editing

Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here, and we just barely got a fifth Wednesday this month. You know what that means: Personal Updates. Today, our writers share personal updates from the past few months. I’ll kick off this post with some of my personal updates.

Kyra’s Updates

Well, this is an awkward time for an update. Nuke-Con 2026 is a couple of days from now. Not only will I be at the board game convention, I’ll be a guest of honor. What? I’ve never been a guest at a convention before. I’m stoked. We’ll see what happens in a couple of days. October’s Game Design Brain Dump is already written and ready to post, so I may have to share some highlights in November’s Game Design Brain Dump. Nuke-Con 2026 should include a ton of playtesting. The Spielmasons (a local board game design group) and I have a dedicated table this year. We’re even putting on an event where convention attendees can take supplies (provided by The Gamecrafter) to design their own games. The Spielmasons and I will be playtesting your designs on Sunday. Woo hoo! If you’re in the Omaha area and you’d like to have me and The Spielmasons playtest a game you designed, stop on by.

I’m still in discussion with a publisher for Spill the Beans. My point of contact has been busy these past couple of months with a KickStarter campaign, which I covered in one of our Geekly News posts, and GenCon. Convention season is dying down. Ironically, Nuke-Con is one of the latest board game conventions of the season, so I should be able to meet with the publisher soon. Fingers crossed.

I haven’t heard back from any of the publishers where I submitted Whirligig Pets. I’m treating this process similar to submitting to literary agents. I’ll craft a follow-up email for Whirligig Pets in the coming days, wait another week or two, and then submit to another board game publisher before Halloween if I don’t hear from this wave of publishers. Board game publishers get busy. Case in point, the publisher with interest in Spill the Beans. I’d like to reengage with the publishers where I sent Whirligig Pets before closing out those submissions as “never responded.”

“Never responded” is a good segue for my writing update. October also marks the three month mark for this round of Crooked as a Dogwood submissions. Most literary agents choose silence. In the next few weeks, I’ll update my submissions to “never responded” and submit to another wave of literary agents. But I’m going to change up a few things. Notably, I’ll rebrand Crooked as a Dogwood as upmarket fiction. Upmarket fiction is a fusion between literary fiction and commercial fiction. If you ask four different publishers what upmarket fiction is, you’ll get four different answers. In short, upmarket fiction is book club fiction.

I always viewed Crooked as a Dogwood making at least one book club fiction, so it may qualify as upmarket fiction. Most writers don’t know that their books are upmarket fiction. I may be one of them. Oops! Upmarket fiction is one of the most sought after genres by literary agents. Before this next wave of literary agent submissions, I’ll give my synopsis a quick pass and spruce up my query letter. It’s always a good idea to revisit these items.

Ber Season has officially begun. With the exception of Nuke-Con most of my focus will be on writing this year’s novel and editing my previous novels. I’m well over 15,000 words, which is a good total for me by the end of September. I’ll ramp up production in the coming weeks and months and easily complete a novel-length work by the end of November. Novel Writing Month. Woo hoo!

Those are all the updates I have for this Fifth Wednesday. It’s a little light because I write Game Design and Writing Brain Dumps once a month. If you want to hear more about my exploits, check out those posts. Let’s see what Season has been doing.

Season’s Updates

As of this post, I’ll have been at my gardening job for a full year. Yay! I’m still loving it and learning a lot. I’ve been trying to cater the flower beds in my work environment to natural pest control. A.K.A. keep the spiders safe. We have a lot of cat-faced spiders and yellow garden spiders. They’re amazing little helpers. 🙂

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned my car before. I have a black 1999 VW New Beetle named Horus. I’ve had Horus for two years now, and he’s been in and out of the shop at least twenty times since I bought him with more tows than I care to admit. He’s my first car, and I didn’t know anything about what to check for in a used car. I got his A/C fixed earlier this month after his most recent attack on my wallet. I’m hoping Horus will behave himself so I can save up for two big things I want to achieve within the next handful of years.

My sister and I are planning on moving in together next spring (hopefully). Recently, I got a pay raise at work and have gotten a lot of overtime, so I’ve been squirreling away an extra hundred bucks a paycheck on top of my usual twenty percent. I also want to buy a dark red Honda Accord within the next five years. I don’t know why, but it has to be red. I will not be swayed. And yes, I already have a name picked out. Let me know if you’d like me to share it, Geekly Gang.

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here again. Those are our writers’ personal updates from these past few months. What’ve you been up to, Geekly Gang? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. I didn’t know how to start this type of post. Heck, I don’t even know if I’m sold on the title “Writing Brain Dump.” It’s a work in progress. Hopefully, I can express how my writing has been going over the past couple of weeks. I’ll be spouting random ideas about writing/editing I’ve found in between each of these posts. Perhaps, you’ll find a cogent thought here somewhere. Buckle up for a Writing Brain Dump.

Reverse Outlining

I’m continuing to reverse outline last year’s novel, set in the same world as my board game Rustbucket Riots. I’ve struggled with this part of the editing process, but reverse outlining and the next section I’ll mention are invaluable.

I began with a spreadsheet that includes the following headings:

Scene Description
Characters
Setting
Point of Scene
Themes
Scene Length
Actionable Item

You may add or subtract a heading or two (or five), but these seven headings help me stay focused. I’m a hybrid pantser (someone who writes without a plot) and a plotter (someone who writes with a plot). My best analogy would be a lighthouse writer or lighthouser. Most stories I write have a scene or two that serve as Lighthouses; I’m building toward these scenes, and while I’m writing a first draft, I need to find the scenes that connect the Lighthouses.

The difficult part of the reverse outline was going back through my manuscript. I waited long enough to gain distance and objectivity. A month or more is a good time period to wait before diving back into a project. But I may have waited long enough to wonder if anything in the manuscript was any good. LOL.

After some emotional cutting (I’m only slightly exaggerating), I found direction, and the reverse outline helped. “Scene Description” allows me to revisit each scene. Sometimes, I need to mark scenes as incomplete. And that’s okay for now. This was an early draft.

“Characters” and “Setting” remind me of the scene’s who and where. I can glance and see when a Character is first introduced or if I’m returning to the same Setting for multiple scenes, and if that’s necessary or not. Or if a character only shows up in one scene, is that character needed? Can I combine the one-off character with another character, tightening the manuscript? I did this more than once.

“Point of Scene” and “Themes” differ subtly. Point of Scene shows whether the scene progresses the story (or plot), while Theme is more the scene’s emotional weight (What’s the scene’s takeaway?). Scene Length is another glance to make sure the pacing for the scene feels right. And during Actionable Item, I suggest something I could do to improve the scene.

Sometimes, a scene doesn’t do enough to progress the story, and I scrap it. Why line-edit a scene that doesn’t do anything for the story? Reverse outlines can be difficult—correction, reverse outlines are difficult—but I need them to keep me on task. I wouldn’t know where to begin editing without a reverse outline. After each draft, I begin a new reverse outline. Elements change.

Some of you may be plotters, but reverse outlines may be a great way to see your story from the other side. Reading your manuscript with fresh eyes may yield themes or points of a scene you didn’t know were there. While a reverse outline helps pantsers or lighthousers (or plantsers), they can still help plotters. Like I said, I begin a new reverse outline after each draft because storytelling elements change.

Timeline

While one could combine a reverse outline and a timeline, I prefer to have these as two separate documents. Chronology is important. You don’t want to say something would take a week when it takes two weeks or vice versa. Going back to “Scene Length,” the manuscript’s pacing also needs to match the timeline. A week needs to feel like a week, however that week feels for the character(s). I forget how many time warps I’ve caused. Hopefully, I will avoid time warps altogether by starting a timeline while I write the first draft. If only I’d remember to start a timeline while writing a first draft.

Always Be Escalating (ABE)

I promised a Writing Brain Dump, and here we go. I’m kinda bouncing back to the first topic (Reverse Outlines), but through a different lens or two. One of George Saunders’s 9 Rules of Thumb is “Always Be Escalating” or ABE, and a hidden benefit to the “Point of Scene” header in a reverse outline is showing that your story’s stakes increase with each scene. Escalating scenes propel the story. They’re the secret sauce to page-turners.

Causality

“Causality” is another one of Saunders’s Rules of Thumb. Saunders often links causality to Chekov’s River. Many of you may know Chekov’s Gun. Quick Recap: If a gun is shown in the first act, it must be fired by the third act. Chekov’s River follows a similar path, but in terms of causality. One character choice should directly lead to another choice by the character, like a river of character choices. Chekov’s River gives characters agency. It also minimizes coincidences.

Coincidence versus Choice

Coincidences at the beginning of a story aren’t so bad, but if a story relies too heavily on coincidences, they become a crutch, and the advancement feels unearned. Batman (1989) will always have a special place in my heart, but it relies on coincidence. Jack Napier (Jack Nickolson’s Joker) falls into a vat of chemicals; he blames Batman. This is a coincidence, but this happens at the beginning. It isn’t too bad—yet.

Then, Joker happens to read a newspaper with a picture of Vicki Vale (Batman’s love interest) and falls in love with her as well, putting the two characters at odds. Why wouldn’t Batman and Joker already be at odds because of their chosen vocations? Make it a choice, not a coincidence. But yes, let’s go with a bizarre love triangle.

Fun Factoid: Because not all parties in a typical Love Triangle are in love with each other, most Love Triangles are actually Love Bipods.

I promised a brain dump. Consider yourself brain-dumped.

Finally, Joker meets Batman (as Bruce Wayne) and threatens him with a gun while saying, “Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?” which happens to be the phrase the Waynes’ killer used. So, Batman surmises the Joker killed his parents. Sure. As you can see, each coincidence cheapens the story.

I suppose there is causality with Joker killing Batman’s parents, and then Batman “making” The Joker, but even Joker dubs this story absurd. “You made me. I made you. How childish can you get?” Batman also leans heavily on flashbacks, which also takes away from the present story. Ground the characters with their choices in the story you’re telling, not choices during flashbacks.

And I’m saying don’t use too many flashbacks when my first novel, Crooked as a Dogwood, features a character skin-walking through their past and their relatives’ past. Ugh! I may need to rethink that novel. LOL

In short, character choice should impact the story more than coincidences. Try to minimize coincidences and flashbacks. Grant characters agency.

I’ve lost the plot. Maybe I need to reverse outline this post. Oh well. I promised a writing brain dump, and this may qualify. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, happy writing and have a fantabulastical day.

Tag: editing

Fifth Wednesday September 2026: Personal Updates