“Time Jumpers”

Recently, I have been playing around with the idea of launching another sf series of short works, novelette-length works, as a way of keeping new stuff constantly being uploaded to my readers, who seemed to enjoy new stories from yours truly.  I haven’t fully decided on this yet, and normally I don’t discuss new works while they are still in the process of being born, but I thought you might like a peek behind the curtains, so to speak, and have a chance to put in some of your own ideas in the stewpot.

Story and Series Notes

1. This would be a series of stories, probably 10-12 in all, about the First Time Displacement Battery.  Each story would run about 15,000 to 20,000 words, about 40-60 pages in all. 
2. All stories would be told by Ultrarch-Major Monthan Dringoth, Battery Commander, while he and 1^st TD are stationed on Storm (the human name for Seome, the oceanic planet seen in The Farpool series), monitoring and occasionally operating the Time Twister.  The stories would be told to his battery crew and they would be stories of some of Dringoth’s exploits and service in the Time Corps and before he joined Time Corps as well as stories of his service in Timejump Command (his current posting).
3. Some of the stories would be briefly interrupted by live engagements with the Coethi in Halo-Alpha space, which the installation on Storm is defending, using the Time Twister.
4. Possible story titles:
   1. ‘Voidtime’ -  1^st TD’s mission and crew
   2. ‘Keaton’s World’ (Dringoth’s earliest years)
   3. ‘A Small Navigation Error’ – the Lalande incident at Boru
   4. ‘Sturdivant Eleven’ – Dringoth is a mining camp cook and bot repairman
   5. ‘Time Corps’
   6. ‘Poona-Peona’ – Recruit training for the Corps
   7. ‘Hapsh’m and the First Coethi Encounter’
   8. ‘Operation Galactic Hammer’
   9. ‘Byrd’s Draconis’ – Dringoth in OCS
   10. ‘Jumpship Majoris’
   11. ‘Time Stream S-4487’
   12. ‘The Time Twister’- the arrival of 1^st TD on Storm and the encounter with intelligent marine creatures (ties in with The Farpool series).
        
       Any serialized story, which this is, needs an overall story arc, as well as continuing characters.  I have Dringoth himself, and several others of his crew, which I won’t get into here.  I have an enemy in the Coethi, a swarm-based intelligence composed of nanobotic elements acting as a single entity, covering about half a light-year in extent.  The conflict of the overall story is this: the Umans (Humanity hundreds of years into the future) wish to expand into a region of the galaxy called the Halo and they currently occupy a part of this Halo space called Halo-Alpha.  The Coethi occupy the rest and they are resisting the encroachments of the Umans.  The two sides fight a series of skirmishes, some of which occupy our story series.  Oh, and much of the conflict takes places in a variety of alternate time streams, because both sides have perfected a rudimentary form of time travel and can move about in time to a limited degree.  The Coethi are trying to ‘destroy’ encroaching Uman outposts before they are even built, by altering the history of the Uman expansion into Halo space.  Obviously, Umans are trying to prevent this.  
        
       In this story, I want to show and dramatize what such a conflict would be like to the soldiers involved (the Time Jumpers).  What would they actually do?  How would they experience this conflict?  How would it differ from other conflicts in human history?  Would there be similarities?  What about strategy, tactics, weapons and cryptic directives from Headquarters? 
        
       I don’t think this series will be ready to start before mid-year 2018, as I clearly have a lot of work to do.   But I enjoyed the challenge of writing the Nanotroopers series and it seems to have been pretty well received, judging from the thousands of downloads to this point.
        
       So let me know what you think.  Is this something you’d like to see?  Send me your ideas on story topics, characters, tactics of war involving time travel and how it might proceed.  I think together we have a real shot at something new and different here.
        
       The next post to The Word Shed will put us into December, specifically December 4, 2017.  Ah, yes…the holidays. 
        
       See you then.
        
       Phil B.
        
        

 

“Repurposing Old Stories”

Every writer has dozens of old stories stuffed away in boxes, on shelves, in desk drawers, just waiting for the garbage can.  I’m no different.  I’ve been writing stories of some kind since I was just out of college in the mid-70s.  Most of the stories won’t and shouldn’t ever see the light of day.  Chalk it up to training.  One wag said you’re not a professional writer until you’ve put down a million words.  It takes that long and that much work to clear out all the crap from your system and get down to the true nuggets of your authentic voice.

Which is not say that old stories can’t be re-used in some fashion or become the basis for other stories.  Sometimes, these old stories are like old jeans…you just can’t throw them away.

A good example is my sf novel The Farpool, now available at Smashwords and other fine ebook retailers (downloads have reached nearly 700 since it was uploaded).  This book started life in the early 80s as an sf novel called The Shores of Seome.   I tried to place this work many times in the 80s but was unsuccessful so I put it aside.  But the idea of setting a story on an oceanic planet with a marine civilization of intelligent fish-like people underwater and human soldiers operating a defensive weapon situated on an island above water, just never would go away. 

Sometime about five years ago, for some reason, I dredged this story out of my own slush pile and revisited it.  Below are my review notes after re-reading this story:

Review Notes

1.  Need less jargon.  Less Seomish words for better readability.
2. Page 72 and on…much of the dialogue is stilted.  Need more natural-sounding dialogue, with less jargon.
3. Needs a human character involved with the story to give it some context for the reader…how a human senses and reacts to Seome and the Seomish.  Maybe a Uman from the Time Twister base (First Umanite Time Displacement Battery) who wanders off and is rescued by the Seomish? 
4. Needs more scenes to show the Uman side of the story…the Time Twister, the war with the Coethi, the bigger picture of which Seome is a part. 
5. Page 16 is a story of how the Seomish came to be…could be used in The Farpool….possibly have snippets from some great encyclopedia that Longsee loh is ‘writing’ or dictating…a sort of History of the Seomish People.

I concocted the idea of the Farpool itself, a whirlpool of such extreme strength that it could become a gateway to other times and places, like a wormhole.  The whirlpool is actually just a side effect of the human weapon called Time Twister, but for the fish-people (i.e. the Seomish), it turns out to be a gateway to Earth itself.  And as you can see, I added some human beings to give the reader a chance to experience all this from a more familiar perspective.  The result: a re-purposed story.  Essentially the same setting, but the story was changed and updated.  I even added an appendix at the end to provide additional details about the planet and its people, their culture, language, etc for those who were interested. 

The result was The Farpool  as it is today.

I am now in the process of doing the same thing with several other of my older stories.  One is a horror story written in the early 80s that still reads pretty well but is too long and needs to be edited down.  Plus it was written to be contemporary in 1980-81 and, as such, is somewhat dated with respect to cultural references, etc.  I’ll have to decide whether this story is worth the effort to pare down, tighten up and/or modernize the time period to now.  I haven’t decided yet.

There is another story, an sf story, written even earlier, which did attract some agent interest when I originally sent it around, but would also require extensive re-writing to make it work.,

The big question here: is it worth it to re-purpose an old story?  Like many things, it depends.  Ask yourself these questions:

1. Is it still a pretty good read?  Does it keep your interest, keep you turning the pages?  Remember, maybe you’re not the best judge of this.  See what your friends think.  And if you already have review comments from the past, look hard at them and see if there isn’t some truth to what they’re saying.
2. How much work is involved?  Is it likely an extensive re-write?  Just some updating, paring down and polishing?  Does the story still hang around in your mind as something worth doing?   In my case, a few of my old stories have almost possessed me over the years…what became The Farpool was like that.   It just wouldn’t go away. 
3. How does the story and the idea behind it compare with what’s being done today?  Has someone else already done this idea?  Shame on them.  Has it been done to death?  Is this really part of the ‘million-word’ crap you have to get out of your system to get down to the gold mine of your true voice? Maybe you should just pull the plug and let it die a natural death.
    
   Every writer faces this situation at some time.  The answers you provide depend on how strong is the hold of this old story on your brain.  If you can’t just let it go, then wrestle with it and maybe you can find a way to make it work in today’s market and for today’s reader.  Let’s face it: writing book-length fiction is a labor of love anyway.  You shouldn’t undertake something like a novel unless you have the vision and the stamina to see it through.  Writing a book is a marathon not a sprint.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed will come on November 27, 2017.  In this post, I’ll lay out some early details for a prospective new series of novelette-length stories called Time Jumpers.  Look for it.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.
    

 

“Developing and Evolving Series Characters

Many writers work with series characters, characters who come on-stage and show up again and again in sequel after sequel, story after story.  We’re talking here about all kinds of characters, from James Bond to Tom Swift, Jr. to John Connor in the Terminator movies.  This is particularly common in television, even film.  Working with characters who continue from one story to another is both rewarding and challenging.  In my own work, I’ve done this enough (see Johnny Winger in my Tales of the Quantum Corps) to have come up with some do’s and don’ts about how to make it all work.

1. Know your character well.  I like to do extensive bios. In previous posts, I’ve shared some details about how to write character bios.  I do a physical description, then a chronological rundown of key events in their lives, then a few paragraphs on their personality and character.  Nothing special and I don’t do it for every character, just the main ones.  But in the end, I know this person pretty well and more importantly, I have something to refer back to and to help me stay consistent with this character across multiple stories.  And sometimes, the details will suggest plot twists and turns themselves.  Do this.
2. Keep your notes.  Refer back to them.  In any long series of stories, like Tales of the Quantum Corps or Nanotroopers, you can never remember all the details. Yet consistency and accuracy are critical.  Readers and reviewers love to point out inconsistencies. In one story, Tom has blond hair.  In the next story, he has brown hair.  What happened?  Hair transplant, Grecian formula or writer laziness?  You be the judge. 
3. Lay out the arc of your character’s development and change beforehand. Give him or her  increasingly difficult challenges.  The simple word for this is planning.  Try to sketch out and write down how you want your main character to change or evolve.  We all change.  Lionel started out an introvert but he managed to overcome this and became a great inspiring leader.  How did this happen?  List some details of scenes and challenges that caused this change, including how Lionel responded.  You don’t have to write a psychological treatise but a little prep goes a long way in keeping you on track.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  I seriously doubt you can maintain a consistent and consistently engaging character over a series without some forethought. 
4. Ask questions of your character.  ‘Interview’ him (or her).  I don’t actually do this but I heard of this technique from a fellow writer and I offer it as a possibility.  Pretend you’re a reporter and you’re interviewing your main character for an article.  Ask penetrating questions: “Why, Colonel Johnny Winger, did you actually decide to join the Quantum Corps in the first place.”  This might actually be a better approach than what I described in (1) above.
5. Add some idiosyncracies but don’t go overboard.  Idiosyncracies are defined as a structural or behavioral peculiarity, from the Greek word idios, meaning peculiar.  You want your main character to be memorable in some way, without giving him two heads or a club foot or the ability to speak a hundred languages, unless all that is germane to the story.  TV writers and shows are notorious for giving series characters ticks or odd quirks or mannerisms that become comfortable to long time viewers but are easy to ridicule and make fun of.  Think Columbo and his rain coat and his lisp.  Maybe this is ‘acting’ but I call it literary laziness.  Writers can do better.  In written entertainment, they’d better be more creative.  Idiosyncracies are fine but they shouldn’t take over the character, at the expense of behavior and character evolution. 
6. Are your primary characters different enough to be distinguishable?  Ask yourself this: what do we remember about Pinocchio?  His long nose.  Do we remember anything about his character or why he has a long nose?  Not so much.  A main series character should be memorable and distinguishable by what he does and what he says and how he reacts.  Often, I portray characters with only minimal physical description, letting the reader form their own opinion from dialogue and narrative.  In your planning, make sure you give your main characters different enough trajectories so that the reader doesn’t confuse one with another.  This means developing and describing different life experiences and different ways of reacting to those experiences.  Just like real life!
7. A word about names.  One of my favorite sources of names is a map or an atlas.  Cities and towns, in many countries, are often named for people.  Don’t bother with phone books.  Scan the newspapers or a map.  Most people have common names.  How many Smiths or Jones are there?  Give your main character a name that doesn’t cause eyes to. roll, that rolls off your tongue, that doesn’t have obvious symbolic or pornographic overtones and that wouldn’t make high schoolers snicker in English Lit class.  Okay, so maybe Johnny Winger isn’t the best choice, but it sounds (to my ear) local, approachable, all-American, and primed for action.  That’s what I wanted to convey.  Nothing more.
    
   That’s it for now.  Remember: series characters require some forethought and planning.  It’s easy to get bogged down in trying to be consistent but if you don’t try, your readers will lose faith in your ability to tell a good story and they may wind up even laughing at your hard work and using the book as a paper weight.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 20.  In this post, I’ll lay out some early details for a prospective new series of novelette-length stories called Time Jumpers.  Look for it.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B. 
    

 

Post #9 November 6, 2017

“Current Projects”

My current projects deal mostly with my sf series The Farpool Stories.  Below is a little chart that shows how these stories (published and upcoming) fit together in time:

Earth Time	Title	Seome Time
2115 AD	The Farpool*	764.2 Tk to 769.3 Tk (Epoch of Tek’potu)
1942 AD and 2115-2117 AD	The Farpool: Marauders of Seome*	779.3 Tk to 785.2 Tk (Sigma Albeth B supernova; Seome destroyed
2115 AD	The Farpool: Exodus	1.1 to 1.5 Kv (Epoch of Kel’vishtu)
2130 AD	The Farpool: Convergence	2.5 to 3.2 Kv
2141 AD and 3.2 BYA (billion years ago)	The Farpool: Union	10.5 to 11.5 Kv
2195 AD	The Farpool: Diaspora	47.5Kv

*Published and uploaded to Smashwords.com

Last week’s blog was an excerpt from my current work in progress: The Farpool: Exodus.  The book is going along well and I expect to be able to make this available for download in early spring 2018, probably March or April.  Look for it.

As you can see from the chart, the series follows sequentially in time, with both Earth time and Seome time indicated.  Upcoming stories will continue the sequence as shown, and the stories will take place on Earth and other places.  One of the characteristics of the Farpool itself is that it is a gateway, a wormhole in space and time, so some stories will take advantage of this. 

For Exodus, I’m working off a pretty detailed chapter and scene outline that gives me direction for the sixteen chapters I believe it will take to tell this story.  As of this writing, I’m close to fifty pages in.

There are a number of challenges in writing stories in a series.  One is just keeping track of all the characters and what happens to them.  I found myself not long ago writing about a character who had actually died in a previous story.  I had to do some quick re-writing to get around this.  The best advice I can offer to any writer doing this kind of work is keep all your notes handy—don’t rely on memory alone.  Sometimes, in my current outline, I’ve found it advisable to write page references to earlier work right in the outline so I can readily refer back to something relevant to a scene.

While I’m writing the first draft of Exodus, I’m also working on the story outline (chapter and scene details) of Convergence, which is next in line.   Doing one outline while writing the first draft of the previous story seems to work pretty well, as my head and brain are still in the story and it’s easier to carry over plot points or character details from one to the next. With any luck, The Farpool: Convergence will exist at least in detailed outline by the end of the year and I can anticipate starting the first draft in the early summer of 2018.  Details and ideas for the next stories after Convergence are still too nebulous to mention here.  But the titles should give you some idea of where I’m going.  Remember we’re dealing with three intelligences here: human beings, the Seomish and the Coethi (nanobotic swarm life from sixty thousand light years away).

In fact, here’s an early look at the story outline for The Farpool: Convergence:

Chapter 1

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Conicthyosis Lab

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

September 2, 2130

Angie Gilliam has arrived at the Conicthyosis lab, with Chase Meyer, to undergo the amphib hybridization procedure.  She is nervous.  She also knows that her mother is adamantly opposed to having this procedure done, for when it is done, Angie will be an amphib like Chase, part Seomish, part human, and able to travel in and out of water, just like her boyfriend.

 

The procedure was developed by Dr. Josey Holland, who now runs the lab and is also an amphib herself and somewhat of a global celebrity.  Dr. Holland and an assistant sit down with Chase and Angie and they go over what the procedure entails.  It is a surgical procedure, with some gene therapy and nanobotic intervention.  The actual procedure will take a day.  The recovery and rehab will take several months in total.

 

We follow the procedure, as Angie is placed in a special chamber where she will remain for several days.  The procedure is described.  It goes well.  While he is waiting for her to come out, Chase watches a Solnet report on how many people around the world are also going through the same procedure.  Dr. Holland and her procedure have become extremely popular, almost a fad, and the Solnet reporter Aimee Tolstoy interviews several who are doing this or who have already undergone Conicthyosis. 

 

Tolstoy also interviews U.S. senator Ryan Palette (D-KY) who is opposed to all these procedures and to the way amphibs are everywhere and how modern culture seems to be increasingly dedicated to amphib needs, ways and concerns.  Palette informs the reporter that he is forming a new organization to ‘regain the way of life we used to have in this country’ and be an advocate for normal people.  It is to be called Sons of Adam (SOA).

 

Chase then finally gets to be with the now-modified Angie Gilliam.  He’s proud she’s taken this step.  It’s like becoming a new citizen of a whole new race.  They announce to Dr. Holland and all the techs that Chase has just proposed and they will be getting married in November, 2130.

 

Dr. Holland is less than enthusiastic about this as she always had designs on Chase, from the very beginning.

 

 

That’s Chapter 1 from my outline for the story coming after the one I’m writing now.  I hope it intrigues you.

 

The next post to The Word Shed will come on November 13, post #100.  In this post, I’ll cover some basics and guidelines, some don’s and don’ts, for developing and evolving characters that continue over multiple stories and sequels.  

 

See you then.

 

Phil B.