By Jaine Fenn, author of Guardians of Paradise, out now in hardback.
Writers are odd coves. Looking at it one way, we’re brave and sensitive souls who dare to bare our deepest feelings, fears and thoughts to the uncaring world, even when it gives nothing for the insights of our genius. Looking at it another way, we’re a bunch of raving megalomaniacs who abuse the power of the storyteller to toy mercilessly with the fates of our hapless characters.
Bwah-ha-hah.
Guardians of Paradise by Jaine Fenn
In my genre, science fiction, we get bonus points across the board. SF explores aspects of the human condition other genres cannot reach. For us, the event horizon’s the limit. If that: writers like Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan go beyond our known universe of space and time, taking our minds on glorious, brain-aching journeys into weird and wonderful places and situations.
For myself, I’m no scientist and the SF I write isn’t ‘the hard stuff’. My brain’s not that big. But I do want the characters in my stories to have experiences they can’t get elsewhere, to use the strangeness of my possible future to mess with their heads in new and exciting ways.
That’s not to say I have it all my own way; ask almost any writer and they’ll tell you about a character of theirs who just wouldn’t do what s/he’s told. The outline says go this way, but the character has their own ideas, and all of a sudden they’ve slipped the leash. This happened to me recently when I was setting up a major, to-the-death conflict; it was going to be great and glorious and climactic...except, a few paragraphs in, one of the parties looked at the odds, thought, ‘Bugger this, I’m doomed if I stay here,’ and legged it, taking my original plot with her. I had no choice other than to follow.
Leaving aside the odd awkward character, we are in a position of unimaginable power. SF writers have whole worlds to play with. Whole histories, too.
The idea of a comprehensive, detailed future history is very appealing to me. Exploring the one I’m playing in will take lots of stories. That’s why I’m writing a series.
Oh dear, you may say, a series. But hear me out...
As a reader, I get annoyed when I pick up an interesting-looking book only to find it’s book 'x' of a series. I’m lazy, and I don’t want to feel obliged to read all those other books just so I can enjoy the one in my hand. Most writers write what they want to read, so the ‘Hidden Empire’ series consists of self-contained stories. My intention is that each book can be read alone.
Having said that, there are characters who re-occur, and who I (and hopefully any reader who does come along for the ride) get to know in greater depth as the stories unfold. And yes, there is a ‘big picture’ plot arc running across all the books. I willingly confess to taking a wicked delight in planting tiny seeds that will germinate later: an anomalous comment here, a small unresolved mystery there, sometimes just a passing reference of no more than half a sentence. They’ll pay off, I tell you. Trust me: I’m a megalomaniac.
