This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #67, on the subject of Novel Conclusion.

This is about the creation of my book Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, now being posted to the web site in serialized form.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, so you might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  That link will take you to the table of contents for the book; links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.  There were also numerous similar previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts:

1. #18:  A Novel Comic Milestone (which provided this kind of insight into the first six chapters),
2. #20:  Becoming Novel (covering chapters seven through twelve),
3. #22:  Getting Into Characters (for chapters thirteen through eighteen),
4. #25:  Novel Changes (chapters 19 through 24),
5. #27:  A Novel Continuation (chapters 25 through 30),
6. #30:  Novel Directions (chapters 31 through 36),
7. #33:  Novel Struggles (chapters 37 through 42),
8. #35:  Quiet on the Novel Front (chapters 43 through 48),
9. #37:  Character Diversity (chapters 49 through 54),
10. #39:  Character Futures (chapters 55 through 60),
11. #43:  Novel Worlds (chapters 61 through 66),
12. #47:  Character Routines (chapters 67 through 72),
13. #50:  Stories Progress (chapters 73 through 78),
14. #53:  Character Battles (chapters 79 through 84),
15. #55:  Stories Winding Down (chapters 85 through 90),
16. #57:  Multiverse Variety (chapters 91 through 96),
17. #59:  Verser Lives and Deaths (chapters 97 through 102),
18. #61:  World Transitions (chapters 103 through 108),
19. #64:  Versers Gather (chapters 109 through 114), and
20. #66:  Character Quest (chapters 115 through 120).

This picks up from there.  These chapters bring the book through the climax to the end.

There is some essential background to the book as a whole in that first post, which I will not repeat here.

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Chapter 121, Kondor 40

I was in the mountains of New Mexico in my scouting days, and climbed one that went above the tree line.  Although for some reason I could not understand then or now we did it before daylight (we wanted to see the sun rise, but wound up mostly huddled in makeshift rock shelters trying to stay warm and out of the wind), I remember something of the terrain.  The idea of the trees thinning gave me new terrain and a new problem for Kondor; he was now out of his forest element, and needed to adapt.

As Joe hopes to see Lauren again, the possibility of heaven is automatically discounted, but the reality of being a verser creates a different possibility for which he can have some hope.  That hope is realized in the next book; that probably doesn’t spoil much.

There are several ways to mark a trail, and Kondor considers some of them.  Using rock markers is good.  The standard, though, stacks a rock on top of another rock, which is good because it doesn’t happen naturally but bad for the current purpose because it doesn’t survive over long periods of time.  The markers I use were my own invention here, the “S” shape prefiguring the destination.  Obviously, I learned making and following trails in Scouts; this particular trail marker was again to suggest the snake.

I knew that somehow Bob was going to be the one fighting the big final fight against the “big boss of the whole game”.  Joe has now delivered him to that point, and I needed something to remove Joe from that final fight—so I gave him his own battle.  I’m not sure when I thought of the idea of one of them fighting the soldiers while the other rescued the girl; but it was evident that Kondor would have to be left behind, because I needed Slade’s perspective on magic.  Slade was better at that sort of glorious one-man combat anyway.

I like to think that Kondor was inspired by Lauren’s sacrifice to take the same step himself.  That’s why he says, “It’s my turn.”

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Chapter 122, Slade 41

I skipped Lauren intentionally.  I was in suspense concerning what was going to happen to her, but at the same time I needed to move the main quest forward.  So I tackled this moment when Joe stays behind and Bob goes ahead, and then returned to deal with what happened to Lauren in the next chapter.

I couldn’t for a moment think why Slade would go on and leave Kondor to fight against such odds; but then the realization that Speckles was already on the altar gave me the reason.  I wasn’t sure it was completely sound, but it worked for the moment.

I had envisioned something akin to Stonehenge; but I wanted the ground to rise slightly to it from where they were, and the center to be hidden from view so that Slade and Kondor, while not that far from each other, could not see each other.  Thus the idea of a crater commended itself.

This is the moment when one of the birds is shown to have magic.  I was not yet certain how much magic the bird had, but providing one such bird made Bob’s task appear more difficult.

I had envisioned the wizard as part of the group transporting Speckles, the sparrow hen suspended in the air and moving slowly along the route as the wizard walked and directed her.  Because he is using magic, not psionics, he can also levitate himself (fly), which Lauren does psionically, not magically.

This might be the best combat scene in the book—although there is Lauren’s still ahead, and the final battle, but here Slade fights and defeats fourteen opponents, and the flying feathers and flashing blade come alive in the action.  I tried to envision a combat that would be compelling on the screen; then I tried to convey it sufficiently that my readers could see it.  Of course, screen combat is often compelling by the speed, the number of movements which occur in short order.  That was difficult to portray here without wasting a lot of bodies quickly–which is what I did.

I then started thinking about how they could change the nature of the fight; the ring was an idea aimed at that, and then the fake sound behind him.  Having him recognize it as a fake and then fake them into believing he was fooled seemed a fun way to do it.

The editor thought the killing of the wizard unnecessarily violent.  I thought I was in the climactic sections, and it needed to be vivid and thrilling while still just this side of credible.

I learned from reading Lord of the Rings and Dune that one way to keep tension is to maintain multiple stages.  I do that constantly throughout the book, but particularly here when Bob wonders whether Lauren had died.  I did not at that moment know the answer to that question, but knew I was going to have to write her fight next.

I liked the Sleeping Beauty reference; I thought it kept Slade humorous even in the midst of the serious battles.

Originally after the phrase “a snake that could swallow all snakes” I had included “it could swallow a cow”, but the editor quite rightly said that should go; that was less impressive than that it could swallow all snakes, and it was cut.

The missile brush trick is something I would use in the third book as a spell one of Slade’s companions knows.  I’m not certain I even remembered then that I had used it here, and there is no direct connection between the two.

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Chapter 123, Hastings 42

When Lauren leapt from the cliff, I thought that might be the end of her; but I needed to write the story to figure out what would happen next.  My first instinct was that I would no longer have her stories to break up the others.  I had at that moment no intention of attempting to recreate the battle with the beast, but only to bring it to whatever conclusion I chose off camera and then let the reader know where she was.  But there were several problems with that.  One was that I still needed Lauren’s stories to break up Slade’s thread.  One was that it was cheating the reader to set such a major battle aside and not resolve it.  In the end, the idea of multiple staging seemed to demand that this battle be fought, and that Lauren’s story come back in here, so I wrote it.

I knew it was crazy for Lauren to jump, and I needed the reader to know that she knew that.  In fact, it was in the rewrite that came up with the idea that she would grab its neck when it tried to snatch her in its jaws.  That made it much more believable.

I now needed to manage a roller coaster ride in a way that would seem terrifying yet believable; I also needed to find a way to bring down the bird, but not make it seem too easy.

The disintegrator rod was a weapon I wanted to take from her for a while anyway; she would get it back eventually, but she needed to learn not to rely on it.  She couldn’t hold on to it practically up here, and it couldn’t survive the fall without breaking, so that all came together fairly well.

I had her try several things which did not work; I had it try several things as well.  It would be dramatically very good for her to plunge toward the ground with it, but I knew she wouldn’t cause that to happen intentionally.  It had to be an accident.

I also realized that I needed some way to save her, because the more I thought about the denouement the more apparent it was that Lauren and Slade were going to have to discuss a couple of things to make them work.

The idea of breaking her fall by leaping up from the creature had been vetted with two of the smartest people I know, my good friend (now Reverend, possibly Doctor) David Oldham, and my brother Roy.  Dave didn’t like the original version in which she pushed off just before landing and rolled across the ground.  The idea, of course, is that both she and the reptile are falling at the same rate, which is not as fast as she would fall alone because it is using its good wing to slow the descent some, and if she pushes herself up from its back she will transfer at least some of her kinetic energy to it, accelerating its fall and decelerating her own.  I’d originally had her leap up and away and then come down on the dirt; David agreed that it might work if she also landed on the beast’s body, to use the body of the beast as a sort of cushion or air bag, crushing it and so absorbing some of her momentum in that impact before rolling down the slope.  The outcome was the more dramatic idea of slowing her fall with the leap and then landing back on the bird and tumbling off.  But I did not want the reader to know at this point whether that worked.  I left the chapter hanging as to that.

I think if this were done as film/video, the entire section of these few chapters would bounce between Joe fighting the bird honor guard, Lauren fighting the flying reptile, and Bob rescuing Speckles.  I’m not sure how to integrate it, but then, I’ve never done video.

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Chapter 118, Slade 42

Kondor is now gone.  The last chapter is his, because it is the beginning of the next book, but his chapter that would have fallen here has been skipped because his part in this book has ended.

This battle went through a couple of rewrites. The version that went to the editor was too short, but it took a lot of thought and effort to lengthen it and keep it interesting.  The entire section of the snake circling Slade and closing for the crush was added; yet it was a good add, and brought back Slade’s first “magic”, the reference to Thor.

The talking was always part of it.  Part of it was plot exposition, part was Slade’s style, his way of “not being afraid”.

Slade confronts a “primitive” religion, the sort of “original” religion that atheists think are the origin of modern beliefs.  He sees the flaws in it.  He starts out with a rather typical twentieth century derision of primitive religious beliefs and practices; but even as he started to deride the idea that the snake was a god, Kondor’s attitude toward his own beliefs came to mind, and he recognized that there could very well be a spirit of the mountains of whom the snake was a servant.

The battle has a feeling of “flourish, then consider”, which worked well and contrasted with a lot of the fights elsewhere, such as Lauren’s battle with the flying beast, which were continuous action until they ended.  Slade often had these pauses in battle; they seem in retrospect to characterize his style to some degree.

This is the climactic victory of the whole book, and for Slade it is much more than that he just saved the girl and won the battle.  I didn’t realize it for quite a while, but I knew that Bob’s story had ended here.  Some years later I was reading something on Aristotle’s Poetics and realized that this book really ultimately was Bob’s story.  He was an ordinary auto mechanic who fancied himself a warrior of Odin, and now he is a warrior of Odin, having defeated a giant, albeit a minor one.  His victory yell is the call of that success; the rest is denouement.

In the original I had included the phrase “beaten the big boss of the whole game”, which I thought fit well with Slade’s character; but the editor thought it a mistake to make it seem like a video game battle, and I conceded and cut it.  But he agreed that the yell should stay, and I kept the “it wasn’t game over” line.

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Chapter 125, Hastings 43

Denouement.  It is here that we discover that Lauren survived her crazy stunt, and then spent some time finding her way out of the mountain valleys back to the nest, and pick up the idea that the parakeet people migrate.  My editor thought it was so patently obvious that Lauren was an idiot not to have realized it sooner; but I don’t know that anyone else had that impression.  I haven’t gotten any other responses suggesting that it was blatantly obvious to the readers.

I wanted to give the impression that Lauren was exhausted, so I stacked her first words to suggest a breath, “‘What about,’ she asked, ‘Joe?’”  I figured that would convey the feeling of breathlessness.  I probably did this many times.  I notice it here:  I break the sentence in an awkward point to insert the label.  I thought it created a pause, here specifically to give the impression of panting, as if she was breathing heavily as she spoke, although elsewhere it expressed uncertainty or thought or hesitation.

I was at this moment uncertain how I was going to get either Lauren or Slade out of this world; so I did not commit to whether they were going to follow the parakeet people.

Again, Lauren is like me.  I wear a sweat suit to bed.

The idea that warriors of Odin would brag about their victories had really just come to me when I was writing this section.  It fit, to a significant degree.  They were to be courageous, fearless in battle, and by bragging of their exploits they would encourage each other to greater feats so that they would have more about which to boast.  I have no idea whether it’s true; the only other Odinite I ever knew was also a game player character who (player and character) knew about as much as Slade about that religion.

The editor thought that Lauren’s words about God giving what we need when we need it were the right “moral of the story” as it were, a good place to wrap it up.  It was, in a sense, the end of this book; the Kondor chapter which follows was in many ways a way of saying, “To be continued.”  The moral for Slade at this point is that what matters is whether you will do what needs to be done when the time comes.

I should probably credit Corrie Ten Boom’s father with the lesson about God giving us what we need when we need it.  I’m sure I’ve heard others say it, but his example of holding onto his daughter’s train ticket until they board the train in the context of whether she would be brave enough to face martyrdom at the hands of the NAZIs is memorable.

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Chapter 126, Kondor 41

Almost as soon as I’d decided it was a novel and not a comic book series, I decided that Kondor would end on “the other Mary Piper“.  The world in the game book has both the space ship and the sailing ship versions, and often they are played in parallel.  I didn’t want to play them in parallel–I thought that would be dull and predictable here (although it is exciting in play, because the players keep wondering whether what happened to the other guy is going to happen to them).

Joe’s ending is really more like the beginning of the next book—but in a sense it has to be here, because we have to know what happened to him when he fought the sparrows.

The weakening of the flashlight beam was a nuance, kind of a “referee’s call” for a tech device not working as well in a low-tech universe.  It’s not something Joe would expect, because he hasn’t really worked with the idea of technology not working in some worlds, so when it doesn’t work he seeks more practical explanations.

The deja-vu expression, “We have been here again, we will be here before,” is something of a Multiverser gag for time travel worlds.  That’s not what this is—this is a parallel scenario, the same names and situations in a different kind of universe—but it fits pretty well.  I had written it for an entirely different scenario.  I had done in play a series of adventures which were built around C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and included the fun of running them chronologically backwards, such that each adventure took place before the previous one.  This meant that from the first adventure the player characters were recognized by those around them as being heroes from an earlier time.  When they could no longer discount this as mistaken identity, Aslan explains it with those words:  “You have been here again, you will be here before.”  There it was rather obvious in meaning:  in their future they would return in Narnia’s past.  However, I thought the phrase was one of my better bits, and I was not certain whether the second novel would ever be done–and I knew I could not use the Narnia adventures in a published work–so I placed it here, in a position that would have something of a different meaning.

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I hope these “behind the writings” posts have been of interest, and perhaps some value, to those of you who have been reading the novel.  There is another–two more complete, actually, and another two started–but there are some complications which I will discuss in the next web log post, probably tomorrow..  Feedback is always welcome, of course.  Your Patreon support will make a difference.

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #66, on the subject of Character Quest.

This is about the creation of my book Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, now being posted to the web site in serialized form.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, so you might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  That link will take you to the table of contents for the book; links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.  There were also numerous similar previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts:

1. #18:  A Novel Comic Milestone (which provided this kind of insight into the first six chapters),
2. #20:  Becoming Novel (covering chapters seven through twelve),
3. #22:  Getting Into Characters (for chapters thirteen through eighteen),
4. #25:  Novel Changes (chapters 19 through 24),
5. #27:  A Novel Continuation (chapters 25 through 30),
6. #30:  Novel Directions (chapters 31 through 36),
7. #33:  Novel Struggles (chapters 37 through 42),
8. #35:  Quiet on the Novel Front (chapters 43 through 48),
9. #37:  Character Diversity (chapters 49 through 54),
10. #39:  Character Futures (chapters 55 through 60),
11. #43:  Novel Worlds (chapters 61 through 66),
12. #47:  Character Routines (chapters 67 through 72),
13. #50:  Stories Progress (chapters 73 through 78),
14. #53:  Character Battles (chapters 79 through 84),
15. #55:  Stories Winding Down (chapters 85 through 90),
16. #57:  Multiverse Variety (chapters 91 through 96),
17. #59:  Verser Lives and Deaths (chapters 97 through 102),
18. #61:  World Transitions (chapters 103 through 108), and
19. #64:  Versers Gather (chapters 109 through 114).

This picks up from there.  In these chapters the three main characters begin a joint rescue mission.

There is some essential background to the book as a whole in that first post, which I will not repeat here.

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Chapter 115, Kondor 38

I think the hints of the first signs of autumn were drawn from my writing journal—the notebooks in which during and for some time after college I attempted to practice writing in scraps, descriptions, character sketches, plot ideas.  At one point I found it worthwhile to attempt to describe seasonal appearances which might be useful for future background.

The hibernation suggestion is a diversion, to help the reader miss the other possibility.

Joe’s attitude toward Bob has a lot of amusement in it; he thinks of Bob as something of a clown, and doesn’t take his “warrior of Odin” notion seriously.

It seemed like time to trigger the problem, even though I was not certain how it was going to work.  This introduces the big event for which I brought them together.  The choice to make it Speckles who was kidnapped was made late in the process, but I long knew that one of the parakeet people would be taken, and it made sense for Lauren to be emotionally invested in the one taken.  It gave extra impetus to the quest.

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Chapter 116, Hastings 40

As mentioned, “Lauren was not ready” picked up from the end of her previous chapter, where she expected to be ready.  It is perhaps a comment on our inability to be ready for the unexpected.  The juxtaposition between the end of Hastings 39, “Lauren was ready”, and the opening here, “Lauren was not ready”, was intentional.

Joe’s rationality comes through in calmly approaching the situation—but Joe has no emotional investment here.

The distintegrator rod is Lauren’s most potent weapon, and I needed to take it from her so that she would not begin to rely on it.  Thus I knew that she would lose the disintegrator, which is why she took it.

The decision not to wear the robes was obvious:  they’re a psychological weapon that would be useless against the sparrows, who don’t understand clothing at all.

As I mentioned, I gave Lauren the rifle so that she could give Joe the bullets.

There is also the aspect here that Joe might be an atheist but he has integrity, and Lauren can recognize and respect that even though he is not a Christian.

Slade’s comment about “something more” did as much to bring forward his idea of this as training for Ragnorak as it did Lauren’s idea that they were there for a reason.  Kondor’s “religion thing” was a recognition on my part that this fit with his ideas.  Joe blames war on religion.  That of course is a very narrow view and not really defensible—in some places one could as easily blame religion on war.  But it is the way he sees it.

I had intended for Joe’s Sherwood Forest tracking to come into play here; but it naturally flowed from that and from their personalities that he would be the leader on this expedition.

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Chapter 117, Slade 39

Most of this was to bring to the fore Kondor’s tracking ability.  I still hadn’t worked out how this was coming together.  I knew that Slade’s alliance with the wind was still supposed to play a part, and had some image of that in my mind.  I knew that I wanted Lauren to sacrifice herself to let the others continue, and had envisioned some sort of leap into a chasm or something.  But I needed to break the tracking passage, so I created the cave entrance.  At that moment, I didn’t know where the cave went or how the other things fit.

Perhaps it’s a learn by doing thing.  I remember George Lucas commenting that it was very difficult to get any excitement out of spaceships fighting each other in space, because there was no real background; space ships fighting inside the space station, or speeder cycles rushing through the forest, could be made much more thrilling by the background zipping past.  In something of the same way, perhaps, I realized that having Kondor track their quarry for hours would be dull, unless something interrupted it.  At this moment, I had no idea what was in the cave; I thought in terms of a long path to somewhere, but it was very vague.  But I needed to get away from Kondor following the trail long enough to break the monotony.

In a lot of this I used an observer narrative technique.  Rather than attempt to follow Joe’s ability to follow the trail and have to get too many details into it, I let Bob observe that Joe did it extremely well.  I did the same with other moments in this part of the story, avoiding becoming too directly involved with the characters performing many of the actions but instead focusing on how they are perceived by their companions.

It was not out of character for Kondor to bring everything; and I already knew that he was going to die on this, and go to the other Mary Piper, so I wanted his gear close to him.  I think by this point I knew Lauren was going to survive her leap and have a chat with Slade toward the end, although the details were still unclear, so having her travel light made sense (particularly as her wagon would have been too much for the journey).  I never thought much about what Slade left behind, although I imagine his magic books and treasure chest did not go with him here.

I had set myself another challenge which I realized now.  The events leading to the sacrifice had to be drawn out long enough that my trio could reach the hen in time.  My first thought was that I had to make the trail long enough and assume that the captors moved along it slowly, such that it would take them quite a few hours to get to the end but the faster moving trackers could close the gap in that time.

The editor was confused by the shift in name usage; it is consistent with the person whose story is being told.  Lauren, who is almost always called Lauren in her own stories, calls her companions Joe and Bob.  Slade is always Slade to himself, and he consistently refers to his companions as Lauren and Kondor.  Kondor is again always Kondor in his own stories; he once or twice refers to Lauren as Mrs. Hastings before relaxing into Lauren, but although aloud he comes to call him Bob, Slade is almost always Bob Slade in his narrative, reflecting a bit of distance, some lesser connection, there.  I think that I got this idea of using the full name from The Great Gatsby, in which my high school English teacher pointed out that one of the characters is consistently distanced from the crowd by using his full name.

I brought them to the cave mouth and was not certain what I would do next.  I recognized almost immediately that what I needed was an obstacle that would slow the captors some, possibly as a place where some ritual was performed in advance of reaching the sacrificial location, but I was not sure how I was doing it.  At first I thought this could be the place, but then I realized that I needed to accomplish a lot more, and this could only be a landmark along the path.  I had considered an underground passage—I had played in a Star Frontiers game in which a ritual trek included a trip through caverns—but decided to make it shorter than that.

The other aspect of this was that the interruption, and the several subsequent interruptions, made the journey seem longer.  This seemingly longer journey was necessary, because it had to appear at least reasonably credible that the threesome caught up with a group that had left the night before; they could perhaps move two or three times as fast, but they could not really move ten times as fast, so this had to seem like it spread over several hours.  No matter how much tracking Kondor did, it would never have that feel, unless it were broken up by something else.  The cave was just such a thing.

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Chapter 118, Kondor 39

The perspective of having the characters observe each other hits again here, as Joe watches Lauren recite the scripture that calls the light.  Light is one of those magicks that works in most worlds.  It also gives us Joe’s viewpoint, that her magic is really psionic and she doesn’t know it.  Kondor applies the same reasoning now that he applied to Sowan the Mage:  it can’t be magic, so it must be psychic.

It is sometimes the case that versers teach each other, and that’s encouraged in some situations; but I didn’t want these people to be too much the same, so they always think of it (and isn’t that just like life) at inopportune times.  Joe will not have the chance in this world to ask Lauren for a lesson, and by the time he does have the chance there will be other problems.

The image of the cave was the moment I decided there was a snake god at the end.  I was going to need something to fight in the big climax, and a giant snake seemed a good choice.  I had not, at this time, read Rowling at all; I subsequently discovered that she used a battle with a snake-like creature in one of her books.  This seemed different enough in retrospect, and I couldn’t see an effective way to change it, so it stayed.

The roof exit was a sudden inspiration; it would provide another value to Slade’s preparations and, to a lesser degree, Lauren’s acrobatics.  I think it was probably at this point that I decided one of the sparrow people was a wizard–more precisely, an evil cleric with clerical magic.  That was the explanation that would ultimately come out for how they carried Speckles along; it would also give me some suggestion that the procession was not a rapid flight with a prisoner, but a ritual march to the place of sacrifice–another piece that made catching up credible.

Lauren’s question about carrying Speckles up the wall is the first clue to their situation, and I decided that the way they were transporting her limited their speed.

Joe’s pride is challenged by the fact that the others made this climb easily.  It shouldn’t be, really—he is the most heavily encumbered here, as he brought all his gear and the others brought only what they thought they would clearly need.  But he’s also the only one who went through boot camp, and couldn’t let himself be outdone by the others.

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Chapter 119, Hastings 41

Lauren thinks about how her use of holy magic might impact Joe even as she uses it to solve their present problems.  Again, I’m letting the characters describe each other, rather than showing what they do from their own perspectives.

I climbed a hill as steep as this at Camp Lebanon in the summer as a boy.  That is the memory.  Much of this was again to make the journey seem longer; providing Lauren’s feelings would help reach that objective.

I managed to get Slade’s pagan god references back into the story without actually thinking of any, by having Lauren reference them.

The wind at the gap was intended as a magical protection left by the sparrow’s wizard-priest.  That’s why it rises when Joe attempts to cross, but not otherwise.

I had envisioned the bridge long before.  I had long debated from whose perspective this scene should be presented.  Doing it from Slade’s perspective would mean that I had to provide both sides of the supernatural dialogue, and that would make it more difficult to understand why Kondor was not convinced of the supernatural after hearing the voices.  I had resolved to do it from Kondor’s angle, so that I could focus more on his reaction.  In the end, it was more the fact that I was in Lauren’s perspective when the moment came that decided it; but this allowed me to present Kondor’s negative attitude and Slade’s side of the discussion without prejudice.  But first we had to deal with crossing–or rather, not crossing–the bridge, in a way that would not cost the life of a character.

Having Joe fall into exactly the same position as Big Bill in the earliest chapters would, I thought, seem credible.  In fact, I’d had trouble with the original version of the Big Bill story and had to entirely rewrite it (it was originally a chauvinistic challenge to Lauren’s right to work the steel, and my editor said it did not work at all), but I had to save the critical moment there because it had to be echoed here.  We know how Lauren will save him almost immediately; it is still tense as she does so.  When Lauren saved Big Bill, I did not realize I was going to do this again.  Yet I wanted this scene so I could use Bob’s connection to the Caliph of the West Wind, and it was a perfect situation to repeat the same rescue this time of Joe.

It is a Multiverser bias point that levitation—telekinetically lifting yourself—is more difficult than other forms of telekinesis—lifting other objects, such as other people.  Thus it makes sense that Lauren can lift Joe easily but cannot lift herself; it’s a different skill.

Lauren’s anthropomorphizing of the wind is in keeping with her supernatural view of the universe; it also sparks Slade to recognize how it fits with him.  Kondor, of course, won’t accept it.  Joe looks for the naturalist explanation for the wind, but is willing to accept the mental powers explanation for Lauren’s ability, as long as it’s not magic.

Having Lauren describe Bob’s confrontation with the wind enabled me to avoid what kind of voice the wind might have had while at the same time avoiding having Joe’s complete invalidation of it.  Having Joe talk whenever Bob stopped talking gave me his skepticism and got me out of committing to the voice of the wind.

I have no idea how Kondor knew the trail ahead would be rougher; of course the air would be thinner as they went higher, and that would be a problem.  But a break seemed to be in order at this moment.

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Chapter 120, Slade 40

The points about how far they had traveled and how difficult it was to negotiate the ledge were both intended to help explain how the trio managed to catch up with their quarry.  I brought back the matter of how they moved Speckles, because I wanted the reader to wonder as well; that way the revelation that there was a wizard would drop the other shoe, and they would get it.

At this moment it came to me that the world through which they were traveling was still beautiful; their attention had been drawn away from that by their focus on the problem.  The sudden opening of the view is a spot of light in the story.

The flying reptile idea had come to me considerably earlier, and I knew that Lauren was going to end her part of the quest here; I had not decided yet how she would survive it.

It was now time for Lauren to sacrifice herself.  I struggled with the pterodactyl, trying to present it in a way that would make it able to hold them at bay and threaten their lives without their weapons putting an end to it.  There had to be a reason why Lauren would jump for it; that reason could only be that it continued to threaten and delay them, and they could not effectively counter it.

I envision the beast using the cliff face for cover and maneuvering in and out of view rapidly as it attempts to snatch one of them for food.  I don’t expect they would make a terribly good meal, but it doesn’t know that.

Guns do jam in Multiverser, on botch rolls sometimes.  I needed Joe’s rifle to jam, because I needed him to have bullets for the confrontation ahead but I couldn’t have him stop trying to kill the beast at this point.

Re-reading this, it occurs to me that Lauren’s talent includes organizing effective teams that continue without her.  That matters eventually.

I have elsewhere told the tale of running Skinner’s Falls in a canoe during the flood.  The short version is that when we reached the four-foot swells at the head of the rapids, I froze and stared, and barely heard my father shouting for me to paddle.  It was something of this feeling that I imagined for Slade at this moment; Lauren jumped off a cliff aiming for a flying lizard.  Whether she made it or not, she was probably dead.  He was stunned.

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Interest in these “behind the writings” continues, so I’m still thinking they’re worth producing.  Feedback is always welcome, of course.  Your Patreon support is also needed to maintain this.

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #64, on the subject of Versers Gather.

This is about the creation of my book Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, now being posted to the web site in serialized form.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, so you might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  That link will take you to the table of contents for the book; links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.  There were also numerous similar previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts:

1. #18:  A Novel Comic Milestone (which provided this kind of insight into the first six chapters),
2. #20:  Becoming Novel (covering chapters seven through twelve),
3. #22:  Getting Into Characters (for chapters thirteen through eighteen),
4. #25:  Novel Changes (chapters 19 through 24),
5. #27:  A Novel Continuation (chapters 25 through 30),
6. #30:  Novel Directions (chapters 31 through 36),
7. #33:  Novel Struggles (chapters 37 through 42),
8. #35:  Quiet on the Novel Front (chapters 43 through 48),
9. #37:  Character Diversity (chapters 49 through 56),
10. #39:  Character Futures (chapters 57 through 60),
11. #43:  Novel Worlds (chapters 61 through 66),
12. #47:  Character Routines (chapters 67 through 72),
13. #50:  Stories Progress (chapters 73 through 78),
14. #53:  Character Battles (chapters 79 through 84),
15. #55:  Stories Winding Down (chapters 85 through 90),
16. #57:  Multiverse Variety (chapters 91 through 96),
17. #59:  Verser Lives and Deaths (chapters 97 through 102), and
18. #61:  World Transitions (chapters 103 through 108).

This picks up from there.  These chapters have all three main characters coming together.

There is some essential background to the book as a whole in that first post, which I will not repeat here.

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Chapter 109, Slade 36

With Joe and Lauren in the same world, their story had slowed significantly; I thus skipped Joe this time and came back to Bob to keep the story moving.

I really like the imagery of Slade’s action hero movement here.  He is holding his blaster in his right hand, but he has to cross-draw his sword from that side, so he tosses the blaster in the air and catches it with his left hand while simultaneously drawing the sword with his now free right hand and striking the enemy.  I don’t think it’s that tough a trick, really, as I often toss my keys in the air with one hand and catch them with the other while transferring whatever was in the other hand to the first hand, for any of several reasons (usually to have my keys in the other hand, since I need them to the right to start the car but keep them in my left pocket).  Holstering the blaster wrong-handed is more difficult, but not impossible if given a moment, and he gives himself the moment by terrorizing them.

The distinction between ranged and close combat was needed to explain how Slade could defeat thirty trained guards; the emotive violence would also be a factor.  The notion that blaster-wielding troops would be incommoded by close combat doesn’t seem that alien.

I also like the chaotic impression of not being able to tell which soldiers are trying to fight and which looking for an escape route.

Somehow my editor didn’t get that Ishara drew his blaster to shoot at the person shooting at Slade, and felt I had left unanswered the question of why Ishara suddenly shot Slade.  I don’t remember what I changed, but I hope that the version that went to print is clear that Ishara did not shoot Slade, one of the Federation guards did.

There was a typo in the printed version.  In the last paragraph a sentence begins “But abruptly, and he dropped it….”  I corrected it for the online version to “Abruptly he dropped it….”  I am not certain what the original was supposed to say.

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Chapter 110, Hastings 38

I realized as I said that Joe took to tending the sick parakeets that I had not previously mentioned them, but it was simple enough to suggest that sick birds stayed out of sight.

This is my first mention of “the journey”.  Lauren never worked out what that meant, but my editor did.  I don’t know whether he was smart or Lauren was stupid; I don’t know whether other readers realize what it means before the reveal.

This was one of the theological discussions that enabled me to put forward ideas about life and heaven.  I tried to keep them “fair”—neither Lauren nor Joe generally won, although when Bob was added that created more complications, because he brought a different viewpoint to it.

The argument this time was to show that they still disagreed even though they were becoming friends, to explore some of the ideas about time, give a bit more backstory to Scriff–and to give Slade a stage on which to enter.

The new voice is, of course, Bob Slade.  I did not want it to be too obvious that he was arriving to join them, although my editor seemed to think that once the two of them were together it was pretty obvious that the third was going to arrive at any moment.  I was so irked by that problem that in the next book I made a point of bringing two characters together early and then separating them before bringing all three together in a different world.

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Chapter 111, Slade 37

Having brought Slade onto the stage, I needed to fill in the gaps before the story escaped him.  Mostly, though, this was just an attempt to create the feeling of meeting them for the first time, and I wanted it to have the natural feel you get when you’re in a foreign country and meet someone from home.

I specifically had Bob ignore the fact that Joe is black.  It is Joe’s self-perception of his blackness that is his racism problem.  Neither Lauren nor Bob ever take note of it unless he mentions it.

This chapter let me fill in the gap from Bob’s departure from Destiny to his appearance here in the valley.  I placed him at a greater distance from the others to start, but in something of the same direction, and said he took two days to make the trip afoot.

There is something about their common experience that draws them together despite their differences.  There’s also the fact that for this first “gather” I put them in a world in which they are the only humans, so they naturally would have more in common with each other than with the birdmen of the world.

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Chapter 112, Kondor 37

This is a peculiar chapter, because it is told from Joe’s perspective but focuses on a conversation between Lauren and Bob which continues for quite a while before Joe is drawn into it.  It thus gives the naturalist’s observations of arguments between supernaturalists.

Bob is completely different from Joe.  Joe is a trained soldier who prefers to be involved in healing, Bob a trained repairman who views himself a fighter.  Joe is serious about everything he does, Bob is not serious even about the things that most matter to him.  They have very little to connect them.

Bob has fair reason to think that there should be a fight.  He was killed in NagaWorld by artillery while stripping parts off a war machine.  In the Djinni Quest, he had to face efreet, and learned of his own inadequacy which he spent decades remedying.  On Destiny, he was part of a rebel pirate crew, and he was one of the key combatants.  Whether there actually was a plan for him to be a fighter or whether he is simply reading the events to fit his expectations, the evidence supports his belief.  Thus his incredulity that there would not be any use for his fighting skills here—and his ultimate validation when there is.

I don’t know what’s available in terms of Norse scriptures either, but in recent years there seems to be a growing number of what might be called fad pagans.  They’ve learned about pagan religions from various sources, and knowing almost nothing about these have decided to declare themselves devotees of these faiths.  Connecting Slade’s beliefs to a series of fantasy novels fit well with who he was.  My knowledge of Norse religion is all second-hand from multiple sources, and so Lauren’s and Bob’s also are all second-hand—but from different sources.  Thus Lauren surprises him with the notion that the giants beat the gods in the end.

The C. S. Lewis quote is one I read decades ago; I could not tell you in which book he wrote it.  I have since heard that J. R. R. Tolkien opined that Lewis romanticized Norse religion.

Years after the book was published, and even well after I had finished the third novel (in which Slade begins learning a few things about his faith) a reader from Finland opined that he hoped in the future I would draw more from the Eddas, and give Bob’s religion more real substance.  I have not done so.  That’s partly because the point is that Bob does not know much about such things—as with magic, he is not really all that interested in the details, and his interest in all things intellectual is shallow at best.  It’s also because I wanted room to play with what Bob believed, and to create things that fit my story needs.  I make no claims that anything Bob believes is genuinely Norse religion, and I make that clear up front with his source:  a series of fantasy adventure novels.

The Viking Raiders series and their author James Thompson are completely fictional inventions of mine.  It is perhaps ironic that I have since met someone named James Thompson who is very into fantasy (mostly Star Wars and Harry Potter, I think), but I did not know him then.

The outbreak when Lauren finds it incredible that Bob got his religion from a set of fantasy adventure books draws Joe into the argument.  He expresses the populist view that the Bible is a collection of myths and legends, against Lauren’s educated view that it is collected history.

Joe’s argument is the typical circular argument that because we have no proof of anything magical or supernatural, we can discount any claims that there is such proof.  Of course, this puts him against both of the other disputants, each of whom is certain that he has encountered the supernatural personally.

Lauren quite rightly accepts that Bob’s magic is as real as hers, and that in the question of whether or not there is a supernatural, Pagans and Christians are allies against naturalists and atheists.  She might be leery of the source of Bob’s powers, but she’s much more concerned about the denial of any such powers than about the specifics of the source in this discussion.

Joe moves to the typical argument that there are scientific explanations we don’t yet know, and that he can accept mental/psionic powers which might be confused for magic.  Lauren is ready with an answer, specifically because she is familiar with both and knows them to be different.

This of course spilled over into the argument about religion, dragging Kondor into it.  The challenge at this point was to keep everyone credible and in character, and find a way out of the argument without anyone conceding anything.

Having Joe tell the story of the debate enabled me to end it unfinished.  Whatever Lauren and Bob said after this probably wasn’t even on subject anymore.  Joe has in essence lost the debate without surrendering his position:  he knows he can’t win, so he stops trying.

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Chapter 113, Hastings 39

I had some notion in mind that the parakeets spent the summers here, but was only hinting it.  My editor thought it incredibly obvious, and thought Lauren really should have realized it sooner, but I’m not convinced even now.  They were not interested in nest construction or maintenance at this point because they were leaving soon.

I knew the action was going to have to resume soon; this was a calm before the storm, and although I was still working out the details of the storm, the calm needed to draw to an end.  Thus Lauren returned to her practice.

The idea that Lauren has been lulled into relaxing and that Bob’s diligence shocks her back to practice seemed sensible.  After all, she’s been thinking that the reason she is here is to help create the basics of civilization, and now she has two companions—one always dressed in the garb of a soldier, the other constantly practicing his combat skills.  If her theory is correct, there must be a need for fighters in whatever is to come, and she needs to put herself back on track for that.

Bob’s practice includes changing the power cell in the weapon because he noticed previously that that was a time-consuming part of fighting, and it would be to his advantage to recognize when he was firing his last shot and to be able to change the power cell quickly.

There are more hints of what is to come in this chapter, but not of the part that matters to the story.  In a sense, the journey is a distraction:  it will come, and it will change the situation, but while the reader is expecting that something entirely different is coming that the reader is not expecting.

The statement at the end of this chapter that Lauren would soon be ready sets up her next chapter, where she realizes she is not.

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Chapter 114, Slade 38

From the first chapters, it had always been assumed that all three characters had started in NagaWorld; but because that world is used as the starting point for players and is supposed to be a mystery to be explored, I tried to keep the amount of detail about it in the book limited.  But at this moment, it seemed sensible to bring out that they were all in that world originally, because it supported the view that they were connected, and that would help the story move forward.

Bob spent years in the relatively quiet position of lord of a castle, but most recently had been in the rather action-packed adventures of a rebel space pirate.  The quiet of the parakeet meadow is a bit of a come-down from that.

In a later book, Lauren and Bob communicate briefly in parakeet, merely because they can.  It becomes a shared experience.  He never becomes particularly fluent in it, though.

It struck me that one aspect of the religion of Odin, as I understood it, was that it valued strong fighters and did not value much else.  Thus for Bob the docile and relatively weak parakeet people were not candidates for his religion, and he didn’t care what they chose to believe.  That also suggests that the gods of this particular faith don’t care about people except in relation to what they are able to do.  Lauren’s faith is entirely different from that.

Lauren broaches the notion that there can be a scientific explanation for how something happens that does not negate the theological purpose of why it happens.  Joe challenges that, thinking that either God did it or science did it, and if there is a materialist scientific explanation for how something happened, asking why is redundant.

I liked the idea of the odds of drawing the two of spades from a pinochle deck (which, of course, has no such card) well enough to use it again, this time to have Joe say it in response to the question of the probability that they would all land in the same world at the same time twice.  It reflected the growing impression Kondor had that random chance could not account for his experiences.  He would of course seek scientific explanations; but he was starting to move away from pure coincidence as an explanation for it all.

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Interest in these “behind the writings” continues, so I’m still thinking they’re worth producing.  Feedback is always welcome, of course.  Your Patreon support is also needed to maintain this.

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #61, on the subject of World Transitions.

This is about the creation of my book Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, now being posted to the web site in serialized form.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, so you might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  That link will take you to the table of contents for the book; links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.  There were also numerous similar previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts:

1. #18:  A Novel Comic Milestone (which provided this kind of insight into the first six chapters),
2. #20:  Becoming Novel (covering chapters seven through twelve),
3. #22:  Getting Into Characters (for chapters thirteen through eighteen),
4. #25:  Novel Changes (chapters 19 through 24),
5. #27:  Novel Continuation (chapters 25 through 30),
6. #30:  Novel Directions (chapters 31 through 36),
7. #33:  Novel Struggles (chapters 37 through 42),
8. #35:  Quiet on the Novel Front (chapters 43 through 48),
9. #37:  Character Diversity (chapters 49 through 56),
10. #39:  Character Futures (chapters 57 through 60),
11. #43:  Novel Worlds (chapters 61 through 66),
12. #47:  Character Routines (chapters 67 through 72),
13. #50:  Stories Progress (chapters 73 through 78),
14. #53:  Character Battles (chapters 79 through 84),
15. #55:  Stories Winding Down (chapters 85 through 90),
16. #57:  Multiverse Variety (chapters 91 through 96), and
17. #59:  Verser Lives and Deaths (chapters 97 through 102).

This picks up from there.  These chapters continue with Lauren and Joe exploring a new world.

There is some essential background to the book as a whole in that first post, which I will not repeat here.

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Chapter 103, Hastings 36

I tried to give the feeling that a fair amount of time had passed, enough that Lauren could learn a bit of the parakeet language.  I also focused on finding technologies she could teach them—fire and pottery the basic ones.

I introduced Speckles because I knew by now that a kidnapping was the way to initiate the quest, and I needed a victim.  I made her someone Lauren would find particularly interesting, intelligent and open to change.

I’ve often said to people that if you want to know what God wants you to do, you have to drop the “but” from “anything but”.  In saying this, I point out that if God wants you to be a missionary to Africa, it’s the only place where you will truly be happy.  The idea that Lauren would enjoy being a missionary to a primitive world commended itself here.  It is one of those things that people talk about in Bible college:  the idea that if you agree to do whatever God wants you to do, He will probably send you as a missionary to some primitive place where you will be very unhappy.  The answers to this are, first, God sends relatively few people to such mission fields, and second, if God does send you there, you can be assured that you would not be so happy anywhere else in the world.  But it is part of the Bible student mentality, to worry about the possibility.

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Chapter 104, Slade 34

I was doing the trap on the fly, as I recall.  I knew I needed this to be an adventure, and the idea that it was a trap would make it so.

There were obvious anomalies, things that had to be as they were to make this part of the story work which at the same time couldn’t be there unless there was something wrong.  The big thing was the prisoner transport, which could not be seriously considered without a fighter escort.  If the transport was not here, there was no way to evacuate the prisoners; but if the fighter escort was here, there was no way The Destiny could do the rescue.  Thus I recognized that the crew would suspect a trap, and would deal with it accordingly.

John’s pep talk is pretty good, I thought.  He manages to put it in perspective and get them thinking they can do it.

I had given the plan previously; now it had to be updated on the fly for the new information, and that was kind of fun.  There were contingencies for possibilities that didn’t happen, which I thought made it seem more realistic—if you’re ready for what happens and nothing else, well, that seems plotted; but if you make a point of being prepared for things that don’t happen, the fact that you managed to be ready for some of the things that do is understandable.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone on television use anything like the reflector, although it could be that I just don’t remember.  I figure if you’re looking at four to twelve screens that keep jumping from camera to camera, and someone points one of the cameras at a different doorway or hallway, you’re not going to realize that you don’t see what that camera is intended to show you because you still see something that looks like a scene from one of the cameras, and unless you’re really attentive to the sequence of screen shots it will be a while before you realize you’re missing something.

I wanted Slade to have a sophisticated weapon for the battles ahead, and this was the best place to get it.  Joe had the problem that he only had one power pack and was going to have to recharge it, but Slade starts with several and practices changing them.

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Chapter 105, Kondor 35

Introducing the same world again without making it dull proved a bit of a challenge; thus I did it quickly.

The idea that versers can sense each other is built in to the game; that was a given.

The idea of the odds being about the same as drawing the two of spades from a pinochle deck was an expression I created for Joe.  If you don’t know, pinochle decks have no cards lower than the 9.  You could only get a two of spades if someone placed it in the deck.

I knew I was taking him to Lauren, but he, she, and the reader were all to be surprised by that.  Still, I figured woods was a general enough description that it wouldn’t necessarily follow that he was in the same world.

The references to the details of the trees reminds that Kondor has developed significant woodcraft skills while in Sherwood for a dozen years, particularly in identifying native plants that might have uses.

Originally this was the first time I described Lauren, and one of my readers balked—my wife’s imagined Lauren was blonde and it was too late in the book to change it.  I back-wrote the scene with the mirrors at Father James’ place to fix that.  I also went back and placed rather more detailed descriptions of each of the characters earlier in the book.

My editor said that the problem with bringing Kondor and Hastings together was that it told the reader that Slade was about to die.  I don’t know if that’s true–I think I managed to keep him in the other world long enough to take some of that expectation away–but I took it to heart, and in the second novel I had Lauren and Derek appear together and then separate again, particularly to defuse this sort of expectation.  I also thought that I would do something in the third novel that would defuse it from a different direction.

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Chapter 106, Hastings 37

Lauren’s opening words are, of course, what Joe just heard her say—in parakeet.

My wife was the first one to say that she liked the fact that Lauren and Kondor don’t immediately like each other, but that they start arguing about things almost immediately.  She appreciated the fact that Lauren and Joe weren’t immediately friends simply because they were both versers.  I knew before I got here that they would have this religious fight (and that Bob would get involved, too, although he’s a lot less serious about it than they and more or less takes it as fun).  Their verbal sparring becomes a significant part of their relationship—and enables me to insert some discussion of important basic theological concepts without breaking the story.

The racial conflict was rather a spur-of-the-moment insight–that I’d created two distinct races, one of which was “black”, and Kondor would be sensitive to that.

The theology debate gives way to an issue of race.  There is a degree to which Kondor is right:  black people think a lot more about race or color than white people do, in the main.  But then, it is just as discriminatory to accuse someone of not noticing race because of race as it is to notice race.

It also seemed important to me that Kondor not lose the religion argument, and particularly not on the first bout; but it flowed well this way, too.

The Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon debate is still ongoing, so although I’ve run worlds in which they are different races of the same species, they might be different species of the same genus, so Lauren’s example works as long as we don’t assume she’s right about the facts.

It wasn’t that much of a stretch to assume that Joe’s medical kit would have equipment to identify poisons.  One would need that to provide antidotes.

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Chapter 107, Slade 35

The trapped office was an afterthought because everything else had gone so well.  Also, I realized that if I were going to bring Slade to the “gather” I had planned for the parakeet world, it was going to have to be on this excursion, as it would take too many chapters to put me in the position of killing him in another.  So this became the way out.  Of course, it wouldn’t be quick or easy, but it would be dramatic.

I was running out of good ideas on this one anyway, and didn’t want to leave Lauren and Kondor alone together too long before creating some action there.

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Chapter 108, Kondor 36

At this point in their relationship, Joe views Lauren as in the peer group of his aunt; and he still has that mentality of addressing adults as adults.  Thus he thinks of her as “Mrs. Hastings” still.  It reminds us of their ages.

Lauren’s statement that she arrived in mid-spring but it’s been about six months is the first indication that the years are longer here.  That enabled me to accomplish a lot more within part of a year than otherwise, and still have changing seasons eventually.

There is often a feeling of exclusion when people around you are speaking to each other in a language you do not understand.  That is amplified here, because they are speaking with an entire set of phonemes foreign to Joe’s background.  It would be as if people in your presence were communicating with each other by Morse Code or Binary ASCII.

This was where I started to feel the complications of my stylistic decisions.  I was now telling the story of two characters, but still constrained to tell it as the stories of each individually.  On the one hand, it meant that I couldn’t tell all sides of a situation easily.  On the other, it gave me the freedom to write materials that skimmed the details–such as the conversation Lauren had with the parakeet people here, which is reduced to Kondor’s discomfort at not understanding any of it instead of extended dialogue.

At this point Joe is feeling quite awkward.  He wants to stow his gear so he can attempt to absorb what has happened.  Note that to this point, in three of his previous worlds he dealt primarily with humans (in his first world he fought giant robot spiders, but we only get a vague glimpse of that).  There were the undead creatures in Quest for the Vorgo, but he never came to grips with what they actually were apart from enemies of the human race, and he had humans around him.  This is the first time he is surrounded by completely alien creatures—only they do not seem quite “alien” in the science fiction sense so much as fantastic in the children’s fantasy world sense.

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Interest in these “behind the writings” continues, so I’m still thinking they’re worth producing.  Feedback is always welcome, of course.  Your Patreon support is also needed to maintain this.

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