Part II: The OutlineLast time I told you about how I got the contract to write The Crab … about writing a proposal for a different book and pretty much just lucking into this assignment. (Well … luck AND leaving a good impression with the right people ... never underestimate the value of being cordial.) Oddly enough, though, the first thing I had to do once I signed the contracts was write another proposal … and that meant doing a whole bunch of research on the Crab clan.
I was better off than I was the previous time. Prepping for The Scorpion gave me a lot of basic information that helped in getting ready to write The Crab. And the fine folks at both Wizards of the Coast and Alderac Entertainment Group helped out by sending me reams and reams of short stories, roleplaying source material, photocopies of trading cards featuring the Hida clan, and even some hand-written notes on the characters and events I was to novelize. And this really was a novelization, perhaps even more than a book based on a movie or TV show.
There was a story already there when I signed on, and it was my job to translate that story into book format. But unlike novelizations of movies or TV shows, the story was not available in a single digestible chunk. I couldn’t watch a video tape of The Crab and get a feel for the whole width and breadth of the tale. I had to piece together different snippets of the story from chunks ranging from about 30 words (on a trading card) to about 3,000 words (in the case of one short story). Most of the information came in little laundry lists—the 10 things that happen at Beiden Pass … the 6 phases of Yakamo’s character progression. But NONE of it was a whole story ... and lots of little bits contradicted one another.
I cobbled them together as well as I could, asked questions of people like Ed Bolme, Ryan Dancey, Scott Magner, Steve Horvath, and Ree Soesbee, and made hard choices about which bits of conflicting information to keep. It was like putting together a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle from a box that contained 600 pieces.
Anyway, I sent my outline in and about 2 weeks later it was returned with notes scribbled all over it. Some of them were pointing out mistakes or continuity gaffs that had slipped my mind. But an equal or greater number of them were telling me that I’d somehow violated source material that I hadn’t been told existed. I had to rewrite the outline before the novel would be approved and I could get around to actually writing it.
Now, I don’t want to come down too hard on the L5R continuity team … I used to have that very same job for some of TSR/WotC’s properties. And I know that it is a difficult, thankless, incredibly important job that no one really appreciates. They constantly have to walk the line between providing an accurate picture of the world for which they’re responsible, and not burying the authors in so much information that we just ignore them because reading the source material will take longer than writing the book.
And although there are some authors who thrive on understanding a setting completely and crafting a novel that fits snugly into existing continuity (I hope that I fall into that category), at least half of those I’ve worked with consider "continuity" nothing more an obstacle that they must get around in order to improve the setting with their personal interpretations. That drove me crazy when I was working on continuity, and I consider it unconscionable now that I’m on the other side of the process. I mean, I signed a contract to write a story within the L5R setting … not to recraft Rokugan in my own image.
So although I was unhappy about getting the number of instructions I did from the continuity team, I felt it was my duty to take them to heart and make my novel tell a story that stayed "within the lines." I rewrote the proposal and sent it back in.
The copy that came back in the mail a week or two later had nearly as many red marks as the first one. And the continuity team had come up with more sources of information they’d forgotten to send me. Plus I was suddenly made aware that my book shared characters (and in some cases whole scenes) with volumes in the novel series that had not yet been published. That meant that even if I kept within previously published continuity, I sometimes had to change the outline to fit a book that wouldn’t be printed for another half year.
Rob King, the editor for the series, told me, "Look, Stan!, just start writing. It will take forever to get this outline 100% right. We’ll just make changes in the second draft. But in order to do that, you have to get your first draft done."
A very wise man that Rob King.
"Plus" he reminded me, "your deadline is only a month and a half away."
*shiver*
Next time: Writing 85,000 words in 6 weeks. And regretting the fact that the WotC Book Department had undying faith in me.
Rant Main Page Crab: Part 1 Crab: Part 2 Crab: Part 3 Crab: Part 4 Crab: Part 5 Crab: Part 6