You've already read some parts of Book Five. No, not from the chapters I've posted. I'm talking about sections in the trilogy that you've already read.
You have already read them, right?
Did I just copy & paste those flashbacks into the new book? Did I radically change things around? Did I totally rewrite all of Zeus' back history, meaning I'll need to do another rewrite on the trilogy?
Minor spoilers and answers after the JUMP.
Newest Book ...
Friday, February 13, 2015
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Writing, Again: Part XI - Finalized Maps
This will be a short one. I thought you might like to see the final maps that appear in Book Five.
As I stated in an earlier post, since Larsa is very Tiberia-focused, the map moves them to the center. Also, much of the world recognizes Tiberia's names for geographical points of interest (Isinnia, Eridia, Badaria, etc.) instead of the more ancient Attican names that Zeus, et al, employed in the trilogy (Galatia, Scythia, Illyria, etc.).
Like previous maps I've made, the place names come from actual geographic features I found on an ancient Latin map of the Roman Empire as well as variations of ancient cities and lands from all around the world. In the trilogy, I stuck to ancient Greece since Zeus, etc., named everything after Attican sites. This time around, without a unifying influence, it seemed logical to name things based on all kinds of differing backgrounds and histories.
Since much of the action takes place in Isinnia, I knew I'd need a more detailed version so I could squeeze in more names and labels.
That's all for now. More reading and editing to do. More blog posts coming soon, too.
Click to embiggen
As I stated in an earlier post, since Larsa is very Tiberia-focused, the map moves them to the center. Also, much of the world recognizes Tiberia's names for geographical points of interest (Isinnia, Eridia, Badaria, etc.) instead of the more ancient Attican names that Zeus, et al, employed in the trilogy (Galatia, Scythia, Illyria, etc.).
Like previous maps I've made, the place names come from actual geographic features I found on an ancient Latin map of the Roman Empire as well as variations of ancient cities and lands from all around the world. In the trilogy, I stuck to ancient Greece since Zeus, etc., named everything after Attican sites. This time around, without a unifying influence, it seemed logical to name things based on all kinds of differing backgrounds and histories.
Click to embiggen
Since much of the action takes place in Isinnia, I knew I'd need a more detailed version so I could squeeze in more names and labels.
That's all for now. More reading and editing to do. More blog posts coming soon, too.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Writing, Again: Part X - Prequel Problems
I've typed on this subject before, but as I'm nearer the book's release, it seemed fitting to tackle it again.
There's an inherent problem with prequels. If characters carry over from the original to the prequel, then we already know how they turn out. So we have to make things interesting. We have to do stuff with them that defies (some measure of) expectations.
Zeus and crew feature prominently in Book Five, of course. But the Zeus we see is not the same Zeus we find in the trilogy. There is a learning curve for him. We get hints of the god who will rule Kobol, but he doesn't fully come into his own within these pages.
The same can be said for other characters that appear in the trilogy, but I won't go into further detail for fear of ruining any potential surprises.
Another problem? Characters you don't know about and aren't familiar with at all. Sometimes this isn't a problem and sometimes it is.
Typically, that's a result of poor writing. If A) the new character isn't intriguing and B) the older, beloved characters appear to be shunted aside in favor of the new characters, then you get audience displeasure.
By necessity, there are new characters in Book Five. The subtitle alone tells you that the Titans are involved. Also, as depicted in a Book Three flashback, we know that there's a Caesar, too. I found Caesar to be a compelling character and I didn't mind dedicating plenty of space to him. I don't believe the readers will mind, either.
Despite my own enjoyment of Caesar Maxentius IX, I know people are reading this for more Zeus, et al, and Cylons. I felt duty-bound to get to them as soon as possible, so the creation of the Titans comes fairly early on. (And the birth of the Olympians shortly after that.) The bulk of the book is Titans vs. Olympians. That's the whole point, right?
I was about a month into it when I realized I was falling into the prequel trap. I was spending too much time with new characters and, as a consequence, the characters people wanted to spend time with were being shunted further and further back. So I began to trim. I had to be careful, though, as I needed to build the world.
Book One spends a good bit of time building the world of Kobol in the golden age of the Lords' reign. When I first published the book, I probably had too many chapters doing that. In subsequent edits, I removed a few. It's a tighter book and the world doesn't seem to have suffered.
Book Five is much the same. The world is very different, though. It's not a world unified and buoyed by the gods. I spent too long building corners of the world that could have been taken care of more organically as the story progressed. All's well now and the book is shorter for it. (Not much shorter, though. Frak. I'll discuss that at a later time.)
But there's a tiger in our faces. I need to mention it.
Caprica had very large shoes to fill, coming after BSG. Unfortunately, the show seemed to spin its wheels for the first third or so of the season. They got lost in world building and in character building, too. They had a hard time getting the characters to a place where the audience truly wanted to spend time with them. It's a shame, because they began to find purchase and gain ground in the latter part of the series, which, of course, was too late.
How did Caprica fare against the prequel problem? Well, they avoided having any characters from BSG in it (though they did have the family members of some). The entire show was made up of new characters, some of whom clicked better than others. They jumped into it, whole hog. Props for the attempt. If the early going hadn't seemed so slow and had "SyFy" treated it better, I'm sure we'd have a few seasons of a good-to-great prequel to reflect upon.
More posts coming soon ... including maps, mythology, and the problem with Galactica.
There's an inherent problem with prequels. If characters carry over from the original to the prequel, then we already know how they turn out. So we have to make things interesting. We have to do stuff with them that defies (some measure of) expectations.
Trust me, I didn't go so far as this.
Zeus and crew feature prominently in Book Five, of course. But the Zeus we see is not the same Zeus we find in the trilogy. There is a learning curve for him. We get hints of the god who will rule Kobol, but he doesn't fully come into his own within these pages.
The same can be said for other characters that appear in the trilogy, but I won't go into further detail for fear of ruining any potential surprises.
Another problem? Characters you don't know about and aren't familiar with at all. Sometimes this isn't a problem and sometimes it is.
Like this guy. Who cared about him in the Matrix sequels? No one. That's who.
Typically, that's a result of poor writing. If A) the new character isn't intriguing and B) the older, beloved characters appear to be shunted aside in favor of the new characters, then you get audience displeasure.
By necessity, there are new characters in Book Five. The subtitle alone tells you that the Titans are involved. Also, as depicted in a Book Three flashback, we know that there's a Caesar, too. I found Caesar to be a compelling character and I didn't mind dedicating plenty of space to him. I don't believe the readers will mind, either.
Despite my own enjoyment of Caesar Maxentius IX, I know people are reading this for more Zeus, et al, and Cylons. I felt duty-bound to get to them as soon as possible, so the creation of the Titans comes fairly early on. (And the birth of the Olympians shortly after that.) The bulk of the book is Titans vs. Olympians. That's the whole point, right?
I was about a month into it when I realized I was falling into the prequel trap. I was spending too much time with new characters and, as a consequence, the characters people wanted to spend time with were being shunted further and further back. So I began to trim. I had to be careful, though, as I needed to build the world.
Book One spends a good bit of time building the world of Kobol in the golden age of the Lords' reign. When I first published the book, I probably had too many chapters doing that. In subsequent edits, I removed a few. It's a tighter book and the world doesn't seem to have suffered.
Book Five is much the same. The world is very different, though. It's not a world unified and buoyed by the gods. I spent too long building corners of the world that could have been taken care of more organically as the story progressed. All's well now and the book is shorter for it. (Not much shorter, though. Frak. I'll discuss that at a later time.)
But there's a tiger in our faces. I need to mention it.
I liked it. A lot.
Caprica had very large shoes to fill, coming after BSG. Unfortunately, the show seemed to spin its wheels for the first third or so of the season. They got lost in world building and in character building, too. They had a hard time getting the characters to a place where the audience truly wanted to spend time with them. It's a shame, because they began to find purchase and gain ground in the latter part of the series, which, of course, was too late.
How did Caprica fare against the prequel problem? Well, they avoided having any characters from BSG in it (though they did have the family members of some). The entire show was made up of new characters, some of whom clicked better than others. They jumped into it, whole hog. Props for the attempt. If the early going hadn't seemed so slow and had "SyFy" treated it better, I'm sure we'd have a few seasons of a good-to-great prequel to reflect upon.
More posts coming soon ... including maps, mythology, and the problem with Galactica.
Friday, January 30, 2015
Writing, Again: Part IX - World Building with Language
In my post-writing phase, I intend to put up entries on all manner of topics related to (and maybe not) BSG, Lords of Kobol, etc. Here's the first.
Language. When you're writing a book, language is pretty damned important. It casts a tone over everything. Word choice, dialogue choice, dialogue styles, ... it makes the world you're creating feel familiar or alien. Whichever one you need.
For Lords of Kobol, I've tried to walk the line between familiar and alien. Since the stories take place thousands of years before BSG, I have a wide degree of latitude when it comes to the world I've made and how the characters speak. It needs to be familiar enough so that the reader is comfortable with it, but I want to inject things that make it feel foreign.
For example, in all of the books, I've managed to avoid having any character say, "OK." That's actually harder than you might think. If I had to guess, I'd say that some of the characters on the show said "OK" on occasion, but not in my books. "OK" dates to the early 1800s when there was an "abbreviation fad" (holy crap, life must've been boring then). There also appeared to be a "misspelling fad," because "OK" came to mean "oll korrect." Apparently, "okeh" is a Choctaw word meaning "it is" and that came to be known at about the same time, so perhaps the two origins are intertwined. Regardless ... I felt "OK" was too colloquial and decided not to use it.
Another one? The word "luck" doesn't appear in the books. Characters might say "good fortune," but they'll never say "good luck." Why? I don't know. It's just another way for it to feel alien.
One of the biggest traps for writers, particularly those who dabble in scifi or ancient times, is the use of idioms. You know what an idiom is, right? It's a phrase that doesn't mean anything logically on its face, but we understand what's being said. For example, "fine kettle of fish."
Because this is set on another planet thousands of years ago, in Book Five, I use a variety of idiomatic substitutions. Here are a few:
Another means: tone of dialogue. Think about historical films. Let's choose a Roman epic, since that fits with Book Five. Everyone has a British accent because, apparently, everyone spoke with British accents back in the day. The rich patricians and the emperor will speak with a highly educated accent. They'll enunciate all of their words. They won't say certain things. This conveys high class. The plebeians, the soldiers and other rabble will speak with a Cockney accent. Something to convey low class. That's the way these things work.
In Book Five, I do much the same thing. The Caesar and his associates often speak in bigger words with a slightly more archaic tone. The plebians in the story do not and they often employ contractions. Zeus and his people speak like "we" do (modern Americans), with lots of contractions and an easy familiarity. That's because this is the way they spoke in the previous books and also because we're supposed to be paying attention to them more intently anyway. Lastly, the Messengers (BSG's angels) speak in a more "ethereal" manner. Their word choices and tones are nearly biblical or Tolkienesque (just like all of Book Four). This puts them at a distance from us; it makes them feel ancient, alien and out of reach. (The narrative around the "tenders" also tends toward the Tolkieneque to aid with this feeling.)
That's all I've got for now. Back to the reading and editing. More posts to come in the near future.
Language. When you're writing a book, language is pretty damned important. It casts a tone over everything. Word choice, dialogue choice, dialogue styles, ... it makes the world you're creating feel familiar or alien. Whichever one you need.
For Lords of Kobol, I've tried to walk the line between familiar and alien. Since the stories take place thousands of years before BSG, I have a wide degree of latitude when it comes to the world I've made and how the characters speak. It needs to be familiar enough so that the reader is comfortable with it, but I want to inject things that make it feel foreign.
For example, in all of the books, I've managed to avoid having any character say, "OK." That's actually harder than you might think. If I had to guess, I'd say that some of the characters on the show said "OK" on occasion, but not in my books. "OK" dates to the early 1800s when there was an "abbreviation fad" (holy crap, life must've been boring then). There also appeared to be a "misspelling fad," because "OK" came to mean "oll korrect." Apparently, "okeh" is a Choctaw word meaning "it is" and that came to be known at about the same time, so perhaps the two origins are intertwined. Regardless ... I felt "OK" was too colloquial and decided not to use it.
Another one? The word "luck" doesn't appear in the books. Characters might say "good fortune," but they'll never say "good luck." Why? I don't know. It's just another way for it to feel alien.
One of the biggest traps for writers, particularly those who dabble in scifi or ancient times, is the use of idioms. You know what an idiom is, right? It's a phrase that doesn't mean anything logically on its face, but we understand what's being said. For example, "fine kettle of fish."
Because this is set on another planet thousands of years ago, in Book Five, I use a variety of idiomatic substitutions. Here are a few:
- "elephant in the room" = "tiger in our face"
- "carrot and stick" = "hook and worm"
- "icing on the cake" = "sauce on the steak"
- "heart of the matter" = "middle of the 'choke" (short for "artichoke")
- "in the lion's den" = "in the bear's cave"
Another means: tone of dialogue. Think about historical films. Let's choose a Roman epic, since that fits with Book Five. Everyone has a British accent because, apparently, everyone spoke with British accents back in the day. The rich patricians and the emperor will speak with a highly educated accent. They'll enunciate all of their words. They won't say certain things. This conveys high class. The plebeians, the soldiers and other rabble will speak with a Cockney accent. Something to convey low class. That's the way these things work.
In Book Five, I do much the same thing. The Caesar and his associates often speak in bigger words with a slightly more archaic tone. The plebians in the story do not and they often employ contractions. Zeus and his people speak like "we" do (modern Americans), with lots of contractions and an easy familiarity. That's because this is the way they spoke in the previous books and also because we're supposed to be paying attention to them more intently anyway. Lastly, the Messengers (BSG's angels) speak in a more "ethereal" manner. Their word choices and tones are nearly biblical or Tolkienesque (just like all of Book Four). This puts them at a distance from us; it makes them feel ancient, alien and out of reach. (The narrative around the "tenders" also tends toward the Tolkieneque to aid with this feeling.)
That's all I've got for now. Back to the reading and editing. More posts to come in the near future.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Writing, Again: Part VIII - Setting the Scene
As I settle down for the reading/editing process, I thought maybe one or two of you might be intrigued to see where the "magic" happens (click to enlarge):
- Map of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. A portent of things to come.
- Snacks. Dark chocolate M&Ms (brain food!) and water with a squirt of lemon juice.
- Reference books. Classical Myth and Wheelock's Latin.
- Nook. Loaded with the previous four Lords of Kobol books for quick reference.
- Notepad. Loaded with ideas more than a couple of years old.
- Map in progress. Basically a blank map of Larsa; I scribble in city and country names as I write.
- Post-Its. The ones on the left are ideas that occur to me throughout the day and I slap them there so I can remember to incorporate them later. The four or five on the right are lists of names, mostly. All of the Olympians, Titans, in what order did Cronus eat Zeus' siblings ...
- I don't know what to call these. They're things I mess with as I type or think. There's a pasteboard cylinder with a lid that opens and closes. The air resistance is nice. A pair of Lego plates that I connect and disconnect in one hand. One of them developed a crack a few weeks ago. On the day I finished Book Five, it finally broke. I don't know what that means. I used to have an old glowstick that I gnawed on like a cigar but my wife took it away from me.
- Universal remote. I use it to control my Blu-ray player which is always playing Bear McCreary's thirteen hours of Galactica-related music.
- More notes. That drawer is filled with notepads and scraps of paper on which I jotted ideas.
Ta-da.
Enough stalling. Back to work for me.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
More to come ...
Once I finish the first draft, I'll begin the re-reading and the editing phase of everything. Once I'm in that swing, I'll be in a better headspace to post on a regular basis.
And I have plenty of things lined up before Book Five's release.
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