General Q & A Session For The Authors

[Greg Cox]

Personally, I'd rather read a 175-page novel, as a 175-page novel, than read a 175-page novel that had been stretched to 375 pages.

I agree, but, sadly, I still remember eavesdropping on a conversation between two customers at a bookstore.

Customer #1 picks up Book: "Ooh, a new book by Favorite Author!"

Customer #2 regards Book dubiously: "Kinda skinny, isn't it?"

Customer #1 reads back cover copy (which, ahem, I had written). "I dunno. Sounds pretty cool."

Costumer #2, still dubious. "Pretty short, though."

Customer #1 shrugs, puts down Book, and walks away, as I look on in dismay.

Alas, in the end, that slim, tightly-written volume didn't sell very well -- or so I recall.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

People who would rather read a 175-page-book stretched out to 375 pages than at its natural length are like people who would, after dropping a letterpress type forme, rather deal with a few hundred to a few thousand pieces of foundry type than a few dozen to a few hundred slugs of linecast type.*

In a word, masochists.

____
*It's a reference to something I say as part of my Ludlow Typograph spiel at the Printing Museum:

Why set matrices by hand, and stick them into a machine to cast a slug, when you could just set foundry type by hand, and print from it directly? Two reasons.
1. If you're using linecast type, you've got fresh type with each new forme, whereas with foundry type, you're using type that's been used, reused, abused, misused, drop-kicked across a football field, and not thrown into the hellbox for remelting until it starts to look like the label on a bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch. Fine if you're trying to sell scotch, but not so good if you want people to read your documents.
2. Suppose you just spent half a day setting a type forme, locking it up in a chase, and knocking the printing surfaces level with each other. You're carrying it across the room, to hang it on a press. And you trip. The chase hits the floor, the quoins let go, type everywhere. What would you rather deal with . . . .

 

[DrBeverly]

I feel like books are getting both longer and shorter. In the more mainstream, mass-market scene, books do seem to be getting longer, but on the more literary side there's a definitely trend towards short novels, even novellas. It does tend to come from the smaller, independent publishing houses that aren't so focused on selling thousands of copies, for the reasons and examples given above.

Yes. In the 1990s, Star Trek novels tended to run between 65k words on the low end and 85k words on the high end. Bigger books than that were often marketed as "Giant Novels". These days, most Star Trek novels commissioned for trade paperback publication are contracted at 100k–120k words.

Thanks for answering and confirming my instinctive thoughts.

 

[Greg Cox]

Apparently, this varies by subgenre as well. You are more likely to get away with writing a massive tome if you're writing an epic fantasy saga than if you're writing, say, a horror novel.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Yeef! Just because Tolkien did LotR, and Lewis did Narnia, does every Tolkien or Lewis wannabe have a license to do verbose?

Thinking of Lloyd Bentsen's remark to Dan Quayle. The line that's a lot more famous than the guy who said it.

 

[Christopher]

Yeef! Just because Tolkien did LotR, and Lewis did Narnia, does every Tolkien or Lewis wannabe have a license to do verbose?

I don't know what gave you the impression that the Narnia books are verbose. They're actually quite short:

• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – 38,421 words
• Prince Caspian – 46,290 words
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – 53,960 words
• The Silver Chair – 51,022 words
• The Horse and His Boy – 48,029 words
• The Magician’s Nephew – 64,480 words
• The Last Battle – 43,333 words

https://blog.fostergrant.co.uk/2017/08/03/word-counts-popular-books-world/

The entire 7-book Narnia series is only slightly longer than The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers combined. It's a third as long as the entire Harry Potter series.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Yes, they are, even as a series, quite a bit shorter than LotR, and as individual books, quite short.

LotR and Narnia (and the complete 14 canonical volumes of Oz, again taken as a whole) are long without being nearly as verbose as the stuff being produced by wannabes at a fraction of the length.

LotR, Narnia, Oz, L'Engle's "Time Quintet," the complete canonical Sherlock Holmes, ADF's Humanx Commonwealt, &c are long because they have a lot to say. Stuff from lesser writers is long because it's verbose.

 

[Christopher]

LotR and Narnia (and the complete 14 canonical volumes of Oz, again taken as a whole) are long without being nearly as verbose as the stuff being produced by wannabes at a fraction of the length.

I still don't understand why you would characterize Narnia as "long." A 7-book series of less than 350,000 words is not long.

And lumping LotR and Narnia together as if they were interchangeable doesn't make sense to me either. LotR is one long story -- quite literally a single huge novel whose publisher insisted on splitting it into three volumes. Narnia is seven relatively short tales with a variety of distinct settings and characters, including a flashback side story and an origin-story prequel that break the sequence.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Also quite true. LotR is really the only one I've cited that's one continuous work.

 

[JJMiller]

In both Star Wars and Star Trek, apart from my shorter debut Trek novel Takedown, I had always kept studiously to 100,000 words, +/- 5%, even after the Trek move to trade paperbacks. This has changed with my last two novels, Picard: Rogue Elements and Strange New Worlds: The High Country, both of which are hardcovers in the 130,000 neighborhood, High Country probably a little longer. There's a few reasons for that.

One is, yes, they're hardcovers, and I like giving readers some more entertainment value if I can — something I feel that's deserving of the format. Another related reason is time. Because the tempo of releases has changed, I've had more time to contemplate the stories, and follow threads I might otherwise have skipped or summarized. Rogue Elements took extra weeks to write, but it was still done before deadline, while due to the paper shortages, High Country will wind up being about 20 months from conception to publication.

A further dynamic is the feel of the stories. We all try to immerse readers in characters' worlds, but you kind of learn to sense what's an appropriate window. A great example is the contrast between Rogue Elements and Die Standing, which are largely single-character showcases. Rios, for his other problems, is a relatively casual and easygoing (or, more precisely, numbed) character coping with more personal stakes — while Emperor Georgiou's adventures are a lot more intense, in a much darker and dangerous place with the whole universe in the balance. The three planets she visits I had developed enough that I could easily have spent more pages there, but the danger of exhausting the reader (and the writer!) was higher. Rios' world was just an easier place to want to hang out for longer in.

High Country is a different animal — multiple characters exploring a single "strange new world" that's been developed more throroughly than I've had space to do in previous adventures: the setting is one of the stars of the book, along with the people we meet along the way. Getting both the epic feel and the personal stories in is a place where having the freedom to go longer really helps.

Lastly, a bigger canvas can allow for more experimentation. For me, the nonfiction excerpts in Rogue Elements started as fun bonus material and wound up being integral to the themes and the plot. It's nice to be able to go "let's see what this looks like" and follow an idea. As noted by others above, that kind of flexibility isn't always the case with every project and publisher, but I'm pleased that I had that option here.

 

[Bryan Levy]

@JJMiller I absolutely loved Rogue Elements, it is very much my favorite Picard novel thus far. I think it’s because very early on I said to myself, “Oh, this is Dortmunder.” Did any of those Westlake books influence you, or did I completely miss the mark?

 

[Ronald Held]

@Christopher, do you have any Trek projects that you can talk about?

 

[JJMiller]

@JJMiller I absolutely loved Rogue Elements, it is very much my favorite Picard novel thus far. I think it’s because very early on I said to myself, “Oh, this is Dortmunder.” Did any of those Westlake books influence you, or did I completely miss the mark?

In fact, I’ve never read any of them. But I may now!

 

[Bryan Levy]

In fact, I’ve never read any of them. But I may now!

I think you’ll like them very much, judging by Rogue Elements. Dortmunder’s like Fletch, but a thief. Great stuff.

 

[Damian]

I was always curious....

The authors of the novels have often created some backstory that was never developed in a canon source for our characters or a storyline. It might have been in one of the relaunches, or even just a standalone book.

I know our authors understand the shows can do what they want essentially with backstories and plot elements. They all understand that any backstory they develop can be undone by a future episode or movie and they all accept that freely.

BUT....that being said I'm curious if any of our authors who post here have ever developed some backstory that they were really proud of. They got done with that and thought, 'damn, I really liked how that turned out.' Then some episode comes out and blows that backstory right out of the water and just feel like 'what a bummer' and wish the show hadn't done that.

It was something I was thinking about as I was watching Strange New Worlds and realizing that the show basically obliterated the entire backstory Christopher had developed for Living Memory for Uhura.

Again I know our authors know the deal writing tie-in fiction and never expect things to be otherwise. This is more a 'wishful thinking' question. Has there been some backstory character or story element they developed that they were so proud of that they were actually a little bummed out got overwritten by some show?

 

[Christopher]

Again I know our authors know the deal writing tie-in fiction and never expect things to be otherwise. This is more a 'wishful thinking' question. Has there been some backstory character or story element they developed that they were so proud of that they were actually a little bummed out got overwritten by some show?

It's natural to be disappointed in a case like that, but we go in with the expectation that it can and probably will happen. As I often point out, that's true of science fiction in general -- any speculation we offer about conjectural science or future events is likely to be contradicted by new discoveries or just by the passage of time. So you can't work in this field without accepting that your speculations will have a finite shelf life. The goal is not to try to "get it right," but simply to offer the most plausible and interesting conjectures you can, given what's known at the time.

I grew up with Trek tie-ins that were usually not in continuity with each other, so it was common for there to be multiple contradictory versions of something like, say, Kirk's first mission on the Enterprise or McCoy's divorce or Spock's falling out with Sarek. When I wrote Living Memory, I drew on several mutually contradictory versions of Uhura's backstory (Alan Dean Foster's from Star Trek Log Ten, Gordon Eklund's from The Starless World, William Rotsler's from Star Trek II Biographies, Ryan Parrott's from Star Trek Ongoing #18) to provide elements for my version. So I never had any illusion that mine was a unique or definitive version. It was just the best conjecture I could come up with.

I was a little miffed that it got contradicted so quickly, but mostly I feel the makers of SNW were doing the same thing in spirit that I was, taking this underdeveloped character and giving her an overdue focus and fleshing out. So I can't really be upset about that. I'm still proud of my version, because I really like how it turned out as a character story, and there were parts that surprised me with how moving and emotional they turned out to be. That's the best experience for a writer, when your characters take over from you and tell the story better than you imagined it would be. That's what matters. Not whether it's "real" or "right," because all of this is imaginary, and there are lots of things in Trek that have several alternative versions in the literature. All that matters is if it's a good story.

 

[Damian]

I was a little miffed that it got contradicted so quickly, but mostly I feel the makers of SNW were doing the same thing in spirit that I was, taking this underdeveloped character and giving her an overdue focus and fleshing out.

That was one of the things that made me think of that. Living Memory was such a recent novel, not something written years ago. And it was quickly 'overwritten' for lack of a better word, to the point that I don't think anything between the two is consistent. That's what got me thinking, hmm, I wonder if any of our authors, even knowing it can happen anytime, ever are disappointed about something they did that they were really proud of got overwritten by a future show/movie.

 

[Christopher]

That's what got me thinking, hmm, I wonder if any of our authors, even knowing it can happen anytime, ever are disappointed about something they did that they were really proud of got overwritten by a future show/movie.

It's natural enough to have that feeling, but again, it's just the nature of the job. We don't own Trek, we're just borrowing it. If someone lets you borrow their car, you don't have the right to feel violated if they decide to take it back. You might be disappointed and inconvenienced, but you accept it as their right.

And again, it's the same in original science fiction. Isaac Asimov once wrote a story predicated on the assumption that Mercury constantly kept one face toward the Sun, which was disproven after the story was sold and before it was published. So it was already obsolete when it came out. It's just the way the game works. It's not about being right, it's about making the best conjectures you can with what you currently know. If you can't accept reality (or new fictional canon) overwriting your conjectures, you're in the wrong line of work.

 

[Damian]

It's natural enough to have that feeling, but again, it's just the nature of the job. We don't own Trek, we're just borrowing it. If someone lets you borrow their car, you don't have the right to feel violated if they decide to take it back. You might be disappointed and inconvenienced, but you accept it as their right.

And again, it's the same in original science fiction. Isaac Asimov once wrote a story predicated on the assumption that Mercury constantly kept one face toward the Sun, which was disproven after the story was sold and before it was published. So it was already obsolete when it came out. It's just the way the game works. It's not about being right, it's about making the best conjectures you can with what you currently know. If you can't accept reality (or new fictional canon) overwriting your conjectures, you're in the wrong line of work.

Yeah, certainly when it comes to real science I imagine that will be an issue. But I figure you guys might be bothered less by that because you can't help it if someone makes a new discovery that undermines some previous plot you created.

I was thinking more in lines of the imaginary stories. Things less to do with science and more with character and world building within the Star Trek universe.

As a reader it even bothers me sometimes. For instance, I've made no secret that I really don't care for Picard a whole lot, while I really enjoyed the litverse universe. It sucks that the litverse had to end for a show that I thought was actually far inferior to the tie-ins. Obviously that's just my own opinion but it's a bummer. Especially season 2. Ugh. They finally came out with a Star Trek on screen that I do not like at all (though someone pointed out with all the hundreds, even thousands of hours of Star Trek it's amazing it took this long for someone to do something I didn't like so there's that ).

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, certainly when it comes to real science I imagine that will be an issue. But I figure you guys might be bothered less by that because you can't help it if someone makes a new discovery that undermines some previous plot you created.

I don't see a difference. In both regular science fiction and media tie-in fiction, we're taking a set of known facts and extrapolating from them to speculate about the unknowns. In both cases (provided the media franchise is still active), new data can supersede our speculations.

As far as being proprietary about our creations, that's just not an appropriate attitude for tie-in work. About my original fiction creations, sure. Those are all mine. But in tie-in work, I'm a hired contractor. I create those stories for my employer. However proud of them I am, I accept going in that they aren't mine. Like I said, if I couldn't accept that, I wouldn't do tie-in work at all. Sometimes, yes, I regret that I don't have control over them, but it is a given from the start. And I have my original fiction, where I do have complete control.

If anything bothers me, it's that more people don't read my original fiction. Especially that I can't manage to get any new Patreon subscribers.

I was thinking more in lines of the imaginary stories. Things less to do with science and more with character and world building within the Star Trek universe.

Again, it's the same principle. Writing stories about pre-existing fictional characters or settings entails learning the established facts about them and extrapolating to construct plausible conjectures about how they'd behave in novel situations. That's no different from researching planetary science or evolutionary biology to write hard science fiction, or researching history to write historical fiction. It's all about learning what's already known and using it as a basis for speculation.