It has begun…
Ok, but for real. My next book has been started, and I’m loving it so far.
First off, this past month I buckled down and finished the outline. I’m sure I will change things as I go, but I do have the rough skeleton of how the plot progresses and the major story beats that occur each chapter. Right now, I’m planning on 17 chapters. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’ve planned each chapter to be much longer than the Soulformer chapters (as a refresher, I had 42 chapters and a prologue with that one). The reason I wanted to do this was to build suspense through each chapter. Right off the bat, the reader knows this is a zombie horror story, and that rising tension is my favorite part. So, I wanted to pull that out as much as possible with each contained chapter (without it feeling like it was dragging).
So far, I’ve finished chapter 1 and the vast majority of chapter 2. Chapter 1 is just under 3,000 words, which is almost as long as the longest chapter in Soulformer. And that is supposed to be the shortest chapter by far. Chapter 2 is sitting at just under 5,000 words and it isn’t even completely written yet. So yeah, each month’s blog post may not have as many chapters to discuss. But that’s ok. I think there will still be plenty of content to talk about.
Let’s start off with chapter 1. This one is essentially the introduction of the crew. We get to know the main/viewpoint character named Di, the captain, who may seem a little prickly at first but will do anything for her crew. We also get a brief introduction to the rest of the cast of characters. First off, there’s Gene, the grizzled vet who’s been on Di’s crew since the beginning and is her closest confidant and who she relies on most. Next, there’s Gerald, the socially awkward science officer who is too smart for his good but is not used to being out in the field. Then, we have Hazel, the experienced pilot who is more than a little bit crazy, but that’s why she’s on the team. Gayle is the somewhat uptight security officer whose gun obsession makes her the best at her job. Emma is the new assistant pilot who is technically precise and perfect at textbook flying, which Hazel hopes to break her from eventually. Lucas, the ship’s mechanic, is young in body but old in spirit, constantly going on about the “good ol’ days” like he wasn’t born 100 years after they ended. Finally, there’s Mr. Liam Roberts, the corporate “babysitter” who’s on the mission to ensure it is completed to Paragon’s standards and to report back with an “unbiased” opinion. Right.
The crew’s mission is to discover what happened to Paragon’s mining crew on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, as they went silent some time ago. And an entire colony of nearly 150 people don’t just disappear…
Chapter 2 is where the crew is split up into two groups, one going to the surface of the ice moon while the other heads to the space station connected to the surface via space elevator. While Di is with group 1 on the surface, we’ll get to check in on group 2 throughout the story. Anyway, group 1 makes it to the surface, but something feels terribly wrong as there isn’t a single soul around…
Dun dun duuuuuuuun.
And that’s all you’re getting from me for now.
As for the actual writing process, it feels really good to start up a new project that feels entirely different. While my writing style and my particular voice is (hopefully) still coming through on the page, Di as a character is so different from Kinnick and Merith that it feels like a different writing style. Also, trying to describe the technology and the more realistic way the world works (despite this, essentially, boiling down to a space zombie story) is really fun to figure out. I’m having a great time writing it and while I know where I’m going with each chapter thanks to that outline, it’s fun discovering how the characters feel and fleshing them out.
As a side note, I really enjoy listening to music while I write. With Soulformer, I actually used a Spotify playlist curated by the man himself, Brandon Sanderson (his writing playlist for Stormlight 4, if you must know). For this one, the perfect playlist is the score for Interstellar. It’s set in space, Hans Zimmer’s music by itself is incredible, and there’s so many tracks that give off a tense, foreboding feeling. I love it.
So that’s where I am now. I’m at just under 8,000 words so far, though we’re just getting started. I’m excited to get the story really going and try writing the creepiness that is in my head…
That makes me sound a bit like a sociopath, but I promise I’m not. Mostly.