This November, I’ll be bending the Nanowrimo rules a teensy bit to recycle an old story.
I wrote the initial draft of Stars Shine Brighter for Nanowrimo in 2008, a mess of rushed ideas, mixed up English and French, entire epic scenes condensed to the words ‘[insert space battle here]‘ and truly horrendous writing.
I can say without false modesty that there isn’t ANY salvageable prose in that draft.
Some of the ideas and characters however, have stayed with me and developed over the past four years. I wrote a few extra scenes in that universe for a piece of Creative Writing coursework, kept about five different story notebooks going, restarted from the beginning several, even discussed some of the concepts and ideas with my Dad (who, it turns out, enjoys hard sci-fi!).
I started dissecting that first draft with Holly Lisle’s excellent and gruelling online editing course, How To Revise Your Novel. But around Lesson Eight, when it was time to decide what to keep and what to cut, to create a solid basis upon which to re-write, I realised that there was nothing in the text I felt like keeping.
So I put Stars Shine Brighter firmly on the back burner and let it stew until I felt ready to have another go at it. For a while, I wasn’t sure I would and I was surprisingly okay with that.
After FTL came out though, I couldn’t get the feel of proper, old time Sci-Fi out of my mind. I also found the game thought-provoking in some ways. Though quite comfortable and traditional is some ways (though not easy!), FTL also has weird stuff going on.
My boyfriend, who loves to immerse himself in a game’s narrative, pointed out that it was a bit weird that your ship, mandated by the Federation, should be so small and crappy and that the enemy fleet, the Rebels, should be so numerous and powerful. Shouldn’t the rebels be a tiny force? And if so many decide to join the Rebellion, is it because the Federation are actually the baddies?
Onto plotting and outlining then, and bring on November!