What Is This Book Anyway?
Toni and I had quite a time last week.
I finally hit the wall and said, “I can’t do anything else until I know what happens at the climax. Besides the Big Magic Bang.” Because given our characters, the Big Magic Bang could be sex; they seem to be heavily invested in it. But of course to know what happens at the Big Magic Bang, we had to know why the antagonist wanted a Big Magic Bang. We kind of knew but then we kept writing and the story got more complex (sweet Jesus, is it complex) and the antagonist was kind of stuck at the gate. Meanwhile my heroine was a humorless bitch and Toni’s kept offering to kill people, and my hero kept hitting people over the head, while Toni’s solved all problems without breaking a sweat because he was a superhero. So we finally came down to the big question:
What is this book about?
We had a TON of stuff, wonderful stuff–snappy patter, sexual tension, theft, violence, magic animals, fabulous settings that changed and thwarted our protagonists, family drama plus the-family-you-make drama–but I had no idea what the book was about. We needed to pick a main plot and then hang all the subplots on that. Actually, all the stuff was so closely interwoven that once we picked a thread and said, “This one,” everything would automatically hang together. So it was pick-a-lane time, and then all our problems would be over.
So of course, we built a new lane. Essentially we looked at everything we had and said, “What would tie all this stuff together, what motivation would throw all of these people into a life or death struggle, what is it they all want (for different reasons) that they’ll risk everything for?” And we thought up something new that had been there all along, we just hadn’t noticed it.
I love that moment when you pull one thread of plot and everything just kind of lines up.
Considering this started as an episodic collaborative novel about four women–an assassin, a waitress, a stable girl, and an (I forget), and then became an episodic collaborative novel about an assassin, a waitress, and a stable girl; and then became an episodic collaborative novel about an assassin and a waitress; and then became a non-episodic collaborative novel about an assassin, a waitress, a magic spy, and an undercover cop, it was amazing we’d gotten as far as we had. We’d even managed to keep the same antagonist. But last week, we had to look at it and say, “I don’t think is a romantic comedy any more.” There’s so much in there, the romances, the friendships, the team building/family-you-make, the parental stuff, the magic stuff, the con stuff, the violent stuff, the food, the animals, the mystery, the comedy . . . ARGH.
It’s a relationship story about a team that comes together to save the world. More or less. Their world anyway, although the repercussions of their failure would be international. With magic. And romance. And mystery. But mostly it’s a cross between Leverage and Person of Interest in 1926 with magic. At least, that’s what it is this week.
Like I said, last week was a doozy.
