Option 1 away for future use.

So maybe fear a little bit.

2015 – The Year We Take Over

r-avatarAs promised, here is our grand scheme for the year ahead.

This past week we sent out our first round of query letters for the infamous Science Novel. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and it will be our only round. If not, we’ll continue querying.

Meanwhile, we’ve begun brainstorming and outlining for Novel #6, aka Son of Music Novel. This very early stage in a novel’s lifecycle is one of our favorites. Everything is shiny and new, and the world is awash with possibilities. We’ve been able to escape the writing cave for the comfier confines of Writing Cave 2, which is located downstairs and has a fireplace and surround sound.

Once we get this new beast tamed (ie, have a complete outline) we’ll write it. Since it is a sequel to the Music Novel, we’ll look for ways to tie the two strongly together. This might require small changes to the Music Novel, so we’ll take care of those as they come up.

Sometimes we like to let a project rest for a while between steps, so that we can come back to it with fresh eyes. If that’s the case with the new novel, we’ll switch into editing mode on the Music Novel. Our critique group gave us good feedback and there are some changes we’d like to make. If the new novel does not require this refractory period, then Music Novel edits will happen after the first draft of its sequel is done.

And then, if there’s any time left in the year after writing an entire novel and editing another, we’ll turn our attention to plotting out the sequel to the Science Novel, which will by then have been acquired by a major publisher. Fingers crossed.

We Can Be Taught

r-avatarFor a while now we’ve been flirting with Novel #6, naming the characters, talking about their backgrounds, even brainstorming up some cool ideas for (gasp!) plot. We have a few more loose ends to tie up with Novels 4&5 before we can really immerse ourselves in the outlining of #6, but there’s one big step we were smart enough to take now.

As we mentioned, we took a field trip to the inspiration location for the Science Novel after we finished writing it, and that meant a certain amount of revision. We weren’t slavishly devoted to the real world location, but having visited it we had a better idea of how our version should feel. We could have saved ourselves a lot of rewriting if we’d been smart and taken the field trip early on.

So that’s what we did this time. Even though we don’t have the whole plot mapped out yet, we have a particular location in mind for a lot of the action. Last weekend we visited it, took a bunch of pictures, asked a bunch of questions. We went before the weather got gross and cold, and more importantly, we went before we wrote anything. Before we even plotted the whole thing out. That means that we have a clear picture of what we want to work with. We know what it’s like to move around in our location, what it smells like, how things are laid out. It should help immensely with outlining, and will probably inspire ideas we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t visited.

And that means we can spend the gross, cold winter days in front of the fireplace, cozy with our slippers and hot buttered rum, brainstorming and working with our plot rainbow.

And if we’re really smart, we’ll set the next one in Prague so we have an excuse to go back.

The Expanding Skelleyverse, er, Universe

r-avatarMost of our time in writing cave lately has been focused on revisions of novels 4 & 5. But when we take Lady Marzipan out for a stroll we have other things to talk about. And lately, those conversations have often revolved around what we might do for novels 6 & 7.

Our ideas are shaping up as sequels to the books we’re currently polishing. It feels great to brainstorm and be able to just make stuff up, after being so intent for the past year or so on the minutiae of the Music Novel and the Science Novel. However, because we’re dealing with sequels, there are definite constraints. As Jen put it, we need to find ways of expanding the story world without changing its fundamental nature.

We come up with lots of cool ideas that would wreck the integrity of the story world. (Kent comes up with them. He can’t seem to help it sometimes.) It’s not really an issue of continuity, it’s more a matter of tone. The sequel should be of the same subgenre as the preceding book, and the stakes should be on a similar scale.

Our story worlds have certain rules, not all of which are demonstrated explicitly in any one book. We like to keep things broad and flexible until events force a firm decision. As we make up a new story and new characters, we periodically paint ourselves into a corner — if we allow X to happen here, then Y would never have been necessary and the main characters wouldn’t have met. Unless we also say Z… This is the process that leads us to the new wrinkles of our story-world physics. We can also just decree new facets, of course, but we like following the characters into trouble and then debugging the scenario. It ensures that all the world building we do is relevant, and it keeps us focused on showing the characters’ stories instead of telling the overall plot. It keeps things grounded and relatable.

This approach also helps keep us stocked up on new concepts, in the form of the ideas that don’t fit into the carefully constructed, shared delusion that is any particular Rune Skelley novel.

 

Future Looks Bright

r-avatarWhen you’re writing about the far future, you can get away with practically anything. But the shorter your jump forward in time, the trickier it is to portray. You’re on the hook to describe what’s happened with cars and phones, and offer some social commentary. And you have to do it all with a fine-bristle brush, no broad strokes allowed.

We like to stir up a brew that closely matches what we encounter when we’re brave enough to venture forth from the writing cave. That is, the consensus reality of our characters is a close match for that of our readers. We’ve delved a few decades into the past, and ventured sideways somewhat, but our novels have all avoided the future.

Soon, though, that will have to change. The sequel to the music novel will concern a new generation of characters, and the plot sort of demands that they not be little kids. And wouldn’t you know it, that lands us squarely in the “trickier” kind of future.

Perhaps it will feel like a natural step for us. Novel #5 was, after all, significantly harder sci-fi than anything else we’ve done. Working together we’ll create the future our characters must struggle in.

Save It For the Sequel

r-avatarAs we’ve been editing the music novel (hacking our way through dense word jungles with a machete, burning whole scenes to the ground, etc) we keep finding ourselves in conversations about ways to complicate the story world.

Believe me when I tell you that this particular story is complicated enough. We have eight point-of-view characters and a couple of subplots. The premise behind the story, the dark twist we’ve given our fictional reality, is one of those deceptively simple ideas. When it’s first explained it makes perfect sense, then you start to think of the implications and ramifications, and you drown in a tsunami of questions. That’s a good thing, because it gives us lots to write about. The characters get to ask those questions and propel the plot.

The Big Idea of this novel is truly expansive, and we could write hundreds of stories set in this universe. The problem is that right now we’re only writing one. That means that we need to keep it focused on one main plot and not clutter things up with every little idea we have.

As we mentioned, we do have plans for a sequel, so some of our Really Coolest Ideas™ will end up being used there. As we keep reminding ourselves.

Before we started these edits we had a debate about which project we should work on. We almost brainstormed and outlined the sequel instead of diving in on the edits, and it’s a really good thing we didn’t. I think we both overestimated how well we remembered the events of this novel, for one thing. For another, the discussions we’re having now are sparking a ton of ideas for the followup that I’m not sure we would have come up with otherwise.

We have a few more weeks of work to do on the music novel before we move on, but we’re both getting excited about the possibilities for Music Novel 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s great to have a writing partner to share your enthusiasm with.

Size Matters

r-avatarWe’ve been harping on and on lately about how big our current project is, which raises the question of why we don’t make it two books.

Two books is something we thought about early in the editing process, after all, we’d have two 90,000-word novels. That’s damn respectable. Turns out there are a host of reasons we’ve opted to not go that way.

First, it feels lazy. We want a good book, not an easy book. That means we need to work hard to craft something beautiful and meaningful, no matter what the size. If all we did was lop it in half, it would feel like cheating, and we’d have two not-great books.

Second, even though it’s long enough to be two books, the plot is not really structured in a way that makes it easy to bisect. As originally written, the story proper took place over one week. We had a large amount of backstory that was told through flashbacks. There was (in our opinion) a really clever structure to the flashbacks that, at the time, we felt justified the use of so many. Our readers, though, did not agree. We had six, and none of them picked up on the clever part, which begs the question of how clever it really was. Since our original vision was a bust, we decided to just tell the story in order. Radical, right? But the scenes that were flashbacks in the first draft weren’t enough to carry the first half of the novel. They were a few isolated incidents, but they weren’t close enough together to be easily connected with a line. Now we’ve written new material to close up the gaps and make the line clear, which is what makes it so damn long. In theory we could chop it at a big tentpole moment and give it a cliffhanger ending. But we don’t wanna. That’s not the way the story is meant to be told. We also don’t want to pad out the first half with artificial plot complications just to make it seem like it deserves to be its own story. That’s not how we roll.

And third, we have ideas for another book, ideas that work well as a sequel but not as the third in a series. When there’s only one point of reference, the second point can go anywhere. But when you have two references, anything further really ought to follow a predictable pattern.

Jen and Kent are very happy that they each have a writing partner they can talk about this kind of thing with. They pity the poor solo authors who have to figure it all out on their own.

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.