fiction

A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: What It’s About

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

I’ve been posting about my writing here a lot.  So, with intermittent updates, I’m going to talk about my fiction writing project, “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet.”

First of all, yes, fiction.  I’ve not done public fiction in awhile – but I did side projects, edited, coached, and did stuff for the Sanctum.  I figure it was time – and it’s fun.  If this works, I plan to split my time between fiction and non-fiction.

And what’s it all about?  To sum it up in one sentence:

A sorceress, an engineer, and a priest on a planet-hopping road trip with the owner of a mysterious collection of holy books.

The idea came together when I got inspired to write, contemplated a few past projects and some recent anime, and came up with a simple idea – what happens when you take a world of magic and monsters, gods and spirits, and technology evolves as well?  Welcome to the world of Telvaren and it’s planetary colonies, a nation of science and sorcery, where the gods use the internet and interplanetary travel is done via techno-wizardry.  Politics is driven by a mixture of gigantic cities, assorted guilds and unions, and divine interests – but don’t let the present distract you, because there’s a past of mysterious artifacts, demons, dragons, and more waiting to be discovered . . .

Into this comes Marigold and Scintilla, a sorceress and a “technic” who act as a freelance techno-magical hazmat and research team for the wizardly guild Phoenix Ascendant.  They have “A Plan” for their careers, which requires them to get into a lot of weird situations to gain influence with the guild.  They’re good at getting into and out of trouble – until someone wants to hire them not to find something mysterious, but to help him carry a set of holy books to Godsgrave, the world where deities go to die.

Also, it’s a lot of money.

Soon they’re outrunning a special branch of the Military consisting only of people who’ve lost loved ones, what may or may not be a demon escaped from the prison-world of Pandemonium, and some mysterious individuals spreading stories on the Network that connects people.  No one is what they seem, no one is quiet telling the truth, and the dumbest things can be done by people who are very smart . . .

So it’s up to Marigold and Scintilla to punch, talk, shoot, conjure, run, lie, and plan their way out of trouble.  They’re going to get their client to Godsgrave by hook or by crook, because as crazy as things get, the two people they are sure they can trust is each other.

I hope you’ll all enjoy it, and I plan to post more on my blog – I think what I’ll do is alternate posts on the story with posts on my writing findings, give or take.

– Steve

A Writer’s View: A May Roundup

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

I figure with all the writing I do and have planned, it’d be fun, educational, and good experience to reguarly share my findings on writing.  So . . . I am.  Probably about once a week or so I’ll spew forth the latest seltzer water of wisdom I happen to have handy.

Right now most of these insights come from my first public fiction project, “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet.”  I’ve written fiction a lot before, have edited, have consulted, but figured it was time to return to fiction in style – with a novel.  Short summary: science fiction/fantasy fusion combination of road-trip and religious pilgrimage goes dreadfully wrong.

So the insights to share for May – any one of these might become a later column.

  • Agile works really well for writing – the mindset and the methods.
  • Writing is about loops, finding cycles and patterns in your story.  Because of this plotting one idea may lead to changes, expansions, or new ideas.
  • Never assume anything in your story is “true” until it’s written – discovery is part of the process.
  • Look for Congruence – when things “feel” right.  You want this on all levels of your work, and before you move on from one thing (say from a character idea to a character outline) make sure things “feel” right.
  • Your inner voice is probably right.  The voice that comes after that voice and points out all its flaws is probably less reliable.
  • When plotting, your story may become “timey-wimey” – ideas later on may influence earlier sections.  That’s fine.
  • Characters are the true measure of your world and writing – knowing them means you know your world and story.
  • Characters are a great way to discover your world – designing them makes you ask specific questions you may have missed.
  • Think of your audience – keep them in mind in your writing, what you say, what you deliver.
  • Enthusiasm beats self-loathing for a writer every time. Better to succeed by creating better than tearing down.
  • Beware “Big Rock” ideas that you’re so committed too they drag the story and other ideas down.
  • Don’t “commit” too early to ideas, concepts, or scenes.
  • A small change may quickly scale up and affect your story.
  • Give yourself a place to record ideas without commuting to them.
  • Start over as early as possible so you don’t have to later.  My restarting the plotting cost me 4-6 weeks, but I can’t imagine what’d have cost me if I’d rammed through with my lame initial plot.

Hope these give you something to think about!
– Steve

My Agile Life: Failure

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

I’m talking my “Agile Life” experiment where I use the Agile techniques in Scrum in my everyday life.  Well, it doesn’t always work, so let’s talk failure – specifically something that went bad this Sprint of May.

As you know one of my goals for the May Sprint was to plot a new novel and write chapter 1. That has partially failed – which is a great time to examine what I did wrong and talk failure.

Agile methods are all about learning as opposed to shame.  We all make mistakes, we all have discoveries of what we didn’t know, so the goal is to learn and adapt.

So first, let’s see what happened:

  • I was going to start a new novel, “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet,” an SF/Fantasy mix.
  • I was going to use a lot of the techniques I’d used before to write it – heavy setting detail, iterative plotting. Just on a larger scale.
  • I found things not feeling “right.” The plot was stale, parts came and went, I didn’t feel I had a grasp on the story – I had about 60% of it but something felt off.
  • After analysis I realized I didn’t have a good a grasp as I thought, it wasn’t quite “alive.” There were good parts – there were *great* parts. But it felt half-made.

So now the questions come in – “Why.”

There’s a great technique called “The Five Whys” that I learned – basically to solve a problem, ask why – and when you get an answer, ask why again. Soon you’ll get to the cause, part of the cause, or one of the causes.

  • WHY did it feel wrong? Because it was. It was patchwork.
  • WHY did it feel patchwork? Because some parts were far more fleshed-out than others and they conflicted due to that.
  • WHY are they half fleshed-out? Because my designing was erratic.
  • WHY was my designing erratic? Because I dived in and didn’t think of what I needed to do as a specific set of tasks.
  • WHY did I do that? Because I didn’t think I’d need it, I’d just dive in as I’ve done this before.

I came to realize I got a bit arrogant. I’ve written and built worlds for 40 years. I’ve published books. I should be able to dive into this right because I’ve done so many similar things?

Yep, I should – if I had thought ahead. But I didn’t think about what was needed, didn’t look at my techniques, didn’t break down the work. If this had been a programming project, it’d be the Product Owner and an Engineer saying “hey, we know how to do this easy, so let’s just block out some time” without the Scrum Master saying “why do you think this doesn’t need the usual level of analysis?”

What I should have done is use all my techniques and experience to design a better plan – how long it’d take for this tasks, what tasks were needed, and so on.  It would have made me think, made me more aware of the work needed, and how that work tied together.

Lesson learned – in writing, like anything else, a good work breakdown is needed.  Just because you might be able to do it “from the gut” is no reason not to think it over – especially when you’re getting back in the swing of things.  Had this not been a novel but a shorter work I might not have caught this mistake.

Now of course after finding this the goal is to get back on track. How am I doing that?

  1. I will focus this month on plotting – any time meant for Chapter 1 now moves to plotting.  That helps me get a timeframe.  It’s still adding work to my sprint, so I may move out other plans – since getting this done is important, and spreading it out too much may mean it loses coherence.
  2. Writing is moving out by one month at least – maybe two.  But I’ll try to do Chapter One next month and then slowly ramp up.
  3. To plot the book I am breaking it down into tasks required to get a full plot outline that I can write from.  It’s really more of a product design process or a research task.  I may write up more on that depending how it goes.

The story quality is already looking much better, and I learned something about my own creativity. Also the story may have a slightly off kilter Technomancer riding a motorcycle on top of a moving train, so there’s that.

A good lesson on many grounds.

– Steve