The Next Chapter

This week we tackled the last of the items on our To Do list relating to the Science Novels. We’re ready to plunge into writing Sibling of Music Novel, and didn’t want a bunch of tiny tasks swarming around us like gnats.

Kent whipped up a nice batch of epigraphs for the third novel, while Jen divided said novel into chapters so that he’d know how many he needed. (Answer: 28) Additionally she gave the chapters names.

We’ve mentioned before that Jen is our resident namer, and it’s a job she really enjoys. There was no chance that Kent was going to get his grubby paws on this task. Don’t get all riled up in his defense, though. Jen does ask for his opinion, and he has veto power.

During composition, we tend to give the scenes that we write goofy or overly spoiler-filled titles. They’re full of inside jokes and terrible puns. In short they would make egregious chapter titles. Would you read a book with chapters called “long day at the business factory”, or “emotionpalooza” or “merrily merrily merrily merrily” or “poopin’ in a bag” ? Of course not.

For the Science Novels, the actual chapter titles all relate to places in the stories. It was easy to come up with a couple dozen of those for the first book. As we moved through the series it got more difficult, largely because we don’t want to just repeat all the same place names from book to book. The thinking cap got a good workout, and in the end we came up with a nice, evocative batch of about 70 names, to cover all three books in the series. Now the whole series has proper chapters, with names and epigraphs and everything.

Having a writing partner means always having someone to share an inside joke with, even if it won’t make a good chapter title.