Bones them Bones, When You're Writing

Every building starts with a foundation — sometimes stilts, sometimes slabs, sometimes basements, and some are built on good solid earth. A house built on sand sinks and demands many posts dug to keep it. You dig and dig until you have made a solid place so that as the sands shift, the house will not sink too far.

Houses settle after a time. Sometimes that is why there is a tiny difference in a floor once so flat a ball wouldn’t roll. The “roll test” is to find if the house has simply settled safely, or if it has a structural problem.

Every person’s body needs a skeleton, for the most part. Yes, there are some creatures without them, but they are decidedly flappy‑like creatures.

The last thing I want is a flappy story. A story with no narrative substance, just words flopped together that might make some interesting poetry.

You know the coffee shop poet, flowing out words — and some will see a point to that structure. If the poet is just throwing words out and faking it, the audience interprets forever, creating meanings that they see. But a really good one isn’t just giving you full freedom — behind all that streaming is a narrative. A bone to trail and move through, even if they are just evoking an emotion.

Stories are different from poetry because we need more narrative than a thin line. We need a full body. And it all starts, for me, with the bones of the story — the narrative, the frame of the house.

Every story — if it is going to stand up under the weight of everything you are going to put on it — starts with bones if you view it as a body, and a foundation if you view it as a house.

What is it standing on?

Dream Bones

I write from dreams. Not metaphorically.

The narratives arrive fully formed in the night, while I lie in a state somewhere between awake and asleep. Sometimes I talk in my sleep and my husband has had full conversations with me, mostly remembered.

The dreams are too vivid to let me rest, but they come complete with characters, emotions, sensory details, worldbuilding, and so much more — and then keep plaguing me on repeat until I get a narrative laid down.

My job is to get them down before they fade too much. They might be repeating, but it’s a massive dream and I can’t sleep properly until I do. If I try, I am either an insomniac or on the repeat cycle and I won’t know until attempting to rest.

That means I work fast and I get down the most essential parts — the narrative and dialogue — and that is the bones.

The Bones

Bones are the structural narrative. The complete skeleton of what happens and why.

It comes from a dream, and to get down one million words in three weeks, it was all tell, not show. Minimal sensory detail, no polished prose, my dyslexic flips and red squiggles popping up all over the place. The events, the words, the logic, and what is strong in that second, on that page, in mass speed‑writing.

Not that I am finished with bones. But without a structure, what do the emotions and details build on?

If you are a new writer — get your bones first. Tell it if you have to and keep on going. Get all that you see down. If you are in a place and see the scene strongly, throw on some meat at the same time, but if you have all the dialogue, get it down.

The bones are the priority, and an imperfect skeleton is infinitely more workable than a beautifully written scene sitting on nothing. I can imagine scenes later, adjust the way the punctuation moves a line later. But if I don’t have the sentence or the moment, it is a little tougher.

Sometimes my dreams get interrupted. My poor dog has congenital heart failure and is on a water pill. He has to say, “Mom, wake up.” And I do.

But then I will lay down the given narrative fast and it’s either directed dreaming as I lie down, or daydreams pulling it, but I’ll get the good start from that first dream.

Finer Bones

No body is complete without its finer bones.

The kneecaps, the knuckles, the elbows. The flexibility points.

I had a really good structure from a dream, but a five‑day run of insomnia, as it was being a pest, so I got it all down just enough that my brain relaxes and moves on to a new story — but that does mean I have a piece not quite as complete.

Editing — the long haul — has begun. I find the places where it is missing something and add that in, and as I go through I start popping in the other bits that are starting to come through, the things that make a story not just words but something that will heal another.

Those kneecaps, elbows, knuckles — you would be surprised how much you miss them when they are gone and how painful it is for them just to be out of place. I have Ehlers–Danlos and it’s not fun, believe me, to have one small bone not quite where it should be.

A story without finer bones can stand, but it cannot move properly. The kneecap helps direct your legs.

The Meat

Now that we have the finer bones looking like what we think is great, we go add the meat and flesh.

This is the environment that all this narrative is going to move through and interact with.

I actually build environments and houses through game software that has decent pieces. I started on 7 Days to Die to build houses when I discovered I could turn zombies off and have just the world around me — a peaceful place to create places to move through.

Important note: 7 Days to Die is a mature‑rated game, for adults, for very good reasons. Even with zombies permanently turned off and used only as a building tool, it would never earn an “E for Everyone.” I use it as an adult tool to model spaces, not as a children’s game.

I also use Fallout 4 and The Sims 3 and 4. Fallout is clearly for mature players. The Sims games are rated T for Teen, and in my opinion that is generous. I treat them as tools for older teens and adults, not for young children.

For younger builders (and for adults who don’t have the money for fancy building software), games like LEGO Worlds and Minecraft are a great place to start. LEGO Worlds is all LEGO blocks and not perfectly smooth walls, but that’s all right. Artists study hand skeletons and wooden mannequins to understand how bones and joints work, even though they aren’t real skin and muscle. In the same way, LEGO bricks can help you see:

where walls, roofs, and doors go (the bones of a building)

how a room changes when you add windows or lamps

how shadows fall when you shine light from different angles

Whatever game you use — LEGO Worlds, Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders 2, or others — always make sure your parents or guardians review the game and approve it first, and preferably play with you when they can. You’d be surprised how often something sneaks into even well‑loved shows and games. (I won’t name names, but Barney springs to mind.)

None of these tools has all the pieces, but together I find a way to genuinely move through places and see how lighting affects the body in that space. And hello, LEGO Worlds — I don’t think they even have a membership unless you want extra bricks. Sometimes the “toy” is the most affordable architecture software you’ll ever own.

The Nerves and Skin

Now that I can move into the world, as I have strength in the body, I need to feel it.

Yes — feel all that which is moving. The nerves and skin. The sensory and emotional beats. The action moments that drive us to say, “Yes, I see it.”

This is the time to remove the tells and now show it and flow it.

The Hair and Distinctive Features

Now, you are showing it right — and then it’s time to be distinctive, adding in maybe another character to show yet more of how this is vital and matters and something uniquely this story maybe find places that you need more diversity. Unique cadences that now can be find. At this point, I'd be doing translation into fairy or dwarven in places provided the line has a little polish.

I am writing a trilogy of sagas. Sagas, not books, with Violet Eyes. But as I write it I already have the big bones laid out. It took twenty years to develop the strong bones of the stories, but they never stop coming. I have more to write than I can ever get down properly.

Some dreams are right stinkers too, but we throw them a bone to say, “MOVE ON, see, written.” And sometimes later those bones I thought were bad turn out to be understanding for a character that moves in. Not every backstory should be told or is that great. There is nothing wrong with leading a relatively boring life.

I once dreamed of being a cow in a field. Imagine that story.

I ate some grass today.

Next day I ate some grass on the other side.

Grass is grass.

Okay, right, but how many people want that story in their face? I just put it here. They are always useful at some point, but whatever — the cow‑in‑a‑field story is really super boring. Not all of them are adventures.

But what was the point of the cow?

The cow eating grass. It was a full night of it. The cow, after they kept trying and trying grasses across the field, picked up very tiny differences. They understood the real fine differences and concluded grass isn’t just grass, even when grown in the same section of fields. Every single blade of grass experienced a different amount of rainfall, a different amount of drainage, a different amount of sunlight and wind.

They found the beauty in each one consumed and were no longer just a cow in a field.

You were sure it was a pointless story — and it remains rather boring compared to my other work. Every night, folks, it’s either the same dream until that one is laid down as at least bones, insomnia on top until down, and then it moves.

So we write whatever, but don’t develop everything.

I might not know its place or why it came for so long. I make no apologies for not putting out every dream, as I only have so much time.

The Final Pass

It's time to get dressed, polished, and ready to face the world. The final edit to check it all and that means taking my translated fairy and dwarf to trackers too making sure I keep track of all the things in the 'closet' that are new. Double checking that every term preexisted match from spelling to meaning. Tracking all the magical terms, tracking the characters for consistency. Tracking to make sure I didn't over use phrases. 1.4 million words the phrases were tracked and I'd look for new ways to say this or that where I can and if it was a repeated one did that repeat warrant it. 1.4 with 0 padding was the goal and is always the goal.

The Organic Simultaneity

I work on all stages at once, but I focus on the current stage. That is the key distinction. I am not building sequentially from bones to hair in strict order. I am building organically — the bones being the priority, the other stages contributing when they naturally emerge, nothing forced before its time.

Think of it like a basketball play. The bones are the play as designed. You know the destination. You know the general shape of how you are getting there. You have run it in your head before the game starts.

But the defense moves.

The dream source hands you something unexpected. A character reveals something you did not plan for. The story reacts to the story.

And you adjust. You don’t abandon the play. You adjust. Because you know the destination even when the path shifts. The bones tell you where the basket is even when the defense changes the route to it.

The writer who does not know their destination when the defense moves loses the ball. Gets lost in the reaction. The bounce back and forth becoming disorientation instead of responsiveness.

The bones put the basket there before the game started. Everything after is adjustment and skill.

For the New Writer

Do not apologize for bones. Do not hold your raw structural draft up against someone else’s polished final version and feel shame about the gap between them. You are looking at completely different stages of completely different processes.

Throw it all down without apologizing that it is not picture‑perfect and platform‑ready. Then go back and flag spaces top down — adding as you go, seeing and examining the bones for the finer ones that allow it to interconnect, throwing on some meat if your mind takes you there.

The bones that survive the disruption become the architecture for something that could not have existed without the earlier, rougher version.

Strong bones first. Everything else earns its place on top of them.

You will see the bones stage demonstrated in Just Imagine That when it releases. The technique is visible in the structure. The dream‑source bones holding up everything built on top of them.

That is what we are building toward. Not perfection on the first pass. A skeleton strong enough to carry what comes next.

Forever Friends Faithfully,

Dream Writer, Lady Ariarose

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