This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #529, on the subject of Characters in Action.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eleven 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,
- Con Verse Lea,
- In Version, in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley, and
- Con Version, in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley,
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 twelfth, A Dozen Verses, again 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 sixth post for this novel, covering chapters 61 through 72. Previous posts are:
- #524: Twisting Worlds, covering the first twelve chapters;
- #525: Character Battles, covering chapters 13 through 24;
- #526: Versers Adjust, chapters 25 through 36;
- #527: Characters Reorient, chapters 37 through 48; and
- #528: Versers Investigate, chapters 49 through 60.
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 61, Slade 271
Chapter 62, Kondor 276
Chapter 63, Cooper 93
Chapter 64, Slade 272
Chapter 65, Kondor 277
Chapter 66, Cooper 94
Chapter 67, Slade 273
Chapter 68, Kondor 278
Chapter 69, Cooper 95
Chapter 70, Slade 274
Chapter 71, Kondor 279
Chapter 72, Cooper 96
I wrote the beginning of this chapter, but dropped it because I wasn’t sure where to go, leaving it for Eric to continue.
Eric wanted to suggest that eating the fruit had temporarily enhanced Shella’s psionic abilities, but I wanted to maintain the rules, that it would be something possible within the definition of the skills she had. We tried a couple of demonstrations of her telekinesis before I settled on the one we included.
Eric had suggested a chase through the streets of the city, so I used this chapter to transition from the auction house to the pursuit.
When I finished Cooper 92, I left a note that read, “My vision at this point is that the corridor continues for some distance and then there is a lit space, not quite a room, more like a cul-de-sac, in which there is something, a statue or an idol or something, and light, not terribly bright but sufficient to see. This will appear to be a dead end. There will be something here worth taking, and some way to open a secret passage that returns them to the surface. That doesn’t all fit in one chapter, but that seems to be the direction to go.” Eric built on that to create this.
I skipped this chapter because I had figured out what to do with Kondor and not what to do with Slade. Eric then wrote it before I got back to Cooper.
I had left the previous Kondor chapter uncertain how Joe would find the chase, given the probability that both of the others were out of sight. I then realized that with the scriff sense he could track Zeke anywhere in the world, and I could use that to get him to Zeke.
Eric tinkered with the text to make it more exciting, and we tussled a bit over how specific we could be about details we were inventing, given that neither of us had ever actually visited France. Eric says, “I ended up creating a new large city in France, Tuolorca, to resolve some of the issues.”
I had asked Eric what he intended for the glove, but he tossed it back to me, reminding me that I had suggested some high-tech device that echoed of the Green Lantern ring. Thus I put together this chapter to introduce it.
I again skipped this chapter. Eric created all of it, with only some minor editorial suggestions from me.
I had been up in what for me was the middle of the night because my gout flared up and I needed to get started on some medicine to control it so I could manage the stairs with my laundry in a few hours. I wrote part of this, and went back to bed. Eric left me significant notes on a way-over-the-top Mission Impossible movie notion. I had already thought of having Kondor drive Amanda off the road and chasing her into an office building, and so I began with that and took only a little of his ideas into completing the chapter.
I got the idea for the way the exits worked while I was writing the previous Kondor chapter. I also thought it was necessary for the others to find something that would interest them, so they wouldn’t focus too much on the glove, and that although I already knew that the glove had other powers, if it opened the doors that would probably be enough to make the others think that was all it did.
I was thrown for a few days at this point. Part of it was that my book RPG-ology Volume I was in the final stages of publication, and I had several tasks to perform to get it into print. However, part of it was that I felt that Eric had thrown a couple curve balls at me, and I was trying to recover.
I learned something about my own writing process. I’ll write a chapter or even several chapters, and then walk away with the storylines simmering on a back burner. Frequently I have no idea what happens next in any of the stories, but then gradually something will coalesce, and I’ll return ready to write.
This time I was still having trouble wrapping my head around Bob Slade’s world, but I expected that Eric was going to write this chapter and I was going to return to write the next chapters for Cooper and Kondor. Instead, I found a list of questions about which way we should go with Slade, and chapters for Cooper and Kondor already in place. As I was already pressed for time, this threw me, and I didn’t read more than the Slade questions and the beginnings of the other two chapters, which told me that Eric had treated things very differently than I had intended in both cases.
It was about a day before I apologized for ducking out, and discussed the Slade situation. Eric was torn between having Slade defeat the priest and go on to finish this world, and having the priest kill Slade then later having someone else deal with the problems here. While I would have been glad to be done with this world, I had two problems. One was that I had no idea who would come back to fix it, but that was a minor issue. The other was that Slade only once lost in single combat (against Dawn in Versers Versus Versers), and I couldn t imagine him doing so here. On reflection, though, I suggested that we have the fight, that the priest manages to animate the entire forest, and Slade is overwhelmed fighting an army of trees.
Eric drafted this. I objected to a couple minor points, which he fixed, and I tweaked it a bit in one spot. I would have included a statement of the contents of the drive, which I had previously suggested was research, probably Russian, on the use of superconductors to achieve cold fusion, but there didn’t really seem a good spot for it.
Eric drafted this rather lengthy sequence of returning to the ship, which had a lot of excellent color. I added Cooper’s explanation of why he didn’t expect to be spending much of his accumulated treasure, and I pointed out to Eric that they had abandoned the flight equipment, so we agreed on a way to fix that which I inserted.
This has been the sixth behind-the-writings look at A Dozen Verses. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.