In my case, part of the reason I prefer using a computer is that I've always had lousy handwriting and a tendency to make typos. It's a lot easier to erase things on a computer.
What does a ST Novel's Outline look like?
- Thread starter chrinFinity
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I hate to admit it but I can't write first drafts on a computer. Everything's in longhand. Then I scratch out words, circle others, draw arrows to move paragraphs, scribble in the margins... My notepad ends up looking like a piece of post-modern art. But it requires no electricity and I can take it with me wherever I go. As long as a pen or pencil is handy, I'm good.
I'm that way with plotting. When it comes to actually writing the prose . . . yeah, modern word processing is great. I still remember the bad old days when you had to retype the entire page if you wanted to revise or correct something, which invariably threw off all the rest of the pages in the chapter. And struggling to line up up a piece of typing paper in the carriage so that you could type over what you previously wrote . . . I don't want to think how many frustrated hours I wasted wrestling with that!
But when it comes to working out the plot and brainstorming ideas, etcetera . . . I wouldn't know how to do it without paper and pen. I can fill up entire legal pads just plotting one chapter . . . ..
Getting back OT: One thing I have to watch out for is that my outlines tend to be heavy on plot and skimpy on characterization, which can come back to bite me when I finally sit down to write the book and discover that I have no idea who the supporting characters are beyond their most rudimentary narrative functions ("visiting scientist," "doomed redshirt," "annoying bureaucrat," etc.).
I've found that, once the proposal is sold, it's worth sitting down in a comfy chair and taking a day or two to flesh out the supporting characters, figure out their backstories, and assign them some distinctive quirks and traits.
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SimpleLogic
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Is it easier or harder to write a novel based within an established universe like Star Trek?
I find that planning on paper gives you a lot of freedom. You can move things around and play with placement of scenes and stuff. I like to make timelines and diagrams for things. Writing the prose on the PC is great, but paper can be nice for organization. Since my work is in textbooks, I need to spend a lot of time organizing ideas and thinking of the visuals that go around my text.
In a lot of ways, it's easier, because most of the basic worldbuilding and character creation has already been done, and its a matter of taking known elements and extrapolating from them. Although the other side of the coin is that you have to do a lot of research to keep it all straight. But research is often a part of original writing too -- if you're doing hard SF you need to research the relevant science, historical fiction means researching the period in question, a medical thriller means researching medicine, a romantic tale in Paris entails researching Paris, etc.
The main thing that's harder about it, I suppose, is the relative lack of freedom to go your own way, the need to work within a certain set of rules and limits. Also the need to get studio approval at every stage and make changes if they're required.
But one thing that definitely feels easier, if you're an established writer, is making the sale. With original work, you don't know if you'll sell it or to whom. With Trek writing, you sell it before you even write it. And that takes a lot of the weight off -- except it gives you the added pressure of a deadline you have to meet. So everything's a tradeoff.
Yeah, I've definitely been spoiled that way. My poor agent has had to explain to me (more than once) that, no, he can't sell an original novel on the basis of just a ten-page outline; I have to actually write the damn book first and hope he can sell it to someone.
Which probably explains why I haven't finished an original novel in decades . . . .
Meanwhile, another low-tech technique: I usually end up laying the plot out on an actual paper calendar just so I can see the whole story at a glance and keep the timing straight. ("How many days have passed since they first found the body?")
I've been known to pick up old, out-of-date calendars for pennies just so I can use them to diagram the plot.
When I was revising Ex Machina, I realized I'd introduced a major temporal paradox; I had two scenes that were supposed to be no more than hours apart bracketing other scenes that had to be a couple of days apart. I had to do some serious reworking of that portion, and ever since then, I've made sure to create a scene list of every novel so I can keep track of the dates and intervals. But I do it as a computer file, which is easier to edit than something written on paper.
I tend to write my first drafts longhand. Maybe just a partial first draft to get me started, but many things start with pen and paper for me.
For example, a third of "The Ginger Kid" (ReDeus: Divine Tales, on sale now, free plug) was written longhand because I was able to work on it on the daily train commute that way. This mode of writing helped me to get the narrator's voice down; he's a washed-up baseball player looking back on a lost season, and he had a specific kind of speech pattern I wanted to capture that I felt was best served by writing at the speed of the pen.
For a complete first draft, the article on Star Trek: Generations I wrote for Paul Simpson for Star Trek: Magazine a few years ago was completely drafted by hand; I liked the feel of the prose as I was writing it that way and I didn't want to lose that. (Unfortunately, when I typed it up, that first draft came in at close to three times the assigned word count.)
I don't use a notebook. I use loose leaf paper, preferably 8 1/2" x 11" ruled notebook paper. (Normal notebook paper is 8" x 10 1/2".) I carry it on a clipboard, and I can shuffle papers around as necessary. It's a system that works for me.
On the other hand, I tried writing a Spider-Man story on the plane several years back and gave up quickly. It was utter hell; I was too used to being able to move sentences around effortlessly, write a sentence four different ways before deciding which version I liked, etc.
Brainstorming is one thing. For actual writing, I prefer computers these days.
But on the other, other hand, I managed to get four action scenes choreographed on my last flight to L.A. Just using a pen and legal pads.
Brainstorming is one thing. For actual writing, I prefer computers these days.
But on the other, other hand, I managed to get four action scenes choreographed on my last flight to L.A. Just using a pen and legal pads.
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SimpleLogic
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Mr. Cox I really enjoyed the Eugenics Wars novels and especially loved how you made it all fit into what we actually lived through while also tying together the Trek stories of the past to make them all fit together. Was those particular books a daunting task? If it is OK to ask.
Writers certainly do have their rituals, don't they? Everyone is different, which is why "how to" advise can only be taken so far. Ultimately we have to find our own way, along our own path.
Thanks for asking! Glad you liked those books.
And, yeah, those books required an unusual amount of research. I still have an entire shelf of books on India and Indian history. I remember spending an afternoon trying to find out what the Indira Gandhi Airport was named before she was assassinated . . . .
Basically, plotting those books was like putting together an enormous crossword puzzle that combined (1) real history, (2) Star Trek history, and (3) as many pop cultural references and in-jokes as I could get away with!
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SimpleLogic
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Job well done because it is one of my personal favorites for all those reasons. I'm sure it would have been easier to wrote it in a fictionalized modern setting (if that is even a thing) but choosing to make it into a sort of Bond cover-up conspiracy was very enjoyable.
As this was in the early 2000's, did you not use the internet much for research?
You know, I can't remember. I'm pretty sure I was hooked up to the internet by then, but I remember relying heavily on various reference books I had piled up around the apartment.
Thinking back, I believe I had a very slow internet connection (Compuserve?) so I mostly just used the computer for word-processing and email and, okay, XENA message boards.
Regarding the computer-vs-paper debate, it's likely my own bias due to working in software, but I've been surprised several times to find the writers on the board less technology-affine than I would have expected science fiction authors to be. I suppose it's a bit like meeting an actor and realizing how different they are as persons from the characters they play; science fiction writers may pen stories involving high technology, but their professional skill is the writing, the make-belief, not the technology (although some SF writers obviously do have technology or science backgrounds). In that sense it's also not disappointing as much as rather impressive and intriguing, considering the massive amount of influence science fiction stories have had on real-world technology: It's rather cool how very different enterprises end up reinforcing each other.
Exactly. I actually majored in chemistry, way back when, but figured out early on that I was much better at science fiction than real science--and that describing gravity beams tearing apart a planet is much easier than trying to install some goddamn new program on my computer.
Plus, to be honest, I was never really a hard-sf guy. I grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, "Kenneth Robeson," and the like, not Heinlein or Hal Clement. More Weird Tales than Astounding/Analog, if you know what I mean.
I think of myself as more of a modern-day pulp writer than anything else.
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