Ask the Authors (Fandemonium)

[KarenMiller]

That's great news, James! Fingers crossed you get the projects you're after.

As for what I would've done with Aris ... that boat has sailed. Holly and Jaimie did a standup job, so that's one puppy I've put to bed.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

James, are you going to be doing any Lost Era stuff?

[JMSwallow]

James, are you going to be doing any Lost Era stuff?

At the moment we're talking about a few ideas, but not Lost Era...at least, not yet!

[Elite Anubis Guard]

What about these MU novels they're talking about?

Okay, general one. How long do you know after a pitch before they want you to write a novel.

[Sabine Bauer]

Wow, thanks for the long post Sonny.
I'm just re-reading Trial By Fire in anticipation of SotF - Gotta wait till payday before I can order it - and it had me thinking. Just how did that story evolve? Your starting off the series, what made you decide to use that story?

Hi, EAN

Oy, what a question! What was I thinking? Apart from being pretty freaked out when I realized that this book would be the first out of the box. Coincidentally, I didn't know that until about three quarters into writing the novel. It orginally was slotted as number two, but as I've since found out, publishing schedules have a habit of changing...

I guess, the one idea I had solidly in place from the get-go was that I wanted to tackle the Abyss fallout (and in answer to another question raised here, that was the one episode where I really felt I wanted to write a tag). Another cornerstone was what people had said at a London con and in emails to Fandemonium, i.e. that they wanted to see the books go back to the roots, as it were, and deal with some ancient cultures. And finally, there was Brad Wright, who keeps asking us to take the stories to places and into situations the show simply can’t afford to stage, both for financial reasons and because of time constraints (could be he’s a little jealous ).

So, that was a very loose framework right there and a basis for research. Of which I did a heck of a lot in the following weeks. I settled for the Phoenician/Punic angle the second I saw that little pictogram of Tanis—that was just too good to pass up on Plus, there were some murmurs, though mostly on the UFO websites, that Punic ships had reached North America way back when. The other, major factor was that the mythology delivered this beautifully slick double-identity thing I originally had written for Baal; there’s a whole genealogy for him, going right back to Babylonian times, and according to that he actually is Moloch. Out of that the SG-1 walking into ostensibly peaceful society and being blindsided scenario developed. It also delivered a foundation for the Mithras cult and its followers, because, again, the origins of that are tied in with Baal’s Babylonian ancestor. And of course there was the irresistible lure of finally making some use of those seven years of Latin I took at school

The rest were very much snippets of ideas and notions—like the sudden, weird urge to explain why Jack chose the Air Force as opposed to the Navy—that got stitched into the outline. I actually worked very closely with Sally on that, bouncing ideas off her, which made things a lot easier for me, because I’m so not an outline person. It’s painful. Honestly. If I’m left to my own devices, I tend to sit down, start with Word One, and see what happens. Partly, the fact that I actually have to physically write it if I want to know what’s next is what keeps me going.

Ah, you say. But what about that insanely annoying Professor Kelly? To be honest, I don’t quite know anymore from which rock she crawled out under. All I can say is that she's very closely based on a real person. Without naming names, the guy—yes, it was a he—was a university professor (he’s retired now), thought he was God, and had this endearing habit of ostentatiously balancing his checkbook during other authorities’ guest lectures—if he wasn’t yawning like a dog. Talk about staring into the abyss! He also tried to shoot me down during my viva, so I guess I had something of a Jaffa revenge thing going there

In terms of Kelly’s function within the book, though—aside from driving Jack up the wall—I wanted her, because to me, it was partly about keeping Daniel human (for want of a better word). Obviously, by showing the contrast between him and Kelly, but also in the sense that Daniel, like Sam, has somehow ended up with this ballast of being an expert on virtually everything, which is neither fair nor humanly possible—so I decided he wasn’t going to be all that clued in on the old Phoenicians. Also, to me there was a feeling that he still was very much off-balance after his return, and Kelly added to that, because she’s so much tied with his rejection by the academic world.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think that parts of the book work (I still love Daniel’s dream, for instance, and I had a ball writing that), while others don’t work quite so well—which probably is a diagnosis that applies to any book or story ever written. Writing Trial by Fire was a heck of a lot more difficult than writing fan fiction, due to the various restrictions and even more due to the change in writing process. By the same token, it was a hugely important learning process, since it taught me how to balance the requirements of writing television tie-in with the way I like to write and made me feel a lot more… uh… limber? … and confident by time Survival of the Fittest came along.

I hope this answers your question at least partly—this kind of 'evolution' is terribly difficult to put in words for me, because so much of it is gut rather than brain...

On your other questions: no, I haven't had a pitch declined so far (but hey! It's early days yet, and I'll be making one once the bloody house is finished ), and the turn-around time between pitch and acceptance tended to be a day or so (that's not counting submission of an outline to MGM, which usually takes about two weeks or thereabouts).

Keep asking questions, guys! This is so much more fun than stripping old siding!

[sonny1]

Have you pitched any stories to Fandemonium that have had to be declined and if so what are they?

Morning! (well, it is, here)

I had other ideas that I included in the rough draft of City of the Gods, but, as Sabine said, the initial feedback on what was wanted in the earlier novels was to explore more fully the archeology aspects as seen through that alien god lens. So I'd have to say that elements of the original pitch for CotG were rejected, while others were expanded upon. Thing is, as writers, ideas are constantly free-floating through your mind, being shaped and cut down, added to and revised, so to explain what was declined either by the publisher or during the writing process is a bit like looking at doodles and saying, all the bits of that doodle that I didn't use in the final picture.

I pitched Exogenesis at the same time as Beth pitched The Chosen, and although the two stories are entirely unrelated, those first pitches appeared similar, mostly because neither was fully fleshed out. The Chosen was better suited to a first season story because we did not have much in the way of history/culture in that universe, whereas Exogenesis depended more on what we knew about the Ancients, so in a sense, it was 'rejected' in its original form. The original pitch for The Chosen also had some elements (or doodles) accepted, and some rejected, so that we worked to expand on the core element of genetic hegemony and regime change.

That ended up being a great thing because The Chosen developed as a story during the writing process, whereas the story of Exogenesis was quietly brewing somewhere in the back of my brain. As The Chosen progressed along one path, any vaguely similar elements in Exogenesis disentangled themselves entirely, and it became a fully fleshed out story in my mind. With the Chosen done, Sally asked for another story, so I sat down and wrote something like 40,000 words over a period of about 10 days, just to get the raw story of Exogenesis out of my head (a 4,000 word version went to the publisher). That gave Beth and I a solid chunk of clay to work with. Of course, most of that 40,000 was paired away during the writing process, but aside from the addition of a scene and a slight alteration in the timing of events, interestingly, not a whole lot changed by the time the book was finished.

Sally has an incredible knack for identifying what elements are worth developing and what should be discarded. So often I read one of her one-line editorial remarks and walk around the house for an hour, pulling my hair out thinking, 'I can't do that!' But of course, I do, and it is so much better, it's like magic. Honestly, she's an extraordinary story editor because she doesn't say, 'that doesn't work, get rid of it', she explains why something doesn't feel quite right, and offers possible alternatives. Ultimately we may do something else entirely, but her ideas serve as a springboard. Truly, we have this amazing support mechanism, which is very, very unusual in the publishing industry - hence why we are all so grateful. And, as Beth said, Sabine's line editing has me in stitches. Seriously, my kids have come home from school to see tears pouring down my face, I'm laughing so hard at some amazingly awful grammatical blunder I've made. I suspect any further works that Beth and I may collaborate on will have us squabbling over who gets to do the line edit.

[Elizabeth Christensen]

A question to all the authors:
What shows besides the Stargates would you be interested in writing about?

Well ... I hate to say 'none,' but it seems like many of the shows I enjoy most are ones that would be incredibly daunting from a writing perspective. For instance, I think Aaron Sorkin writes fantastically crafted screenplays and the best dialogue on the face of the planet, so I'd be afraid to even touch The West Wing. Likewise, I think Battlestar Galactica is flat-out brilliant, but I think it'd be tough to fit a one-shot, reset-to-zero story into that universe and make it meaningful. But obviously people are making it work, so I'll have to check out James's BSG novel if and when it hits the shelves ...

I was reading the posts you guys had made, and as so much fanfiction is extending or extrapolating scenes written in the show, or rewriting it with an AU ending, I was curious as to which scene any (and all) of you most wish to do this to.

Y'know, I used to think about stuff like that a lot more -- don't know why I haven't done so lately. Probably because I have bits of novel plots chasing each other around in my head. I agree with Karen (I just keep echoing her, don't I?); there are plenty of scenes that I wish could have gone longer, just for purposes of character development, which tends lose out when cramming a fully-detailed plot into 42 minutes on screen.

If I had to choose one from Atlantis, I'd go with "Letters from Pegasus," because I'd have liked to see Teyla and Sheppard come to an understanding about why they clashed on the planet. Teyla doesn't necessarily know that Sheppard got busted back on Earth for doing the right thing for a few at the risk of jeopardizing a larger goal, and I think she might have judged him a little less harshly if she'd known. But I suspect that's my pro-flyboy bias showing ... I have a weakness for the boys in blue.

Thanks for the questions, gang -- this is fun!

Beth

[Lauriel]

Hmm. Usually when I think about that scene I think of it from Shep's view (I tend to be pro-flyboy too. ). I hadn't thought about it from Teyla's view like that. I l ike that, that's a good point. She probably wouldn't have known much of Sheppard's past at that point. Thank you.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

Thanks for the answers Sonny and Sabine. Very insightful.

Hows about, if you could novelize any episode of Stargate or Atlantis, what would you do and how would you expand about the episode?

[JMSwallow]

What about these MU novels they're talking about?

Those have all been assigned, sadly! One thing about Pocket Books and the Star Trek line is that they work a very long way ahead - the novels they're putting together now won't be out until 2008...

Okay, general one. How long do you know after a pitch before they want you to write a novel.

Depends on who the publisher/editor is. I've had answers on proposals in less than a week; others have taken a year or more. The Fandemonium crew are pretty quick.

Hows about, if you could novelize any episode of Stargate or Atlantis, what would you do and how would you expand about the episode?

Interesting question. Turning a standard-length episode into a book would be quite a bit of work! But to be honest, If I had the choice I'd much rather write an original story than novelise one that we've all seen before...

[KarenMiller]

In case anyone's interested, I've just posted a teaser excerpt from SG-1 Alliances up on my website ...

http://www.karenmiller.net/thebooks.html

I'll whack up a separate thread elsewhere, but since you're such a lovely captive audience ...

[Sabine Bauer]

Hows about, if you could novelize any episode of Stargate or Atlantis, what would you do and how would you expand about the episode?

Huh… I guess Beneath the Surface. And then I’d turn it into a two-parter Actually, this probably qualifies for the episode tag/additional scene question as well. Thing is, with this ep a heck of a lot was literally left beneath the surface. For starters, I’d be interested how the topside society functions—I suspect slight Wellsian elements here, along the lines of Morlocks and Eloi, if only in terms of what the taxpayers (provided they pay taxes) are being told. How was SG-1 captured/subdued? Must have been a hell of a party at the governor’s mansion I’d also like to take Major Griff for a bit of a test drive, and most of all I’d like the to explore the dynamics of the subterranean worker society more.

I suspect any further works that Beth and I may collaborate on will have us squabbling over who gets to do the line edit.

What you forgot to mention is that you two are extremely pleasant editees. I mean, not everybody is willing to cope with—let alone follow—the weird workings of my mind and find it funny.

And by the way, guys, this

Sonny

is why we love Sonny LOL

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Any plans in the works for science-centric rather than mythology-centric stories?

Any Sam-centric or Teal'c stories?

[JMSwallow]

Any plans in the works for science-centric rather than mythology-centric stories?

Watch this space.




And hey, how come you girls all got a spiff new id tag and I don't?

[Elite Anubis Guard]

David/Darren musn't have noticed you...