It's interesting how the different books take shape. I started Secrets of Starpoint Mountain by just sitting down and writing. I had a few basic ideas about the characters and the history of the land but that was it, just winged it from that point on.
This one is starting completely different. It takes place on a space station and I started by deciding what kind of crew this station would have. I figured out the organizational structure of the station from the captain and his command crew down to the individual science groups. It came out to 32 different stations but I felt that was to much so I streamlined and reorganized the staff down to 23.
Deciding to stick with that I worked on the characters. I gave each of them a name, age, ethnicity and a brief paragraph description of their character, history and relationships with other crew members. It turned out to be quite a diverse group and I made sure some of them do not get along very well, actually, they hate each other. Some of them have very nasty secrets as well.
Then I went back and wrote a history of the space program from 2030 to 2075 when the story takes place. Then went and rewrote it with more details including a technological war with China and failed mission launches. Also worked out some of the station lingo.
Next week I'm planning on doing more character details.
It's funny how the creative brain develops this. I don't really think about it or plan it it just plans itself. I suspect it's because canvas for this book is so different from Starpoint Mountain. In the books I had a whole world to travel through with lots of opportunities to introduce new characters. This one is a closed space with limited characters so I think I have to know them from the start. I'm also going in to this as a one book project. The first book I wrote, Timelash, I looked at as a trilogy, so was the Dr. Who book, and Starpoint came out at four books and twenty-two short stories with opportunities for more. I really don't see this going for more than one book.
This one is starting completely different. It takes place on a space station and I started by deciding what kind of crew this station would have. I figured out the organizational structure of the station from the captain and his command crew down to the individual science groups. It came out to 32 different stations but I felt that was to much so I streamlined and reorganized the staff down to 23.
Deciding to stick with that I worked on the characters. I gave each of them a name, age, ethnicity and a brief paragraph description of their character, history and relationships with other crew members. It turned out to be quite a diverse group and I made sure some of them do not get along very well, actually, they hate each other. Some of them have very nasty secrets as well.
Then I went back and wrote a history of the space program from 2030 to 2075 when the story takes place. Then went and rewrote it with more details including a technological war with China and failed mission launches. Also worked out some of the station lingo.
Next week I'm planning on doing more character details.
It's funny how the creative brain develops this. I don't really think about it or plan it it just plans itself. I suspect it's because canvas for this book is so different from Starpoint Mountain. In the books I had a whole world to travel through with lots of opportunities to introduce new characters. This one is a closed space with limited characters so I think I have to know them from the start. I'm also going in to this as a one book project. The first book I wrote, Timelash, I looked at as a trilogy, so was the Dr. Who book, and Starpoint came out at four books and twenty-two short stories with opportunities for more. I really don't see this going for more than one book.
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