The power of TK at Tobias Buckell Online

Journal Entry

The power of TK

I’m blazing to finish a story I owe, and need to finish up. Mainly I’m trying to lay down a solid draft, and to do that I’m just writing it out and not bothering to get stuck on details that need clarified. I used to just create a bracket and note inside, but Paolo Bacigalupi once taught me the trick that journalists use to make these notes easily findable: TK.

For example, you’re writing along and hit a note that isn’t important to the plot or anything that is a detail that does need to be added in. Instead of stopping to figure it out, or research it, you write something like “He jumped into the [TK make/model of car] and slammed the door shut.” The ‘TK’ is a somewhat statistically improbable letter combination, so you can, in draft, just do a find for TK and work your way through in a later draft fixing little things.

A lot of writers ask me how you keep your butt in the chair, or dodge writers block. The use of little tricks like ‘TK’ as well as skipping scenes you don’t want to write until you have a better idea later are neat tricks.

Some writers can’t move on, it’s part of their process to get all the details just right. That’s cool too.

But sometimes, you can’t know the details until you’ve written out a draft and the way in which everything sits around that blank spot allows you to realize that ‘oh, X is the solution’ and easily write it in.

Thus, I’ve made lots of little TK notes to myself today.

Filed under the topic On Writing on August 17th 2009 at 3:59 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.

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18 Responses so far

1. John Booth on Aug 17th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I used the power of TK a LOT in the newsroom, and still do even as a freelancer. Admittedly, the two-letter combo is too easy for me to overlook in revising, so I usually write SOMETHINGSOMETHINGSOMETHING to fill the space. Hard to miss that.
2. Matt Ruff on Aug 17th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I use ‘XX’ for this.
3. Devin L. Ganger on Aug 17th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Huh. I do the same with my initials in my technical writing; never thought about doing it for my fiction. Thanks!
4. Josh Smith on Aug 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
TK is Amazing. I picked it up from Cory Doctorow and it has made witing fast much easier.
5. Rick Novy on Aug 17th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
I’ve used qwerty for that
6. Sarah Brand on Aug 17th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
That is a neat trick! I’ve used it before (the brackets-plus-note version), but today I needed to be reminded that sometimes it really is okay to just skip stuff and come back.
7. Ben on Aug 17th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I don’t write fiction, but when writing technical documents in my day job I use XXXX and ????, and usually a green highlight. It works wonders until you’ve only got XXXX’s left in the document.
8. Ken McConnell on Aug 17th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Of course George Lucas used this technique and mistakenly forgot to replace the name of a Stormtrooper in E4. TK428. LOL!
9. YetiStomper on Aug 17th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Handy tip. Makes a lot of sense.
10. Michael Canfield on Aug 18th, 2009 at 1:20 am
I usually search for the open bracket symbol: [
11. Steve Buchheit on Aug 18th, 2009 at 8:26 am
It certainly helps when you feel the process start to get mired in the molasses of “further research or thought needed.”
12. spyscribbler on Aug 18th, 2009 at 8:35 am
I tend to use sdfasdfa, which is really silly, because the letters end up different every time, which means I have to go through the entire thing, reading every sentence, in order to find the bits I need to look up. I should try TK!
I also leave lots of white space, when the ideas are flowing really fast or I’m just getting snippets of the dialogue.
13. Tim Keating on Aug 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
TK is the most powerful force in the universe.
- Tim Keating
14. Michael Bracken on Aug 19th, 2009 at 8:24 am
You mention “TK” as an “improbable letter combination,” which it is, but it’s also journalism shorthand for “to come,” which you didn’t mention and which writers unfamiliar with journalism might not know. I use it on unfinished layouts to indicate missing photos or holes where ads will be placed; when I write I usually use a trio of asterisks to indicate missing copy.
15. Josh on Aug 19th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Huh. Didn’t know there was an actual name for this trick. I’ve been using asterisks to fill in spots that I go back and fix or elaborate on later, just to help keep myself in the writing flow. Nice to see other people use it as well.

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