I don’t know if this is THE way to write a best selling novel. It’s my way. And this is the first time I’m going to start from 0, and journal as I go. I’ve done bits on my cover design process, bits on my working with the editor, bits on specific sections of themes or marketing, but never a nuts and bolts a - z.
I won’t be emailing these out. You can find them here, this is for the wonks, the autists, the OCD’s, the aspiring writer who will actually finish his work.
What do I want to say?
I like the idea of layering. Softbone was a layered story. The surface level plot is a story of a man who is looking to be free from his ball busting wife and job drugery. It would almost be Office Space or Fight Club. It’s simple, and it would work fine, but it would be boring and derivitive.
So I layer it. I add the ship of Theseus on top, but with cyberpunk. At what point are you the same person if you keep replacing pieces with implants? The funny part is, by the end, Buck makes himself a new eyepatch out of communist skin leather that says ‘still Theseus’ but is he? Is Jake? The story started with Jake as a man named Jakov, submissive, longhoused, complaint to feminine preferences. He ends as a cocky, self assured, somewhat jaded man who unapologetically gets laid and owns his wants. As he gets his augments swapped out in the story, he changes as a person. He calls himself the same Jake, but he’s not.
Buck as well. He started as the cocky, self assured, somewhat jaded man who unapolagetically gets laid and owns his wants. He ends up as a lonely divorced man who wants to leave the life and spend time with his family. They think of themselves as the same ship, but they aren’t.
Then a third layer: each of the main characters are a different sort of family creation. A widow, a single mom with baby rabies, an incel who wants a harem, and a divorced dad.
So, what do I want this time?
Theme 1, 2… 3?
Real Power is the degree to which a person has control over their own circumstances. Real Power is the degree to which we control the directions of our lives.
If freedom is the main theme, why not go with the follow-up to freedom, power? It’s generally a male version of freedom anyways.
Man freedom - No one can force me to do what I don’t want to.
Woman freedom - I can manipulate everything to do what I want
It’s a good start, but I need two more…
If I made the ship of Theseus last time, why not go with Master/Slave morality? How easy does the idea fit into a techno-feminist dystopia?
Then, I’ve done family formation as the characters, what this time?
Simps vs thugs, men who are raised without fathers tend to cluster into extremes?
Madonna/Whore? women fit into the two archetypes that causes problems interacting with men?
communists vs individualists? fitting in vs doing it your way?
I will keep all that in my head and see which one fits better as I outline.
The 6 types of stories
Rags to Riches
Riches to Rags
Man in a Hole - Dog Walker
Icarus
Cindarella - Softbone
Oedipus
I don’t like downer endings. I like restrained happy endings. I don’t think people want to read bad endings when things are IRL bad. I’ll wait for a booming economy to write something depressing.
Question is, do I continue softbone as a series of cindarella stories, or switch it up? I’m thinking consistency. If someone likes the first one they would want something similar as a followup, no? If I want to write something different I can always do that western or fantasy book I keep thinking about.
Note: If you don’t understand the above, think of a two axis chart, X axis is ‘time’ and Y axis is ‘characters fortune’
Satire, worldbuilding flavor
Now to add the cyberpunk. Genre is setting, and the more I write the more I get that. There are no sci fi stories. There’s stories set in sci fi. What are the current neuroticisms about the world I can use?
Pandemic/anti-vax? COVID who cried wolf meets the Spanish flu?
Mass immigration - Cyberpunk Indian invasion?
deaths of despair? - Stim junkie men dying,
White flight - moving away from diversity
Losing the internet commons - Maybe a battle between wireless and the gopher?
A techno-religion from everyone’s ghosts (can make this a real thing or a mass delusion? Warhammer astartes?)
Women in the apocalypse turn to whorin?
Luddite revolution?
Communists invade techno feudalism? (China vs the west?)
Well?
What I found worked best is to keep all these in my mind, and as I run into story problems I need to solve, fit them in as needed. Then the story will build itself, no forced BS.
Summary
This is how I start every time. Next up is to think of a basic short story, inciting incident, a moral question and an answer (start with the ending) I’ll have time while I’m going to sleep to let my mind wander and think of stuff. No idea when though.
