Speaker A
Adrien Tchaikovsky came on the show to talk about how he writes fantasy and science fiction. He won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for a book called Children of Time. And the guy is just prolific.
Adrian Tchaikovsky shares his detailed approach to writing immersive fantasy and sci-fi worlds, character development, and narrative planning.
Key Takeaways
- Effective world-building is foundational and should be immersive and logically consistent.
- Planning is essential but flexibility during writing allows for creative detours and improvements.
- 'What if' questions serve as the core starting point for developing unique speculative fiction concepts.
- Maintaining clear information flow is crucial to plot coherence and reader understanding.
- The writer’s role can shift from creator to chronicler as the story unfolds organically.
Summary
- Adrian Tchaikovsky discusses his prolific career and award-winning work in fantasy and science fiction.
- He emphasizes advanced world-building inspired by role-playing game design to create immersive, believable settings.
- Tchaikovsky plans his novels chapter-by-chapter in a linear fashion but allows flexibility during writing.
- He starts with a 'what if' concept that logically expands into a fully developed world and story.
- The importance of ensuring plot logic and character motivations are coherent throughout the narrative is highlighted.
- Tchaikovsky describes the writing process as both a creative exploration and a disciplined craft.
- He prefers to leave the exact ending open until late in the writing process to let the story’s momentum guide it.
- The interview touches on balancing originality with existing genre conventions to find unique story angles.
- He explains how pacing, fight scenes, and information flow are critical to maintaining reader engagement.
- Tchaikovsky also discusses inhabiting characters deeply to bring authenticity to their actions and dialogue.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Background
- 03:03Planning Process and Linear Narrative Structure
- 06:48What If vs Premise and Concept Development
- 09:48Combining Ideas and Unique Storytelling
- 13:14Character Depth and Plot Development
- 20:02World Imagination and Detail
- 23:57Information Flow and Narrative Logic
- 29:08Improving Craft and Writer’s Relationship with Characters
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
He's written more than 60 books and novellas. So, he's got a lot to teach.
Speaker A
He spends all of his life thinking about this, thinking about how do you make worlds that are actually believable? How do you build characters that have weight to them? And my favorite one, how do you write a fight scene? How do you think
Speaker A
through the pacing and all the action that needs to happen? That if you want to write stories, imaginative stories, stories that are filled with wonder and fantasy, well, then you're going to like this episode.
Speaker A
Well, what I want to start with is you really plan your novels in advance. And how did you get into that?
Speaker A
The advanced advanced planning is always world-led with me. Um, which is a practice I picked up long before I started writing because I basically come out of a tradition of um running role-playing games.
Speaker A
Right. So, when you're creating a world for a role-playing game, you make it very robustly because you don't know what the players are going to break, but you're also making a world specifically for other people to see.
Speaker A
Uh, even if it's just like three other people around a gaming table. Um, that then translates very directly into making a world for a book. And it usually results in a world that is going to be very immersive and
Speaker A
very complete and will extend considerably beyond the pages of the book itself and the particular story that book is about. And that's always what I'm struggling to do because one of the things I think in fantasy and science fiction writing is
Speaker A
the extent that people go to it to be taken to another place. Um, and then from that point, traditionally, I've also been similarly thorough in working through the plot really just because I, that's, I like to know where I'm going. I like, I like to
Speaker A
know that I'm not going to get halfway through an idea and then just sit there staring at the page thinking, "Right, I've, I've got them into this situation and I can't get them out." So, what are you in your office with
Speaker A
post-it notes all on the wall or what does it actually look like? Oh, no. I mean, it would be lovely to have like the, you know, the red tape and the conspiracy theory guy sort of meme. But, um, I generally just
Speaker A
produce a just like a Word document and it will be chapter by chapter. This happens, this happens, this happens. And usually each chapter will have right this beat, this beat, this beat and very occasionally it would even go into right
Speaker A
and then there is a conversation in which this piece of information needs to be exchanged between these characters because essentially if that doesn't happen then the back end of the book can't work because people don't know what they need to know and I mean it
Speaker A
sometimes feels like getting information to the right place within a book is 90% of planning it.
Speaker A
And are you pretty linear in this process or are you just kind of building out the outline? Maybe you're in chapter 24 and then you jump up to chapter two.
Speaker A
Oh no, this is, I mean so certainly my, my traditional way of doing things. Yes, it would absolutely this happens then this happens then this happens. I'm just creating this narrative in a very, very almost pedestrian way. Um because then I
Speaker A
know I have a set of steps which will get me from here to the end of the book.
Speaker A
Now, whether I stay on that staircase during writing does vary quite a lot because sometimes you'll get an idea that's actually it'll be better just to have a bit of a detour here and come back to it
Speaker A
later on. Or sometimes you'll get to this point and realize actually the logic of this does not work um because I've not done my job properly when planning. And sometimes it'll be a logic of world building and sometimes it will
Speaker A
be a logic of narrative. Um, you know, I had a, I had a book where I got three-quarters of the way through and realized that the entire business of the book was rendered completely pointless by the way the book ended. So that you could
Speaker A
literally have cut it all out and nothing would have changed at that point. Right, I'm going to have to go back and rethink through the logic of that and rewrite various chapters so that all of this has a point. Um,
Speaker A
but usually the penultimate scene will be fairly fixed. And the one thing I've never done is actually work out the very last, the very ending.
Speaker A
So you get almost to the end but not to the end. Um because what I mean one thing I found um right from the beginning was you can get yourself in the planning to that. Yeah, you were in the final room. You've got
Speaker A
the, the big bad. You've got the heroes. They're having the face off, but letting the book, letting the trajectory and momentum of the book to that point then tell you how it should end has worked really well for me.
Speaker A
So then as a writer, do you feel that even though you're the creator of the book, at some point you actually get away from the driver's seat and you're almost a passenger following some sort of intrinsic telos that the thing that
Speaker A
you have made has? Yeah. I mean it's, to put it in a less fancy way, you get to the point of feeling that you are chronicling and this is especially the case I think probably more so with science fiction
Speaker A
and fantasy than anything else because so much of the stuff in the book is, is, is, I want to say fictional and obviously everything in the book is fictional but is more fictional because you are dealing with places and times and people
Speaker A
and creatures that don't exist in any way in the real world and so to a certain extent you are, you are driving the story. Um, but because a lot of that is coming out of your subconscious, subconscious, it also
Speaker A
feels as though you're, um, you're just kind of there with a notebook. Is it fun to imagine these worlds or is the experience of it actually pretty worky?
Speaker A
Uh, oh, it's the most fun. Um, this is, I mean this is I think why my, my process is so very world focused is just making new worlds.
Speaker A
And fun in what way? Playful, laughter. Um, no it, it's imaginative. It's imaginative. It's an exploration because the, so the way the way I'll generally start is with a particular what if. So we'll have like this is the
Speaker A
thing about this world. This is the world where, this is, this is the world where, um, a species of spider is going to evolve into the dominant civilization. So, one what if variable basically and then, um, the, the image I usually use
Speaker A
is the idea you're dropping a stone into a pool and then you have them the ripples from where that stone impacts and you follow them out and each set of ripples is a consecutive sort of logical therefore if that's is your starting
Speaker A
point well therefore this must be true and if that's true then this must be true and eventually you end up building an entire world, whether it's a science fictional world that has, you know, that he's borrowing from real science or
Speaker A
whether it is an entirely fantastical magical place where every part of it fits with everything else.
Speaker A
What's the difference between a what if and a premise or are those the same?
Speaker A
Um, I mean, I think those are probably the same thing. It's just I think what if is just the way of expressing it that appeals to me as a, as a sort of a, you know, a science fiction and fantasy
Speaker A
author. And then as you're thinking through the what if, what makes for a good what if versus, ah, that one's crap. Like if I were to throw you 10 of them and you were to say, "Ah, the first nine are bad." What
Speaker A
do you think that they would have? Um, I think for a starter, the key thing is I don't want to ever want to repeat someone else's, um, work basically. And so if I am working in a space that a lot
Speaker A
of writers have explored before me, I really want to be aware of where they've gone and to find that own my own unique spin. And if there isn't a, if I can't think of a really interesting spin on something,
Speaker A
I won't go there. So for examp
Speaker A
I won't go there. So for example, I h you know, I've written a lot of fantasy books. I've never really done a dragon, right?
Speaker A
Which is like one of the most of course, you know, iconic things in fantasy. But then people have done so many dragons and they've done dragons in so many different and interesting ways.
Speaker A
I would need a really interesting take in order to go there because that's such a crowded idea space.
Speaker A
Why do you think dragons are so popular? Cuz they're big. They're kind of dramatic.
Speaker A
I mean, if you if we accept that uh say uh eastern culture dragons and western culture dragons are are dragons in the same way and that that's a bit of a debatable point. It's something that the vast majority of cultures seem to have.
Speaker A
It's something that obviously speaks to the human psyche. It's a it's a symbol of power, whether that's a good power or especially in the western evil power. It can be a symbol of all sorts of interesting human um
Speaker A
human um sort of nature characteristics. So for example, you go smog in the hobbit is an embodiment of greed and Tolken is taking that directly from Fafnir in sort of Anglo-Saxon myth and Fafneer was a person who turns into a
Speaker A
dragon because of greed. So it's the idea, you know, monsters that tell us about us are always going to be more interesting than just a monster. And at the same time with a dragon, you've got something that is enormously monstrous and
Speaker A
powerful and sort of flamboyant and spectacular. Okay. So, you've mentioned originality for the what if. What are the other components?
Speaker A
Um, I mean, for me, it's got to it's just got to it's got to feel like a solid enough idea that it's worth doing a book about. Um, and that's a really hard thing to pin down. And it's it
Speaker A
comes down to well, I'd know it when I see it. Yeah. Because one of the things you find when you find a good sort of premise or idea, what if is you find almost the seed and all of a sudden it grows and
Speaker A
grows and grows. It begins to expand. Is that something you feel? I have a lot of half book ideas.
Speaker A
Huh. And a lot of the books I've written have been when two of these ideas have clicked together and I've real um that I can get out of that. And sometimes it's more than two, but often it's just um so for example, in Children
Speaker A
of Ruin, which is the second of my kind of big sci-fi books in that series, I wanted to write about uplifted octopuses. Um because they are very fascinating creatures, but that felt like half a book. And you get you you
Speaker A
learn you get a sense of how much of it is. And so theoretically, I could probably have done a novela just on that, but not a full novel. But then there is also in that book this entirely alien creature and the way it interfaces
Speaker A
with um human neurology and those two things together despite the fact they didn't obviously seem to have anything particular in common just clicked and oh no there is a complete book if I could write both of those into the same work
Speaker A
and then as you're thinking about your world building even going back to the games what then are the components that lead to oh that world feels cohesive realistic whatever it is you want to call it versus ah That sort of feels
Speaker A
like a sham. That's fake. That's not really going to hold water. So I I try and build ground up when I'm doing world building.
Speaker A
Okay. And usually there that what if is is right at the bottom and everything is coming up from that. So that if I have done my job properly, by the time I get to the point of actually starting
Speaker A
writing the book or even starting sort of working out that sort of chapter plan of plot, um the world has already got that level of reality to it, that sort of robustness.
Speaker A
So it I I need that kind of um solid ground under my feet sort of feel. And if I don't get that get there with a world, as occasionally I don't, then I won't get as far as actually turning it
Speaker A
into a book. And now when you're trying to turn something into a book, how would you think through the different phases? How long do they take? And how does the nature of the work change?
Speaker A
Um, what do you mean by phases? I'm going to plan the book. I have research to do. I'm writing a first draft. I'm doing editing.
Speaker A
Okay. So, um, the world stage will generally be about a couple of weeks and a couple of weeks. Wow, that's pretty fast.
Speaker A
Yeah, I I think that is because by the time I sit down to say, right, I will now sort of formalize this, it's been boiling away in the back of my head probably for months, years even. you know, I have
Speaker A
this whole sort of conveyor belt of forming ideas just sort of marching along and then the next one will turn up and it will be coherent enough already.
Speaker A
And sometime I mean what I do these days because I am getting older and my memory is not what it was, I have a whole host of notes on my phone where I just every time an idea strikes me I'll say right
Speaker A
that is an idea for that that book I will go to that file I will jot that down and maybe that will be useful when I come to that sort of formal stage. So it is it's m there is quite a long sort
Speaker A
of relatively subconscious process before I sit down. But yes, when I sit down, I will hammer it out in about that time. And then if I'm doing a chapter plan, because like I say, these days I've started to vary that up, I will get
Speaker A
that done because one of the things you get out of the world, if you've made it sufficiently coherent, is it will tell you what the story is going to be. um because I am not in any way advancing
Speaker A
this as necessarily the best way to write and certainly it's not the only way to write but I am always showcasing that world in my work. So I am looking for the story that will allow me to take
Speaker A
you to all the interesting places and see all the interesting things that are happening. And the world itself will have sort of uh flash points and pressures and fractures inherently within it because when you're making a world it's not static. It's not the idea
Speaker A
of yet and this is how it is and this is how it will be for a thousand years.
Speaker A
It's just like this is how it is in this one moment just before the book starts and that will mean yeah these guys hate those guys and this is all going to fall apart and this is going to go on fire and then
Speaker A
all of these things you worked into the setting give you the the where the plot is going to go and they give you the characters as well.
Speaker A
So what's an example of that of of of you have a vivid world and then the characters arise out of that? So, my fantasy series that I'm working on at the moment, it's called The Tyran Philosophers. Um, first book was City of
Speaker A
Last Chances. Um, there's something in particular about citybased books where you get a whole extra layer of of world going on in this case. So, I knew it's an occupied city, but I want to be writing about very relatively low-level
Speaker A
mundane people um who are under the boot of the occupation uh but they're not going to be the leading likes of the resistance or anything like that. And so at that point it feels a lot like right well I've done the work.
Speaker A
I know who the factions are. I know what's going on. I know what the the pressures are. I will go out into the streets of Ilar this city and I will see who I meet. And you're right. This
Speaker A
character is a sort of a magical porn broker. And so he is obviously going to have some interesting relationships with the occupiers and with the resistance and with this other character who is um he's an academic in the the local sort
Speaker A
of university and the university is fighting to retain its kind of traditional privileges against the occupiers but at the same time this guy is a collector of magical tat and he will make deals with this crooked member of the occupation force to raid the porn
Speaker A
broker's shop for choice. to pieces. And so you just start building up this spiderweb.
Speaker A
Wow. Of all of these associations. And then all of that is giving you your plot because you know these things are happening. And you know that there is this long tale of events informing all of these characters and
Speaker A
how they live together and how they relate to one another. And you know that at some point this relationship is going to catch fire because this character is not going to live with it any longer. And they will
Speaker A
strike back. And then that will have this domino effect throughout the city. So that you get very small actions taken for relatively petty reasons that end up with the entire city on fire with a kind of a a huge sort of revolution going on.
Speaker A
And now when you're talking about starting with the city and then going to the pond broker and the academic and then you end up with the drama and you know I just think of a fire building and all of a sudden right it's like a
Speaker A
symphony. So then when you're thinking about that drama, do you feel like you're pushing towards drama or do you feel like you know what if this happens and this happens and I'm fairly true to the world itself? Drama is just
Speaker A
something that just sort of naturally emerges out of the story. AB absolutely that in fact in with these books I'm not planning them. Um I am literally just setting all of this stuff up and then seeing what it does and all
Speaker A
of the innate drives and friction and relationships of these characters give me the plot. But I don't know any event in advance in this case, which is, you know, it's kind of like writing without a safety net. And it was terrifying
Speaker A
because I didn't know if I'd end up like 500,000 words in with no sign of an ending. But actually, it all seemed to come together.
Speaker A
H Does it sometimes have no sign of an ending? Uh, not I it hasn't failed yet. So, I'm I'm currently working on the fifth main novel in this series, and they've all I mean, they're long as books go, but they
Speaker A
are not sort of ridiculously long, and they've all had a good shape and all and they all have a lots and lots of interweaving mosaicy threads and lots of point of view characters and everything kind of comes together at the end.
Speaker A
Take me back to what you were saying about with the settings and cities having unique properties versus the other options. Certainly for a lot of narratives, especially fantasy narrative, they tend to be travels.
Speaker A
And the thing there is you get to leave your messes behind. Um, you can walk away from the consequences of what you do because you're always going on to the next point in the map in your great trek
Speaker A
towards throwing the rim in ring into Mount Doom or whatever you're doing. You don't need to worry about what is happening back in Brie um after you kind of got out ahead of the rings.
Speaker A
If you're in a city, you don't have that luxury. If you're in a city, first off, you are a resident of that city. You've lived there all your life. You have an existing relationship with all of these people and factions and events. And when
Speaker A
you do a thing, you know, when your when your tolerance finally snaps and you make that terribly reckless decision, you have to stick around and live with the consequences. And that makes for a much more complex and interesting
Speaker A
narrative, I think, than the Travalog narrative where you're where you're basically doing the murder hobo thing and just just walking away from your problems.
Speaker A
And when you say complex and interesting, that's for the reader. Do you feel like it's harder for you as the writer?
Speaker A
Um, I feel it's more challenging. Um, I think Why do you distinguish between hard and challenging?
Speaker A
Because challenging is fun. Um, I mean, I think it is it is harder, but on the other hand, I think it is also commensurably more rewarding when you've done it. And so, I don't I don't want to get make it sound as if
Speaker A
there is a a downside to it. But I do think you need to do more um more prep work because unless you're starting off with a character just coming to that city from outside who's never been there before,
Speaker A
all of these people you're going to meet are going to have all a pre-existing association. They're going to know about each other. They may be friends. They may be enemies. They may just have heard of someone, but we're talking about the
Speaker A
board with the red red strings. At that point, you need that board. You need to know who hates who and who likes who and however you wish to represent that for your own benefit. You kind of need to do
Speaker A
the leg work or I mean I know I know there are writers who will just write and sort it all out in the in the in the second draft. I have a colossal amount of admiration for that because I need that
Speaker A
world already there. I need to know, you know, wherever I whatever street I turn down, I need to know what I'm going to find there.
Speaker A
How do you imagine that world? Do you imagine it in terms of people, in terms of streets, in terms of clothes? Like in your head, if you were to close your eyes and imagine that world, what do you see?
Speaker A
Um, it's kind of a it's a combination of all of it. There's certainly there's a big visual component. Uh, there's an audio component, but there's also, it's very hard to define, but there's almost like a a gestalt. I found this a
Speaker A
lot. um both with individual characters and with settings as a whole, there's kind of like a mask you put on and then when you're looking at things through that mask, you're seeing it with a filter that shows you this is what this
Speaker A
world looks like. And at that point you can kind of think right I need to think about a public baths and rather than instantly thinking about this is the real world thing this or this is like a picture of baths in the
Speaker A
Roman Empire or something like that because you've got that filter you can say well in this world this is you know this is how that would go or in this world they wouldn't have that because of these reasons and as long as you've done
Speaker A
that prep work and immersed yourself in the world hopefully your imagin ation will furnish you with the right version of whatever sort of thing you need that will fit seamlessly with all the other things you put in.
Speaker A
And we're talking about the world in terms of making sure that connections work well. We were talking about certain characters like the pawn broker and the academic. When you're thinking through those characters, where does that begin? Where does that
Speaker A
start? And then what leads to a kind of believability of character? cuz science fiction has sort of a reputation of having kind of flat, stale, unbelievable characters.
Speaker A
Um, which I I mean I think whilst I'm sure you there are you can find examples where that is the case. Um, and certainly there is a a period of science fiction where the focus is much more on
Speaker A
say the technology than the people. I also feel that we get stick for it in a way that other genres don't and I'm pretty sure you can find similar examples in every other genre. It's just that that doesn't tend to be the focus
Speaker A
of criticism. Um and you know for example if you look at the work of say Ursula Luin one of the big voices of the you know the golden age of science fiction she is enormously concerned with the human experience right
Speaker A
rather than you know how the technology works or anything like that. So, um, but for for me, sticking with the characters we've been talking about, so I know what by the time I get as far as, well, there's a porn broker.
Speaker A
I know that this pawn broker is from this particular culture. He is an immigrant in the city from a nearby nation which has previously been invaded by the same people who are currently occupying this city.
Speaker A
Mhm. So, he's already got all of this informing him even before I know what he who he is and what he's doing. Um, he's growing out of the world um in the same way as all of the other characters large
Speaker A
or small are growing out from this same common sort of weave of ideas I put in.
Speaker A
So, ideally, by the time that character has emerged as, oh yes, let's have him in the book. Um there are all those strings attaching that character to all the other parts of the setting are already there. Uh they're not things I
Speaker A
necessarily need to tack on by hand because it's inherent in who this character is as to how he's going to relate um to everything else that's going on in the same way that a world would unfold and presumably be kind of
Speaker A
surprised by what happens. And same thing with the story. Do you feel that with characters that they grow, they change, they adapt in ways that surprise you?
Speaker A
Yes, absolutely. Yes. Um, and that that applies for books where I planned more uh more sort of rigidly as well as where I'm I'm I'm letting letting the plot unwind itself. Um, characters will always have more depth because, you
Speaker A
know, they'll start off with just like, yeah, here is like a handful of adjectives and a couple of notes on their starting disposition. But because they are coming out of that world, as you meet them, you'll realize, oh, no,
Speaker A
they have this going on as well, and they have that going on as well, or they have they they've got a thing romantically for this other character.
Speaker A
It's not in the plan at all, but it's just like it's it's a thing you discover when you meet them because there is a gap there that of exactly that shape that they kind of then move to fill. Um,
Speaker A
and a lot of this I think is probably subconsciously mediated. A lot of this comes from the more you do it, the better you get at it. And therefore once you have been writing for a long enough these this richness of character detail
Speaker A
will suggest itself to you much more naturally because you train your mind to feel to think in a certain way.
Speaker A
Um okay so when you're thinking of a science fiction world I feel like there's two ways that they can fall apart. One is that the world itself breaks down and the other could be that the science itself breaks down.
Speaker A
How much do you think about that? So when I'm doing science fiction, um I mean first of all I would say the way I tend to think about it is that there is a whole continuum between like the hardest of hard science
Speaker A
fiction where you're doing absolutely everything as science works now to our best understanding and then you go all the way through things sort of like a space opera more of a Star Warsy sort of thing where there are the trappings of
Speaker A
maybe science fiction but the logic behind it is kind of mystical and you know it takes you all the way kind of full on secondary world fantasy where everything is just magic. Um but when we're working towards this end where the
Speaker A
science is um I have borrowed the idea of a left wall. H what's that?
Speaker A
So it's the idea that what science says is possible. That is your left wall as you as you write the book. So you can only expand outwards from that. you can't go into that because at that point you're you're
Speaker A
unless you know unless you're very intently deciding right I want I do not care about this particular part of science I'm going to have time machines or whatever um in the same way honestly as if if you were writing something set
Speaker A
in a very specific historical context your left wall is well this is what we understand about how things were done at that time and that really it's working out the contours of that left wall is what re your research is and the
Speaker A
difficult thing there is working out ahead of time what you don't know. It is the unknown unknowns as whichever statesman said.
Speaker A
Yeah. That get you because otherwise you will tend to assume well I know how that works and then you'll get to a certain point in the book and either you will just get it wrong because you don't know
Speaker A
how it works and don't realize you don't know or you will get halfway through the book and realize oh I now need to go off and research and just have to hope that that research doesn't undo a whole chunk
Speaker A
of the stuff I've just written. And when you say research, do you mean if you have something about airplanes, looking how an airplane would fly to make sure that you understand the physics of aviation? Is that what you're saying?
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, for example, um, Children of Ruin, again, in Children of Ruin, the octopuses have spaceships and the spaceships are full of water because they're octopuses. how thankfully before getting particularly far into the book I realized I have no
Speaker A
idea what this does to a spaceship being full of water because that is not a thing we do with spaceships. So I got hold of someone in this case I got hold of a chap who designed submarines who
Speaker A
you'd think would have literally the opposite problem to this um but who was able to basically guide me through well you have this problem with inertia and you have this problem momentum because the whole thing just weighs a thousand
Speaker A
times more um than a spaceship that's full of air and you know this might happen if if you have a hole breach and the water is going out and that all of that kind of thing but it's just working
Speaker A
out those weird little gaps. I mean ideally my absolute favorite scenario for anything like this is I will find someone who knows this topic extremely well and generally people are extremely happy um to do this because people who
Speaker A
are very knowledgeable about a thing are are quite happy to share that knowledge that tends to be um so for example with uh the spiders and children of time I turned out to have a very uh a really
Speaker A
fluky connection at the natural history museum. That meant I could go over there here in London.
Speaker A
That's the pretty one in South Kensington. Yeah. Yeah. And I was able to just go in and talk to their entomology department for an entire day just talking through the logistics of what if you got a really big spider. Um
Speaker A
how big were we talking? Like like a truck or a boat? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I mean you because you can't. Um so in this case they're about that big. Um that's as big as they get.
Speaker A
Okay. So like a foot long. Yeah. Um I mean that's kind of including legs. So they're they are they are big.
Speaker A
They're about, you know, the size of a cat or so, but they're, you know, it's big for a spider. Um, well, I mean I Yeah, I mean I I like spiders a lot, but also with that book, I'm well aware that
Speaker A
basically most people don't like spiders. So I wanted a book about empathy, uh, human empathy with the other. And if you can do that with spiders, you can do that with anything.
Speaker A
And so that was the big challenge with Children at Time. But yes, I also I needed my spiders to be as scientifically plausible as possible.
Speaker A
And so that was the the purpose of that particular sort of retail expedition. And forgiven my ignorance, but why why is scientifically plausible important?
Speaker A
Is that like a pride thing for you as the writer or is that David? No, the story needs scientific plausibility for this this and this reason.
Speaker A
So it's I mean it's mostly the second. I'm not going to say that the first isn't there and I always particularly cherish if someone basically says yes I am a professional in this area and yes you basically nailed this thing that I
Speaker A
am knowledgeable about and I that's always a bit of a joy you know I it's it's the equivalent of making a table where all the legs touch the ground and it doesn't wobble you I've built that well but
Speaker A
there is a particular way that science informed in science fiction lands that fantasy doesn't necessarily. So that if I had written a book about just magical talking spiders, it wouldn't have had the same impact because people would have know well this is obviously
Speaker A
it's a story. Mhm. Uh I mean you you must have had other people talking about the idea of the one big lie.
Speaker A
No. Oh right. Okay. Well, there is this idea, maybe it's a science fiction fantasy thing in particular, but you have the idea that you can get away with one big lie and it's just, you know, that one thing which is just convenient
Speaker A
to have in the book to make the plot work in the way that you want and that is your one big lie, but in order to support your one big lie, everything else needs to be true. So, what would
Speaker A
examples of that be in different in children of time? Yeah, there is a big lie, but it is not the spiders. This the big lie is literally there is this uh nano virus which is assisting the uplift of the spiders and the lie is the
Speaker A
amount of time that that uplift will take because of the narrow virus. It happens in tens of thousands of years rather than hundreds of millions of years which you would need for actual evolution. But the evolution that's going on is as plausible and real as I
Speaker A
can make it because that's what gives the book its effect. It is the idea that people will read the book and think and come away feeling this is a thing that could happen. These uh this particular species of spider which is it's an
Speaker A
enormously cognitively complex species of spider. The book was in fact inspired by uh reading the scientific papers of people who've been studying this and finding with giant spiders.
Speaker A
No no no the the species of the spider you start off with is basically small enough to fit on your thumbnail.
Speaker A
Okay. It's a species of jumping spider porchia labiata. It is insanely intelligent for something that is that small and doesn't really have a brain as we would think of it.
Speaker A
Wow. Uh we have later found, which I didn't get to put into the book cuz it was written by them, we found that they dream uh like we dream. They you can see them having like eye movements when
Speaker A
they're asleep. Wow. And yeah, they just like this is just but this is all very new research. I read the research and thought I would like to write the book where the what if is what if this specific species of
Speaker A
spider became um fully censioned and had a you know as and developed a society and a civilization and a technology and all of that sort of thing. But the in order for that to land in the way I wanted it to
Speaker A
land it had to be real as possible. It had to be based on the science so that you know it's not like a 40ft spider or anything like that. It's not like the thing the giant bugs in Starship
Speaker A
Troopers because um if you're talking about an Earth spider that has been um this is being uplifted, there are physics limits you can't really go beyond. Um but the end the end result is that hopefully the spiders come over as
Speaker A
this is the thing that could be this is the thing that could be real. And that gives the book a weight and a uh gravity that it would not necessarily have if it was magic talking spiders. And I have
Speaker A
written magic talking spiders. And that when I'm doing that, that's not what I'm seeking to do in the book. The book is doing different things at that point.
Speaker A
Mhm. Walk me through some of the differences between fantasy and science fiction, both in terms of the genre conventions and in terms of the purposes that they serve.
Speaker A
A lot of the time they may not be serving different purposes. So the thing that science fiction can do that I think no other genre does is really just that building on the science that speculation where you are standing on you know the
Speaker A
shoulders of giants I guess where you where you you're building off what we know and saying well this is a plausible way this could go. Um but what I should also say is as far as science fiction fantasy goes it is that continuum.
Speaker A
So you move away from that hard science point. Uh and you know when and when I'm writing a book I will know right at the beginning with the initial concept where along this continuum is going to fall. So that
Speaker A
in the middle there in that sort of space opera territory I've got uh a series called the final architecture and it's spaceships and it's aliens and it's got all of that science fiction stuff going on. So it's still definitely
Speaker A
science fiction, but at the same time there is a lot of, you know, the aliens are all coincidentally of a level where they can kind of interact with humans or mostly um interact with humans on a human level and they can communicate and
Speaker A
there are translation devices and things like that. Whereas if you look at Children of Ruin, 50% of that book is people working out how the hell you talk to an octopus. Um and so at the point where you're looking at um
Speaker A
the hard science, it basically means you are accepting I am not going to have certain things in this book. So I am not going to have time travel because as far as we are where there's no real mechanic
Speaker A
to go back in time and then the more you go towards that the more you cut out uh because your left wall is taking up more and more of the space.
Speaker A
Um whereas as you go away from that more and more things become available to your narrative. Uh I mean one of the reasons I did the architect series as a space operator I just really wanted to be able
Speaker A
to gad about in the universe very uh with enormous distances very quickly because in children of ruin they take months to get between planets within a solar system because that's kind of how it goes. Um, and then eventually you end
Speaker A
up going straight into um, you know, full-on fantasy where it said, "Yeah, there is magic." And the magic works like this, and here are the things the magic can't do, and here is the price the magic demands for you using it, and
Speaker A
so forth. And you end up with a world that effectively you build your own left wall, and you end up with a world that world that has the same amount of logic and reality to it as your science
Speaker A
fictional world. It's just that you have built it by hand rather than importing large chunks of it from the real world.
Speaker A
Why do you think that the use of magic so often does come with a price?
Speaker A
Um because for the same reason it's easier to write dystopias than utopias because if you have magic with no price then why is anyone got a problem at this point? Why isn't everyone just doing everything by magic? I mean also frankly
Speaker A
you know just narratively I think it is much more satisfying. Uh we like the idea of kind of wicked magics that exact terrible prices from their their users whether those users are our heroes or our villains. It's just it gives you
Speaker A
more narrative space than if um I mean when you have a narrative where basically you can do anything.
Speaker A
There is a story there. I mean um Michael Walkart wrote a series called the dancers of the end of time which is set in such a far future. There are basically about seven people left and they are all but essentially gods and
Speaker A
they can just make things at a whim. And the whole point of that series is they are so bored because magic has no price. The whole thing is them trying to find some way to obiate this incredible onwe of just
Speaker A
having absolutely everything in the world. You were talking about the left wall. Mhm. And you were talking about the one big lie.
Speaker A
Yeah. Are there other maxims that you think about in terms of writing that you lean on a lot?
Speaker A
Um, I mean, not many. I mean, one of the things I tend to find out find about writing maxims is that they are very seldom true. Hm.
Speaker A
Whenever I run into a sort of a dogmatic writing take, whether it is, well, you should always do this or you should never do this, I can always think of a circumstance. Well, actually don't do it like this or actually you do want to do
Speaker A
it like that. You know, I mean, the problem is it all kind of comes down to received wisdom and it tends to get given handed down to people at the start of their writing career as the Ten Commandments a lot of the time.
Speaker A
I think that is very irresponsible, right? This isn't Moses talking to God. This is something that's worked for people.
Speaker A
I think that the most important pe thing that people need to know about writing is every writer does it differently. I mean, I know a lot of writers. I've been on lots of panels where we've all talked about our writing process. Every single
Speaker A
writer does something that I personally find absolutely unthinkable. Um, I mean, when I, you know, when I talk about the fact, oh, I never I never I never decide on the ending. And you should see the looks you get from some of the writers
Speaker A
because to them, oh, that's the only thing I know is I always know how it's going to end and how it's going to start. and you just have this long piece of string in the middle and that might
Speaker A
go anywhere. Um there's no one way of doing this and at the end of it you always converge on having a book. You know, anyone who says, "Well, you should always show rather than tell." And, you know, you can absolutely tell too much.
Speaker A
It's very easy to do so. I'm sure I do so on occasion. But on the other hand, my most successful book is Children of Time, and that is basically 60% exposition by volume because sometimes that is the best way of doing something.
Speaker A
And I think there are certain writing traditions which I think are so entrenched And people assume they are so unavoidable that it's it can be actively harmful. I mean um I do not like the idea of the hero's journey. It is very
Speaker A
very prevalent. There are people who will basically say well every every story has got to conform to the hero's journey. And I' I've heard people b why don't you like it?
Speaker A
Because it's just one one structure. the idea of saying well all this is the story that all stories must follow. I mean I I if you listen to people who are talking about the hero's journey and how this book or that book
Speaker A
conforms to the hero's journey you will always get to this point. Well I mean obvious and I guess this is kind of our descent into the underworld and you can sort of think well it I mean it isn't.
Speaker A
It's not, you know, you're making it that because you know that there's got to be a descent into the underworld at this point of the hero's journey, but that's not actually what's going on in the book, right?
Speaker A
Um because once you are reducing something um that far, then you're left with a model that is completely worthless.
Speaker A
Mhm. I mean, honestly, it it is like modeling reality in any way. In order to get a model of something real that you can run through your statistical tests and get sort of valuable data out of, you have
Speaker A
to simplify reality to the point that the data you're getting is actually useless. And it's very much that idea when you're trying to reduce writing to well these are the ways you write a book. So when I'm talking about the left
Speaker A
wall for example, it's or talking about the stone in the pool and that kind of thing, it's really more that just like that is the easiest way I can think of to describe a fairly nebulous thing.
Speaker A
Right. Um right. What you're saying is to hold models and maxims with a light grip.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is it's one of those any piece of advice is useful so long as it doesn't basically become this is the law because there's always going to be a situation where it's not true.
Speaker A
Sure. Including that piece of advice, I'm sure. What makes for a good fight scene?
Speaker A
Oh. Ah. Well, fight scenes are a thing. So, I have What have I done? I I did several years of stage fighting and I did well over a decade of live action roleplay and I did three or four years
Speaker A
of historical broadstor training at the lead armories. So you've thought a lot about this.
Speaker A
Well, well the thing I mean thing is if you're writing epic fantasy that's a lot of fights.
Speaker A
Yeah. The other thing is if you're writing fantasy you're also writing for a lot of people who have done one or more of those things. You are writing essentially for a fairly educated audience who know what end of a sword to
Speaker A
stick into people. So when you write the scene where yes, your sword has been broken, but you can still stab your enemy through with the jagged edge that goes through their breastplate and you and the what you hear then is the sound
Speaker A
of a small but significant group of your readers throwing the book across the room because they know it doesn't work like that. They know the whole point of wearing armor is you can't just stab a broken sword through it,
Speaker A
right? Um whereas once you've done a bit of the research, once you've done a bit of um you know historical European martial arts training and that kind of thing, you know, yes, you stab them in the armpit where the breastplate doesn't go.
Speaker A
And that is exactly because you need the mobility of your arm. You cannot arm at the armpit against being stabbed through. And at that point, that little section of your readers are going, "Yes, that's absolutely correct." and they do
Speaker A
not throw the book across the room. Um, in order to write really good engrossing fight scenes, um, you need to have a sense of um, perspective and flow. Um, I mean, one uh, there's a fancy writer Joe Abocrombi for example, he writes
Speaker A
incredible fight scenes. He wrote a book called The Heroes. There is a very large battle in the heroes which you are basically seeing through the slot in someone's visor. So that just it is this enormous panicky cacophony of people charging
Speaker A
about and barging into each other and then suddenly you're fighting someone and then everything shifts and you're fighting someone else and you don't know what happened to the person you were just and that is that's a really good
Speaker A
way of telling a fight scene. Um and a lot of that is that's nothing to do particularly with what you do with a sword as long as you're not doing something patiently ridiculous with it.
Speaker A
But it's to do with how it feels to be in a fight. And at the same time, you also may want to tell a bit where right, you've got the general and they're looking across the thing and you're
Speaker A
seeing right, yeah, your left wing is doing this and your right wing is doing that and your siege artillery is doing this thing and having that kind of sense. So, it's getting all of these different meshing toolkits together.
Speaker A
And yeah, there are there are big battle scenes and that's one type of uh writing of fight. There are skirmishes where you might have like a dozen people just sort of hacking away at each other and that is another really quite complex way of
Speaker A
having a fight because it's very mobile and you tend to have a lot of people trade trading off uh opponents and sometimes I've got to the point of literally just marking out right this person is going over here and this
Speaker A
person's going over here and you know just having this whole complex scene literally planned out I think it was with like little toy insects that my son had uh just to just to work out the logistics of it. And then you have
Speaker A
things like if you have a duel, wait, that's you playing with insects trying to say this is going to pick out.
Speaker A
Yeah. Oh, that's a funny image. Yeah. And then you have a duel where you're probably going to be a lot more into the precise um techniques that are going into a fight because it is just the two people at that point and it is
Speaker A
the technique of the fight that is going to be the narrative of the scene. And then you start to work out well, you know, the narrative of the fight is also an opportunity for you to express the characters who are involved
Speaker A
in the fight. So, for example, um there's a a fight in one of my Shadows of the Apt books where you've got a fairly unskilled opponent and someone who was a lot better than him, but who is actually also quite fond of
Speaker A
him and doesn't want to kill him. And so you get the bit at the end where you you see where the more skilled opponent had their opportunity to finish the fight and doesn't and then they get killed because they have failed to take that
Speaker A
opportunity. But that's character development. That is that is letting your the fight tell the story rather than just being a he hit him and then he hit him and they clothe through there and you know you could you you learn after you've done a
Speaker A
after you've got a certain way into writing fights that actually a fight scene is also a vehicle for advancing the narrative.
Speaker A
Well, you were talking earlier about how the story is an opportunity for the world to reveal itself and to unfold.
Speaker A
How would a fight scene reveal and unfold the world that you're building? Um, so it you do it through character, like I say, but also um I mean if you're doing fantasy or science fiction, you can also use that as a very sneaky way of
Speaker A
showcasing fun world parts, right? Because you could show weapons and Yeah. Or for example, in um in the Echoes of the Fall series, everyone is shape changer. everyone has an animal form and you can transfer from human to
Speaker A
animal like that. So that led to a lot of extraordinarily complicated fight scenes where people are turning in and out of wolves and bears and snakes and things like that just moment to moment because of the advantage it's giving
Speaker A
them in the fight. Uh which was really hard to think through but hopefully is enjoyable to read.
Speaker A
That's a funny image. One of the most important things I haven't said about writing fighting is this. Once you have learned all these clever things from whatever means you're using to learn about fights is you need to learn how to
Speaker A
put as little of that as possible on the page. Because the temptation, as with anything you've done the research on, is I am just going to vomit all of this stuff on the bay to show how incredibly intensive my research has been. And at
Speaker A
that point, pacing goes out of the window. and you have this, you know, nobody wants to read a fencing manual at that point, but once you know that stuff, it will inform the details you do put in.
Speaker A
So, and it will it will genuinely show through. And this is the same with any kind of research is once even though you're pairing it down to just maybe a handful of words where you can see that those arose from what you have learned
Speaker A
those are the words that will make it real. Mhm. getting into the heads of the characters, like I was saying. Um, even if you're not doing that, just that very restricted viewpoint, having the narrative of the fight told as much
Speaker A
through the emotions as through the footwork or the precise blade work. Explain that for me. Talking through the emotions rather than the Yeah. Because I mean the thing I mean, so weirdly enough, this is something I got from um live role playing.
Speaker A
Okay. Um, when you say live role playing, do you mean actually acting in person with other people?
Speaker A
Rubber sword, um, dress up as a barbarian, uh, charge about. Um, so it's like improv for fights.
Speaker A
Uh, yes. And, you know, you're playing a character, there is a a certain sense of a world going on. And in this case, because it's what we call festbased LAR, it's full on a thousand people on a battlefield um, sometimes. and you're
Speaker A
there standing with your kind of your spear or whatever in the second rank of your battle line and a bunch of people are screaming at the top of their lungs charging down a hill at you and you feel
Speaker A
it. You feel it here and that's what I gained from that sort of that laughing experience to put on the page is this is not just the fact that yes, these are standing here and this is the tactical
Speaker A
this and and the kind of strategic that of what is going on the battlefield.
Speaker A
It's just like this is what it feels like to be in a fight. And that's not a thing that regular life these days tends to teach you particularly. Um, but because you're there, there is a part of you that reacts as if it's real, even
Speaker A
though it's, you know, it's obviously it's it's it's purely a a fictional pastime. And that sense is what you can put on the page. Now, for you as the writer, whenever you're working on a new book, you're trying to do something new,
Speaker A
as I understand it, to avoid writing ruts. So, as you think about doing that, what's important?
Speaker A
Um, so there there will be usually one or two things I want to do differently. Yes. In a in particular with any with any new project, there will be a particular idea I want to explore or there will be a particular
Speaker A
moment of emotional impact I want to try and generate even um there will be so I mean and you to give one example of a thing I have not yet been able to do and is definitely on my list to have a crack
Speaker A
at um there are a couple of books I have read which have inspired me this incredible sense of the numinous the Huminous.
Speaker A
Yes. Of this kind of just the awe of there being just a world that is just out of sight.
Speaker A
Yes. But is very very real. And you you get I mean um Robert Holdto's Mythgo Wood is one and Susanna Clark's uh Pyreazy is another. Both of which are books I absolutely love. And at some point I want to write a book that inspires a
Speaker A
similar kind of sense. And it will be very much on my own terms and drawn from the sort of things that interest me. So, it will be that new terrain, but I would really like to be able to leave readers
Speaker A
with that sense of a of that sort of other world. Um, and like I say, I haven't yet done that. Um, I've got a book coming out. Um, the title of which I can't say because it's currently in folks because titles
Speaker A
are a thing I can't do. I get to keep about one title out of three of my of what I submit. Um, but it's I wanted to see can I do a book that is simultaneously gothic horror and also um
Speaker A
is exploring things like clones and post tech societ. I do a lot of post tech society stuff for some reason. That's an idea that absolutely fascinates me and I keep it.
Speaker A
Um I think it is there. What is it about the post tech society? Yeah, it's something it's very evocative. It's I think it's the same thing that is the explanation for why so many um computer game settings are based
Speaker A
around ruined worlds. And it's not a dystopia thing. It's this idea there is a certain tragedy and grandeur to your story playing out in the wreckage of a past that has mostly been completely forgotten.
Speaker A
So that the characters, you know, they are there with all of these indicators of what might have been going on in the past, but they've all, you know, their own society has got to the point where they don't know necessarily where they
Speaker A
came from and they don't know how to do the things that pre who pre people previously did. You get this three-sided knowledge uh structure.
Speaker A
What's that? So, there's what you as the author know and there is what the characters in the book know and there is what the reader knows.
Speaker A
And there are many there are all sorts of different ways you can play with this. So, for example, you can have a situation where your character has a whole lot of stuff that they know that they're not saying. So that when
Speaker A
especi and this is especially the case with like unreliable narrator um stories where you're telling it from a first-person point of view and that character there is sort of a compact that readers tend to assume well if you've got a narrator and he's telling
Speaker A
you what happened then that is what happened and it doesn't have to be that way of course because if your narrator is telling the story they probably have an ulterior motive and they have an agenda and then you'll get to a bit in
Speaker A
the book where the reader realizes that they've not been given the story. Um I mean this is something I do in um City of Last Chances. There is basically a kind of a multis falcon thing going on where there
Speaker A
is a particular item and it's gone missing and one of a set of characters has it and you get to see inside the head of most of those characters and at no time do any of them admit to having
Speaker A
it. That sounds like what's that board game? Uh Secret Hitler. Is that what that sounds?
Speaker A
Well, it is. Yeah, I mean it is kind of a hidden it's sort of a hidden rolly a really rolly sort of thing. And that was that was complicated by the fact that because this is the book I didn't plan I
Speaker A
didn't know who had it. So I had to write all of these characters from an entirely agnostic position of whether they might or might not have had the thing. And then towards the end of the book it just became obvious, oh this
Speaker A
character hasn't has to have it and this is what they've done with it and this is why and this is when it's going to be revealed that they've had it all along.
Speaker A
But there is also the other way that triangle of information can go is that when you the author and the reader are sharing knowledge that the characters don't have and that is a very much a thing you tend
Speaker A
to get with post tech. So for example in um my expert systems nollas. It's an exoplanet. There was a colony ship that went there but the people who live on the planet have no memory of this whatsoever. They are living in a very
Speaker A
weird sort of sheltered way, but as part of that, they have lost all track of where they came from. It's just like, well, this is our world and we live here and we've kind of always have.
Speaker A
Um, but you, as the reader, of course, have a much broader understanding of what's going on. And as um the main character explores the world, he doesn't particularly understand a lot of the things that he finds, but the reader can
Speaker A
pick up the clues and stay a step a step ahead of what the character understands.
Speaker A
And some I mean, and sometimes this can be profoundly traumatic. So there's um in Dogs of War, um the main character is uh Rex. He is an bio-engineered dog who is being used as a military asset and he's telling the
Speaker A
story from his own point of view. And at the beginning, Rex is a good dog because he's doing what he's told. And that's the the measure of being a good dog. And it becomes readily apparent to the readers that what Rex is doing is war
Speaker A
crimes. War crimes. Yeah. He's absolutely killing civilians uh and indeed children because he's talking about, you know, big big big enemies and small enemies and things like that. But Rex has no understanding of that because he doesn't have the
Speaker A
context. And so you as the reader are potentially just kind of chewing your finger nails off saying this is this is this is really really terrible. And Rex is such this kind of amiiable likable character who just thinks he's being a
Speaker A
good dog. And then later on of course Rex will catch up and and as he goes out into the world he understands more and gets starts making his own value judgments about what is right and wrong that isn't just my master has told me to
Speaker A
do this thing. But in those early sections, you as the reader have a lot of perspective and knowledge, even based on Rex's own account that Rex doesn't have. And so you have this tension between what the author author knows, what the reader
Speaker A
knows, what the character knows. Yeah. As you're thinking up these stories, is there uh utility to your dreams? And you know there's so many even Salvador Dolli as a painter you know he would kind of fall asleep with
Speaker A
the apple and then wake up with the unconscious. Do you feel like coming up with stories and alternate worlds is a conscious deliberate fun process for you or are you tapped into sort of more subconscious dare I say mystical ways of
Speaker A
coming up with stories? Um I mean I don't tend I I don't tend to do mystical per se but I think subconscious yes. Um I think that the ideally as a writer your subconscious and your conscious are working in lock step and supporting one
Speaker A
another in what way? So that for example when I am consciously working out the framework of the world and well we'll have this and we'll have that and that leads to that at the same time all of the gaps
Speaker A
between those points I'm putting on the map are being filled up by my subconscious because the subconscious will understand connections between things before I'm consciously aware of them and then that is what will come out spontaneously in the writing. That's where it's that's
Speaker A
where it's coming from. And really, it's it's kind of you're almost writing in partnership with yourself at that point.
Speaker A
And you you learn to delegate certain parts to your subconscious because once you've done it enough, you have faith that your subconscious will come through with the goods when you need it to.
Speaker A
How do you feel like you go about improving at the craft? How much of it is reading the great, studying them? How much of it is maybe now actually getting feedback from editors and constructive criticism from other people? How much of
Speaker A
it is just sheer writing? What is it that you do to say, "Okay, I'm here now.
Speaker A
In 10 years, I'm going to be better. What are you going to do to walk that path of improvement?" I mean, there are some things. Well, we were talking about like the the the scent of the newness. There are some
Speaker A
things that are definitely I would like to write a book at some point that that does this. That's a goal. And I'm aware I am not there yet. And so and for example with the um City of Last Chances
Speaker A
um there was before then I said I would like to write a book where it is a mosaic story with the lives of all of these characters kind of interweaving which is was not something I'd done before and so right that's the book
Speaker A
where I do that. Um and so it's some of it is having those quite definite goals to a certain extent. You know, you're you're aware of areas you've not gone where you feel there is still territory that one can move out into other writers
Speaker A
have maybe paved the way for but haven't necessarily gone to those particular places you're going to go. Um and some of that is certainly going to come out of reading. for example. I mean, I don't know about reading the greats
Speaker A
per se. I always find it more useful to read my my peers, the people who are writing now.
Speaker A
Oh, really? Because they're already informed by those. Yeah. We're all already informed by this great milange of previous writing that's gone on. We have been building on things. That's how we work.
Speaker A
Yeah. We build on uh past work and we build on past work and therefore reading more recent stuff. Um and honestly I think we are in a bit of a golden age of really interesting science fiction at the moment
Speaker A
is I find that more interesting than going back to read something from the 60s.
Speaker A
Right. So, as we begin to close, I'm curious about how you think through connecting the readers with the emotions of the characters so that you can bring them along through the story.
Speaker A
Um, I think I mean it's a hard thing to to boil down and I think this is where the subconscious really comes in because the subconscious is kind of where we connect with our own emotions. I often know
Speaker A
particular emotional beats I would like my readers to experience. And the thing is you're never going to get that from every reader because everyone is responding differently. But you you cast a net and hopefully like the majority of your
Speaker A
uh readers will feel somewhere within the general territory of what you want them to feel. So that for example when you've got you know the doomed defense of the barricades when the soldiers are moving in um you want them to feel the
Speaker A
you know the hope and the tragedy and the despair and you want them to have you know when you have that last minute intervention just when everything is lost you want them to soar with it and a lot of the time I'm doing this because
Speaker A
I'm hopefully connecting them to the emotional lives with the characters themselves and this is a this is often a lot when I was talking about with the the idea of you have the mask on and the filter. Each character has a mask and
Speaker A
each character's emotions are that filter. And this is probably another thing I'm bringing in from way sort of table tabletop role playing games way back.
Speaker A
But the idea is you inhabit the character. Yes. Even if it's a tiny character at the time, they are very real to themselves.
Speaker A
They have things that they want. They have things that they are scared of. they have reactions to what is going on that are no less real just because they're a bit part or whether they're a main main player in the book. And I think having
Speaker A
the characters be real to themselves and true to themselves um is probably one of the ways you then get the audience to feel along with them.
Speaker A
H well I guess a good ending question is what makes for a good ending?
Speaker A
Absolutely no no bones about it. The ending is the most important part of a book.
Speaker A
The most important part definitely because it's the bit that your readers are left with.
Speaker A
And if the ending does not work, then that's what they're taking away. It's just like and you you do you do find this. Yeah.
Speaker A
You find it in films and TV and books where basically you kind of think, well, that came out a bit well. I feel that that was a good ending that wasn't earned. Or you feel, well, that was a
Speaker A
bit depressing. uh or you feel well that was a cliffhanger where the next book in the series isn't going to come out for seven years and you know you the ending needs to be the bit where everything that you intend to tie up in the book
Speaker A
turns out to have been inexraably leading to that ending even though while it was doing that leading that wasn't remotely obviously where it was going.
Speaker A
So, it's it's a lot like any kind of twist uh in that it needs to be the very logical result of what's gone before, but also to be a surprise. And that's a big part of the craft.
Speaker A
And that's the part that you don't have planned. Yes. I mean, this is probably why I I try not to plan it, so that by the time I get to that final scene, the motion of the book to that point takes
Speaker A
me to where it needs to go, rather than me trying to say, well, obviously it's going to end in this way and these characters will do that and he will die and he will live and so forth. It's just
Speaker A
like I will let those details turn up or organically and I hopefully that's what gives the book uh in my case a a satisfactory ending because it's the only ending the book can at that point have and I'm not imposing it in any way.
Speaker A
Thanks for coming on the show. It's good to meet you. Oh, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Topics:Adrian Tchaikovskyfantasy writingscience fictionworld-buildingnovel planningcreative processcharacter developmentstory pacingwriting adviceChildren of Time
