This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #498, on the subject of Characters Restart.
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,
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 first post for this novel, covering chapters 1 through 12. 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 1, Takano 84
Chapter 2, Brown 282
Chapter 3, Cooper 1
Chapter 4, Takano 85
Chapter 5, Brown 283
Chapter 6, Cooper 2
Chapter 7, Takano 86
Chapter 8, Brown 284
Chapter 9, Cooper 3
Chapter 10, Takano 87
Chapter 11, Brown 285
Chapter 12, Cooper 4
We had just finished the final readthrough edit of In Version, and although we weren’t in a hurry to continue we had agreed to work together on the next probably two books, this one picking up Tomiko’s story and continuing Derek’s, and the next one returning to Slade and Beam. We had agreed that the second chapter would be the continuation of Derek’s spooky New Orleans world, but the first would bring Tommy back, so I wrote this to recall the end of Tommy’s story in Con Verse Lea and did a quick edit to a chapter Eric had written, part of which had been included in In Version, to make this a continuation of that.
Titles are always a conundrum for me, and my suggestion for this one came from a long chain of reasoning. In Versers Versus Versers there were five versers in the same world and they were at war against each other, and nearly all of them were versed out by the end of the book. That was the inspiration for the title Re Verse All, that almost everyone had versed once again. That book, though, only covered Lauren Hastings, Tommy Takano, and James Beam, and so when it ended and the next one dropped all three of them and picked up Joe Kondor, Bob Slade, and Derek Brown, it made sense to call it In Verse Proportion. I then swapped back to the other three characters and had much of the action centered around a lake in a meadow, which logically fit the title Con Verse Lea. The tenth book returned to Kondor, Slade, and Brown, but they were all in the same universe and this was continuing the story from In Verse Proportion, so I named it In Version. Pondering a title for this book, I realized that readers have been waiting to hear what happens to Tommy, so this is in one sense a continuation of Con Verse Lea, and it would probably be the only time that the title Con Version made sense.
Eric had written a chapter as a proposed New Orleans world where Derek could get the trumpet I wanted him to have eventually. I had thought it sounded like an excellent and very different setting, but wanted to split it so that a short part of it would be a cliffhanger ending for In Version and the story would continue in a subsequent book. Because there were good arguments for interrupting most of the other stories, we put the continuation here.
There was a fair amount of uncertainty about who should be the third character in this book. Slade’s story would be continuing the alien empire where he and Derek had been involved in the very intense combat tournament, and because it had so many ties to both the parakeet world and the space traveling aliens of the previous books we wanted to break away from that and return later. We weren’t sure what to do with Beam but that he had been a viewpoint character in several recent books so we thought he should be out for a while. I had wanted to shelve Lauren for a few books, mostly because I needed a break from her. Kondor was continuing the story Slade had started in an earlier book, and it felt like the parakeet world needed a break. The suggestion was made that we launch a new character, and there was a player who reportedly hoped we would base a character on him. At the same time we thought the best solution to Tommy’s problems would be to bring a character into her world who could bring survival skills they didn’t have. That could be Kondor, but we had set him up for an interesting and challenging storyline where he was, so he would be arriving somewhat later. Johnny Angel was a possibility, because his background was at this point vague enough with enough of a suggestion of a long history in the verse that we could fill in a lot of skills. Or it could be the new verser. I was hesitant to create another new verser, because the six presently in use already meant a lot more skipping. But it was an option, and in the end we designed a character loosely on a player who had been in games with both of us and had suggested to Eric that he be included.
Even so, there were a lot of points to debate. We changed the name, but the original player used an English translation of his German name, and we wanted to retain that as well–but we made this decision before we decided to introduce him in Switzerland, which complicated the name use very early. I suggested that he would be black, mostly for racial diversity, but also because his very conservative Evangelical Christian faith fit with a black man. Eric agreed, but said he was also part German, which seemed good. There was a discussion concerning whether he might maintain his physical shape by participating in a martial art; the original player did not do so, but taught himself to fight in one of his early worlds. There are several advantages in game terms to having such skills, but we decided he was a strong enough character without them. At first I had given him a Bible, but the player provided notes in which he suggested that he didn’t use books, instead relying on his laptop, so that was changed.
I had long thought that having a character meet William Tell and learn the use of the crossbow from him was as promising as having someone learn the longbow from Robin Hood. The player had been in Sherwood Forest as one of his first worlds, but I had used Sherwood in Verse Three, Chapter One, and even though no one learned to use the bow I was reluctant to use the same world for a different character. Still, I had mentioned this, along with several others, and Eric decided to run with this one, partly because it had religious issues alongside the political ones.
We also decided that Barrelmaster would have seen Slade verse out, and then followed the scriff sense to Umak Tek, where he would have stayed for some time before being versed out; we did not decide on anything he did there, or what killed him.
I was a bit bothered by the notion that Barrelmaster was already at Stage Two, the stage at which versers have weird dreams when versing, but decided to let it slip, as it was possible.
We had some trouble getting the Takano story moving. I was short on ideas, and while Eric made up for this he was not on top of either the geography and environment of an unspoiled southern New Jersey area where this was set, or the specifics of Tommy’s skills and equipment and those of her companions. There were a lot of rewrites in the early chapters.
Eric created the confrontation with the bull and the damage to the robot. The development of the new telepathy to animals skill was a good extrapolation from what he knew.
For a long time I was very bothered by the notion that a bull could gore the outer shell of a robot made of Duralloy, one of those super hard science fiction materials that can withstand bullets and meteoroids, but I let it stand. Ultimately it appears that the bull is supernaturally gifted. I was still vexed by the problem of how Derek could repair it. Ultimately I undid the goring.
Eric had launched Cooper, and wrote this as well. The use of German was an unusual touch, but made sense in the setting.
Eric had envisioned Cooper going for a short walk outside the confines of Umak Tek and being killed (presumably by a coral bush?), and thus being separated from his possessions and needing to recover them. That meant some wandering in the mountain, but it was something already in the character’s backstory.
The mountain lion story was Eric’s idea. The animal was plausible; there are such lions in the northern mountains, and they could spread south. However, we had to hammer out a lot of details related to where it would be and how Tommy would find it.
I wrote this. We had agreed that Derek would get his trumpet in this world, and that it would be integral to the story, given to him by a person who seemed ordinary but at the same time was mysterious. At this point I created Pierre Hunter as an old black man who had been the protector of New Orleans and was retiring as Derek would be the one to face and hopefully defeat the devil. He would be expecting them, and would have the trumpet for Derek.
I have never actually seen a four-valve trumpet, but they make four-valve brass instruments and I understand the use of the fourth valve from playing a four-valve tuba; I wanted this to be recognizably special and yet for practical purposes a regular trumpet, so I went with that.
Our discussions about this world, while we were still working on In Version, included that part of the battle would have Derek leading a Dixieland band in the song When the Saints Go Marching In. It struck me that a Dixieland band usually has a woodwind player, a clarinet or saxophone most typically, that plays what in a Sousa march would be called the descant and would be played on flutes and piccolos, and so I did some quick research into ancient Persian woodwinds. That gave me the Ney, very like a recorder but made in multiple sizes so it can play in different keys. It seemed the sort of thing a young Arabian princess would be expected to learn, and this would enable Vashti to play along with Derek.
I also decided to give them the house as a base of operations.
We also sketched several points still to come, including the members of the band and some of the events at the story’s climax.
Trying to pick up where Eric was headed with the William Tell story, I wrote enough of this to gather the equipment and bring Cooper within sight of the Tell homestead. My description was limited to the fact that there was a house, a stable for the donkey, and the wagon parked outside. At that point I stopped to raise a question about the setting. Traditions surrounding Tell disagree as to whether he was a peasant with a crossbow (presumably for hunting) or a gentleman living outside the city. That had to be decided before his residence could be further described, so I waited for input from Eric on it. We agreed on the nobleman status, and I continued.
Eric wrote this, with conflicting plans and the odd result that the opinion of the three team leaders outvoted the separate opinions of the three group leaders, and the consequent outcome that they were going to attempt to trap a mountain lion.
I was moving the music side of the Brown story forward, and wanted to build the foundation for a Dixieland band. Sousa March trios and Dixieland standards have very similar structure, and I don’t remember much of either repertoire, but it was a start.
Eric picked up the dinner.
At one point I commented that I was relying on an online translation program to give me the German for Cooper 3; Eric responded that he was also using that translation program. We could only hope that our snippets of German are close enough for the purpose.
This has been the first 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.