First Cup of Coffee - July 19, 2021

One of the critical jobs revision should perform and other thoughts on seeding, layering, and creating internal consistency in a novel. Because writing a novel takes a long time and it's natural to forget stuff.

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Hmm. I got my shipment of cocoa truffle espresso. And it's so good, you guys. Why was I depriving myself? Because I had so much of the plain ristretto that needed to be drunk out. But now it is drunk, and I might just have cocoa truffle for the rest of my life. I'm just gonna sit here and drink my coffee, you guys. You talk. Tell me about you. How was your life? How was your weekend? Alright. Uh along those lines. Uh today is Monday, July 19th. Um, hope it's a good Monday for you all, that you are all uh in your various saddles, uh, as it were. I had a nice weekend. I had a um a laid back weekend. I am finally uh discovering. I I want to say realizing, and I I feel like people don't understand what I mean when I say that, but I'm realizing the um benefits of having someone come clean my house. Someone's. Um we've been doing that, I think I know since May, maybe since late April. And I mean, they're still they're still working their way through deep cleaning all the things. You guys, these gals, they're so amazing. They wash the windows, they wash out inside the refrigerator, they like pull stuff out of the bottom of the pantry and vacuum out in there. Um, so my mom um was very upset. I don't know if I told you guys this story, but when she had to get rid of her old housekeeper um who had who had gotten old and just wasn't uh able to do as good of a job. And so then she was trying out new ones, and one of the new ones was a gal who came in and said, Well, your house is very dirty. And my mom was um offended. And I said, Well, don't don't and she didn't like her, and I said, Well, don't have her back. Uh you know, get someone else. You know, you don't you don't need that kind of negativity in your life. But the thing is, is my mom's house is not really dirty. Um, so when uh Rosa came to clean for the first time and she said, Well, it's it's really dirty. Um, and my mom said, Oh no, when I mentioned it to her, and I said, No, no, it's okay because I know it is. I mean, that's the thing, is that uh I was able to you know sort of keep up with the surface clean, and even that was starting to feel like just a lot, but um this kind of deep cleaning like that. I mean, you know, I would periodically wash the windows, um, but you know, like twice a year. And these things like uh, you know, wipe out the fridge only when it gets really terrible, you know, all of those things. Um pulling out the furniture and vacuuming underneath it, they do that. They just sort of work their way through the house, and um, you know, there's just like backlogs of dust and things, so so it's amazing. They're doing that. And I've this weekend I was just finally noticing that um, you know, I had such a busy June with various things happening, and it was really nice that I didn't have to add cleaning the house to the list, and now um it was really great to have a weekend where I didn't have any real chores I had to do, but I did organize something in the garage that had been bothering me, and so it frees me up to do those things. Um I went and did some shopping Saturday afternoon for David's birthday presents. Uh, that was kind of frustrating, it wasn't fun. Um I think shopping when you're looking for something in particular is usually not fun. But I did, I did go to the post office, you guys. Uh Friday afternoon I got all of the books packed up, and Saturday I shipped them all. So big loadoff. And I am, I did put a note on my to-do list that I'm just gonna try to check every Friday afternoon for uh anything that needs to be packed up to be shipped. Um, ultimately, I found that as much as I liked using the PayPal multi-shipping and not having to go to the post office, that that was being more of a pain point than otherwise. Because it takes a while to work through the screen on on PayPal. Um it was just too much. Whereas what I did was I bought all these envelopes, so it was nice I didn't have to look for envelopes, and I got them set out, got my signing pen out, got my bookmarks out, and then I just I went back to the old days, I felt like when I um worked for the environmental consulting firm and we would do mailings, and I I had mailing labels, and I, you know, used the the Avery label template in Word, and I put all of the addresses on there and I printed out one sheet, stuck them on all of the various envelopes, and loaded them up with the books, not necessarily in that order. I had to load up the books first because it depended on how many books uh affected the size of the mailing envelope. Then I affixed the label and it was ready to go. And I just took my big tote bag into the post office and it wasn't that huge of a deal. I mean I had to wait, but the line wasn't hugely long, and you know, just got it done. So, cheers. Um, yeah, it was really a loadoff to have that done. And I did a lot of reading this weekend, which was nice. And um, I'm trying to think of what else I did. I don't I must not have done a whole lot. Um but it was good. I mean, I did a lot of little chores, and and it was good to get those done. We were gonna go to the lake, but then there was a flash flood watch. And it's not fun to be at the lake when there's been flooding upstream. You have to watch out for big chunks of things. So we decided, eh, let's not do it. Um, so yeah, it was nice. And on Friday, I think I was complaining last week that um I had slowed down on Dragon's Daughter, and I was wondering if it was partly getting the Kindle Vella project wetted to darkness up, um, that it had drained me a bit. It's funny, you know, some days you have the juice and some days you don't. And Friday I got my 3,000 words on Dragon's Daughter in less than three hours, just flowed right along. And I'm trying to do 250 words a day on Wedded to Darkness. That would let me put out about a 1,000 to 1,500 word episode a week, and I got that done. So I I was feeling really good about all of that. And then I had several meetings on um Friday evening. Oh, and I had a board meeting on Saturday, SFO board meeting. So we didn't quite get keep it to one hour, but it was one hour and 40 minutes, and we got a lot done, a lot planned. So it was good. All right, so let's see. Um the thing is, is I'm not sure I have much to say today. I I'm very reassured by those of you who have commented that even when I feel like I don't have much to say, that uh you still get something out of what I have to say. So unfortunately, my mind is something of a blank at the moment. Um Dragon's Daughter, I think this is you guys are gonna laugh at me. Um Dragon's Daughter has a little bit of a different structure. But and I and I laugh at myself. Because I feel like I say that every time. Um, every book, you know, it's just one of those things. Every book is a little bit different. For whatever reason. It's uh what is art? Who am I? So so yeah, it's been interesting writing Dragon's Daughter because it has such a different structure. But um, we're moving things along here, and I can't I feel I don't want to tell you what the different structure is because I don't want to spoiler it. But but it really is true that each book you write has a um brings its own nest of problems to the table. I suppose if it doesn't, then you're just writing the same book over and over and over again. Um which you know, sometimes there's there's something over here floating. I think it must be in a spider web. You know, when it like looks like a leaf is just floating in midair, but it turns out it's on a spider strong. Either that or it's magic. That was something else I got done this weekend was I did was doing uh a paid beta reading, and I I also got splinters in my hands. Little cactus thorn. Um, and I wrote up the report on that. Uh it's hard sometimes to to give good critique. Um especially when it's something where someone's expecting it to be a beta read, and my reaction is is you know, beta read means that it's, you know, ready to almost ready to go, and and I've ended up having to say that this book was not ready to go. Unfortunately. And I'm trying to say I don't think I can speak to that, uh, because yeah, I I would take it would be too many specifics and I don't want to do that. I have all of these things that I'm not saying today. One thing about story is finding that internal consistency. And I know that this is something that I have spoken about before. And I think it's really hard, it's one of the challenges of writing a novel is to make sure that the things that you have in the story at the beginning are the things that you have at the end. And I'm not talking about um, you know, like character transformation, uh, those those kinds of things, but but simple details like, and I'm going to oversimplify, but things like what kind of car the person drives, um what color eyes they have. Uh if you bring up something at the end of the book, um, like that, let's say that the heroine has a troubled relationship with her mother. Um, oh, actually, this I could I could talk about this one. Yeah, like she um what is the heroine's relationship with her mother? How often does she communicate with her mother? Um this is something that can't that needs to be consistent throughout the book and consistently touched upon, either or or not in there at all. You know, either that or it's um, it could be something like like they they just don't, they just don't talk. But if you have a different points in the book that somebody um almost never talks to their family, and then another place you say, oh well they only talk like once a month. At another point, it might say um that their mother is too interfering and communi, you know, and is constantly calling. You see, all of those things can't be simultaneously true. If it changes through the book, that's fine. You can have it change through the book, but I see this kind of thing a lot, and it's it's it's basic craft, and I realize that it's a peril of novel writing because writing novels takes a long time. And by the time you get to the end of the book, you forget what was at the beginning of the book. And I mean, it's of course you forget. I mean, especially if you're a new writer, writing a book might take you a year, it might take you a couple of years. So, of course you've forgotten. And uh, you know, Lizzie Penelope mentioned this once a while back on her podcast, and we were joking about it, but it's the what happened to the dog syndrome, that at the beginning of the book you have the dog, and at the end of the book, you realize that you haven't mentioned the dog in 300 pages, that you know, apparently the dog is now dead because you left it locked in the garage two months ago in the book's timeline. Um, and it's one of those oh shit moments, and that's when you go back and you revise and you layer in the dog, you layer in references to the dog. Um, that's why revision is so important. And I say this is to someone who used to hate to revise it. I still don't love revising, but I used to, um, when I was a newbie writer, I would say that revising felt to me like fixing everything I got wrong the first time. And and that's not inaccurate, but it's also a harsh way of looking at it. Because it's not really that you get things wrong the first time or that you've made mistakes the first time, which is how it felt to me. It's that you just can't get everything right the first time. You know, I I have high expectations of myself that way. Um so, and I know that other people probably feel this way, and it it takes time, you know, you don't want to spend that time revising when you could be right writing another book and so forth, but but you have to. Um there are other syndromes of this are like um like when you have the the heroine's treasured necklace that she wears um all the time and never takes it off. And and then you realize that even though you mentioned that at the beginning of the book, that um this necklace that she never takes off is not in evidence again. Um readers notice a lot is like if injuries disappear, it's easy to forget about injuries. You know, it's like uh the person has their arm in a sling at the beginning of the book, and then later they're just fine. They're like waving their arms around and packing things around. You're like, what happened to that broken arm? Um you just you forget, and that's okay. Um, you have to go back and and fix it, put those things in. Um sometimes, and and this is me, you think of things at the end of the book that you want to have. Um like you want the the hero to propose with the perfect ring that the heroine has always longed for. It's a nice romantic moment, shows that the hero is paying attention to what the heroine wants, um, and so forth. But the point is, is if you're going to have if you're going to have that at the end, and it's okay if you don't figure it out until the end, you still have to layer it, you have to seed it throughout the story. So you go back through, and and what I do is I make a list. I have a list of these things, weave in this, layer in this. Um, and I do a full pass. I go back and I read the story and I look for places to seed these things in. You know, and and it doesn't take much. It's it's small mentions, you know, like um, you know, where the her brother shares custody of the dog, and so she sends the dog off with the brother. There, dog's taken care of. Um or you know, as she's out, she stops at the you know, she's going from one place to another, have her go by the jewelry store window, and and she sees the perfect ring, and she tells her friend, look, if I'm ever getting married, that's the ring I want. Uh or maybe she visits it daily. And so you see these things here. Uh, I was teaching a workshop not long ago about uh keeping secrets and building suspense. And one of the gals asked me, is that something I do on revision? Do I go back and heighten things? Because I was talking about the um how useful it can be to have like countdowns, to have anything that makes their that gives a sense of time slipping away, and that you can add even little countdowns throughout any time you feel like you like things are lagging. And she said, Is that something you do? Or asked, uh, do you go back and put that in? And I said, you know, I actually do, because I'm not a super heavy revisor, but that is one of the things I do on revision, is I go in and I add things that intensify the secrets, and I add in countdowns, and I add in urgency. Um, and I and I layer in things that I've figured out at the end that I want to have in there so that I'm seeding those reader expectations. Um and then also consistency, looking for, you know, like at the end of the book, I've if I've decided that uh I'm trying to think of a recent example. Well, for those of you who have read Dark Wizard, um, this is this is a real-world example, was that I decided partway through the book that I wanted her to have something that she was doing to keep herself from thinking about him. And and I liked the idea of um stuff that people do for for negative reinforcement. Uh my my stepdaughter used to suck on her fingers, which is a habit I gave to Stella in um in the Airs of Magic books. But and I so and I was writing these, you know, trading, and so it occurred to me as I was uh working on Dark Wizard, I thought, oh well, I want to give her a way to stop thinking about the wizard. And uh my stepdaughter, when we were trying to help her learn not to suck on her fingers, uh, had her put a rubber band around her wrist. And if she would start to put her fingers in a mouth, in her mouth, she would snap the rubber band, you know, painfully against her wrist. So I gave something like that to Nick. I gave her a copper bracelet where she would press the fangs of this uh snake, copper snake, into the skin of her wrist so that she would stop thinking about him. And then I had to go back out and layer in her deciding to do that and finding the bracelet and putting it on. And then I had to go like go through and find all these, because I realized at the end that I'd forgotten about the copper bracelet, that it had disappeared, you know, what happened to the dog. And so then I had to go add that in. So all of these things happen on revision. It's just um that's part of craft, part of making the book as good as it can be. And on that note, I will remind you all that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network. And you will find more podcasts that you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. And I will talk to you all tomorrow. Take care. Bye bye.