A Bridge To The Quiet Planet

A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: Avenoth

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Let’s get to know more about the setting of my upcoming novel, A Bridge To The Quiet Planet.

Avenoth
Avenoth is the star around which Telvaren and its sister worlds orbit. It’s a g-class star, analogous to our own sun, if slightly larger. It is orbited by the following planets, from closest to furthest from the sun:

  • Maladon – A rapidly spinning rocky world close to the sun. There was a failed attempt to visit it out of geologic curiosity, but the voidship was lost.
  • Gellitar – A semi-arid world first reached in 200 BR. Gellitar was arguably the site of the first Bridge, as primitive as it was. Initially a curiosity, it was colonized officially pre-war, forming the major city of The Barrow.
  • Telvaren – Homeworld of humanity and arguably the gods of Avenoth. Telvaren sports one major continent and one (previously two) minor continents. It is the most technically, magical, and theologically advanced of humanity’s worlds and the most populous of the worlds. It survived the great War, where power consolidated – and was wrestled away – by the Twelve Great Cities. It has one moon.
  • Godsrest – Godsrest has an orbit at a different angle than most of the worlds around Avenoth. it is the grave-world of the gods, where they go to die to avoid affecting the minds of their followers and the world. Godsrest was “theoformed” aeons ago.
  • Lindhaem – The second world reached by humanity. Lindhaem is a world known for its hospitable environment – nearly equal to Telvaren if slightly colder – but hostile life forms and diseases. It was rapidly colonized during the War, but this led to a variety of factions, minor nations, and political chaos. The planet’s government is in Dawn’s Approach, but it’s sister city of Corvallion wields considerable economic power. It has one moon, Roshnak, which appears to be a separate planet captured ages past.
  • Pandemonium – Formerly a world known as The Eye, it’s a world of extremes, with areas of cold, heat, and unusual geologic activities. Near the end of the War the majority of Demon Royalty and the Emperor were exiled here as an easier solution to mass battles against the poisonous creatures.
  • Iskomal – A gas giant with multiple moons, some of which are colonized. However no moon is habitable without technology, sorcery, or divine intervention.
  • Final Gleam – The last known planet in the solar system, it’s a frozen world of strange crystals.

There are various rumored other worlds, including lost planets, hidden ones, or even a complete parallel Telvaren on the other side of Avenoth.

– Steve

A Writer’s Life: Arcs Over Rewrites

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

So “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet,” my sf/fantasy sarcastic road trip novel, is in editing.  I did a few passes, but now the goal is to tighten up the plot and characterizations.

Originally I had wanted to go over the story and truly re-work it to be “what I wanted.”  The plan was to re-outline the plot, and then do a mix of cut-and-paste, writing, and rewriting to flesh out the “new” novel.  But something felt wrong . . . that kind of thing that tells me I’m doing something wrong.

So that gut feel – why did it feel wrong?  It felt excessive, it felt like a lot of effort, and it also didn’t feel like it’d bring me much.  I’d spend a bunch of time building an outline, then try to shoehorn things in, and as my past experience had told me – I’d probably find plenty of other things I’d have to change.

It’s always important to listen to those gut feelings, and this one said it was a bad idea.

At that point, I discussed this with friends.  How was I going to tweak the plot?  After a few discussions, I went back to my lessons from Agile Software development – good improvement is often iterative.  So how would I truly improve the plot in iterations?

Well, in software you rarely go overhaul everything.  You tweak the components, improving this piece here, that piece there.  My novel wasn’t flawed, it just needed to be improved.  Re-plotting it would have been as logical as doing a working piece of software from scratch just to add a few new features or improve existing ones.

That’s when I realized what I wanted to do was improve various story arcs.  So this is what I’m doing:

  1. First, I went over my notes and thoughts, and wrote down the arcs I wanted to improve or make.
  2. Under each arc I wrote down the general things I wanted to do in story order.
  3. Now with that done, I plan to rewrite just the arcs, going through the story (which I know all too well) to just add to, tweak, expand, or reduce the story to embody these new or improved arcs.

What does this net me:

  • It’s easier.  It’s just not some giant re-outline that’d be inaccurate quickly.
  • It’s about value.  Each individual arc improvement makes the story better.
  • It’s atomistic.  Each arc improvement is roughly standalone, so I can add them with relative ease.  I can also drop them with relative ease.
  • It’s synergestic.  I’m working on one arc at a time, so I get to see the synergies as I go part-by-part (which plays into iterative improvement).
  • It’s iterative.  Each arc I add or improve in the story allows me to re-evaluate progress – and re-evaluate the other arcs I want to add or improve.
  • It’s more hands-on.  I’m editing arcs much quicker as opposed to making some plan, so it keeps me in tune with the story.

I’ll let you know how this goes.  But it’s certainly less of a burden on my mind, it gets me writing quicker, and it fits my Agile experiences.

– Steve

A Writer’s Life: Space

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

This month I’m trying to write at least 24,000 words, preferably 30,000.  This isn’t due to any NaNoWriMo thing, it’s a personal challenge to up my productivity.  In setting this goal, I ran into a problem.

I’d set aside time to write, but it felt constrained.  A punishment, a forced duty.

Yet when I’d get writing, I’d often enjoy it.  I find that even when you don’t want to write, doing it for five minutes usually unblocks you.  Besides, even if you hate it, you’re going to edit it later, so might as well enjoy half-baked crap as you make it.

At this point I knew my “ugh, time to write” reaction was irrational.  So I set about thinking of how I could “re-imagine” that writing time to make me see it in a positive light.  Not so much tricking myself, but more how to take a better attitude.

At the same time, I was also discussing the concept of “Pull” in Kanban, and Agile methodology.  So you can guess this is another one of my Agile/Writing posts.

Anyway, the idea in Kanban is you only work on something when you have space to do it – then you “Pull.”  It’s the opposite of “Pushing” work.  If you’re blocked up, you don’t Pull in new work, you focus on getting things moving.  If you can’t get anything moving because of other people, go do something else like take a class or get a coffee once you’re done yelling at them

It sounds weird, but then you realize that Kanban gives you “space” to work.  “Space” to take tasks on when you’re ready.  It’s very much like my earlier thoughts on the subject.

That’s when I realized that setting aside writing time was not making myself write – it was setting aside Space to write.  That 30 minutes or 60 minutes where I’m clear to write.

This changed my mindset (for the most part).  It felt less constrained, less forced, less trapped.  Sometimes it even felt amazing – “a whole hour to write, wow!”  Oh sure I still get those moments of feeling I’m forcing myself, but they’re diminished – and I can rethink that time as “space” and reduce the feelings.

Let’s see if this gets even better over time, but it’s certainly helped already.

– Steve