Writing: Critique and. Revision

HWSWAnswers: Collaboration, Organizing, Writing the Military

~ Jenny ~ 11 Comments

Allanah asked:
HWSWA Question (on the subject of tact): I love how seamless your co-written books are, especially given your different writing methods and also typically different subject matter. I wondered, have you read each other’s independent books, and if so, which are your favourites and why? I think maybe this is a question about how your writing works together, when on the surface it might seem unlikely?

Jenny:
Favorite books of Bob’s: I still love Bodyguard of Lies and there’s an earlier one, Cut-Out, that’s great (we need to talk about that ending, though). And now I need to check out the Will Kane books. Continue reading →

The Twelve Days of Nita: Day Two: Sequence Analysis

~ Jenny ~ 7 Comments

I am now deep into revisions with the entire book written, which means lots of analysis. Do not do this during discovery drafts, it annoys the Girls.

Basically, I ran the Act Two plot through the analysis wringer five times:
Once to look at the action only.
Once to look at the antagonist conflict.
Once to ramp up the antagonist conflict because it was weak.
Once to look at the romance.
Once to look at the Button/Max foil romance. Continue reading →

Twelve Days of Nita: Day One: Act Two Is A Mess

~ Jenny ~ 13 Comments


I’m very happy with Nita’s Act One. It’s 36,000 words which is 3,000 too many, but since it should be 1/3 of the book, that would make the finished book 108,000 words, and that’s within the normal contract requirement of 100,000, give or take 10% either way.

Then there’s Act Two, which is still a freaking mess even after I’ve been working on it. It’s been awhile since we talked about Nita, so here’s the rough outline:

Continue reading →

The Power of Rewriting

~ Jenny ~ 45 Comments

I will be the first to agree that taking over four years to write 100,000 coherent words of fiction seems excessive. Actually I wrote 145,000 words of fiction and only some of it was coherent, which is one of the many reasons why the rewrite is taking so long. But one good thing about taking that long is that I can really gain insight into my characters and my story. The bad thing is that after awhile, the story’s dead and I’m not rewriting, I’m just washing garbage, and I’m about three days away from washing garbage here, but another good thing is that I really love this book. When I finally let it go, it’s going to be the best I can do, which may not be good, but I’ll be proud of it anyway. Continue reading →

Questionable: How do you decide what your main plot is and who your antagonist is?

~ Jenny ~ 7 Comments

AG wrote:
So when is the decision to beef up your villain into the antagonist, and when is the decision to shrink the villain so that the focus is on the primary relationships? I remember that a common complaint has been that Marvel villains are weak, but for several of those films, that worked, since they didn’t get in the way of the primary relationships. But when does the complaint that the villain is weak become an actual issue?

There’s a lot to unpack there. I’ll tackle the first question at length and then hit the second on the way out.

Continue reading →

Today in Overthinking: Identity and the Jar in Tennessee

~ Jenny ~ 20 Comments

One of my favorite poems is Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar.” I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately for several reasons, and it’s just occurred to me that it might be a great metaphor for teaching the impact of identity in characterization. It’s such a slippery concept, and I’ve never thought I was particularly good at getting it across, but then I recently went back to the poem for the reasons and thought, “Oh, it’s right there.” So let’s try this again (waving to McDaniel students).

Continue reading →

Possibly Not the Kitchen Sink

~ Jenny ~ 36 Comments

Last night I made stirfry because I had a bunch of food that was about to go south, and you can put anything in stirfry. So I did. It’s not bad–just had some for lunch–because it turns out if you pour enough tamari and sesame oil and garlic on vegetables, they always taste good. But it was lacking direction. There’s so much stuff in there that I just added chow mien noodles and concentrated on the tamari and the crunch. I mean, it has to be healthy–green beans, peas, mushrooms,bok choy, celery, scallions, half a tomato left over from my sandwich, garlic–but there wasn’t any there there. I’m thinking that’s what happened with the first draft of Nita.
Continue reading →

Questionable: What’s With Your Obsession Over Word Counts?

~ Jenny ~ 11 Comments

Andrea asked:
I am wondering where the word count requirements originate. Is that an industry standard? Is it what you yourself have developed as the best structure? A mix of the two?

A mix of the two.

Word count is usually stipulated in the contract. In this case, my contract says 100,000 words, which is my natural length anyway. Legally I can go 10,000 words either side of that, so 90,000 to 110,000, although as I remember Fast Women was 116,000.

The act counts are mine because I write in acts to arc the plot. And because I want the plot to escalate, I try to make sure each act is shorter than the last one so that the turning points/big moments come faster together as the plot progresses. That’s just my thing, nothing contractural.

Continue reading →