Working Wednesday, August 14, 2024

I’ve been working on Very Nice Funerals for a thousand years. For those of you wondering why VNF is taking so long, it’s me.

Here’s the deal: Bob is our plot guy, he comes up with the action, the events that make the story zip. I am the structure person. What’s the difference? Plot is event. Structure is pattern. Plot is content. Structure is arrangement. Plot is story. Structure is meaning.

I write in acts, so I look at each act/chunk of story in terms of where it is in the emotional arc of the romance, in the thematic arc of the story. I can only do that once Bob has drafted the plot and we’ve both written scenes that mostly (but not always) fit that plot. Then I go in and look at the arcs: the romance arcs, the character arcs, the subplot arcs, the dog’s arc . . . . It takes me FOREVER. And that’s what I’m doing now.

So Bob sets up the events—in VNF it’s a serial killer plot, which is a problem in Rocky Start because there are so many possibilities—and then I come along and say, “Yes, but what do they MEAN?” At the same time I’m wrestling with theme—which in VNF is change and connection—he’s trying to get a logical action story that makes sense. So we trade it back and forth, and he tells me how many double spaces there were after periods in the last draft, and I tell him I just moved ten thousand words to a different place in the plot and he sighs. Loudly. Sometimes twice.

How do I know when I’m done? When I’m happy. When I read through the draft and I think, No, no, no, this isn’t right, I know I need to keep going. When I read though it and think, My god, we’re geniuses, and feel really good, I’m done. Then it goes back to Bob and we talk about it.

We’re closer, and I’m starting to feel cheerful, so that’s a good sign. Nothing but good times, people.

So what did you work on this week?