“Update on The Farpool: Marauders of Seome”

This post is an update on my next Farpool novel.  You see the title above.  It’s a sequel to the original The Farpool, published in June 2016 at Smashwords.com and available at fine ebook retailers everywhere.

I have a general plot outline but my days are now filled with the task of fleshing this outline out into a document I call Chapter and Scene Details.  This involves taking each piece of action in my notes and constructing a series of scenes and a chapter, explaining (to myself) what is supposed to happen, where the action takes places and who’s involved…and why.  It involves some fairly intense thinking and imagining.  Outlining is hard but it helps me in writing later. 

How do I come up with this stuff?  Basically, by asking questions.  I know what has preceded this chapter.  I know what my general outline says about where I should be going.  So I ask myself: what should happen next?  What would this character do next?  How would others respond?  That’s how I flesh things out…by putting myself right in the middle of the action and describing what I see in my mind’s eye.  It’s fun and rewarding but it can be exhausting as well. 

Here’s an excerpt from one of my newly concocted outlines…

Chapter 2:

(November 21, 1942)

Two German U- boats (U-115 and U86) are attacking an American convoy off the North Carolina coast.  A freighter and a tanker are torpedoed and sink.  Oil, flames and dying crewmen are floundering in the cold Atlantic waters.  The Ponkti lifeships and their mission teams observe what happens and are intrigued with the underwater technology of the Germans.  They observe the U-boats and follow them during the attack, then follow one as it returns to a U-boat pen at Bremen, on the German North Sea coast.

 

The Ponkti resolve to find a way of meeting with the operators of these strange metal craft.  Several Ponkti, wearing lifesuits, simply walk up out of the water at a U-boat pen and accost technicians working on a U-boat in harbor.  The dockworkers are startled and afraid.  Shots are fired, but the lifesuits are armored and the Ponkti are able to render the Tailless unconscious with blinders and sound suppressors (that give off deafening sound bursts that can render an enemy unconscious).  German marines are summoned  but one man, staff officer Fregattenkapitan Werner von Kleist, happens to be nearby, compiling a report on the U-boat mission for the OKM in Berlin.  He is more intrigued than afraid.  When one of the Ponkti (the Germans call them ‘Froschmann’…‘Frogmen’) hands Kleist an echopod, Kleist eventually understands what it is for, that these are intelligent beings and that they want to talk, to communicate, through the translator.  Kleist waves off the German marines (the Seebataillon)(also Marine-Stross-trupp-Abteilung) and huddles with other base officers in a machine shop off the pier.   There is a standoff outside, Ponkti vs. the marines. 

 

This process takes some hours, but eventually a meeting is organized around the waters of the U-boat pen…in a bunker just built to store munitions and explosives, but not yet being used. 

 

Needless to say, this can be laborious and tedious.  I try to do one of these chapters every day, working on the details after writing 3+ pages for Episode 22 of my serial Nanotroopers. 

Once I’ve taken my chapter details to the presumed end of my outline, what’s my next step?   Look for holes in the plot.  Obvious inconsistencies.  Duplications.  Would this person really do that, based on what I know about them?  Or based on what has gone before.

Writing a sequel has both advantages and disadvantages.  I have a ready- made imaginary world at hand, already thought up and thoroughly researched and accessible in the Appendix of The Farpool.  The disadvantage is I can’t veer off too far from what has already been written and published and expect readers to believe it.  So there are both constraints on what I can do and props to help me do it.  The art of writing lies in finding a middle way and making it work for the reader. 

The end result, if I do all this properly and with appropriate attention to detail, to story flow, to motivations and believability, is I will have something called Chapter and Scene Details and I’ll be ready to write the first draft.  When I’ve done this right, that first draft becomes much easier to write and in many cases, almost writes itself.  In fact, if I do the Details the way I should, I can often lift text right from the Details and use it in the story.

A little upfront work goes a long way toward helping this writer get the job done.  And, if the story wants to veer off as I write it (which happens), I’m not afraid to do that either, knowing where I am ultimately going to wind up by following my detailed outline.

My current plan, if all goes well, is to begin the first draft of The Farpool: Marauders of Seome on or about April 20…Earth Day.  Except we won’t be spending all our time on Earth….

The next post to The Word Shed comes on March 27.

See you then.

Phil B.