After the holiday break — which wasn’t a real break as there was a lot of overtime at the day job — I have begun the rough ideas on paper stage for my next novel.

While I have an idea for the characters and the central plot and story there are a lot of details yet to work out. For me that starts with the world building.

I know some of the outlines of the world that this story has to take place in. The plot dictates elements of the worlds. You can never have Alien happen in a world of happy socialism, so to get to Alien you must have a world with greedy corporations.

Given that the working title for the next novel is Company Town: Mars that means the world building has to include a lot of capitalism and all that entails. It’s set about 120 years in the future and will be mostly a sociological science-fiction tale about the system to hem, corral, and define our actions.

What is fun in this phase is discovering the new aspect of the universe as they appear in my little noggin. The very act of making the notes open new idea and expands into constructions I hadn’t considered before putting words to documents.

I am thinking that this book will take place in a world where divergent political pressures have shattered the United States and the grand Union has failed. While I expect none of the story will actually take place on Earth much less in the United States the background is essential to creating the fictional present.

I don’t know how others feel about the world building but for me it is one of the more fun aspects of writing.

A frequent topic of conversation among writers, particularly as ‘Own Voices’ continues to grow is the fraught challenges when someone, usually straight, white, and male, writes for characters from minority or marginalized communities.

There is a school of thought that members of culturally dominate groups should refrain from writing characters coming from those marginalized groups. On one level this seems reasonable and logical. Experiences from marginalized communities can be quite specific, with social queues and particularities that are not visible to people outside of the group. If a writer’s understanding of a group comes from mass culture itis likely to be contaminated with stereotypes, both positive and negative, rather than actual understanding.

There is also a practicality question.

Minority and marginalized communities are under representative in popular media arts and an artist not from such a community can be seen as taken up a spot in the room that might have gone to someone historically shut out from the conversation. So even well intended, well researched, efforts can contribute to harm.

But there is another issue to consider.

If as a straight white male, I should stick to straight white male characters, then my novels become a northern European sausage-fest, one that utterly fails to reflect the reality. Restricted to my own group is a disservice to my art and by extension to anyone who consumes it.

Clearly my works should include the full spectrum of humanity, and yet I do have a responsibility to consider how my place and my voice may impact others.

I think the answer may be to think of characters existing in orbitals around the protagonist/antagonist nucleus.

The protagonist and the antagonist most likely constitute the majority of my novel’s points of view. It is through these characters’ eyes that I am reflecting the world around them and whose thoughts and emotions are buried in the prose. These characters I should know the best and should be a few steps removed from myself as possible. Each major aspect that is distantly removed from my own is an added difficulty factor in getting the character right.

Sidekicks, friends, and associates are an orbital distant and are less likely to have extended scenes from their points of view. More separation and less time in their heads mean there is less danger, but not none, in committing an egregious error. More factors of difficulty can be safely added.

Minor characters, here for a scene or two, are the most distant. With these characters, as long as stereotypes are avoided, it is the safest to introduce every sort of character, to populate a world fully.

As with most artistic things there are no hard fast rules, but there are always considerations.

I will return to my season Spooky Movie series tomorrow.

For the last week I have been reading a novella by a fellow writer as a beta reader. For those not in the know a beta read is test read by someone other than the author of a piece. The purpose is to discover how it comes across to someone unfamiliar with the story. Writers often beg and go wanting for good beta readers, after all it is unpaid labor and a good beta read is labor as not only are you responding with ‘I like that character’ ‘I don’t like that one,’ and such. But if you are a writer, you are also trying to feel the pace, the mood, and why it works or doesn’t.

That is why if you are a writer doing beta reads is more important than getting them. Sharpening those analytical skills on prose you did not compose sharpened them for when you are composing as well. The trick is to also understand what the other writer’s voice is and not step on that. The point of your feedback isn’t to turn the piece into something like what you would have written but the improve what is there by coming closer to what the author intended.

I am luck that the piece I am currently reading is well-written and entertaining with few major issues. All writers should as much as possible, go forth and beta read for others.

In the superhero role playing game champions on of the disadvantages you can added to a character’s power to lower its point cost is an activation roll. Basically, when the character attempts to use their power, flight, energy blasty, whatever it is, the player must roll dice and if they make the target roll then the power function otherwise nothing happens.

For me writing can often feel like a power with an activation roll.

I have my stories, my characters, my themes and setting but getting started on that day’s writing can be a challenge. The internet with its endless diversions is a powerful temptation, as are movies, video games, and just plain old-fashioned daydreaming.

However, once I have begun to actually write, burying myself in the exact act of placing words into sentences, bringing the characters and events to life as I type them all resistance evaporates and it is terribly easy to fall into ‘flow’ and just write.

I am certain that there are many writers who feel the same way I do. It’s the basis of my statement ‘The hardest part of writing of butt to chair and fingers to keyboard.’

What exactly is the source of this resistance I am not sure. I don’t think it is a fear of failure. I have failed so many times that is holds little terror for me. Much like rejections its failure is simply another aspect of the writing experience that is nearly inescapable. There are numerous abandoned short stories, scripts, and novel in my history. It is not heart wrenching when a story crashes on take and never achieves flight, it is just part of the process. (Though I am happy to say that unfinished stories happen with far less frequency than they used to.)

I think it is simply the desire to not work.

Writing is work.

For me it is an emotional experience. I feel that same things my characters feel. Fear, elation, arousal, these are mirrored in me as I attempt to put them into prose. That is a tiring and strenuous process and it probably the common desire to avoid strain that levels this activation cost, a toll I again and again must find a method to pay.