From: seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com   
      
   	I often get asked various questions about how I write, what my approach   
   to writing is, how long it takes, and so on. This piece tries to cover   
   all of these questions.   
      
   	The simplest way to describe how I write is the wiseass version: I sit   
   down, open my computer, bring up the file, and write until I run out of   
   story or time.   
      
   	Naturally, it's not quite so simple as that.   
      
   	If I know what I'm writing – that is, I have the plotline clear in my   
   head and I know the characters and so on – it can be about that simple.   
   For the stories told in what I consider my "main universe" – which   
   includes Digital Knight/Paradigms Lost and Phoenix Rising, but has many   
   other stories written and planned – this is fairly common. I can sit   
   down and start writing any of several stories pretty easily.   
      
   	This is because that universe is one I've been working on for over 35   
   years. I know that universe like the back of my hand. If I'm so tired   
   that my eyes are trying to close on their own, I can still remember key   
   facts about the way things work and finish planning out the rest of a   
   chapter while I'm typing it. If I come to a point in a story where I   
   actually haven't figured out the details, I can usually just keep on   
   writing, confident that my knowledge of how the world works will help me   
   work things out on the fly.   
      
   	Thus – for me – the first thing I do with any new story is figure out   
   the world it takes place in. Some people like to start with characters,   
   but for me it's the world – mainly because I have to know what the   
   characters will have to live with, what strange (or not so strange)   
   rules will govern their lives, in order to actually figure out the   
   characters themselves.   
      
   	So far in my published or to-be-published writing career I've had to do   
   that five times – first for Diamonds Are Forever (collected in Mountain   
   Magic), then for Boundary, then Grand Central Arena, Polychrome, and   
   most recently for the new Boundaryverse novel Castaway Planet, which is   
   200 years farther on and has a lot of new stuff I had to figure out. I'm   
   just starting the worldbuilding on a sixth – The Ethical Magical Girl.   
      
   	The amount of worldbuilding varies drastically. For Diamonds Are   
   Forever, I actually wanted to leave a possible opening for that world   
   linking with my own, so I was able to steal certain background concepts   
   as foundations for parts of the world which gave me the origins of the   
   Nowëthada and Lisharithada; it was in a sense a bit of a cheat, but it   
   worked fine for such a short novel and by the time I was done I knew a   
   lot more about the world.   
      
   	For Boundary there was a lot of scary work to do. I didn't have to   
   design the deep background – it was set in a version of this world   
   thirty years hence – but I did need to come to understand space travel,   
   and the technologies and challenges, to a depth I'd never expected, and   
   figure out how to arrange specific events that would bring the   
   characters together in interesting and exciting ways. Hard SF puts   
   serious constraints on you; no zooming from planet to planet in a couple   
   of hours, not with any tech we have or foresee, anyway. However, it did   
   have the real-world advantage of having many people to consult with on   
   how things worked.   
      
   	Grand Central Arena posed a completely different challenge – the need   
   to make a space opera universe that wasn't my main universe.  The core   
   concept that Eric had planted the seed for was easy enough to grow – it   
   fit an old, old idea I'd had many years before – but there was something   
   missing, and it wasn't until several elements dovetailed in my head –   
   DuQuesne's background, a particular set of Roger Dean images, and a few   
   other disparate things – that I understood really what I was building   
   and why.   
      
   	Polychrome had the terrible challenge of trying to take a series of   
   children's books written a hundred years ago and (A) resolve key   
   contradictions, (B) construct a coherent world that was respectful of   
   the original world, and (C) create a plotline that would maintain some   
   of the essence of the original while being worthwhile for adults or   
   young adults to read – not a children's story, even though its origins   
   were set in one of the oldest childrens' series written.   
      
   	Castaway Planet's challenges involved extrapolating from the   
   Boundaryverse and then creating what I hope is a fairly unique world and   
   set of challenges for the characters developed.   
      
   	Characters themselves have many different inspirations. In the Boundary   
   series, some characters were invented by Eric Flint (most notably Helen   
   Sutter, and the published version of Madeline Fathom is really his even   
   if I did invent the name and general outline); others were mine and   
   their origins varied – A.J. Baker is essentially two characters from   
   Digital Knight crossed: Jason Wood and the super-hacker called "The   
   Jammer". Nicholas Glendale is clearly a nod to Dr. Carl Sagan, just in a   
   paleontological setting; and so on. Grand Central Arena of course   
   features characters directly and admittedly inspired by others, with   
   Marc C. DuQuesne being the most obvious. Stephen Fransceschetti and Carl   
   Edlund are direct Tuckerizations of friends of mine; Ariane Austin   
   combines the hotshot pilot template with her namesake Steve Austin. In   
   Castaway Planet we stole a lot of character concepts from the original   
   inspirations – prior "Robinsonades" – and put our own spin on them.   
      
   	Familiarity, or lack thereof, with the universe influences how much   
   planning-ahead and outlining I prefer to do. Sometimes I still have to   
   outline – and it's a task I hate with a passion – because my publisher   
   wants an outline first, before they buy anything. In general, though,   
   the outline is a skeleton that may fall apart once the writing starts.   
      
   For instance, at the time of writing this, I had just completed Phoenix   
   in Shadow, sequel to Phoenix Rising, and the outline mostly went out the   
   window pretty quickly. As I know that world so well, I didn't even use   
   the outline once I started writing, except to look up names or something   
   similar that I remembered inventing for the outline and didn't want to   
   re-invent. But for the most part, I literally just let the characters   
   lead me through their adventures until they reached the climactic points   
   which I did know.   
      
   That latter bit is one of the crucial parts of writing for me. I   
   absolutely must know what I'm heading for, and specifically I need to   
   have in my mind some awesome, spectacular, and/or tearjerking scene that   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)