From Scratch

From Scratch – Part 4: A Different Approach

/ Tim

Previously on From Scratch, I changed my mind a million times, indicated I’d soon be writing about this story, and had every intention of submitting it to that short story window I found….yeah, about that.

Everything went a little bit awry with my plans to submit my sci-fi story, but in the best way possible. You see, I set out to get my feet wet with writing short fiction again after taking a too-long hiatus thanks to focusing on a novel I wasn’t enjoying writing, and thus actually not accomplishing much of anything at all.

So the deadline? Missed it.  The word count? Blew out. The fantasy story I was also planning to write? Never got around to it.

None of this is bad though!

Instead of an 8000 word short story that was water-themed, I instead wound up with a 20,000 word sci-fi novella that I think is legitimately the best thing I’ve ever written – certainly I like it more than I’ve liked anything else I’ve done, and it hasn’t taken my usual ten edits to get it to the stage where I’m not embarrassed by it either. Hell, I wrote it from start to finish pretty much non-stop and knew exactly where I was going with it pretty much the whole time, which never happens with me.

What started out as a simple heist story is instead a good chunk of meaty story, a military space opera influenced by Star Wars and Firefly and all the other usual suspects, but with a focus on what I hope are interesting characters and a unique scenario that elevates it into something different while also walking the line between action, humour, tension, and cool space ships shooting at each other.

So yes, unfortunately I missed the short story submissions window I was aiming for.  Instead, I’ve now got my sights set on the TOR novella window opening in early May.  I think I’ve basically got zero chance of success, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth having a crack.

Wish me luck!

Finally, to show the difference a bit of time makes, here’s the intro to the story – now called Calayasii – from the latest edit. You’ll notice that it is fairly similar tonally, but there have been quite a few little changes here or there compared to the earlier draft:

The starfighters of Corsair squadron skimmed an ocean the colour of smoked glass, leaving chaos in their wake.

‘Incoming fighters: state your business.’ The query from Holy City Flight Control stabbed into Ayla’s mind. Most chip communications were not so intrusive, but the Cobies had a particularly blunt way of making themselves known.

‘This is Aquafex Hydronatus Lurr of flight group Zero-Two-Delta here for refuel and resupply.’ Ayla pulsed back, every word untrue.

‘Acknowledged, Aquafex. Welcome to the Holy World,’ Control buzzed back, a giant mosquito somewhere in her frontal lobe. Illusory lights floated into existence before her eyes, pink orbs illuminating a path toward the Holy City. ‘Hangar alpha-four, landing pad eighteen in City West. Deviate from the designated flight path and be destroyed. All praise to the Cobalt Waters.’

‘We will comply, Control.’ Another lie.  ‘We have absolutely no intention of causing any trouble. Praise the Cobalt Waters of Holy Ter.’

Now that was some real crap, even down to the murky water they skimmed across most definitely not being any shade of blue Ayla had ever seen.  Lies within lies within lies.

Captain Ayla Neshitani, leader of Corsair Squadron – former soldier, pretend space pirate, and extra-pretend Aquafex of the fanatical Cobalt Imperium – sighed and kept her focus on ensuring her fighter didn’t plough into the water below.

It’d be far too apropos to drown in the murk of this bullshit mission.

From Scratch – Part 3: Pantsing It

/ Tim

Previously on From Scratch, I managed to avoid making a decision on which story idea I wanted to go with, and instead decided to write both!

I’ve since worked a whole bunch on my still-as-yet-untitled sci-fi story of space pirates hijacking holy water, and I’m very happy with how the first draft is coming, even though I’m already over the maximum word count despite probably only being 3/4 of the way there.  Even better, I’m reasonably sure I’ve got a tonne of stuff to remove, and that I’m going to have to insert a bunch more into the early parts of the story to plant enough seeds for the later plot points to pay off (once I’ve confirmed what those are!).

Does all of this sound kind of chaotic? It is! That’s because I, with this particular story, decided to go back to where I began as a writer:

I decided to pants it.

There is a writing methodology that is all about the meticulous planning: the author writes a short overall plot description (like my earlier pitches), expands this out into, say, a page or two of plot summary hitting the key points, and then expands this out in turn to be a chapter by chapter or scene by scene summary forming a novel framework.  In the case of a short story, you’d generally not go further than the page or two of summary, although you might go further down the rabbit hole with detail there if the story was particularly complex. Obviously, this is a broad guidelines – it varies by author or project, but the key rule is taking a structured, planned approach toward your work, giving you a framework where you are essentially “filling in the gaps” until the story is done.

That is the literal opposite of what I’m doing.

Instead, I decided to write by the seat of my pants.  This has traditionally been my chosen method of writing, with the end result being a whole bunch of partially completed projects and relatively few finished ones.  Basically, I sit down with an idea, and just write.  As the words come out, the skeleton of a plot starts to form, and I can organically respond to it, following it to a conclusion.

With my new story, this has actually been working really well.  I have an idea of how I want it to end, and I’m enjoying exploring the different ways of getting there, even as I rapidly realise there’s whole chunks I’ll need to rewrite.

A lot of people I speak to about writing are blown away by idea of drafting and redrafting.  The idea that you can type the last word and know that you’re probably only a quarter of the way there (if that) frustrates a lot of people, never mind the utterly alien concept of handing said work over to someone else to read and dissect and send you back to rework whole chunks of the story.

This is a necessary process for all writing styles, but it is particularly so when writing without a solid plan.  As someone without an artistic bone in my body, I’ll nonetheless liken it to my probably misconception of sculpting. I have the roughest of designs in mind. I get the base structure into place and begin to visualise where it will end up, and then I chip away until I get there in the end.

This story is taking shape so far, and I am actually feeling pretty confident it’ll be something decent in the end.

With that in mind, here’s the intro to the story – again, this is the first draft. It’s probably garbage, is subject to change, read it at your own peril, etc, etc:

The sky was the dull sheen of gunmetal, mirrored perfectly by the ocean. The four fighters of Corsair squadron skimmed above the water, leaving chaos in their wake.

The query from Holy Ter City flight control stabbed again in Ayla’s mind – most chip communications were not intrusive, but the Cobies had a particularly blunt way of making themselves known.

‘This is Aquafex Hydronatus Lurr of flight group Zero-Two-Delta here for emergency refuel and resupply.’ Ayla pulsed back, every word untrue.

‘Acknowledged, Aquafex. Welcome to the Holy World,’ Control buzzed back, a giant mosquito somewhere in her frontal lobe. ‘Landing pad eighteen in Ter City West. Deviate and be destroyed. All praise to the Cobalt Waters’

‘We will comply, Control.’ Another lie.  ‘We have absolutely no intention of causing any trouble. Praise the Cobalt Waters of Holy Ter.’

Now that was some real crap, even down to the murky water they skimmed across most definitely not being cobalt or any other shade of blue.  Every single thing about this damn mission was lies within lies within lies.

Captain Ayla Neshitani, leader of Corsair Squadron – former soldier, current revolutionary, pretend space pirate, and extra-pretend Aquafex of the fanatical Cobalt Imperium – sighed and decided to keep her focus on ensuring her fighter didn’t plough into the smoked glass surface of the water below.

It’d be far too apropos to drown in the murk of this bullshit mission.

More about the story itself…next time, on From Scratch.

From Scratch – Part 2: No Decisions Necessary

/ Tim

Previously on From Scratch, I pondered which of the two water-themed story ideas I would go with:

  1. A melancholy dark fantasy story about a healer betraying her friends to defend helpless civilians who hate her and are doomed anyway; OR
  2. A space pirate adventure revolving around an attempt to steal a tanker full of holy water from the home planet of a xenophobic empire of whackjobs.

Option 1 appeals to me as a writer – dark and brooding has mostly been my go-to, and it would be a story set in a world I’ve spent a fair bit of time fleshing out for myself.

Option 2, on the other hand, is a setting I’ve only really thought about. I’ve written the first chapter of a potential future novel in this same setting, and I’ve doodled a whole bunch of spaceship designs during meetings at work, but otherwise it’s a blank slate in a new setting in a style that I haven’t really ventured into (barring some Warhammer 40,000 fan fiction back in the day, which was tonally very different to what I’d be aiming for here).

After much pondering (it took minutes, I swear!), I made the decision to not make a decision. Instead, I’m just going to write both of them.

To be honest, there’s a couple of reasons for this – I could say that both interest me equally, although that wouldn’t be entirely true.  I could say that both are gateway stories into linked novels I’ve been planning to write, which would also be true. I could even say that I miss writing short stories (which is 100% true), so why limit myself?

The real reason is that I have missed writing like this. For the first time in literal years, I am feeling inspired – like I cannot wait to drop whatever else I am doing so I can sit down and get more words down. I’m craving the redrafting; the cutting of whole pages of beloved text simply because it doesn’t quite work. I want to ruthlessly edit and get criticism from my beta readers and all of that good stuff.

Thinking about this process has made me realise just how much of a misstep focusing on writing my novel to the exclusion of all else has been. I’ve always been the kind of guy who functions best with multiple projects going at once – I’ve been one for laser focus. Focusing on rewriting and redrafting Freeburn, as useful as that has been for nutting out solutions to problems I was having, has also led to me basically not writing anything new except the odd sentence here or there for a very long time.  Obsession with getting it right has led to me resenting it a bit, and my writing process has suffered as a result.

No more!

Freeburn is on the back burner for now, and I think it will be the better for it.  In the meantime, I have begun writing the as-yet-untitled tale of Captain Ayla Neshitani and her band of roguish space pirates, and I’m about 2/3rds of the way through the first draft.  I’ve even managed to fit in a pretty decent cloaca joke that I’m hoping will make it through to the final version.

I’m very excited to discuss this first story in more detail…next time, on From Scratch.

From Scratch – Part 1: Go Pitch Myself

/ Tim

Due to getting bogged down for the longest time in working on my first novel, I’ve decided to cleanse my palette a little bit by getting back to the thing that brought me to the writing dance in the first place: short stories. 

From Scratch is going to be an ongoing documentation of my journey from searching for an idea through to (hopeful) completion and submission of a story.

Burning out on writing sucks.

I didn’t realise that was what was happening to me at first – surely, I was just struggling with working on a novel, right? Anyone transitioning from writing a tightly edited 6000 words is going to feel overwhelmed trying to make an 80,000 word story come together properly, never mind then having to redraft multiple times.

I kept telling myself that, even as I found myself doing less and less work on it.  Worse, despite knowing that I do my best from a productivity standpoint when I have multiple projects underway simultaneously, I kept trying to laser focus in on this one project that I was growing to hate-hate (instead of my usual love-hate that I have with all my work).

No longer! A random run-in on Facebook led to me finding the following call for submissions for water-themed speculative fiction. This is perfect – a short story window I can aim for that, even if I am not successful, will challenge me to come up with a concept taking into account a theme I may have otherwise never arrived at.  Even better, it’s open to all spec fic sub genres, which tickles my recent urges to get back into the fantasy and sci-fi spaces.

In the end I arrived at a fork in the road, one way leading back to my dark fantasy world I have previously explored in Heart Eater and an upcoming as-yet-unnamed novella. The other leading me to a space opera vision of pirates and revolutionaries I’ve had in the back of my mind since I first read the Rogue and Wraith Squadron books of Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston.

I decided to write quick summary pitches of both stories, to give me an idea of a broad plot outline I might decide to follow:

Fantasy:

PLACEHOLDER, follower of the Ocean Path and medic for a band of mercenaries, has a crisis of conscience when her leaders accept a job to slaughter a village of orcish civilians.  Abandoning her post, she goes to the orcs and uses her healing powers to keep the civilians alive in the face of overwhelming odds, even as she struggles with their distrust of her, the betrayal of her former friends,  the demands of her pacifistic religion, and the knowledge that every person she heals brings the deaths of them all inevitably closer.

Sci-Fi:

Captain Ayla Neshitani – space pirate, insurgent, and reluctant revolutionary – is tasked with a mission to steal the Calayasii, a derelict fuel tanker-turned-shrine from Ter, the spiritual home of the Cobalt Imperium.  Ayla’s squad is to infiltrate the ocean world, fill the Calayasii to the brim with holy water, and retrieve it for sale to the highest bidder. Of course, things don’t quite go according to plan, and Ayla finds herself faced with an unexpected ethical question regarding exploiting the spirituality of her enemies.

Which will I choose?

Tune in for Part 2.