Whit reviewed his other plans for the day as they headed for the kitchen. He was a great outliner himself, so he knew there was no chance of them completing their full blueprint today. That took patience and extreme care for a book like this one, with its four previous installments and its ravenous, critical fans. But he had spent the night before looking over Merritt’s work, which she’d left behind.
He had already read Helen’s books, and he’d reread them this last year as he tried to find the gumption to write the next one. But last night had been different. Reading Merritt’s character briefs was like encountering a piece of really good literary criticism: it unlocked something for him. He was understanding these characters now as fully realized individuals with years of history and central experiences, with quirks, fears, strengths, and, most importantly, desires. He felt a now-familiar burst of shame at the realization that it had taken Merritt to stir this appreciation in him. He wished he’d been able to feel it when Helen had been here and to praise what she’d made more openly and honestly.
The truth was, he had needed Merritt’s insights. For the first time, he knew, consciously, what Helen’s characters wanted—hegotit. It made sense.Theymade sense in a way they never had before. By the time he finished reading Merritt’s briefs, he felt more confidence in the success of this project than he had yet.
“Your notes are wonderful,” he told her now as he put the kettle on and Merritt finished her soup at the table.
“Oh,” she said, her spoon inches from her face. “Thank you.”
“You sound surprised.”
She shrugged. “I am.”
“You really get these books, you know? You’re helping me get them.”
Whit spotted the barest trace of redness in her cheeks before Merritt dropped her face to stare at her soup.
“And anyway,” he continued, “I think we should start with Ursula, the half-fairy.”
“What do you mean?”
“We talked about the middle, right?” he said, aware of the heightened energy in his voice. “How it’s a bit murky and all, but I think that’s fine. We have a sense of the beginning, and the end is taking shape, and what needs to happen now, I think, is that we focus on our three protagonists and their arcs. The middle should naturally fill in that way, and Ursula seems like a good place to start.”
“Why her?” Merritt asked, covering her mouth and trying unsuccessfully to mask a slurping sound. Whit hardly noticed.
“Because of what you said.” He waved his hand enthusiastically before picking up a stack of papers on the counter. “In here. How she’s been steady and diligent and all those things for three and a half books, and how it was only in book4 that we really saw her start putting her own story first. So let’s do it, too. Let’s put her story first.”
“Are you sure you should be drinking caffeinated tea?” Merritt asked.
Whit moved his eyes from the papers he still held aloft to the mugs and teabags in front of him.
“I’m fine,” he said eventually. “I’m just excited.”
Merritt smiled at him. “So am I. I have some ideas I want to talk about, too, but let’s do your thing first.”
“What ideas?”
She shook her head, still smirking. “Nope. I don’t think we should let whatever this is”—she gestured to his entire body—“go to waste.”
“Fair,” he said, laughing to himself as he let the boiling water tumble into the mugs. “Let’s go in here.”
Merritt followed him into the living room, where logs crackled in the grate. He sat in one squishy armchair and gestured to its companion on the other side of the fire.
Whit had made the barest sketch of an outline, based on his and Merritt’s conversations about beginnings, middles, and endings. Now, showing it to Merritt, he tried not to be too self-congratulatory about this rare feat ofactually doing work, but Merritt sensed it.
“You did this on your own?” she asked, clearly fighting a smile.
“Yes, in fact I did,” Whit laughed. “All by myself.”
She was nodding her head slowly, pursing her lips into a frown like someone highly impressed. “Wow.”
Whit rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “No autographs, please.”
After talking for a bit about how to flesh out this outline, they eventually developed a system that felt intuitive to them. Merritt would dump information and insights about the various characters and their motivations, and Whit would suggest bullet points of plot to get them from point A to point B to point C, which Merritt would rearrange before Whit went back through once more with his mystery novelist’s eye for things like pacing and probability.
Then they started and, to Whit’s delight, itworked. They were a symbiotic, self-perpetuating machine that relentlessly churned through chapters and plot points in a way Whit found both wildly unfamiliar and deeply thrilling.
They continued this process for an hour or so, sitting in their chairs until Merritt got down on the floor to spread out her various printed materials. Whit felt awkward sitting above her, so he joined her there.
