This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #511, on the subject of Characters Change.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first ten 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,
- Con Verse Lea, and
- In Version, in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley,
2 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 eleventh, Con Version, again 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 ninth post for this novel, covering chapters 97 through 108. Previous mark Joseph “young” behind-the-writings web log posts for this book include:
- #498: Characters Restart covering chapters 1 through 12;
- #501: Characters Orienting, covering chapters 13 through 24;
- #502: Verser Setbacks, chapters 25 through 36;
- #503: Versers Progress, chapters 37 through 48;
- #505: Versers Advance, chapters 49 through 60;
- #506: Characters Involved, chapters 61 through 72;
- #509: Character Challenges, chapters 73 through 84; and
- #510: Versers Debate, chapters 85 through 96.
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. This is also the longest book to date, and has quite a few long chapters in it, so there will be quite a few of these background articles.
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 97 Takano 115
Chapter 98 Brown 316
Chapter 99 Cooper 32
Chapter 100, Brown 317
Chapter 101, Takano 116
Chapter 102, Brown 318
Chapter 103, Cooper 33
Chapter 104, Brown 319
Chapter 105, Cooper 34
Chapter 106, Brown 320
Chapter 107, Takano 117
Chapter 108, Brown 321
Eric wrote this, covering a month and reducing Varlax’ absence to a single chapter.
Eric wrote a massive chapter with a huge confusing dream or vision sequence here, and although I was uncomfortable with a lot of it, I decided to keep it, but to break it into shorter chapters and to make a few minor tweaks. I wound up with six chapters, not all of them actually short, but the first one covers all that precedes the vision.
Eric had set up the bank robbery, so I tackled the scene itself. We had discussed the powers to go with the names Major Pain and Private Problem. Having written as far as drawing the sword, I decided to make that the cliffhanger and return to the scene in the next Cooper chapter.
Eric’s dream sequence begins here, and I made a chapter of what seemed the first natural chunk, an introduction to the vision within a vision.
Eric drafted this as Tommy’s exit. We had agreed on the framework that she would be trying to rescue a child from copperheads and would be bitten, but we had some difficulty with the execution. Eric had envisioned a terrain that might exist in the mountains at the north end of the state, but not in the Cohansey Aquifer of this setting. I made a lot of tweaks to get it to fit the setting.
Eric’s dream sequence at this point shifted into its first major scene, which I cut into its own chapter.
When I had left the scene hanging, I was not certain what I was going to do with it. I returned perhaps an hour later to finish the encounter. The Hebrews quote is in the language of Young’s Literal Translation, the preferred translation of the player on whom the character is based.
The second major scene of Eric’s dream sequence was shorter, but still formed a coherent chapter.
This chapter was originally Takano 117, but when Eric wrote Takano 117 he brought it to a confrontation with Cooper, and when I was catching up I was unaware that this had been continued in Cooper 34 two chapters later, and thought Eric was asking me to finish it. I wrote the rest, and then when I got to Cooper 34 realized that there was overlap. Being uncomfortable with a chapter that took Cooper back to the bank preceding one that had him across town meeting Tommy, I swapped them and did a bit of editing to make them work.
The vision shifts into a history lesson badly skewed toward what the south believed caused the war, and I included the suggestion that this was not necessarily the actual history of anything, and his vision was not something from the King but an explanation by the Spirit of New Orleans.
This had been chapter 105, but there was some confusing temporal overlap between the Cooper 34 chapter Eric had written here and the Takano 117 chapter he had written there, so I swapped them, completed this one, and tweaked them to fit.
This was the final chapter of the vision Eric had written, which I sliced into a conclusion with its denouement.
This has been the ninth behind-the-writings look at Con Version. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.