This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #487, on the subject of A World in Space.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first nine 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, and
- Con Verse Lea,
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 tenth, In Version, 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 were:
- #476: Versers Deduce, covering chapters 1 through 12;
- #478: Character Conflicts, covering 13 through 24;
- #480: Versers Think, 25 through 36
- #482: Versers Engage, 37 through 48.
- #484: Characters Maneuver, 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, Beam 176
Chapter 62, Slade 229
Chapter 63, Kondor 236
Chapter 64, Brown 260
Chapter 65, Beam 177
Chapter 66, Slade 230
Chapter 67, Brown 261
Chapter 68, Kondor 237
Chapter 69, Slade 231
Chapter 70, Brown 262
Chapter 71, Slade 232
Chapter 72, Brown 263
Although I drafted this chapter, Eric had contributed some of the ideas for it in discussion. We were considering the bears as an ironic exit from this world. Eric kept using the word “chimera” in a sense unfamiliar to me, but which apparently suggested some genetic manipulation of some sort, so I stopped with the appearance of the bears and suggested Eric revise it as desired.
Eric drafted this originally as chapter 60, but I inserted two chapters mostly to give a credible feeling that they had prepared for it. At the end, Eric had the ships separating for two separate landing sites, but my previous descriptions of the ship suggested that launch bays were near the bottom and the bridge and simulator near the top and elevators in the center, so it made the most sense for them to use the same bay even if there were more than one, and do at least part of the journey together.
Eric drafted this, and it went with only minor editing.
Eric drafted this. We had discussed such issues as whether they would find a vehicle of some sort, and Eric wanted to have a lot of combat aboard the ship; even so I was surprised that they disembarked directly into a firefight.
I chose not to start this chapter because I thought Eric had some ideas about the bear(s). Eric eventually wrote the attack.
At this point, we were both fairly certain that at least two and possibly all four of our viewpoint characters would be versing out within the next few chapters. Our biggest problem was that we were quite uncertain where to send any of them.
I was waiting to see what Eric would do with Beam’s bear “chimera”, but I decided to jump ahead on the Slade and Brown threads. One reason I jumped into that was that I realized that the robot had been an animal capture bot, and could probably appear to be so if it were carrying them, which would let them be insignificant in a different way.
The cliffhanger was intended to set up the next Brown chapter with Slade killing an alien. I envisioned it as an alien with a clipboard, recalling his first kill in the first book.
Having set up the fight, I came back and wrote it, mostly because I liked the image of Slade being ignored by the alien until the attack fell. This delivered Derek to the right floor and sent Slade into his big combat.
I had Derek learn the Insignificancy spell without any notion of when or whether he would use it.
Eric wrote this mostly to let the reader know that we hadn’t forgotten Kondor. He included seeing a flash in space, but I removed that because first I thought it too soon and second I didn’t think Slade could produce any explosion large enough to be seen from the ground without somehow destroying the ship.
Eric wrote this, in which there was a great deal of combat and Slade was barely hanging on to life from the sound of it. I thought it too long, and so at the point where the former captain robot produces blades I decided it was time to catch up with Derek, and broke the chapter into two.
I inserted this chapter to break the extended Slade battle and catch up with what Derek was doing taking over the ship.
This was the end of Eric’s original Slade 231, which I pushed by inserting the Brown chapter.
I wrote this as the endgame for Seeker’s attack on the parakeets.
This has been the sixth behind-the-writings look at In Version. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.
