Hello Readers! Greetings and Salutations!

It is us… Graham and Clevenger! Here to talk about the writing prompts we did last week. 

Clevenger: Welcome Graham to Wednesdays! How’s things?

Graham: Greetings and salutations, Clevenger. And to anybody reading. Things are going well.

Clevenger: Good, good. So how’d the prompt treat you? 

Graham: It was an interesting experiment. I found it interesting that we both went into it with a singular idea that became our theme. Did everyone guess who wrote which story?

Clevenger: Well, I don’t know. But let’s get that out on the table. I wrote the “Final Jar.” 

Graham: And as anyone who knows me could tell, I couldn’t resist building an entire story around a pun.

Clevenger: So our tones were both similar, and I know I was a bit inspired by a “horror” vibe. What surprised you about the similarities in our takes?

Graham: I think we both hit a lot of points that, I feel, were just basic storytelling. For example, we both had the Villain present at the end. I think this just felt natural because how else were we going to tell the reader what our twist was?

Clevenger: Yeah. The “twist” was what mine was all about. I had this idea of a sort of “Saw” vibe where the first character is the antagonist… you just don’t know it yet. What did you think of that?

Graham: It was fun. It is something that, now, is viewed almost as a classic. And I got what you were going for, that your main theme going in was the “classic D&D party”. With mine, it was built entirely around the word-play idea of looking for alternates for “three”. “Trenta”, which is Spanish for Thirty, was the first that came to mind. Trenta became Traitor, and my story just kind of built up around that.

Clevenger: So what kind of research or work did you need to do for that? What was the hardest part to finalize before you wrote?

Graham: Honestly, there was no research! Haha. Trenta came from high school Spanish classes, and from there it was just getting it actually written. I mentioned this last night, but the last several months I have discovered that I am very much a “pants-er”. So I took my concept, wrote out the first couple of paragraphs, and started continuing. I think that really, the hardest part in getting this written, was just how much drama and health issues have been going on in my household this past couple of weeks.

Clevenger: Yeah, I can get that. Yeah, as we mentioned off-line, I’m very much a “plotter.” So once I had my idea of the party being formed, I wrote out what order they came in, and the order they died in. Then I wrote a prophecy around that order, and then I built the jars around supporting that prophecy. It was all a big organizational hooplah. That was Tuesday and Wednesday Morning. Then, I spent all evening Wednesday night getting the story written. 

Graham: I am starting to find it fascinating how I write when working solo. This story was a prime example. None of my characters existed, not even in my own head, until I started describing them on the page. I needed someone to be the protagonist, so Solomon started being described. Then he needed someone to interact with. Therefore, Manaj came into existence. Only when they started talking did I decide they needed something to ward against betrayal, and so the bracelets popped into my head. So on, and so on. Even as I started writing the ending, I wasn’t sure if Lysandra was going to be an agent of Lord Traitor, or actually possessed by him. It just happened as I wrote.

Clevenger: Yeah, I certainly set all my tentpoles in ahead of time. The thought process was similar. I needed the “party,” that led to the “prophecy,” etc. But I didn’t really have an idea of who each of them were. Oxag was just labeled as “Fighter” through my initial outline. His voice (speaking in the third person) was discovered as I wrote. Vinnar became a halfling, Lynid became an elf, and I just sort of made them up. But everyone’s role, and actions were pretty much set in stone by the time I put pen to paper. 

Graham: It’s very different for me when we write together, and yet in some ways, still the same. I know you and I have talked about this quite a bit. We build the outline together, planning out who will be in the scene, what it will cover as far as plot, and what the emotions are that it should be built around. Then we each kind of take ownership of one or more scenes, based on something we have in our head, whether it be an environment, a conversation, or a piece of character growth. But from there, you plot out the scene, build the dialogue, and work from that skeleton. Me? I start pantsing the blazes out of it! Haha. Half the time, it goes in some weird tangential direction, and I either have to reign it in, or check with you to see if the changes are going to impact anything!

Clevenger: Yeah. I think that’s actually been the fun part for me in our shared writing. Looking at a scene you just wrote and adapting the map for it. Moving a scene around, or revamping it with the new information. But honestly it’s when I get inspired by something you just wrote and add a new scene later to echo it. We talk about the “Checkov’s Gun” and how everything pays out. So I love tracking down the new threads that you open up and seeing what we can do with them. The adaptation is what excites me. 

Graham: We definitely mesh well, it seems. The differences in our writing approach mean that you keep me on the rails, while I keep your outlines from becoming stagnant. But I think this writing assignment really showed how similarly we think. We both went with a trap for the protagonists, a twist ending where the villain won, and some kind of a “prophecy”. Our protagonists were definitely put in an “all-in-or-lose” situation, and both lost because they didn’t have one key piece of information. Our stories were different. Different pacing, different style. But the bones, the skeleton, the… core. These were all eerily similar.

Clevenger: Yep. I think that you’re right on with that. I think that’s one of the things I took away as well. The refresh of ideas. I had this “Monster in the Box” idea right out the gate. I tried to write a different version because of the “Years have went by” line in the prompt… but it went nowhere. Once I had this “Monster” idea, I got tunnel vision. I couldn’t see any other way to tell the tale. So seeing how you told yours was awesome because it meant we could look at an almost identical theme and tell it with our own spin. But it wasn’t “totally” different. Ya know?

Graham: It was a fun exercise. I think it really brought to light two main things, at least for me. First, we do write and think differently, at least on the surface level of how our minds work on word play, word choices, and themes. But also on our deepest level of fundamental writing technique. But the second thing it showed was that while the top and bottom buns are radically different, the innards, the guts, all the important stuff in the middle, we both lean in the same direction. We go for very similar character ideas, plot directions, emotional states. And most importantly, we mesh so well in the story we want to tell readers.

Clevenger: I agree. I think that what I picked up was that our fundamental skills as storytellers are so similar that we can merge quickly with only slight adjustments. Like with “Manticore’s Shadow,” I had very specific elements and details. Those meshed with yours almost seamlessly. Then we just had to fill in the slight gaps to make the seams invisible. I thought that it was funny that you could almost put our little short-stories side by side, and we could make adjustments and turn them into a single story. Just little moments. This was the first “short story” I’ve written since school. It was a nice change of pace. You’ve got more experience in that right?

Graham: Yeah, that opens up a whole new can of worms that we really can’t get into right now. There are so many differences between writing chapters in a novel, vs an entire story encapsulated in the length of just one of those chapters. We are finding out that there are even differences when you confine your story to just one book! Haha. But there you have it, people. 

Clevenger: Any idea what we should write next? What’s on your mind for Sunday?

Graham: You would put that on me! Can I hate you now? Haha.

Clevenger: Ha! You know I had to try! Well, don’t answer now. We’ll find out at the weekend. To everyone else. Thanks for playing along with us. Until next time.  Be Kind.

Graham: And don’t forget to love one another.

-Graham Clevenger