This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #496, on the subject of Character Setbacks.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first nine Multiverser novels,
- Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel,
- Old Verses New,
- For Better or Verse,
- Spy Verses,
- Garden of Versers,
- Versers Versus Versers,
- Re Verse All,
- In Verse Proportion, and
- Con Verse Lea,
in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book). Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages. Now as I am posting the tenth, In Version, written in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley, I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights. This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed. You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them. Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.
This is the twelfth and final post for this novel, covering chapters 133 through 144. Previous posts were:
- #476: Versers Deduce, covering chapters 1 through 12;
- #478: Character Conflicts, covering 13 through 24;
- #480: Versers Think, 25 through 36;
- #482: Versers Engage, 37 through 48.
- #484: Characters Maneuver, 49 through 60.
- #487: A World in Space, 61 through 72.
- #489: Battle Worlds, 73 through 84;
- #491: Verser Ventures, 85 through 96;
- #493: Verser Engagements, 97 through 108;
- #494: Warring Worlds, 109 through 120; and
- #495: World Crises, 121 through 132.
There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.
History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.
Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 133, Brown 278
Chapter 134, Kondor 253
Chapter 135, Slade 247
Chapter 136, Beam 195
Chapter 137, Brown 279
Chapter 138, Slade 248
Chapter 139, Kondor 254
Chapter 140, Brown 280
Chapter 141, Slade 249
Chapter 142, Kondor 255
Chapter 143, Slade 250
Chapter 144, Brown 281
Eric drafted this, inventing the park and the mountains. The description of where the park was within the mountain range was the last issue we had to clarify between the two of us during the readthrough edits.
This was my idea, that the best Parakeet to develop a way for Parakeets and Little Green Men to speak with each other would be that same language professor who created the Morse Code.
I wrote this mostly for the opening, in which Slade is asked not to shape change during the fight. I created the snake-like alien because I wanted an opponent who would appear to have excellent dodging abilities, so Slade could suggest banning them for the fight and so win the argument on behalf of Derek.
Eric had said he wanted to verse Beam out in this confrontation with Norax, so I left this chapter for him. Then overnight Eric wrote it, outlined the remainder of the book, and drafted several other discontinuous chapters.
It was considerably later, during the readthrough edit when I had reached Beam 194, that we realized all of Beam’s party’s equipment including the food cart would be about twenty floors below, which would be about ten miles, so wherever they went from here they would have to deal with that. No decision had been made about where they were going next, other than that they would not be in the next novel, Con Version.
Eric marked this as a combat between Derek and a Xoark. It had been my idea that he should fight a four-armed opponent with three spears and some kind of ability that caused Derek’s thrown knife to miss, although it was left open whether it was a telekinetic shifting of the weapon, a warping of space, or a distortion of the visible position of the opponent.
Eric marked this as Slade’s final battle against a Fenex. I insisted that Slade should reach the awards ranked #25 despite being the only undefeated contestant, and therefore he should win this contest with some difficulty.
Eric handed me a briefly-described alien and a detailed write-up of a German sword-based martial arts style that a player had created for game play, and left it to me to create a fight. The name “Fenex” was connected to the character name used by that player, and Eric had promised to use it in a book. It was agreed that Slade would win, but barely, and that it would be obvious that this would be the most challenging opponent he fought, but also his last fight.
Eric wrote this chapter the night he drafted the outline for the rest of the book. We had agreed that he was going to leave this world either at the end of this book or at the beginning of whatever was his next.
We had agreed on a confrontation with thugs in the hall outside their apartments in which Derek would be versed out. Eric wrote this the same night he drafted the outline of the remainder of the book.
Eric indicated that in this chapter Slade would kill the thugs including the Anders he did not get to fight in the contest. He left it for me to write.
Eric marked this as a Kondor chapter when he created his outline, but did not indicate what would happen here. As he was drafting it, he suddenly got an idea for a major plot twist, and since this would be the cliffhanger for the Kondor story we agreed to go with it. There was some concern that it might echo Lauren Hasting’s story in Garden of Versers, but we decided that this would be a very different handling of a similar situation.
Eric had indicated that there would be an awards ceremony, and as we agreed Slade would rank #25. I added the note that Derek would be acknowledged posthumously, along with the Anders who had threatened Slade at the party and killed Derek.
Eric had originally outlined this as the last chapter, with the last Brown chapter preceding it. Having previously said that I wanted a short part of Derek’s new New Orleans to world end the book, I changed them.
This turned out to be the last chapter drafted, on the last day of July, 2022.
When we were discussing characters and worlds for the next book, Eric remembered me saying that eventually Derek would get a trumpet and go to New Orleans to meet Johnny Angel. He put together a chapter with a “spooky New Orleans” feel, and I agreed that this would be a great idea for the new book, and that Derek would get his trumpet there, but that it was not the version of New Orleans in which he meets Johnny Angel, which would come later. I proposed cutting what Eric wrote into a short cliffhanger and a longer chapter in the new book, and so I did that here, with a few other adjustments to cover the fact that Derek was nowhere near Vashti or their equipment when he versed out. This was written before some of the previous chapters were started.
This has been the twelfth and final behind-the-writings look at In Version. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.