Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 66

And We’re Back to Nita.

I need to get Nita out the door, so I’m getting serious about it. Well, I was always serious about it, but now I’m REALLY serious about it. It has problems that I have to identify, which means analysis. Argh. So here’s my plan. (Yes, once again, you’re being subjected to me talking about my writing problems. Feel free to skip.)

As many of you know, I write in acts, usually four acts, defined by the turning points they end in. Currently, my acts are too long, except for the last one which is a little short, but I can fix all of that. The problem (I think) is that there’s so much Stuff in this book that it needs focused. So my first task, after I reread everything, is to tighten everything up. Which means an act outline.

And that meant figuring out the major aspects of the plot to focus on. I decided on five:

Nita’s character arc. (Duh.)
Nick’s character arc. (Also duh.)
The love story. (It’s the romance, stupid.)
The antagonist’s plot (Duh again.)
The subplot romance. (Because I love it.)

That’s it, the five points I have to hit in each act. All others need not apply.

And that left me with this [redacted for spoilers]:

Act One:
Nita tries to ignore the supernatural, focuses on island problems.
Nick starts to change, deals with emotions, focuses on future as Devil
Nita and Nick turn to each other for help.
[redacted] finds out from Vinnie that Nita and Nick are talking, sends Ukobach to kill her, tells [redacted] to increase the poison dosage for Nick.
[Nita meets Button, Max comes to Earth]

Act Two:
Nita has to adapt to the supernatural
Nick becomes emotionally human again
Nita and Nick join forces, assemble a team
[redacted] sends [redacted] to kill Nita, [redacted] to seduce him. tells [redacted] to increase the poison dose again.
[Button and Max meet [redacted] they call a truce]

Act Three:
Nita is fully in on the supernatural and Nick
Nick is [redacted] but keeps coming back to Nita
Nita and Nick fall in love [redacted]
[redacted] poisons Nick and [redacted], tries to kill Nita a third time
[Button and Max work together [redacted]

Act Four:
Nita [redacted]
Nick [redacted]
Nita and Nick save each other, commit
[redacted] [redacted]
[Button and Max are together]

Yeah, I know the [redacted]s are annoying. Sorry about that.

I’m going to lose some stuff I like when I focus on those five points in four acts, but that’s writing for you. If not “kill your darlings,” at least cut them and put them in a file where you’ll eventually forget them.

The thing about breaking the book into acts is that it makes it manageable. Instead of 100,000 words, I’ve got 33,000, 28,000, 24,000, 15,000 to write. Actually what I’ve got in this draft is 34,326, 36,282, 30,715, 11,590. So some revision ahead. Much cutting. Focus! I can do this.

Of course, Bob keeps sending me messages about pirate zombies on icebergs, so it’s not clear sailing here, but I will get this book out the door.

And then my agent will be astounded at four finished books in one year. Well, I’m astounded. So if you don’t hear from me for awhile, I’m cutting like crazy, focusing like a demon, and repelling pirate zombies from my increasingly demanding collaborator. It’ a good life.

So what’s new with you?

This is a Good Book Thursday, October 27, 2022

I’m reading The Devil in Nita Dodd. Over and over and over again. Devils and demons but no zombies. I have some standards.

What met your standards for reading this week?

Working Wednesday, October 26, 2022

I’m working on Nita, coping with Bob and his zombie lust, and throwing out half my kitchen.

What’s work like for you?

Argh Author: Nancy Yeager’s When We Were Friends

Frannie and Lexi were best friends. Sisters of the heart. Partners in crime. But when they got caught, only one of them went to prison.

Five years later, ex-con Frannie is back to claim her share of the money they stole, then she’ll disappear and start a new life.

But with her ex-best friend, a lonely kid with a mangy mutt, and even Frannie’s high-school crush pulling on her heartstrings, leaving doesn’t look as easy as it once did. When an old enemy surfaces, though, Frannie realizes her staying endangers everyone she loves. And even though she might have found her heart’s true home, there’s no guarantee she can keep it.

Buy it now on Amazon.

State of the Collaboration: Next Book

Bob and I are taking a break because we strained our brains writing three books in seven months, but we are starting to talk about the next one.

No, seriously, he wants His Guy walking the Appalachian Trail with his dog. I want to know what My Girl is doing on the damn Appalachian Trail. She’s in long skirts and sparkly flats, and she runs a second hand store, plus she’s the single mother of a high school senior. She doesn’t have time for the Appalachian Trail. This may be the first romantic adventure where the two leads never meet.

Reminds me of that time when he said, “Who’s Your Girl this time?” and I said, “A food writer,” and he said, “My Guy’s a hitman.” That worked out okay. Still, I have grave doubts about Rosie and the Guy Walking the Appalachian Trail with His Dog.

But first we take a break. He’s finishing the next Phoebe book and I am going to get Nita out the door for once and for all.

Then I’ll deal with the damn iceberg.

Happiness is Not Hearing “Book Done Yet?”

Yes, I’m still rolling in the ecstasy of finished books, but the icing on the e-mail was when Bob wrote “Book done yet?” and I could say, “YES! YES! YES!” It’s the little things, you know?

What little things (or big things made you happy this week?

State of the Collaboration: Voice Work

Note 1: I wrote this awhile ago and never posted it. The excerpts are from One in Vermillion, so it wasn’t that long ago, but it does show a little more about how we collaborate.

Note 2: It was Bob’s birthday yesterday. (I suck at deadlines.) I think finishing three books is present enough, but I did cast an eye over the Lego zombie pirate captain on Amazon. Good thing I don’t know his address or he’d have that sucker on his desk now.

Bob and I have very different voices, which is good, it helps tremendously in differentiating the two PoV characters. But when we have to write each other’s characters, it becomes a problem. That’s okay, we just go in and rewrite our own characters to fit, smooth out the scene to conform to our styles. Bob shortens my run-on sentences in my first drafts of Vince scenes, and I start combining his sentence fragments into complete sentences in Liz’s. That’s not because I think sentence fragments are bad, they’re a feature of his writer’s voice and by extension of Vince’s voice. But they’re not Liz’s voice. In the same way Bob’s voice (and Vince’s) is fairly formal and measured, which I chalk up to years in the military. But my voice (and Liz’s) is very informal, full of slang and rat-a-tat-tat pacing. Again, this is a good thing, putting that difference on the page.

I thought of that last night when Bob gave me two scenes to rewrite in Liz’s PoV. Why was he writing Liz? Because she’d gotten sucked into an action scene with a gun, and I know zilch about that. Much better for Bob to write it and get the details right, and then for me to rewrite it to fix the voice. This is something we’ve been doing for years, so no egos are bruised or broken; I expect him to do the same thing for the Vince scenes I write. We usually end up handing the scenes back forth a couple of times before we’re both satisfied. It’s a good system.

Usually he hands me the scene and it’ll have a note on it that says something like “insert banter here,” and usually my process is go through and take out all his Latinate/formal words and put them into Anglo/Saxon vernacular, with a few stops to change something that sounds more like a guy than a woman. And I hand him a scene and say, “You’re going to have to butch this up,” and watch him start to cut. The important part is, it always makes the scene better.

*****

So here’s a paragraph from the doc he sent me last night, first his version and then my rewrite to put it into Liz’s voice.

Bob’s First Draft:
Vince had roused me from barely enough sleep to be worth going to bed, well before the sun came up. I had to admit it was my own damn fault for pulling the stunt with Molly last night but it had been so worth it. And, as he’d reminded me, a couple of times during the drive, this was the price to be paid.

This morning, though, wasn’t on the same level of being a stunt. This was for real, which hit home when Vince pulled off Route 52 onto a dirt road to a small clearing where George was waiting in his big truck and Rain in her snazzy Mercedes. They both got out when we stopped.

Jenny’s Second Draft
That morning, Vince had woken me up a couple of hours after we’d hit the sheets, long before the sun came up. I rolled down over the foot of the bed, cursing Major Rogers and his perverse lust for dawn. I knew it was my own damn fault for trashing O’Toole’s posters with Molly last night but it had been so worth it. And, as Vince continued to remind me as we drove to meet Rain and George, this was the price to be paid for immature vandalism.

“There is no free lunch, Danger,” he said. “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

“It was a paintbrush,” I said. “Die by the paintbrush just doesn’t have the same ring.”

He continued to explain why trashing the posters was immature, unproductive and illegal, but I didn’t care. People were going to laugh their asses off when they saw those posters. Also, I was pretty sure he was doing it to distract me from the fact that we were all gonna die.

Kidding.

There was nothing funny about this morning, though, which hit home when Vince pulled off Route 52 onto a dirt road to a small clearing where George was waiting in his big truck and Rain in her snazzy Mercedes. They both got out when we stopped.

*****

You’ll notice my draft was longer. That’s in part because I’m a slut for dialogue, but mostly because of character. That is, if that scene had been from Vince’s PoV, it would have been the length Bob made it because Vince (and Bob) would be thinking about the mission, not bantering with a nervous girlfriend.

But it’s in Liz’s PoV, and she (and I) are thinking about what’s coming up, about how dangerous it is and how out of her depth she is, so she’s babbling, trying to keep things light so she doesn’t start screaming from nerves. Humor: it’s a great deflector of emotion.

Scholomance Spoilers

So I started the last in the Scholomance series with great anticipation and hit the wall. Spoilers below and probably many more in the comments. You have been warned.

Spoilers.

Really, a lot of spoilers.

So my biggest problem was all the explaining. And the description. And the deep thoughts. I kept thinking, “Orion is trapped with a mawmouth, and you’re describing a garden?” I think the opening up of the setting was part of the problem although it was inevitable, so I don’t think it was a wrong choice on the part of the author. Certainly keeping El and Orion apart for so long was not a help since the tension and draw between them powered the first two books (ask me how I know that keeping the power-of-the-book couple apart for too long is a bad idea). And it really undercuts that this-was-meant-to-be part of the motive when El sleeps with somebody else while she’s trying desperately to save the boyfriend. It just felt to me as though the plot was all over the place, lost in too much details about enclaves and intricate magic politics. My interest lay solely in getting Orion out of the Scholomance before Patience (Fortitude?) ate him, so all the detailed maneuvering that El was doing felt like walking through weeds.

The first two novels will always be big keepers for me. I’ve read them over and over, and I’m sure I will again. This one I’ll try again, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be skimming to get through it.

Okay. Over to you all. Knock yourselves out, but be kind to authors. None of us ever try to write a book with problems, but they happen all the time, so no “She really mailed this one in” or “She didn’t even try.” The level of detail and craft on this one is just as superb as the first two, and she deserves props for that alone. Also, authors who live in glass manuscripts shouldn’t throw stones: everything I’ve objected to here I’ve done inadvertently in my books.

This is a Good Book Thursday, October 20, 2022

Bob sent me an e-mail this week: Book done yet? And I could finally tell him yes, I’d finished my revision of the end of Vermillion. So that’s what I’ve been reading, the books we just finished. I am very tired of reading them.

What did you read this week that you did not get tired of?

Working Wednesday, October 18, 2022

I’m doing winterizing things since Indian summer is evidently not happening this year. Bah, humbug.

What are you all up to?