Joseph Dooley Fiction

Writing goals met and unmet

I had several goals when I started writing Seeds of Calamity, which I outlined a year and 2 months ago:

Outline start to finish before drafting: I failed this miserably. I had no outline for two-thirds of the book, and those are the plot-heavy sections. I tended to plot in my head about a chapter in advance of what I was writing at the time. When I started, I had inklings of set pieces I wanted to do, and only vague notions of how they would fit together. Having a clear outline from the outset will be a goal for my next big writing project.
Told from the perspective of just one character: I managed this well. I discovered in the early going that I did not have the luxury of a passive leading man if he was going to hold the reader's interest. So I gave Felton, my leading man, a bias for action so he would drive the plot. Also, the limited perspective opened up opportunities for surprises in the plot. I'll devote an entire post to what I learned about limited perspective later.
Prominent female character: I'm proud of what I was able to do with Greta, introducing her toward the end of the first act and giving her just enough characterization and backstory to be interesting. She has agency in the plot and I love her partnering with Felton in the second act. The trust and friendship that develops between them was a highlight for me as a writer.
Shorter chapters (average 5,000 words): This came naturally with a tighter writing style that was more focused on plot than on scenery, which was the biggest complaint I heard about my first book, Tendrils to the Moon. For Seeds, the prologue and 15 chapters together come out to just over 75,000 words, 5,000 words short of my initial goal, but I'll take it.

Something different I did with Seeds was get my wife to edit the book and involve her in plotting the second and third acts. She was great in smoothing out stilted character interactions, especially when it came to Greta, and asking for more or less exposition at various points. She certainly earned her editor credit. The book is better because of her.

Obviously the writing went much slower with this second book. I averaged almost 1,000 words per day on Tendrils, a pace I was proud of. On Seeds, not so much: less than 200 words per day. I'll get into the reasons for that some other time.

The overarching goal was to improve as a writer. I believe I did, and it shows in the quality of the product. See for yourself. Seeds of Calamity is available in paperback and ebook.

As always, let me know what you think in the comment section below. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

Long overdue, but finally here

The sparse posting of late has been so I can focus all my creative energy on finishing writing and editing Seeds of Calamity. Now, the fruit of that long year's labor is available to you for only 99 cents on Kindle, or $7.99 in beautiful paperback.

I'll post later about the joys and trials of writing this book. Until then, happy reading!

Calamity rides on the back of an asteroid...

In 2216, a natural disaster on Mars destroys a remote steelworker settlement, killing thousands.
Four asteroid miners who’ve fallen on hard times go to work for a man they don’t trust.
A Customs agent uncovers a human trafficking ring, but the real crime is more terrible than she could have imagined.

Felton wrangles asteroids for a living. With his brother Levi and shipmates Blake and Castor, he scours the Asteroid Belt for valuable minerals on a space cruiser dubbed the Marillion.
When the Marillion crew lose financial backing, they’re left to fend for themselves in the dog-eat-dog depths of space. They enter an uneasy partnership with the smuggler Keegan, who’s delivering sensitive cargo for a secretive client.
Joined by Customs agent Greta Holtz, they descend on Mars, where men’s unchecked ambition violently collides with the power of an alien lifeform. Tossed about by forces far greater than himself, it’s all Felton can do to survive, let alone avert a calamity that threatens everything he holds dear...

From hard sci-fi novelist Joseph Dooley comes Seeds of Calamity, a new tale of the future packed with twists, thrills, and heart-stopping action.

As always, let me know what you think in the comment section below. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

Sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on a mobile device, click here. As a thank you for joining, new mailing list members will receive a digital copy of Tendrils to the Moon, my debut sci-fi novel. I've made the first 3 chapters available on this blog for free.

Backtracking

I'm finishing up chapter 7 of Seeds of Calamity, and I can't understate how pleased I am with how the plot and characters are shaping up. The prose and plotting feel to me so much tighter than they were in Tendrils to the Moon; that was something I wanted to improve on after overshooting the Tendrils's wordcount by a whopping 40 percent.

I want to talk about backtracking--namely, changing your mind about the plot and the direction you want to go in after you've already committed to a different course. I did this recently. I had to retool 9,000 words I had written for chapters 6 and 7 because I was no longer convinced a key plot device was realistic or helping the plot advance the way I wanted it to. I say "retool" because I hit upon a solution that allowed me to keep most of what I wrote instead of trashing all that hard work.

I won't give away the abandoned plot device or what I replaced it with, but I'll say this about it: The moment I conjured up this plot device, I fancied it. It added another layer of complexity to the plot, and I savored the challenge of pulling it off. But after trying it out, I had to admit to myself it was making the book harder to write. I'm already juggling half a dozen characters' personalities, ambitions, and hurdles; why complicate things further? Like expert shot maker Phil Mickelson, I wanted to hit a 200-yard screamer off the pine straw instead of a 150-yard approach shot from the fairway. I'm glad I was able to recognize this and save the book from this dangerous tendency in time, before venturing beyond a point of no return.

I also backtracked over the opening scene of Seeds of Calamity, which I wrote around August, I think. My original opening scene, where a man wakes up from drug-induced sleep, was boring, and it missed the personality of the protagonist. I was able to salvage pieces of dialogue and exposition of secondary characters, but the opening scene is now completely different. It features an asteroid mining crew finding out a rock they had gone out of their way to survey was worthless.

Another one of my goals is for the paperback to go live the same day as the ebook. To that end, I designed the paperback art and interior well ahead of time, and I received the proof copy Wednesday. I need to make a bunch of small corrections, and my fears about the spine were confirmed. The upside is I have a long time to troubleshoot these issues so they're corrected before we go into production. (Don't take this as an indication the book is complete. I'm about half done.)

Tell me what you think in the comments below! I'll reply to you as soon as I can. Feel free to read the first three chapters of Tendrils to the Moon and see if the last 9 chapters are worth your time. The paperback version is on sale at Amazon for $8.99. The ebook is only 99 cents.

Writing with children

Opportunities to write have been few and far between around the holidays and with a newborn child. Last spring, when I was writing Tendrils to the Moon, I was averaging 1,000 words a day, with at least half of my weekly output coming on Friday and Saturday.

That hasn't been the case lately, which means I've had to be creative in finding time to write. I've been using AndrOpen Office on my Samsung Galaxy S5 to edit and write when I'm away from home and have a moment to spare. After experimenting with several apps, I've concluded this is the easiest mobile word processor to edit .doc files on my phone. (I prefer to work in .doc files because they're the most advanced format my old laptop is compatible with.)

The last few days I've been shoring up some scenes in the first two chapters, making characters consistent. The hardest part of the start of a novel is I rarely have a clear mental picture of the characters and their arcs. I've arrived at the first pinch point in chapter 4, and the actions that I required some of the characters to do had not been set up properly. The ratio of effort to net word count is low, but it's work that had to be done regardless.

I suppose more professional writers are able to let stuff like that wait until the editing phase, but it's a mental block for me if the character development is not at the level it needs to be.

I started a writing journal to keep myself motivated. I figure if I average 1,000 words per day, I'll meet my daunting goal of finishing my first draft by the end of January. Today I stopped at 19,261 words.

Here's some back-cover copy I wrote for Seeds of Calamity:

In terrestrial year 2216...
A meteor carrying an alien passenger strikes near a colonial settlement on Mars, killing thousands.
An asteroid mining crew that's fallen on hard times goes to work for a man they don't trust.
A detective thinks she's cracked a human smuggling case, but the real crime is bigger than she could have ever imagined.
The seeds of calamity have begun to sprout.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section below. I'll respond to your comment as soon as I can.

Archetypal characters and family update

I expressed a desire to my editor for the characters in my upcoming book Seeds of Calamity to be more archetypal. Readers connect quickly with people they recognize, so by using archetypes I could quickly establish character dynamics and reader expectations.

I can think of few examples where deliberately eschewing archetypes for the main character succeeded. But the best example would have to be Die Hard. Every time I rewatch that Christmas classic, I'm fascinated with how unheroic John McClane seems in the first 20 minutes. He's afraid of flying. He interacts stiffly with the airplane passenger and the limo driver. He fights with his wife within minutes of meeting her at her office. He quips about Ellis's cocaine use and fruity Californians. The movie goes out of its way to make you think twice about liking this man. The filmmakers may have been motivated to purposefully break the audience's prior identification with Bruce Willis, who was known as a comic actor in the '80s, not an action star. Nevertheless, they did a super job introducing that character.

In my first book, Tendrils to the Moon, Ames is the hero, but I didn't initially present him as such. He comes off as an uptight, no-nonsense everyman, who happens to be XO on a spaceship bound for the Moon. His character arc is to become the magnanimous leader that his boss proves not to be. One of my readers thought Sheridan, not Ames, was the hero until roughly halfway through the book.

Anyway, my editor was skeptical. She likes my characters and thinks I shouldn't try anything different with them. They're interesting without seeming fake, she said. I'll lean on her judgement for now. She is my wife, after all!

This Thanksgiving is special for my family because last Friday we welcomed our second daughter into the world.

Life has been pretty full since Diana was born, and the writing has not come as quickly as I would like. But I wouldn't trade this child for 20,000 words of clean prose.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below! I'll reply to you as soon as I can. I invite you to read the first three chapters of Tendrils to the Moon for free, and see if the last 9 chapters are worth your time. The paperback version is on sale at Amazon for $8.99. The ebook is only 99 cents.

On colonizing Mars

I wish to quibble with a point in the BBC's write-up of the TV series Mars:

Colonising Mars would provide humankind with a lifeboat, ensuring our species' survival if some giant catastrophe were to befall civilisation - let's say an asteroid strike, or an ecological breakdown.

Realistically, there is no circumstance that could make Mars a more attractive destination than Earth to perpetuate mankind. A "lifeboat" biodome on Earth has the advantage in every aspect. To name a few:

Atmospheric pressure: Even if Earth's atmosphere turned poisonous, it would be no less deadly than the near lack of atmosphere on Mars. An Earth biodome wouldn't have to solve the challenge of containing a pressurized system.
Known resources of organic life and minerals: There is no native life on Mars, nor oil for power generation or plastics. Nor is it Earth's equal in mineral diversity. All these resources would have to be substituted.
Proximity: Until costs for space travel are lowered from the billions of dollars to "mere" millions, simply getting to Mars is an enormous expense, considering all that you have to bring with you. Such an expense, as well as those of time and effort in planning the expedition, are not required to sustain life in a biodome on Earth.

If we're talking strictly in the near-term, before space travel is thoroughly commercialized, I think the only reason man would seriously settle Mars would be to flee the global reach of oppressors. Imagine the Republic of China fleeing to Taiwan in 1949, but on a larger (yet, smaller) scale. If circumstances materialized to that extent, identifiable people groups such as nations or religious sects would already be organized for their self-defense. Only the most affluent and learned groups would attempt an extraterrestrial colonization, with Mars being preferred over the Moon.

Ron Howard is producer of the Mars TV series, and he had some comments that I wish to analyze.

I wasn't sure I believed in the idea of going to Mars. I knew I believed in the idea of space exploration… and any show that advocated that was making a statement that was healthy and positive for human beings - to inspire their imaginations to look outward.
But as I have gone through the process of working on the show and interviewing some of the big thinkers, I now really do believe in it strategically - I don't mean that from a military standpoint, I mean it from the point of the ongoing evolution of the human species… I not only believe it's viable, I'm a big supporter.

This idea of mankind evolving--not just physically but in the way individuals relate and rely on each other--is a fun idea to play with. It sets up a conflict of visions--whither should mankind evolve?--that all readers can be stimulated by because it's fundamental to the human condition. Given current political trends, I think people are increasingly conscious of it as well.

In my book Tendrils to the Moon, the antagonist is taken with the idea of mankind maturing beyond what he sees as its fatal flaws, namely nationalism and religion, which gave rise to the conflict that killed his parents. That the antagonist has that ideology is not an indictment of the ideology, but it gives him a motivation that the reader can relate to.

I tried to write a book back in 2011, a murder mystery/thriller set in an underground colony on Mars that had an almost Communist vision of man. The lack of capitalist/liberal alternatives, the necessity for communal living (contra individual and nuclear family), and the lack of privacy in such dense quarters all could contribute to a Communism organization of society prevailing, at least for a time. The book failed because of a convoluted plot that was impossible to execute, but I wouldn't mind returning to that idea someday.

On artificial atmospheres

I happened across this interview of sci-fi/fantasy author Richard K. Morgan. I haven't read any of his books, but he seems to have a strong sense for hard sci-fi. Excerpt:

In Black Man, I posited that one of the things they would be doing is sending Andeans—Andean Native Americans—to Mars. Because one of the things obviously is if you’ve got a very, very thin atmosphere, then guys who are used to living at altitude are going to be genetically predisposed to cope with that better. So in Black Man, the Western world has built its Mars prep camps in the Andes, because you get the altitude there, and also something of the bleak environment these people will be going to. So the idea is you’ve got several generations of grunt labor coming from places like Peru and Bolivia, and they’ve brought their culture with them. So that’s one of the baseline cultures that operates on Mars.

Kinda like how the grunt labor for Himalayas Mountains climbers are local Sherpas who are genetically adapted to the altitude.

In my book Tendrils to the Moon, one of the dangers facing the characters is decompression of the artificial atmospheres that keep them alive. I even mention that the dropping air pressure in one situation is equivalent to the atmosphere in Tibet. Survivable for your average Westerner, but some people do get altitude sickness at those heights.

If you're writing hard sci-fi, you have to consider how artificial atmospheres are maintained. With current technology, a low-pressure atmosphere is easier and less costly to maintain than a high-pressure atmosphere. Therefore high-altitude adaptation is ideal for people living on alien worlds.

You also have to consider the composition of the artificial atmosphere. There is a minimum partial pressure of oxygen that could sustain a colony. That pressure is unique to every individual, and it's the pressure of oxygen in the alveoli in the lungs. If the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere is too low, oxygen is physically incapable of passing through alveoli into the arteries. For most people, that pressure is about two-thirds of the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level on Earth. Furthermore, there also must be a significant trace gas, like nitrogen or argon, present in your artificial atmosphere, since a pure oxygen atmosphere presents a significant fire hazard.