The
Farpool is, as I have said, a work in progress. Now that Chapter 1 is public, what did I have
in mind as I translated my Notes into actual story text?
First, Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam are American
teen-agers circa early 22nd century.
They live in Scotland Beach, Florida.
They see something extraordinary on a little canoe trip offshore to an
isolated cove and they can’t convince any adults or the authorities that they
actually did see what they know they saw.
So right away, we know something’s up.
One
of my key goals
in Chapter 1 was to establish Chase and Angie’s relationships, to each other,
to their families and to the town.
Eventually, the story will take them to a place and a time that is a
long, long way from Scotland Beach. In
order to make this credible, I want to make them believable and likeable people
that readers can identify with. Where
they are going and what they will do and see is so incredible and so different
from anything else they’ve ever seen and done before, that I figured the best
way to bring that home to the reader was to experience it through someone they
like and trust, people like themselves.
This was priority number one.
In other words, I want them to seem ordinary, so
that when the truly extraordinary things begin to happen, it’s more
believable. Novelists do this all the
time, especially in fantasy, horror and science fiction stories, all of which
place readers in really unusual places.
It’s almost like a canon of the field: the more extraordinary the
setting, the more ordinary the people should be…otherwise there is too much for
a reader to absorb. And readers don’t
really like to work that hard.
A
second goal I had in writing Chapter 1 the way I
did is to set the stage for the alien encounters that are coming. Much of The
Farpool takes place in two places: 22nd century Earth (Florida)
and an oceanic world 6000 light years distant and hundreds of years displaced
in time. To do that, I had to introduce
some basic descriptions of the aliens, what they look like (to Chase and
Angie), what capabilities they have, how they act and react around humans and
around Chase and Angie. I wanted to
initially guide the reader’s reactions to the aliens (they’re called Seomish)
so that the reader will have some foundation on how to experience what is
coming. Specifically, I want the reader
to experience the Seomish and their
world and their ideas, language, behavior, etc through Chase and Angie; that’s
why the teenagers are in the story. In
effect, they are a vehicle to guide your responses to this alien world and its
people.
There is an ancillary
goal I have in exploring the growing relationship between Chase and Angie
by contrasting it with the relationships among the Seomish. In fact, there will be two main Seomish
characters, one male and female, relatively young in age. I intend to highlight Chase and Angie’s
relationship by putting them in situations where they have to act and explain
themselves to the Seomish and vice versa.
The story possibilities are endless here.
Along with explaining their relationships to the Seomish,
the fact that Chase and Angie will have a relationship with these primary
Seomish characters and will in fact travel to their world for an extended stay,
gives me the opportunity to show how two 22nd century American
teenagers react to this strange world and the even stranger predicament the
Seomish find themselves in.
Chase and Angie don’t expect to be thrust into the
role of heroes. But fate and the firm
hand of the author will put them in that situation. Read The
Farpool to find out how they do and what happens to them.
But enough. I
don’t want to give away everything just yet.
See you in a week.
Phil B.
No comments:
Post a Comment