This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #480, on the subject of Versers Think.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first nine Multiverser novels,

1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
2. Old Verses New,
3. For Better or Verse,
4. Spy Verses,
5. Garden of Versers,
6. Versers Versus Versers,
7. Re Verse All,
8. In Verse Proportion, and
9. 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 third post for this novel, covering chapters 25 through 36.  The first post, #476:  Versers Deduce, covered chapters 1 through 12, and the second, #478:  Character Conflicts, covered 13 through 24.  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.

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Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 25, Kondor 227
Chapter 26, Brown 251
Chapter 27, Slade 220
Chapter 28, Beam 167
Chapter 29, Kondor 228
Chapter 30, Beam 168
Chapter 31, Slade 221
Chapter 32, Brown 252
Chapter 33, Kondor 229
Chapter 34, Beam 169
Chapter 35, Slade 222
Chapter 36, Kondor 230

Chapter 25, Kondor 227

MJ opened this chapter putting forward the notion that Joe was going to question the spy, and the suggestion that Zeke would do the language link/mind reading combination to tell whether the bird was telling the truth.

Eric made some suggestions which made sense.  MJ decided that the prisoners would be locked in cages in the on-campus zoo that had been mentioned in the previous book, as the easiest place to secure them.

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Chapter 26, Brown 251

This chapter may have gone through a dozen rewrites, because we couldn’t make sense of Derek cracking the language.  Eric headed in the direction of building a database of words used by the aliens, and trying to make sense of their communications based on matching words to the movements of the ship.  MJ, meanwhile, thought this didn’t really fit the known facts, that the ship had departed from the same original location as The Wanderer from which Derek and his spaceship and robot had just come–the languages would have been the same then, and any change would be strictly in pronunciation.  That, though, proved the key:  the computer would still be spelling everything the same way, but as with English the pronunciation would have changed, and that meant that Derek’s computer could communicate with the visitors’ computers because they would be sending encoded text messages to each other, and generational changes in pronunciation wouldn’t matter.

Eric came up with the idea for the EMP, but used it to give Derek more vocabulary.  MJ adapted it to identify the coordinates of the university on the visitors’ grid, and so begin to put together the latitude/longitude system being used by the visitors.

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Chapter 27, Slade 220

This surprise came from Eric, and we probably don’t know where it’s going.  After all, all his current opponents are either avians or little green men, so he would be guessing concerning where their nerve junctions are.  However, there’s a reasonable chance this will come to something in the future.

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Chapter 28, Beam 167

MJ realized that Sophia was going to be very uncomfortable trying to sleep with the knowledge of those monsters in the basement, and so would want to sleep with Beam; he then realized that the opportunistic Beam would use this to get both wives in the same bed with him.

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Chapter 29, Kondor 228

Eric’s original vision of this Wheel of Trade was that he was reading about the world of Mary Piper Alpha, the primitive sailing vessel, and he made it a religious object with the suggestion of some kind of god of commerce.  The big problem MJ observed was that although Kondor had that tablet when he arrived at that world, that world didn’t have any computers so he couldn’t have gotten a data version of the history, and any history of that world he did have he would have written himself.  The passage was recast to suggest that this was in Mary Piper Beta, and the religious aspects blunted since there is no hint of religion in the original world descriptions or Kondor’s visits there.

We hit a minor snag, because although Zeke has had some training with primitive weapons and is a below average amateur, he doesn’t actually own any such weapons.  A bit of rewrite arranged for him to borrow swords from others.

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Chapter 30, Beam 168

Eric had suggested that Beam would fight another batch of zombies, but MJ actually finds it difficult to write interesting combat scenes and thought it more interesting to have them arrive and eat their own dead.

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Chapter 31, Slade 221

At this point MJ outlined a plan for the next four chapters which would bring the parakeet world story to a turning point.  It was important as a first step that we create the feeling of a bit of time passing.

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Chapter 32, Brown 252

This chapter was intended to cover a lot more, but it was getting cumbersome so MJ ended it at a point at which it made some sense to switch to Kondor; the cliffhanger at the end of the next chapter was supposed to be the end of this one.  Then the outline called for Beam and then Kondor, but that Kondor chapter was really about observing Derek’s communication with the aliens, so it was simple enough to change it to Slade.

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Chapter 33, Kondor 229

This was the second half of what was going to be in the previous Brown chapter, expanded a bit.  As mentioned, the cliffhanger message was supposed to end the Brown chapter, but MJ needed to make it two chapters to prevent the feeling that it was rushed.

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Chapter 34, Beam 169

This was a joint effort.  MJ suggested that Bob would levitate a cow over and drop it, and that Sophia, the fire mage, might have some spells to cook it and to preserve it.  Eric wrote the first draft of the chapter and created most of the detail, although MJ edited some of it out and made a few minor changes.

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Chapter 35, Slade 222

We had discussed this and considered it for quite a while before we reached this point, and so had been working toward it, but it was pretty much a last minute decision to make it a Slade chapter, mostly because we hadn’t had one for a while.  MJ thought that contact from someone claiming to be an officer of a sister ship would at least stall the visitors, but as this was written we had not figured out what would happen next.

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Chapter 36, Kondor 230

Eric had suggested a confrontation with an ambassador upset about the versers revealing the location of some secret facility, and MJ had said if it was going to happen it had to be here.  Over the course of a day that went from MJ recommending an outline to expanding it to a chapter that spilled over into the next chapter.

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This has been the third 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.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #472, on the subject of Versers Vanish.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eight Multiverser novels,

1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
2. Old Verses New,
3. For Better or Verse,
4. Spy Verses,
5. Garden of Versers,
6. Versers Versus Versers,
7. Re Verse All, and
8. In Verse Proportion,

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 ninth, Con Verse Lea,  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 fifth and final post for this novel, covering chapters 66 through 85.  Previous behind-the-writings posts for Con Verse Lea include web log posts:

1. #460:  Versers Reorganize, covering chapters 1 through 17;
2. #463:  Characters Unsettled, covering chapters 18 through 34;
3. #365:  Characters Wander, covering chapters 35 through 51.
4. #470:  Verser Turnings, covering chapters 52 through 68.

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.

Return to Top

Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 69, Takano 78
Chapter 70, Beam 151
Chapter 71, Hastings 250
Chapter 72, Beam 152
Chapter 73, Takano 79
Chapter 74, Beam 153
Chapter 75, Hastings 251
Chapter 76, Takano 80
Chapter 77, Beam 154
Chapter 78, Takano 81
Chapter 79, Hastings 252
Chapter 80, Beam 155
Chapter 81, Hastings 253
Chapter 82, Beam 156
Chapter 83, Takano 82
Chapter 84, Beam 157
Chapter 85, Takano 83

Chapter 69, Takano 78

I was very uncertain how to handle this, but I began at the beginning and let it unfold as I went.  The song is one I learned as a child, elementary school aged, which eventually enabled me to recall the order of the books before I reached college.

I decided to give a fair amount of the sermon, but to spread it over a few chapters.  I have not yet decided whether the next part will be from Lauren’s perspective or again Tommy’s.

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Chapter 70, Beam 151

I came to this with a complication.  In my mind I had played out the key events of the rescue, but I realized that it was all very much from Ashleigh’s perspective, and Beam wasn’t there.  It took some work to figure out how to tell the rescue from Beam’s perspective and make it interesting.

I gave serious consideration to writing up the rescue from Ashleigh’s perspective and posting it for my Patreon patrons; I put off doing so because of concerns that I finish the book in a reasonable timeframe.

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Chapter 71, Hastings 250

I was going to write the Genesis passage from memory, as I had the John passage, but decided that since Lauren was reading it and I was to some degree relying on the idea that God had provided the same translation to her as to all the others, I went with the updated New American Standard Bible, which I have generally treated as Lauren’s preferred translation, and copied it from my copy.

I also copied the John passage; although I didn’t need to, having memorized it in Greek since having memorized the English in an earlier edition of that translation, I thought I’d better be careful to have it right.

In doing this, I really had very little idea what I was going to cover in this first sermon, and as I proceeded I recognized the technical problems, like the system of chapters and verses.

On my first pass I consciously chose not to use secondary quotes for the passages she was reading aloud, as it would be a tremendous amount, I thought, of clutter.  However, on a read-through edit I decided that when she cites the first words of Genesis as matching John, “in the beginning”, the flow of the text was confusing enough that the reader would be unlikely to realize that it was a quote instead of a statement about the text, so I used the inner quotes for it, but only for it, to clarify.

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Chapter 72, Beam 152

When I started this chapter I had no more idea of where it was going than that Warren would be awaiting them at the cave.  The rest of it was filling in answers to questions that were rattling in my head, and moving the story forward.  It is almost unfortunate that I can’t follow Warren and Amanda, because I’ve a pretty good idea where they’re going and no clue what Beam does next.

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Chapter 73, Takano 79

Again, I came to this chapter with nothing, and as I started to write I decided to segue out of the sermon with Tommy’s reaction to it.  From there I just filled in details of ordinary life and wrapped back around to the significant change.  It was short, but I think it was worth including.

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Chapter 74, Beam 153

The part about having disowned the gem and so being unable to track it was pretty much all I had when I started this chapter, but as I started to type I thought of how to lead up to that, and went from there.

I figured out the trick to figuring out which way Warren and Amanda went–or rather, didn’t go–while writing it.

I originally had said Beam fried up some eggs to go with the rice, but on the read-through I deleted that, because again they didn’t do any cooking in the cave, and although I hadn’t said they were there that was the stated meeting place so I was assuming as much, and thought the reader would also assume that.

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Chapter 75, Hastings 251

For a couple days I was more focused on finishing the setup for In Verse Proportion, and indeed I more than once forgot whose chapter was next–I had been thinking that it was Tommy, and I would do Tommy and then Lauren to make it feel like a longer time before Beam arrived at his destination.  Still, when I got to it, I was pressed for time and wrote the first paragraph, and ran off to other chores.

I still had trouble figuring out what to write, and wound up with a rather short chapter.

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Chapter 76, Takano 80

I had started this chapter, but was stumbling forward, so I went back to re-read everything from the beginning.  As I reached chapter 10, I realized I had a continuity problem:  at that point, there were battery-powered electric lights in the outlaw caves, and they built no fires and did no cooking there.  Yet after Beam rescued Warren they retreated to the cave, where they ate and slept, and there was an oil lamp in the bedroom.  I was going to have to fix that.

I made a couple decisions about the book by the time I’d finished the re-read.  One was that this was going to be a short book, that I was rapidly approaching the end.  I decided that Beam was going to be ambushed, and worked out some details about how that might work; I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a world in which Ashley and Sophia would find it difficult to kill each other, but which also would create an interesting place and restore some of Turbirb’durpa’s abilities.  I am currently thinking about a zombie apocalypse world, and of course there are multiple kinds of zombies.  I was trying to decide whether these would be magic or tech, and Kyler suggested bod-based, some kind of parasite, which is probably what I will choose.

Meanwhile, I am more and more thinking that Lauren will get in a fight with a bear.  I had a player do that once.  The problem is that Lauren probably could defeat a bear–but I think I’ve got the answers to that.  I also gave some consideration to formally retiring her, having her enter heaven–but decided instead to leave her out of the next several books and have the other characters wonder what happened to her.  That way I could still bring her back in some future book if I wished.

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Chapter 77, Beam 154

I realized I had to have a Beam chapter in which they were traveling, and this, although short, accomplished that.  I expected to have one more chapter in this world, and then probably would need to have the first chapter of the next world before the end of the book, but I wanted several more chapters in total, so I was going to have to stretch things.

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Chapter 78, Takano 81

I knew I was bringing the book to an end, and needed to figure out how to bring all three stories to a reasonable resting point.  This was mostly an effort to convey that Lauren had taught Tommy pretty much everything else she could about wilderness survival.

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Chapter 79, Hastings 252

Again I needed to draw the story to a close without it being abrupt, and so I focused on Lauren’s concerns for the days ahead.

I made sassafras tea as a boy.  I used the roots, and although I drank it, I never much cared for it because it had no sugar.  After I wrote the chapter I checked and learned that sassafras is no longer commercially available because it contains low levels of some poison, but I decided Lauren didn’t know that.

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Chapter 80, Beam 155

This was my exit strategy for Beam.  I decided that if the soldiers were thinking that they had to kill the demons, Bob wouldn’t recognize that as a threat to them and wouldn’t give the alert until too late, and enough individual soldiers shooting at Bob and Dawn would kill them both.  Bron was an afterthought, since he was there and I wasn’t certain how to handle him.

The important thing was that Beam should be killed.  I included the discussion about sparing Ashley mostly to give a bit of tinge of evil to the soldier.

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Chapter 81, Hastings 253

I had been sitting on this as a Takano chapter for a few days, unable to move forward.  I was struggling with the fact that I wanted to verse out Lauren and Beam, establish the new world for Beam but not for Lauren, and close with Tommy leading the Bible teaching.  I couldn’t find a way to write an interesting chapter here that was about Tommy.

I once had a player’s character pick a fight with a bear, and he fancied himself an excellent martial artist but realized after the fact that he had severely underestimated the bear.  I don’t remember how that came out.  I did recognize that a few things had to go against Lauren for her to lose, but stripping her of armor and weapons and having her fail to get the shield up in time were enough to tip the balance, I thought.

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Chapter 82, Beam 156

I was trying to get as much of the new world into this as I could without making it feel contrived.  In some ways I succeeded, but I didn’t get as far as the confrontation between Sophia and Ashley.  I thought I was going to have to bounce that to the next book, but then I had similar trouble covering everything I wanted to cover in the next Takano chapter, so I needed another Beam chapter so I could have another Takano chapter after that.

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Chapter 83, Takano 82

I knew I needed to start with Tommy noticing that Lauren was gone, and I wanted to get as far as the Sunday morning meeting—but I realized I couldn’t reasonably include that unless I kept Tommy awake all night or somehow covered the night, so I needed another chapter to complete it.

I had to look up Clark’s name.  I’m a bit uneasy about exactly what equipment Tommy has collected while here (particularly whether she has a bow, a quiver, or arrows), but I’ll piece that together when I do the character sheet updates so I’ll have it ready before she returns, which I think will be book eleven, although I haven’t decided whether she or Beam will be in book ten.

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Chapter 84, Beam 157

I managed to get quite a bit of what I wanted into this chapter.

I have been struggling with the fact that Beam really ought to curse, but I won’t have it in the book; but I decided that I could give Sophia the ability to curse by creating inventive invective for her.  Thus I decided that she could say “in the dregs” as an insult.

This is a zombie apocalypse, and it’s still taking shape in my mind, but I’ve decided that there is a parasite that takes over the body and kills the brain.

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Chapter 85, Takano 83

This end came together in pieces while I was writing the previous several chapters.  I knew that I was going to have Tommy pick up with something from the miraculous resurrection of Lazarus.  I also knew that she was going to have to say something about Lauren’s disappearance, and that she was going to want to meet with the leaders.  It took a bit of coalescing to get that in the right sequence, and I thought it an excellent conclusion to finish with the quote from John.

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This has been the fifth and final behind-the-writings look at Con Verse Lea.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.