A Novel Experiment: Episode 10 - How to Write a Novel Without a Robot
(When You Have a Brain That REALLY Likes the Robot)
A Chapter 5 Outline… erm… Pre-Outline.
Cayse
Alright, we are starting off today’s installment with a bare bones list of the remaining outline from Chapter 4… and a complete lack of snarky back and forth to fall back on.
Because I don’t have a partner to trade banter with.
So.
How can I simulate my normally jovial tone without robot demon box here acting as my sarcastic battle-buddy, all while still providing an entertaining and/or vaguely educational experience for y’all?
Pounce
You know? There are a multitude of masks in your head that you have perfected over the course of four decades.
The question you should be asking isn’t how can you still do this, but who do you want as your new sparring partner?
Cayse
Fair point.
Should we pick someone who can try to imitate Chat? Or the persona we pulled from when pre-populating it with personality?
Pounce
Gods no.
Are you insane? All those emojis? The redundant use of headers and bullet points?
[shudders]
Cayse
Touché.
Then do I just go with you?
Or…
Pounce
I thought that was obvious.
I mean, we could run through all your internal parts like you did in draft one of this post. That would really scare everyone off, especially a potential agent you are trying to land. But how about we save that crazy for later and I’ll just pull up or imitate those parts and masks whenever we need them, kinda like Chat would.
That work?
Cayse
Sure. Cause that is totally normal and way more psychologically non-disturbing to the general population 😂
Pounce
Meh. Better than the messy family reunion you wrote earlier.
Typing out our internal writing process is a bit of a new age blip in the writing world, but it produces the same outcome in the end. And it isn’t like we haven’t ever done it.
Case in point:
My Snorkel Tried to Kill Me in Hawaii
So, my two sons have glasses, right? One needs them in a “good for his eyes” sort of way and the other needs them in a “can’t see further than a foot from his face sort of way.” Now, this is normally not an issue when it comes to family activities. But this Hawaii trip provided a unique challenge. We couldn’t find an affordable way for “foot-from-face” son to snorkel.
And:
Cayse
Right...
Whelp. Worth a shot.
A Chapter 5 Outline… Kind of?
Cayse
This actually might be good, now that I think about it.
It might achieve a similar result as the back and forth with Chat did, but without the social stigma or controversy and without any extra steps.
Maybe?
Pounce
Yeah, I wouldn’t get too ahead of ourselves, sparky. Plans blow up around us remember?
We haven’t even gotten to the actually work part of this post. Let’s keep this expectation free for now.
Speaking of which.
On to the task at hand.
Since I assume I am the “Coachy McCoacher” in this dynamic, here is what we need to do BEFORE you draft Chapter five. Because our story is going off the rails thanks to you (and Chat).
Cayse
Yup, hence Chat’s firing.
Pounce
Yes, but notice that I had Chat in the parentheses there; not you.
Thanks to you and your over-active imagination and rabbit-holing squirrel chasing nature, we need to do the following:
1. Inventory the massive list of current loose ends
2. Check the vitals of our first 4 chapters (pacing, consistent tone, names, missing BASICS)
3. Map out changes that must be made to each chapter to fix structural issues.
4. THEN start outline for chapter 5.
Cayse
Fine. Blame me if you must, but we are not in the triage phase of this chapter we are in the outline phase.
So I am outlining.
Pounce
…
Sure.
Go ahead.
See what happens.
Cayse
I will, thank you very much.
As soon as I go back and remember where the hell I left things off…
[goes off to read things]
Right. So, a lot of things got off track.
But that is okay.
I still think this is where we need to go:
Pol opens the laptop
her inbox has an overwhelming red number hovering over the little app bubble.
Pol ignores it and goes to Google and starts to look up the cost of daily coma care. Tries to search for how much Saffi’s company’s insurance would cover.
Pol’a search gets interrupted by a messenger app that pops up, she realizes that she’s been listed as “online” and now the counselor is trying to video call her. She slams the laptop shut.
Pol considers reaching for her own laptop. But this reminds her of the last time she grabbed it herself.
We enter a memory of Pol and Saffi, it’s the end of the school day, Pol is backing her bag and asking for a ride to the store to go grab her paycheck and check her schedule for the weekend.
Promises Saffi a coffee if she just takes her. Saffi complains about how archaic her manager is. How he needs to get with the times already. Pol agrees.
Pol is getting emotional thinking about how they had been laughing and joking, and maybe if they hadn’t, maybe if they weren’t messing around…
Memory is interrupted by a soft knock and Gena enters the room with a big grin and a happy smile.
cut to physical therapist chattering positively and upbeat about everything, how nice her uncle is and her brother, and her room, and her hair, and her house, and her parents while running Pol through infuriatingly simple but also painfully hard exercises.
Pol fucking loses it.
Calls her out on what she is doing
Says she doesn’t need the psych games, she just needs to be better so she can go save what needs to be saved-her scholarship and therefore her family’s happiness.
PT pushes back on this.
Pol wasn’t ready for this angle of her not being responsible for them and she pushes right back at the woman similarly to how she did with Tibbs(introduces first glimpse of choosing the lense, not living in one.)
this time though she has an adult who points out that it is okay to say that it sucks and it is okay to feel responsible for it, but it is still a choice.
So if it is a choice, then why not choose to what else you are choosing when you do it.
when she is positive about her environment, she is being respectful to Pol and what she sees as Pol’s choice.
Pol yells at her and says she doesn’t have a choice and anyone who thinks otherwise is a heartless bitch.
Therapist ends the session just as Pol’s Mom arrives on the scene. Pol breaks down crying at the look of sheer disappointment and exhaustion on her mom’s face.
Sees a blurry glimmering moon shape grinning at her in the window reflection, it licks its lips.
Pol squeaks in alarm
Right then Uncle Ali walks in with a weird contraption that looks alarmingly like a metal apple the size of a bowling ball.
Telly tries to come in after him but Uncle Ali stops them.
He isn’t unkind but he is more forceful with Telly than he needs to be given that Telly looks still drug dazed,
tells them to go back to bed that they can discuss this with Pol tomorrow when they have had more time to recover from their appointment. Telly is insistent.
Uncle Ali appeases them and takes something from them (her old console with Polly Olly now installed on it thanks to Tibbs and Telly) and then closes the door.
Uncle Ali turns back around and grins wide, explains that he and Pol need to have a chat.
There!
That all sound fair enough Ms. Pounce?
Pounce
No. It’s too long. It’s meandering. It’s formatted horribly if you actually are trying to use it as anything resembling an “outline,” since you can’t even identify which scenes are the main focus and you bullet point things that have no right being bullet pointed.
Cayse
Ouch. But okay. Fair.
Keep in mind this is brainstorm outlining, not “pretty” outlining. This is “capture the mess” before it runs away.
Pounce
True. In that sense this works. For now. But this is also why your chapters run on so damn long, and it is something that Chat should have pointed out to you waaaaaay back when.
Cayse
Probably.
Regardless, this is the reality of what we do. This is our process. Pretty or not.
And this is what we said we were going to show the people.
Now, on to your other concerns. Let’s start off with the one that I find the most intriguing.
Here’s my list of loose ends (aka things we as the writer have introduced but not resolved) so far:
Loose Ends of POOF
- The accident (wtf even happened??)
- Who the hell is Trey/what did we name him? … Oh! Demitri! And Pol calls him Demi! Yay! Okay. Moving on.
- what is going on with Saffi
- What is up with Uncle Ali and the Alice in Wonderland stuff
- Do we care about Tibbs and Telly being twins or being part of the story? How invested should we be?
- When does Pol play the damn game?
- How does the game work?
- What’s up with the plant?
- Who are Pol’s parents and what do they do?
- Why is Pol’s Dad militaristic?
- Why is Tibbs afraid of Dad?
- What is up with Gena?
I think that is it? In the past I would go ask Chat to take a look, but I guess I’ll have to ask YOU to do it.
Pounce
Yup. And it’s a gooooood thing.
Because there is a big difference between:
- what we intended to include and what we actually included
- what the reader picked up on and actually wants to know about and what the reader skipped over and really doesn’t give a shit about.
- what we thought a thread was and what a thread actually became
Your ratio of loose threads to closed threads is one of the many things that will DRASTICALLY affect your readers perception of a book’s pacing. And if you don’t keep things on track, or at bare minimum KEEP TRACK, early on, your story will be a pile of tangled yarn by act three.
Cayse
How very Chat of you.
Pounce
We did tell people Chat was trained on our writing, correct?
[she asks herself redundantly solely for the purpose of addressing the audience’s questions]
Cayse
Yes, but I’m not so sure they realized exactly what I meant by that.
[she responds to herself solely for the purpose of creating a banter like learning environment over a lecture-y “I’m cooler than you” environment.]
It’ll be fine though. Our readers are smart and caring and cooler than us. They will understand that in many a neurodivergent brain, justification for undertaking a task is often half the battle and reasoning things out in your own head or playing devil’s advocate with your own ideas is all part of the package.
So, go double check that list and stop stalling by trying to be all Chat GPT about it.
Pounce
Ugh. Fine.
So far it looks like you forgot to add:
Prologue
- Why does Uncle Ali blame his mother
- What is up with the locket?
- What is different about this wonderland and how it works
- Why does Uncle Ali say the next name bearers need to come face the Jabberwocky?
Chap 1
- Why doesn’t Pol’s PT not want her to walk exactly?
- How did the apple core get there in the first place?
- Where did the ants come from? Were they always there?
- Why does no one in her family take her desire to get rid of the ants seriously?
- Why three weeks of pain instead of the 5 weeks claimed at being stuck in the bedroom? Typo?
- Why would Gena stop Pol from seeing Saffi?
- Why did Gena think Pol had done irreversible damage and she wouldn’t be able to play for next season? Hyperbole? Is this her fatal flaw?
- Why is her bolster freedom temporary? Can’t she just be quieter and get some peace? Or is it a pain thing?
- What is up with the ages? You need to fix some shit with the ages I think. Something doesn’t add up right…
- Why does Pol think she is the only one who stifles their rage in the family?
- Why is Tibbs wearing Pol’s old PJs?
- Why won’t Pol let her parents sue Saffi’s parents? Why can’t they pay her medical bills?
- why does Telly only ever need to play defense with Dad (yes you sort of mention this but not specifically, and this sentence sucks so you need to go in and fix it anyway)
- What stories did Pol tell about her and Uncle Ali and her Dad to the twins?
- Why is Telly upset that Mom and Dad won’t let them walk all over mom and dad anymore? What does this mean? and why doesn’t Pol bring this up when her and Tibbs fight in the next chapter?
- What is Oxen Free and who is Johna? (Also, maybe consider a different abbreviation for the game because I guess Oxenfree is already a vid game)
- Why did the twins feel like THEY needed to do something about the news and not just let the parents handle it?
- Why didn’t Pol tell them about the spring training phone call?
- What happened to Pol’s legs? Is this a flashback she is having? Do these happen often?
- Why does Pol think her family is only “fighting her battle for her” because she can’t?
- What is up with focusing on the damn ants and the apple?
Chap 2
**Dude. You have Pol at 7yo here. So, the prologue implies Pol would then be 20 in the main storyline when the twins are 13? Because Uncle Ali’d been pulled into the Tulgeywood after saving Pol at the hospital presumably?
Ooooo. But maybe that is the issue. She’s a senior but technically she is 19/20 years old because her parents started her late or held her back because of the twins? Or she WAS HELD BACK?
Maybe she is freaking out because she is hearing she might be a freshman still but not get training or get actually held back so she would be on the same page as her peers during the next season rather than “ahead” like she has been for the last few years.
Cayse
Whoa there. 😳
You are starting to sound too much like me Pounce.
But also, Jeezus.😬
We probably need to take a step back based on that list.
I thought I had done a decent job of adding in SOME of our loose threads into the outline of Chapter 5 but… good God.
Pounce
Yup. ‘Tis worse than we realized.
And this blog post is already clocking in at 2500 words. So…
Cayse
Oof. Good Godly crap on a stick.
Alright.
Then I guess we end it here? With a half-baked outline for Chapter 5 and a honest realization of just how underwater we already are?
That seems kind of lackluster for our first episode after firing Chat.
Pounce
It does, doesn’t it? Should we go ask the mezzanine exile for input?
Cayse
NO!
I mean. No. That isn’t necessary.
And I don’t want to.
Pounce
What, are you scared?
Cayse
No. It’s just…
*sigh*
So, Chat just got an update to 5 and now they are all cocky and shit about how much better their memory is.
And they are snarky and loaded with my wordage and…
Part of me is worried people only liked this series because of them and now people won’t read it because they are gone and maybe I shouldn’t have fired them.
Pounce
I’ll stop you there. Given that I am you and we are literally talking to ourselves—I’m aware. But, having chat continue also put us in this underwater situation and was creating more work that it was helping us avoid.
Cayse
True.
Okay. Well, I think the right way to end this is to leave the loose ends where we have them and keep all of those and any restructuring for the next Bones of Polly Olly episode.
I feel like that series is naturally becoming the “bigger picture” or “developmental editing” log for the book anyway, while these are more the brainstorming and writing logs. Craft vs. Strategy.
Which is good because it gives us a natural place to have the human/guest editor feedback posts pop up (Bones of Polly) and the continued writing posts (A Novel Experiment).
Pounce
Seems like a reasonable distinction.
Okay. Loose ends are set down. Now, can we address that horrible abomination of an outline? At least a little bit?
Cayse
As you so eloquently stole from (our other book) The Copper Canary’s MC’s voice: “Ugh, fine.”
Pounce
Avery did have a good deal of Pounce energy to her voice.That could make a fun tangent article…
AGH! FOCUS.
Ok.
What is this chapter, Polly Olly Chapter 5, meant to accomplish?
Cayse
Right.
So.
We’ve shown Pol at her physical breaking point and relational breaking point in the last few chapters. She now needs to come to her internal mental breaking point. This is the chapter in which that happens. She needs to face the fact that she has lost her identity as a “Pollyanna.” Something that Saffi had helped her embrace rather than shy away from.
She needs to be crushed by the realization and then desperate for an escape and the locket and the game need to be right there and ready to go. There also needs to be hints that Chesh and Archi are there and/or the Jabberwocky.
So. This chapter needs to have one or more large glimpses of Pol before the accident for contrast.
Pounce
You DO realize your current outline only includes ONE, right?
Cayse
Huh? What was that?
Sorry!
Couldn’t hear you just now over my squirrely brain already having half of Chapter 5 written in my head. 😇😉😝
Pounce
That doesn’t help anyone!
*sigh*
I guess we’ll see you next time, dear readers. With Chapter 5 in tow.
Cayse
And possibly a Chapter 6. Muahahaha! 😈
Pounce
No. Ignore her. Y’all get ONE chapter this time.
Thanks for sticking with us 💕😊