Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

novels

A Stab at a Self-interview: Question 12 ~ collaboration

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Mirror Image ~ writing. Modified from a 

Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash

Would you consider collaborating with another writer?

I would have to know them very well and feel that we had similar writing styles and a united focus on the plot and characters. Of course, after saying that, I must admit I have been talking to two people about collaborating.

My husband and I have a couple of ideas we would like to turn into a series of books. Though we have never worked on a creative endeavor of this sort together before, lately I have been finding him very easy to brainstorm with. He has often over the years offered ideas that I have found intriguing and inspiring. Usually I write notes down about what he came up with and look forward to when I can work them into my writing schedule. Some have turned into short stories, but at this time none are published.

After I finish editing Standing Stone 3 and drafting Students of Jump 5, I hope to begin working on a novel he and I recently brainstormed together. And we have a second planned out as well. At this point, I will probably be the one writing while he contributes to the process in brainstorm sessions. But we may migrate into actually writing a novel in tandem or in pieces together in the future.

Another individual I am in discussion about collaborating is my daughter. We both are very busy, creative types so we are trying to figure out how we can make this work. Recently, we chatted via Skype so we could brainstorm the organization of an idea we have in mind. We have already determined which parts will be mine to write and which are hers. The unusual structure of the piece makes it possible for us to write separately, share and adjust what we’ve written. Also the idea we have is more non-fiction than fiction, most definitely not science fiction or fantasy. A contemporary work based on personal experience ~ fictionalized true to life, perhaps is a good description. LOL, without actually describing it.

As for writing with an author I am not related to, that has not come up yet. I’m not against the idea; I just have not had any reason to consider it.

#collaboration
#writing
#interview

Family builds my characters and my stories

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Branch of the family tree, okay vine.

Often when I read science fiction, the main characters and certainly the supporting and stock characters rarely have family.  I don’t mean they don’t ever have family, but family is not the cause of change or action in them.  Family is window decoration in most novels.  Yet family is a basic component of my fiction writing.

Family can drive my characters to do things they have been avoiding or things they would not have done without the influence of a member of the family.  In my first book In Times Passed, Brent Garrett jumps to another time period claiming the excuse that he had to get away from his mother’s interference.  After he makes a life in the new time period, it is family again that affects him, influences his actions.  Loss of family nearly destroys him.

In No-Time like the Present, family motivated Misty Meredith to trust a stranger and jump two hundred years into her future so she could stand before her father and prove to him he failed by leaving her, that she didn’t need him anyway because she had her Uncle Mick and Aunt Emily, family that cared to raise her.  And she is surrounded by family, starts her own family and ultimately learns that family means no one ever really leaves anyone behind.

Mick and Emily never had children of their own, yet they raised a family.  They keep taking in the orphans, granted they are family, but this act of parenting the parentless is a basic feature of their lives.   So in Next Time We Meet, this couple think they have nothing to give the future, but what they are always offering is future to those who need it most.  All their efforts are directed at creating, supporting and reuniting family. 

I am currently working on the fourth book in the Students of Jump series, working title Testing Time, and family is again basic to the story.  Sarra Marsh’s family must break up in order to survive what is happening in the world and time she lives in.  The group she ends up with is guided by two individuals, Ma Potterby (a mother to all the assembled renegades) and Carnegie, (a sort of patriarchal figure whose terse manner ensures discipline in the ranks).  As she endeavors to enact change in her society as dictated by her father from a distance, she is always aware of her disbursed family.  Until change occurs, they must remain separated.  And the change may be far too late to bring them back together.

I have an anthology of short stories.  Not one of them lacks the basic feature of family.  The title story, “Gardens in the Cracks,” is steeped in the fact that major change was made in how families are established, maintained, organized and torn apart.  Marga Graber has already given up one child to the demands of planetary survival and is now facing more tears in her family fabric no less damaging.  The novella sequel that follows it in the anthology deals with the events that should pull family together but often does the opposite.  Still the pull that drives us from within to desire and seek family lives on and is at times the only thing that keeps these characters going.  Thus, in Scrapper, a boy finds his way home greatly changed from the boy who was excited to leave family.

Family is integral to us all.  I cannot separate it from my writing.  I am forever influenced by a woman I don’t even remember because she was at one very brief time my mother.  My father now deceased more than eight years is daily a part of my life.  For a time he held a dual role in a time period when few men could imagine being a mother to two children: one a toddler, the other an infant.  He potty trained me, and when I was becoming concerned about my daughter reaching that milestone in development, who did I call?  Yup, my dad, who offered his usual sage advice.  Potty trained in less than a week and my little girl made the decision.  I just offered opportunity and a willingness to listen. But that’s a story for another time.  Family, gotta love them.

Author pages where my eBooks are listed and available for sample or purchase.
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In search of the ideal timeline program

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I have posted in the past about my search for my holy grail of keeping track of time travel in my novels, especially when the movement forward and back happens repeatedly.  My third book in the series is proving to be more complicated in movements than the second.  Mick and Em not only go back in time, but they find themselves making repeated jumps into the consecutive moments. And to make it more complicated, another character is moving back and forth as well as remaining stationary in No-time, yet still time is passing.  That does not sound clear in this simple writing, and it is more complicated when actually writing the story.

So I have selected and tried three different applications to keep track of time travel.  In this post I am going to evaluate these three based on the criteria of my ideal platform.

Criteria:

  1. A horizontal line on which I can
    assign dates (and create dates that don’t yet exist) 
  2. Attach key
    points to them 
  3. Add little bubbles or boxes that
    connect to those points for summary or notes 
  4. Be able to close them
    up as I move along the timeline 
  5. Open them all up and see how it lays
    out.  
  6. Able to click on them and move them if I wish.  
  7. Have the program on my computer
  8. Print out the timeline
  9. Be capable of showing overlap of other novels, written and planned.

The three programs I have been working with are OneNote by Microsoft,  Timeline by The Timeline Authors available from SourceForge, and Padlet (formerly known as WallWisher) at Padlet.com.

Using OneNote for keeping track of time travel events
OneNote as timeline

OneNote
I have been using OneNote the longest and found it to have numerous qualities that have nothing to do with keeping track of a timeline.  It has proved extremely useful to me in other areas, namely keeping track of my research and publication information.  It has proved a fairly good “time” organizer though still not my ideal. Its proximity to all my other support materials is an important point though.  But that is not on my list of ideal qualities for a timeline. 

  • It does not provide a horizontal line or any line for that matter. But I can create a series of vertical boxes with time, setting and key plot points. (However, this is something any word processing program could do.)  
  • I can attach key points
  • I can add additional text boxes
  • These cannot be “closed”
  • Nor can they be “opened” at will
  • I can shuffle them about to reflect changes in the text
  • The program is on my computer and, in fact, came with the loaded programming.
  • I can print out my “timeline” easily without any format changes.  It looks the same on the computer desktop as it does in printed form.
  • It cannot overlap other timelines easily.  I could muscle it in, but it would be awfully awkward.

So out of the 9 ideals, it provides 5.  Score: 5/9

Timeline program for keeping track of past, current and future time
Timeline as timeline

Timeline
The next timeline program I tried out was appropriately named Timeline.  I have only used it for about a week.

  • It does provide a horizontal line on which I can place time markers with my choice of dates, and it is not limited to history already lived. 
  • What is shown in the note is a title or short summary at best. 
  • It does provide secondary bubbles for additional information which can be fairly detailed.  A window pops up with several features, including attaching files and links.
  • The timeline itself can be stretched and squeezed, but the bubbles only appear when the cursor hovers over them. The timeline adjusts as the time is stretched or squeezed into a short time view.
  • The bubbles open as needed.
  • Movement of the events has proved problematic.   They can be easily adjusted along the line, but the notations also move unexpectedly to locations not intended.  Probably time and learned finesse will correct this, but the instructions are so limited that I spent a lot of time just trying everything to return a notation back to the spot I had it originally before it almost (clearly I had done something) spontaneously  moved.  Without clear instructions, trial and error rules the learning curve.
  • This is a freeware program, and I downloaded onto my computer without trouble.
  • The timeline can be printed out, but legibility was dependent upon how tightly they were scrunched or stretched out.  Could be a problem when scenes cover short amounts of time and the novel extends over a longer period of time.
  • Overlap of novel timelines is difficult.  I had to color code individuals to tell them apart and would have to do something similar for different books.  There are two features: categories and periods.  The descriptions of these was quite limited, so I am uncertain if it would be possible to designate categories as individual novels or if periods would be better.  When I tried using them, they appeared below the horizontal timeline and overlapped each other which interfered with the purpose I had determined I wanted to use them for.

Out of 9 ideals, it met  6 1/2.  Score: 6.5/9

Padlet as timetravel timeline
Padlet as timeline

Padlet
I have made use of Padlet most recently and have spent about three days on it entering just the opening of book 1, the entirety of book 2 and the first five chapters of book 3.  Visually, it is the prettiest of the three with some interesting additions.  It feels the most like a wall of sticky notes, which is the manual ideal I wish I could do, but my husband has a sense of decor and sticky notes aren’t fittin’.

  • Though it does not provide a built-in horizontal line, putting the little “stickies” in place just as I would on a wall created one easily.  I put my dates on the label of the sticky, but I could just as easily provide stickies as tiny markers at whatever interval I want.  I have added the option of several horizontals.  So book one as shown in the picture is furthest to the left with only two stickies at this time.  I plan to raise it up higher as the “wall’ appears limitless in all directions.  Book two is next and is dropped lower.  Book three is two more steps down and because it has two plot lines occurring at the same time, it has two horizontal flow lines which will meet up later in the novel.
  • I can add additional information beneath the heading on the note. It has a red label at the top of the sticky and a secondary notes
    section beneath on the same sticky. The stickies can be lengthened
    horizontally or vertically.  I kept them fairly uniform in width and
    created a short hand summary format that covered the main points.
  • Rather than secondary bubbles, it does provide for inserted pictures (see my book covers), inserted internet media of any type (video, photo, doc, etc.) or use my computer camera to take a picture, bonuses not on my wish list.
  • You might say the sticky is the closed version.
  • A click on the note does bring up a full screen display of the note and attachments as well as means to post to Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, email and others.  Additionally, the wall itself can be stretched and shrunk with ease (especially so if you have a touch sensitive screen.)  Arrow keys move the view from note to note in the screen-sized view.
  • The stickies can be moved easily about the “wall.”  If I could make a suggestion here, it would be to be able to move the notes in large groups rather than one at a time.  I have not found a means to do this, but perhaps that will come up.   The instructions do include sending requests for additional features.  So I will be asking for that one or instructions how to do it if it is already a feature.  The traditional drag and highlight has not worked.
  • This is not a downloadable program but is accessed and free at padlet.com with login and password.   However, privacy settings are available making it public or completely private.
  • The file can be printed in pdf, csv or excel.  The printout does not look like the wall, but it has all the info that I have inserted.  Since I only added pictures of my covers, I cannot say what it does with other media links.
  • Overlapping of book is definitely practical and possible. I did it with three books and intend to do it with all seven.

How did this program fit my criteria?  Pretty well.  Of the 9 desired features, it had some version of 8.  Score: 8/9.

At this point, I prefer Padlet which to my knowledge is marketed more as an educational tool for students than for timeline creation, but it is highly adaptable, pretty, fun to use and it is so much like having a wall of sticky notes that I am looking forward to seeing how it continues to make keeping track of time travel plot points easy.

Let me know if you have found the perfect timeline program or if you see a criteria you would like me to apply to any one or more of these programs.

OneNote will continue to be my research and publications notes filing goto program.  It has been great with holding my notes for clothing over the centuries, cobbles stones, Boston Common, epidemics, etc. Keeping track of timeslines, …. nah.

Book 2 of the Students of Jump just went live on Smashwords

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No-Time like the Present is published on Smashwords as of just a few minutes ago.  It has been a busy month pulling the last bits together, editing copy and preparing the cover.  I had the best help from fellow author Marcy Peska, who as my beta reader provided advice I could not have managed without.  Check out her books at Amazon.com.

My daughter helped me put the cover together.  It would not be the beauty it is without her eye for detail and design.

Look for the second book in the Student of Jump series at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and other booksellers in the next week or two.  For the remainder of July, the book will be available for 50% off at Smashwords.  Use coupon SSW50.  This coupon will work with all four of my books until the end of July.

Not just sitting around

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Not just watching the flowers grow.

So I have not been preparing my Tuesday prompts and am not busy teaching, but that doesn’t mean I am just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.  I have been steadily working on two separate projects.  One is getting the second of my Student of Jump books (No-time Like the Present) ready for publication at the end of this month.  I just finished what is my pretend final edit.  The one I convince myself is the last one needed.  But in a week or so it will go through another which will no doubt result in finding so many errors I will be a basket case for a few days, losing all confidence before I do another edit which will do the exact opposite, and I will split the difference and feel fairly confident that I have taken care of all I can.  I have my absolutely wonderful beta reader tackling it right now, which will provide the impetus to make changes and edit again.

The other project is The Handbook of Narrative Frameworks for Novels & Short Stories.  This is a gathering of the narrative mode posts I have been doing since February 2013.  After pulling them together, I edited, added, and am currently creating worksheets that will help make use of the frameworks each one provides for novel and story writing.  All and all I have been busy and since school has let out, intensely content finding myself immersed in my writing, spending time with my family, and taking care of those little jobs that always wait for summer to come.