HE WROTE: How we write 2

The partnership: when we first agreed to write together I wasn't sure it would work. Looking back, one thing that indicated it would work was the way we both presented at conferences. We approached speaking differently: Jenny did a keynote at Surrey where I saw the 'notes' she had prepared and heard the talk and the two did not connect at all. I was like 'huh?'. My notes tend to reflect my talk but like her, I can't remember what I said. However, we both tend to speak the same way. We both have this dry sense of humor that seems to work.
I was sitting with Terry Brooks in Maui when Jenny presented one morning and she was quite proud of the fact that she NEVER outlined. After I gave Terry CPR, we both said "what the hell is she talking about?'. Terry is the guru of outlining and I tend to do a bit myself. I once gave my agent a 10,000 word, chapter by chapter outline. On a book I never wrote.
I think Jenny has to feel her way into the characters and I have to feel my way into the plot. I have to know the back-story and the antaqonist is key to my plotting since I've written mostly thrillers.
I think we help each other with our weaknesses. Jenny is, well, hmm, what word should I use? how about two words: detail-oriented. I'm more like: looks good when it left here. Which is what artillery-men say when they fire a round out of a howitzer.
Last night Jenny e-mailed me about a picture I sent her (and I don't know how to post pictures in this thing) of a house that we're using as Cranky Agnes's. If you've ever seen the movie, Great Santini, it's the house they lived in. Up the coast in Beaufort. And she email me going: is this Agnes's house or Baby's. And I'm like, duh. She tends to forget big things like: who is the antagonist again? I forget little things like is Xavier's car white or red?
I was watching Mystic River last night again-- great book and great movie-- and I noted something new. I call it tightness in story-telling where every little gesture is so important, and also foreshadowing- where an early scene mirrors a later scene. When Tim Robbins character is kidnapped in the opening as a child there's a shot of him being driven down the street and he's looking back, out of the rear window of the car. And near the end, when he's picked up by the bad guys there's the same shot of him looking back out the rear window.
That was a writing aside.
Characters. Yes, Shane is George Clooney in Peacemaker. I thought that was a good movie except when he cuts the steel cable with his knife. Agnes is very hot: especially the glasses. Dark hair. Sultry. And she whacks a hit-man over the head with a frying pan on the first page. What a gal.
Shane is not a goombah hit man. He works in the covert world for the government. He's sort of like my characters in Bodyguard of Lies working for the Cellar. But he's very uncomfortable around women. And he's up to his neck in them in this book. Jenny let me know she's got a group: The Mothers-- who are bugging Agnes about the wedding. I just wrote Jenny that Shane, when the Mothers show up the morning after he meets Agnes, is the hell out of there. No man in his right mind hangs around that many women talking about a wedding. Nope.
Hey. Just occurred to me. There's going to be a bachelor party. And a bacherolette party. That will be fun writing when you have hit men involved.
Anyway. The Giant game is on. And I'm waiting on Jenny to send me Agnes latest scene.
Book done yet?