Flesh & Blood: Day 7

Posted by Bob Greenberger on October 31, 2006

When last we visited the Predators, I was working with an outline from my partner in crime, Mike Friedman. He subsequently took my expansion of his two-page premise and expanded things even further.

However, when I received his next draft, nothing I had added remained. This had me confused. Since he was unreachable during the day, I fretted over whether or not we were out of synch or I misunderstood something. When we finally spoke last Wednesday, he was dumbstruck, not realizing what had happened. We went back through the drafts and figured out where we were and where we needed to go. Once that call was done, I was feeling much more secure about the whole thing.

And I began to write.

As of today, I’m about 8000 words into the book, completing two chapters. I just sent them off to Mike for his review.

The other thing I sent him was the Scorecard. As written, the outline only really named the protagonist and the antagonist with no physical description. Both characters had friends, associates, lawyers, etc. that needed names, personalities and descriptions. As I’ve been introducing them, I’ve been cutting and pasting the descriptions into a separate document for easy reference, especially for Mike who will no doubt season them to his taste.

This is a new step in the process for me. Usually the previous collaborations were set in a universe where we both knew the shorthand. This is new territory for us both so I figure the more reference maps, the better.

I also found giving the characters distinctive voices easier than some other works so I feel pretty good about this. I’ve written just a little with the Predators, to date, so am still getting a feel for them, but note I’ve automatically adjusted how I wrote those scenes.

I’ll be keeping you posted on the progress.