Creation can take a lot of energy. Sometimes the words just flow, and it seems to be so easy. Then I stop after a few hours or so, and realize how tired I’ve become.
Creating a new story is relatively easy for me, if the setting is similar to a place I know, the house is similar to one I have lived in, the characters are similar to any of people I have met in the real world, and if the story is a new take on one of the basic plots. (Different critics disagree on how many basic plots there are.) Every old plot that is reused becomes a different story. After all, “how the detective learned who killed whats-his-name” is an ancient plot, but no two stories are the same.
But when everything is new — setting, situation, characters, background — then writing a new story takes a lot more creative energy.
Star Kings (working title) is the most demanding book I’ve ever worked on, far more effort per page than even The Black Ring. It’s a story cycle, from the hero’s birth to the birth of his first child. It is set in a galaxy so far away that George Lucas never heard of it, and in a time that bears no relation to any time with which we are familiar. It involves a highly advanced people who have come to share the Cold Star Cluster, deep in the Great Cloud, with twenty five other intelligent peoples among hundreds of star systems. These other peoples are not the aliens, my heroes are the outsiders. My people trade with many of these other peoples, and with hundreds of other peoples out in the limb of the galaxy beyond the Cloud.
Each of these peoples is different, in biology, physiology, appearance, technology level, psychology, culture, and so on. I can only hint at those differences, and I don’t have to do more than that, unless a difference affects the development of the story, and then tell no more than what is necessary. The peoples cannot be actors in rubber suits. They have to feel like real people, even though they are not “human.”
My hero and his people are not “human” either, I just portray them that way to make it easier to tell my stories. They live in what they call the city, a giant construct in space near the center of the Cluster. It is complex, enclosed, an artificial environment with different gravitational zones. Life in the city is not like the life we know here.
I use what I know of our world as models for what my Star Kings do in the city, how they live at home, how they trade with others in the Cluster and out in the limb of the galaxy, and where they get their wealth. My models here are obvious. Mining towns mine for a living, no matter when or where. They are supported by people who provide shops, government, community, just like any small town does. Traders trade, they are not merchants buying and selling. There is no common currency between, say, medieval Cornwall, the Italian states, or the far East. And some of the cultures I portray also have models in the real world.
The worlds I visit (if they have people, I call them ‘worlds’, otherwise I call them ‘planets’) are not like our world, and each of them must be different, at least in some small way. I describe only their obvious differences from our world, rather than giving a full description of their land forms, their botany, their styles of architecture, and so on. I try to suggest, instead show.
—————
Each of the forty one stories is a challenge. The plot of each story must make sense, it must have a beginning that hooks the reader, an ending that is satisfying and makes the reader want another story, and a middle that draws the reader from the beginning to the end. This is, of course, what every story should have. But for the stories of Star Kings, each setting, situation, problems to be solved, and cast of characters — except for a few who continue from story to story — has to be created from scratch. If any of this is used in a later story, the reader may need to be reminded about it, if only briefly.
Continuity is a problem. Have I said or done or shown something before? Did I provide a necessary set-up more than once? Did I use the same plot device in different stories? Has the passage of time been consistent? It takes a lot of effort to check all this, but it must be done. Readers catch mistakes in things like that.
Every story I finish shows how my heroes grow, and helps me to understand them better. My understanding of what their life is like in their artificial world, as miners and what they mine, as traders dealing with other peoples, of their culture, of the society of the Cluster, and of the greater society of the peoples of the limb beyond it, all that grows too.
Sturgis, which I published in 2016, had just one recognizable town, several recognizable characters, and only a vampire who was different. It was based on Stoker’s book, not the movies, and it was easy.
Star Kings, well, that continues to be difficult, and it is taking a lot of time. And yet, as I finish each story, I get chills, a sign that I have done well. I don’t know what it will feel like when I finish the whole cycle.