← How I Write
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- [00:00]
A
Adrian 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 a Time. And the guy is just prolific. He's written more than 60 books and novellas, so he's got a lot to teach. 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 through the pacing and all the action that needs to happen? And if you want to write stories, imaginative stories, stories that are filled with wonder and fantasy, well, then you're gonna like this episode. Well, what I wanna start with is you really planned your novels in advance and how did you get into that?
- [00:44]
B
The advanced. Advanced planning is always world with me, which is a practice I picked up long before I started writing because I basically come out of a tradition of running roleplaying games, right? So when you're creating a world for a roleplaying game, you make it very robustly because you don't know what the players are gonna break. But you're also making a world specifically for other people to see, even if it's just like three other people around a gaming table. 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 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 striving to do. Because one of the things I think in fantasy and science fiction writing is the extent that people go to it to be taken to another place. And then from that point. Traditionally, I've also been similarly thorough in working through the plot, really, just because I like to know where I'm going. I like to 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 got him into this situation and I can't get him out.
- [01:57]
A
So what are you in your office with? Post it notes all on the wall, or what does that actually look like?
- [02:01]
B
Oh, no. I mean, it would be lovely to have like the red tape and the conspiracy theory guy sort of meme, but I generally just 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 this beat, this beat, this beat. And very occasionally it would even go into Right. 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 sometimes feels like getting information to the right place within a book is 90% of planning it.
- [02:38]
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.
- [02:47]
B
Oh, no, this is. I mean, certainly my true 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 because then I know I have a set of steps which will get me from here to the end of the book. Now, whether I stay on that staircase during writing does vary quite a lot because I. Sometimes you'll get an idea that actually it'll be better just to have a bit of a detour here and come back to it later on. Or sometimes you'll get to this point and realize actually the logic of this does not work because I've not done my job properly when planning. And sometimes it'll be a logic of world building, and sometimes it'll be a logic of narrative. 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. The way the book ended. So that you could literally have cut it all out and nothing would have changed. And at that point. Right, I'm gonna have to go back and rethink through the logic of that and rewrite various chapters so that all of this has a point. 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.
- [04:09]
A
So you get almost to the end, but not through the end.
- [04:12]
B
Because one thing I found right from the beginning was you can get yourself in the planning to that you are in the final room. You've got the big Bad, you've got the heroes. They're having the face off. But letting the trajectory and momentum of the book to that point, then tell you how it should end has worked really well for me.
- [04:34]
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 you have made. Has.
- [04:49]
B
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 and fantasy than anything else, because so much of the stuff in the book is, is, is, I don't want to say fictional. And obviously everything in the book is fictional, but is more fictional because you're dealing with places and times and people 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. But because a lot of that is coming out of your subconscious, it also feels as though you're, you're just kind of there with a notebook.
- [05:32]
A
Is it fun to imagine these worlds or is the experience of it actually pretty worky?
- [05:40]
B
Oh, it's the most fun. This is, I mean, this is, I think, why my, my process is so very world focused. It's just making new worlds and fun.
- [05:49]
A
In what way? PLAYFUL LAUGHTER no, it's imaginative.
- [05:53]
B
It's imaginative. It's an exploration. Because the, so the way, the way I'll generally start is with a, a particular what if. So we'll have. All right, this is the thing about this world. This is the world where this is. This, this is the world where a species of spider is going to evolve into the dominant civilization.
- [06:13]
A
So one what if variable, basically.
- [06:15]
B
And then the image I usually use is the idea you're dropping a stone into a pool and then you have 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 is your starting 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 whether it is an entirely fantastical, magical place where every part of it fits with everything else.
- [06:54]
A
What's the difference between a what if and a premise? Or are those the same?
- [06:58]
B
I mean, I think there's probably the same thing. It's just, I think what if is just the way of expressing it that appeals to me as a sort of a science fiction fantasy author.
- [07:08]
A
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 do you think that they would have, um.
- [07:24]
B
I think for a starter, the key thing is I don't ever want to repeat someone else's work, basically. And so if I am working in a space that a lot 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, if I can't think of a really interesting spin on something, I won't go there. So, for example, I have. Yeah, I've written a lot of fantasy books. I've never really done a dragon.
- [07:53]
A
Right.
- [07:54]
B
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. I would need a really interesting take in order to go there because that's such a crowded idea space.
- [08:09]
A
Why do you think dragons are so popular? Because they're big, they're kind of dramatic.
- [08:14]
B
I mean, if we accept that, say Eastern culture dragons and Western culture dragons are dragons in the same way. And that's a bit of a debatable point. It's something that the vast majority of cultures seem to have. It's something that obviously speaks to the human psyche. 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 sort of nature characteristics. So, for example, Smaug in the Hobbit is an embodiment of greed. And Tolkien is taking that directly from Fafnir in sort of Anglo Saxon myth. And Fafnir was a person who turns into 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 powerful and sort of flamboyant and spectacular.
- [09:18]
A
Okay, so you mentioned originality for the what if. What are the other components?
- [09:23]
B
I mean, for me, it's got to feel like a solid enough idea that it's worth doing a book about. And that's a really hard thing to pin down. And it comes down to. Well, I'd know it when I see it.
- [09:35]
A
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 grows and grows. It begins to expand. Is that something you feel?
- [09:45]
B
I have a lot of half book ideas and a lot of the books I'VE written have been when two of these ideas have clicked together and I've realized, ah, there isn't a complete. If I put two things together, there is a complete book that I can get out of that. And sometimes it's more than two, but often it's just so. For example, in Children of Ruin, which is the second of my kind of big sci fi books, in that series, I wanted to write about uplifted octopuses because they are very fascinating creatures. But that felt like half a book. And you learn, you get a sense of how much of it is. And so theoretically, I could probably have done a novella 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 with human neurology. And those two things together, despite the fact they didn't obviously seem to have anything particular in common, just clicked and wrote, oh, no, there is a complete book. If I could write both of those into the same work.
- [10:44]
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 that solar feels like a sham that's fake, that's not really going to hold water.
- [10:59]
B
So I try and build ground up when I'm doing worldbuilding, okay? And usually that what if 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 writing the book or even starting working out that sort of chapter plan of plot, the world has already got that level of reality to it, that sort of robustness. So I need that kind of solid ground under my feet sort of feel. And if I don't get there with the world, as occasionally I don't, then I won't get as far as actually turning it into a book.
- [11:39]
A
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?
- [11:48]
B
What do you mean by phases?
- [11:51]
A
I'm gonna plan the book. I have research to do. I'm writing a first draft, I'm doing editing, okay?
- [11:58]
B
So the world stage will generally be about a couple of weeks and. A couple of weeks, wow, that's pretty fast. Yeah, 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 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. And sometimes, 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, that is an idea for 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 there is quite a long sort 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 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. Because I am not in any way advancing 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 you to all the interesting places and see all the interesting things that are happening. And the world itself will have sort of flashpoints and pressures and fractures inherently within it. Because when you're making a world, it's not static, it's not the idea of Yeth. And this is how it is, and this is how it will be for a thousand years. 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 gonna fall apart and this is gonna go on fire. And then all of these things you worked into the setting give you the where the plot is going to go and they give you the characters as well.
- [14:08]
A
So what's an example of that? Of you have a vivid world and then the characters arise out of that.
- [14:14]
B
So my fantasy series that I'm working on at the moment is called the Tyrant Philosophers. First book was City of Last Chances. There's something in particular about city based books where you get a whole extra layer of world going on in this case. So I knew it's an occupied city, but I want to be writing about relatively low level mundane people who are under the boot of the occupation, 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. I know who the factions are. I know what's going on. I know what the pressures are. I will go out into the streets of Ilmar, this city, and I will see who I meet. And this character is a sort of a magical pawnbroker. 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. He's an academic in the. The local sort 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 pawnbroker's shop for choice pieces. And so you just start building up this spider web.
- [15:35]
A
Wow.
- [15:35]
B
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 tail of events informing all of these characters and 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 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 huge sort of revolution going on.
- [16:14]
A
And now when you're talking about starting with the city and then going to the pawnbroker 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 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 something that just sort of naturally emerges out of the soil.
- [16:37]
B
Absolutely that. And in fact, with these books, I'm not planning them. I am literally just setting all of this stuff up and then seeing what it does. And all of the innate drives and friction and relationships of these characters give me the plot. But I don't know any of it in advance in this case, which is a bit. It's kind of like writing without a safety net. And it was terrifying 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.
- [17:06]
A
Does it sometimes have no sign of ending?
- [17:09]
B
It hasn't failed yet. So I'm currently working on the film fifth main novel in this series. And they've all. I mean, they're long as books go, but they are not sort of ridiculously long. And they've all had a good shape and all. And they all have lots and lots of interweaving mosaic threads and lots of point of view characters and everything kind of comes together at the end.
- [17:30]
A
Take me back to what you were saying about with the settings and cities having unique properties versus the other option.
- [17:38]
B
Certainly for a lot of narratives, especially fantasy narrative, they tend to be travelogs. And the thing there is you get to leave your messes behind. 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 towards throwing the ring into Mount Doom or whatever you're doing. You don't need to worry about what is happening back in Bree after you kind of gone out ahead of the Ringwraiths. If you're in a city, you don't have that luxury. If you're in a city, first off, you're 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 you do a thing, 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 narrative, I think, than the travelogue narrative where you're basically doing the murder hobo thing and just walking away from your problems.
- [18:42]
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?
- [18:48]
B
I feel it's more challenging, I think.
- [18:50]
A
Why do you distinguish between hard and challenging?
- [18:53]
B
Because challenging is fun. I mean, I think it is harder. But on the other hand, I think it's also commensurably more rewarding when you've done it. And so I don't want to make it sound as if there is a downside to it, but I do think you need to do 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, all of these people you're gonna meet are going to have 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 board with the 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 the legwork, or. I mean, I know there are writers who will just write and sort it all out in the second draft, and I have a colossal amount of admiration for that, because I need that world already there. I need to know whatever street I turn down, I need to know what I'm going to find there.
- [20:02]
A
How do you imagine that world? Do you imagine it in terms of people, in terms of streets, in terms of close? Like in your head? If you were to close your eyes and imagine that world, what do you see?
- [20:14]
B
It's kind of a. It's a combination of all of it. Certainly there's a big visual component, there's an audio component, but there's also. It's very hard to define, but there's almost like a gestalt. I mean, I feel this a lot, 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 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, or this is like a picture of baths in the Roman Empire or something like that, because you've got that filter, you can say, well, in this world, 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 that prep work and immersed yourself in the world, hopefully your imagination 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.
- [21:20]
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 pawnbroker and the academic. When you're thinking through those characters, where does that begin? Where does that start? And then what leads to a kind of believability of character? Because science fiction has sort of a reputation of having kind of flat, stale, unbelievable characters.
- [21:48]
B
Which, I mean, I think, whilst I'm sure you can find examples where that is the case, and certainly there is a period of science fiction where the focus is much more on, 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 of criticism. And for example, if you look at the work of, say, Ursula Le Guin, one of the big voices of the golden age of science fiction, she is enormously concerned with the human experience rather than how the technology works or anything like that. So, but for. For me, sticking with the characters we've been talking about. So I know by the time I get as far as, well, there's a pawnbroker. I know that this pawnbroker 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. So he's already got all of this informing him even before I know who he is and what he's doing. He's growing out of the world in the same way as all of the other characters, large or small, are growing out from this same common sort of weave of ideas I put in. So ideally, by the time that character has emerged as, oh, yes, let's have him in the book, there are all those strings attaching that character to all the other parts of the setting are already there. They're not things I necessarily need to tack on by hand because it's inherent in who this character is as to how he's going to relate to everything else that's going on in the same.
- [23:46]
A
Way that a world would unfold. And presumably you'd be kind of 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?
- [23:57]
B
Yes, absolutely. Yes. And that. That applies for books where I planned more. More sort of rigidly as well as where I'm. I'm letting. Letting the plot unwind itself. Characters will always have more depth because, you 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, 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 that'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. 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 long enough, this richness of character detail will suggest itself to you much more naturally because you train your mind to feel, to think in a certain way.
- [25:09]
A
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. How much do you think about that?
- [25:25]
B
So when I'm doing science fiction, 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 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 Wars y sort of thing, where there are the trappings of maybe science fiction, but the logic behind it is kind of mystical. And, you know, it takes you all the way to kind of full on secondary world fantasy where everything is just magic. But when we're working towards this end, where the science is, I have borrowed the idea of a left wall.
- [26:08]
A
What's that?
- [26:09]
B
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, unless you're very intentionally deciding, right, I do not care about this particular part of science. I'm going to have time machines or whatever. In the same way, honestly, as if you were writing something set 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 your research is. And the difficult thing there is working out ahead of time what you don't know. It is the unknown unknowns, as whichever statesman said 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'll just get it wrong because you don't know how it works and don't realize you don't know, or you will get halfway through the bucket 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 of the stuff I've just written.
- [27:18]
A
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?
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, for example, Children of Ruin again, in Children of Ruin, the octopuses have spaceships and the spaceships are full of water because they're octopuses. Now, thankfully, before getting particularly far into the book, I realized I have no 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 you'd think would have literally the opposite problem to this, but who was able to basically guide me through. Well, you have this problem with inertia and you have this problem with momentum because the whole thing just weighs a thousand times more than a spaceship that's full of air. And, you know, this might happen if you have a hull breach and the water is going out and all of that kind of thing, but it's just wor. Working out those weird little gaps. I mean, ideally, my absolute favourite scenario for anything like this is I will find someone who knows this topic extremely well. And generally people are extremely happy to do this because people who are very knowledgeable about a thing are quite happy to share that knowledge. That tends to be. So, for example, with the Spiders and Children of Time, I turned out to have a very. A really fluky connection at the Natural History Museum. That meant I could go over there here in London.
- [28:50]
A
That's the pretty one in South Kensington.
- [28:52]
B
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? How big?
- [29:03]
A
We're talking like a truck or a boat.
- [29:05]
B
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, because you can't. So in this case, they're about that big. That's as big as they get.
- [29:12]
A
Okay, so like a foot long.
- [29:13]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of including legs. So they are big. They're about the size of a cat or so, but they're, you know, it's big for a spider. Well, I mean, I. Yeah, I mean, I. I like spiders a lot. But also with that book, I'm well aware that basically most people don't like spiders. So I wanted a book about Empathy, human empathy with the other. And if you can do that with spiders, you can do that with anything. And so that was the big challenge with Children of Time. But yes, I also, I needed my spiders to be as scientifically plausible as possible. And so that was the purpose of that particular sort of research expedition.
- [29:51]
A
And forgive my ignorance, but why, why is scientifically plausible important? 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.
- [30:04]
B
So, 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 am knowledgeable about. And that's always a bit of a joy.
- [30:19]
A
Very true.
- [30:20]
B
That is the equivalent of making a table where all the legs touch the ground and it doesn't wobble. I built that well, yeah. But there is a particular way that science informed 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 known. Well, this is obviously, it's a story. I mean, you must have had other people talking about the idea of the one big lie.
- [30:56]
A
No.
- [30:57]
B
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 that one thing, which is just convenient 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 examples of that be in different stories? Well, in Children of Time, there is a big lie, but it is not the spiders. The big lie is literally there is this nanovirus which is, is assisting the uplift of the spiders. And the lie is the amount of time that that uplift will take. Because of the nariovirus. 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 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, this particular species of spider, which is, it's an enormously cognitively complex species. The book was in Fact. Inspired by reading the scientific papers of people who've been studying this and finding giant spiders. No, no. The species of the spider you start off with is basically small enough to fit on your thumbnail.
- [32:13]
A
Okay.
- [32:13]
B
It's a species of jumping spider, Portia labiata. It is insanely intelligent for something that is that small and doesn't really have a brain as we would think of it. Wow. We have later found, which I didn't get to put into the book because it was written by them, we found that they dream like we dream. They. You can see them having like eye movements when they're asleep. And yeah, it's 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 spider became fully sentient and had a, you know, 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 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 40 foot spider or anything like that. It's not like the thing, the giant bugs in Starship Troopers. Because if you're talking about an Earth spider that has been. This is being uplifted. There are physics limits you can't really go beyond. But the end, the end result is that hopefully the spiders come over as this is the thing that could be. This is the thing that could be real. And that gives the book a weight and a gravity that it would not necessarily have if it was magic talking spiders. And I have written magic talking spiders. And that when I'm doing that, that's not. Not what I'm seeking to do in the book. The book is doing different things at that point.
- [33:47]
A
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.
- [33:58]
B
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're standing on the shoulders of Jones, I guess, where you're building off what we know and saying, well, this is a plausible way this could go. But what I should also say is as far as science fiction and fantasy goes, it is that continuum. So you move away from that hard science point. 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 in the middle there, in that sort of space opera territory, I've got 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 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 interact with humans on a human level. And they can communicate and 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. And so at the point where you're looking at 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 aware, there's no real mechanic to go back in time. And then the more you go towards that, the more you cut out because your left wall is taking up more and more of the space. Whereas as you go away from that, more and more things become available to your narrative. I mean, one of the reasons I did the Architects series as a space operation, I just really wanted to be able to gad about in the universe 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. And then eventually you end up going straight into, you know, full on fantasy, where, yes, 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 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 fiction world. It's just that you have built it by hand rather than importing large chunks of it from the real world.
- [36:38]
A
Why do you think that the use of magic so often does come with a price?
- [36:44]
B
Because for the same reason it's easier to write dystopias than utopias. Because if you have magic with no price, then why has anyone got a problem at this point? Why isn't everyone just doing everything by magic? I mean, also, frankly, just narratively, I think it's much more satisfying. We like the idea of kind of wicked magics that exact terrible prices from Their users, whether those users are our heroes or our villains. It's just. It gives you more narrative space than if. I mean, when you have a narrative where basically you can do anything, there is a story there. I mean, Michael Walcott wrote a series called the Dance at the End of Time, which is set in such a far future, there are basically about seven people left, and they're all but essentially gods, and 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 obviate this incredible ennui of just having absolutely everything in the world.
- [37:49]
A
You were talking about the left wall and you were talking about the one big lie.
- [37:53]
B
Yeah.
- [37:54]
A
Are there other maxims that you think about in terms of writing that you lean on a lot of?
- [38:02]
B
I mean, not many. I mean, one of the things I tend to find about writing maxims is that they are very seldom true. 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 it like that. 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, I think that is very irresponsible. Right.
- [38:41]
A
This isn't Moses talking to God. This is something that's worked for people.
- [38:45]
B
I think that the most important 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. And every single writer does something that I personally find absolutely unthinkable. I mean, when I, you know, when I talk about the fact. Oh, yeah, I never. I never. I never decide on the ending. And you should see the looks you get from some of the writers 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 go anywhere. There's no one way of doing this. And at the end of it, you always converge on having a book. Anyone who says, well, you should always show rather than tell, and you can absolutely tell too much, 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. And I think there are certain writing traditions which I think are so entrenched and people assume they are so unavoidable that it can be actively harmful. I mean, I do not like the idea of the hero's journey. It is very, very prevalent. There are people who will basically say, well, every story has got to conform to the hero's journey. And I've heard people.
- [40:20]
A
Why don't you like it?
- [40:22]
B
Because it's just one. One structure. The idea of saying, well, all this is the story that all stories must follow. I mean, if you listen to people who are talking about the hero's journey and how this book or that book conforms to the hero's journey, you will always get to this point. Well, I mean, obviously. And I guess this is kind of our descent into the underworld. And you can just think, well, it's. I mean, he doesn't. 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.
- [40:57]
A
Right.
- [40:58]
B
Because once you are reducing something that far, then you're left with a model that is completely worthless. I mean, honestly, 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 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 wall, for example, 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.
- [41:44]
A
Right. What you're saying is to hold models and maxims with a light grip.
- [41:50]
B
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.
- [42:01]
A
Sure.
- [42:02]
B
Including that piece of advice, I'm sure.
- [42:04]
A
What makes for a good fight scene.
- [42:07]
B
Oh, ah, well, fight scenes are a thing. So I have. What have I done? 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 of historical broadsword training at the Leeds armories.
- [42:23]
A
So you've thought a lot about this.
- [42:25]
B
Well, the thing, I mean, thing is, if you're writing epic fantasy, that's a lot of fights. Yeah. The other thing is 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 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 what you hear then is the sound 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.
- [43:05]
A
Right.
- [43:06]
B
Whereas once you've done a bit of the research, once you've done a bit of, 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. 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 not throw the book across the room. In order to write really good, engrossing fight scenes, you need to have a sense of perspective and flow. I mean, there's a fantasy writer, Joe Abercrombie, for example, he writes 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 is enormous panicky cacophony of people charging 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 way of telling a fight scene. 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 patently ridiculous with it. 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 you've got the general and they're looking across the thing and you're 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. And there are big battle scenes and that's one type of 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 having a fight because it's very mobile and you tend to have a lot of people trading off opponents. And sometimes I've got to the point of literally just marking out, right, this person's going over here and this person's going over here and you're just having this whole complex scene literally planned out. I think it was with like little toy insects that my son had just to work out the logistics of it. And then you have things like if you have a duel, wait, that's you.
- [45:21]
A
Playing with insects, trying to say, this.
- [45:23]
B
Is how we just get a guy pick out. Yeah.
- [45:25]
A
Oh, that's a funny image.
- [45:27]
B
Yeah. And then you have a duel where you're probably going to be a lot more into the precise techniques that are going into a fight because it is just the two people at that point and it is 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 in the fight. So for example, there's a fight in one of my Shadows of the APT books where you've got a fairly unskilled opponent and you're someone who was a lot better than him, but who is actually also quite fond of him and doesn't want to kill him. And so you get the bit at the end where you see where the more skilled opponent had their opportunity to finish the fight and doesn't and then they get killed because they are failed to take that opportunity. But that's character development that is letting the fight tell the story rather than just being, oh yeah, he hit him and then he hit him and they clothed through there. And you know, you learn after you've done, after you've got a certain way into writing fight, that actually a fight scene is also a vehicle for advancing the narrative.
- [46:38]
A
Well, you were talking earlier about how the story is an opportunity for the world to reveal itself and to Unfold. How would a fight scene reveal and unfold the world that you're building?
- [46:50]
B
So you do it through character, like I say. But also, I mean, if you're doing fantasy or science fiction, you can also use that as a very sneaky way of showcasing fun world parts. Right.
- [47:03]
A
Because you could show weapons and.
- [47:05]
B
Yeah. Or for example, in the Echoes of the fall series, everyone is a shape changer. Everyone has an animal form and you can transfer from human to 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 them in the fight, which was really hard to think through, but hopefully is enjoyable to read.
- [47:35]
A
That's a funny image.
- [47:38]
B
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 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 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. 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 paring it down to just maybe a handful of words where you can see that those arose from what you have learned, those are the words that will make it real. Getting into the heads of the characters. Like I'm saying, even if you're not doing that, just that very restricted viewpoint, having the narrative of the fight told as much through the emotions as through the footwork or the precise blade work.
- [48:53]
A
Explain that for me. Talking through the emotions rather than the work.
- [48:57]
B
Because I mean the thing I mean. So weirdly enough, this is something I got from live role playing.
- [49:03]
A
Okay, when you say live role playing, do you mean actually acting in person with other people?
- [49:08]
B
Rubber sword, dress up as a barbarian, charge about.
- [49:12]
A
So it's like improv for fights.
- [49:14]
B
Yes. And you're playing a character. There is a certain sense of a world going on. And in this case because it's what we call fest based larp, it's full on a thousand people on the battlefield sometimes. And you're 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 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 this and the kind of strategic that of what is going on the battlefield. 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. But because you're there, there is a part of you that reacts as if it's real, even though it's, you know, it's. Obviously, it's purely a fictional pastime. And that sense is what you can.
- [50:15]
A
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, as I understand it, to avoid writing ruts. So as you think about doing that, what's important?
- [50:31]
B
So there will be usually one or two things I want to do differently. Yes. In particular, with any new project, there will be a particular idea I want to explore, or there will be a particular moment of emotional impact I want to try and generate, even. There will be. So, I mean, 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 at, there are a couple of books I have read which have inspired in me this incredible sense of the numinous.
- [51:06]
A
The numinous?
- [51:07]
B
Yes, of this kind of just the awe of there being just a world that is just out of sight. But it's very, very real. And you get. I mean, Robert Holdstock's Mythargo Wood is one, and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is another, both of which are books I absolutely love. And at some point I want to write a book that inspires a similar kind of sense. And it will be 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 with that sense of that sort of other world. And like I say, I haven't yet done that. I've got a book coming out, the title of which I can't say because it's currently in flux, because titles are a thing I can't do. I get to keep about one title out of three of My of what I submit, but I wanted to see can I do a book that is simultaneously gothic horror and also is exploring things like clones and post text society. I do a lot of post text society stuff. For some reason. That's an idea that absolutely fascinates me. And I keep. Why I don't do it. I think it is. Yeah.
- [52:30]
A
What is it about the post Text Society?
- [52:32]
B
Yeah, it's something. It's very evocative. I think it's the same thing that is the explanation of why so many computer game settings are based 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. So that the characters, 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 came from and they don't know how to do the things that people previously did. You get this three sided knowledge structure.
- [53:23]
A
What's that?
- [53:24]
B
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. 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 especially. And this is especially the case with like unreliable narrator 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 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 the book where the reader realizes that they've not been given the full story. I mean, this is something I do. In City of Last Chances, there is basically a kind of a Maltese falcon thing going on where there 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 it.
- [54:38]
A
That sounds like. What's that board game Secret Hitler?
- [54:43]
B
Well, it is, yeah. I mean it is kind of A hidden. It's sort of a hidden rolly sort of thing. And that was. That was complicated by the fact that because this is the book, I didn't plan. I 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 character 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. 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 very much a thing you tend to get with post tech. So, for example, in my Expert Systems novellas, 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 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. But you, as the reader, of course, have a much broader understanding of what's going on. And as the main character explores the world, he doesn't particularly understand a lot of the things he finds. But the reader can pick up the clues and stay a step ahead of what the character understands. And some, I mean, and sometimes this can be profoundly traumatic. So there's. In Dogs of War, the main character is Rex. He is a bioengineered dog who is being used as a military asset. And he's telling the 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 measure of being a good dog. And it becomes readily apparent to the readers that what Rex is doing is war crimes.
- [56:44]
A
War crimes?
- [56:45]
B
Yeah, he's absolutely killing civilians and indeed children because he's talking about the era big, big, big enemies and small enemies and things like that. But Rex has no understanding of that because he doesn't have the 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 amiable, likable character who just thinks he's being a good dog. And then later on, of course, Rex will catch up. And as he goes out into the world, he understands more and starts making his own value judgments about what is right and wrong. That isn't just my master has told me to 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 knows, what the reader knows, what the character knows. Yeah.
- [57:38]
A
As you're thinking up these stories, is there utility to your dreams? And, you know, there's so many. Even Salvador Dali as a painter, you know, he would kind of fall asleep with 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 coming up with stories?
- [58:06]
B
I mean, I don't tend to do mystical per se, but I think subconscious. Yes. I think that the. Ideally, as a writer, your subconscious and your conscious are working in lockstep and supporting one another in what way? So that, for example, when I am consciously working out the framework of the world, and we'll have this and we'll have that, and that leads to that, at the same time, all of the gaps 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 coming from. And really, it's kind of. You're almost writing in partnership with yourself at end the that point. 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.
- [59:07]
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 it is just sheer writing? What is it that you do to say, okay, I'm here now, in 10 years, I'm going to be better? What are you going to do to walk that path of improvement?
- [59:27]
B
I mean, there are some things where we're talking about the sense of the numinous. There are some things that are definitely, I would like to write a book at some point that does this. That's a goal. And I'm aware I am not there yet. And for Example with the City of Last Chances 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 as kind of interweaving, which was not something I'd done before. And so that's the book where I do that. And so some of it is having those quite definite goals to a certain extent. You're aware of areas you've not gone where you feel there is still territory that one can move out into. Other writers have maybe paved the way for, but haven't necessarily gone to those particular places you're going to go. And some of that is certainly going to come out of reading. For example. I mean, I don't know about reading the greats per se. I always find it more useful to read my peers, the people who are writing now. Oh, really? Because they're already informed by those. Yeah, we're all already informed by this great melange of previous writing that's gone on. We have been building on things. That's how we work. Yeah, we build on past work and we build on past work and therefore reading more recent stuff. And honestly, I think we are in a bit of a golden age of really interesting science fiction at the moment. Is. I find that more interesting than going back to read something from the 60s. Right.
- [61:07]
A
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.
- [61:19]
B
I think, I mean, it's a hard thing 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 particular emotional beats I would like my readers to experience. And the thing is, you're never gonna get that from every reader because everyone is responding differently. But you cast a net and hopefully the majority of your readers will feel somewhere within the general territory of what they want them to feel. So that, for example, when you've got the doomed defense of the barricades, when the soldiers are moving in, you want them to feel the hope and the tragedy and the despair. And you want them to have, when you have that last minute intervention, just when everything is lost, you want them to soar with it. And a lot of this time I'm doing this because I'm hopefully connecting them to the emotional lives with the characters themselves. And this is often a lot. When I was talking about with the idea of you have the mask on and the filter, each character has a mask and each character's emotions are that filter. And this is probably another thing I'm bringing in from way tabletop role playing games way back. But the idea is you inhabit the character, even if it's a tiny character at the time. They are very real to themselves. 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 are a bit part or whether they're a main player in the book. And I think having the characters be real to themselves and true to themselves is probably one of the ways you then get the audience to feel along with them.
- [63:08]
A
Well, I guess a good ending question is what makes for a good ending?
- [63:12]
B
Absolutely no bones about it. The ending is the most important part of a book. The most important part, definitely, because it's the bit that your readers are left with. And if the ending does not work, then that's what they're taking away. It's just like. And you do find this. Yeah, 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 bit depressing. 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 turns out to have been inextricably leading to that ending, even though while it was doing that leading, that wasn't remotely obviously where it was going. So it's a lot like any kind of twist 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.
- [64:19]
A
And that's the part that you don't have planned.
- [64:22]
B
Yes, I mean, this is probably why 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 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 like I will let those details turn up organically and hopefully that's what gives the book, in my case, 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.
- [64:58]
A
Thanks for coming on the show. It's good to meet you.
- [65:00]
B
Oh, it's been a pleasure.
- [65:01]
A
Yeah.