Hello, dreamers. It’s Wednesday, and I remain engrossed in research for my new work-in-progress. I have a lot of other stuff going on, but I haven’t forgotten about Karen Hernandez and the crew of the DSRV Challenger. Amid my ongoing research and other concurrent projects, much of what I’ve come up with so far remains subject to change. So, while I’d originally planned to spend this week’s WIP Wednesday discussing the supporting characters of the novel, today I realized that might not be a good idea. After all, at this point I’ve already been questioning the characters themselves, and considering making changes. With that in mind, this week I’ll be talking about the process by which I develop a novel.

Aquarius 1

I often say that developing a novel is a process of synergy: different elements influence one another. Each of my novels begins with a basic premise: a one-to-four-line summary at the top of my concept notes, that lays out the basic concept of the story. Thus, at the top of my concept notes for Aquarius 1, I wrote this:

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Follows the Aquarius 1 space mission, the first mission of DSRV-1 Challenger. After a robotic probe detects liquid water on the surface of Zahl’s moon (Rigil Kentaurus 1b), the crew of Challenger is dispatched to the Kentaurus system to assess its habitability and search for signs of life. The story revolves around Karen Hernandez, a marine biologist on her first space mission.

So there’s the starting point. And the last line serves as the jumping-off point for the next phase of the process: the main character. Characters always come first: their motivations shape the plot, which in turn affects the setting. And their personalities affect their actions, as well as those of the characters around them. I picture the process as me pouring water between three different glasses: characters, plot, setting, until it’s all in the middle, forming a complete story.

Thus, at the moment, I don’t feel I can expound on the characters. As I move further into research, fleshing out details of culture and technology, as well as the nature of the moon they’ll be exploring, there’s a good chance I’ll end up making changes to characters. Some will be changed, some may be omitted and/or replaced. As the story evolves, the characters will evolve to fill its needs.

However, there is one character who almost certainly will not be changed: Fazil Westerwelle. A German planetary scientist of Turkish descent, Fazil becomes Karen’s best friend. That makes him crucial to the story.

Another thing I often say is that as a writer, you must accept that somehow, some way, you will end up in the story. Your personality, your experiences, even what’s going on in your life as you write, will end up influencing the characters and the story, for better or for worse. One of the most common sayings in writing is “Write what you know”. I believe that’s often misconstrued by writers to mean “You can only write about things that fall within your expertise”. And you see that attitude a lot; no doubt there will be writers who will scold me for writing a book about marine biology when I’m not a marine biologist. But I’ve always interpreted that advice more broadly: “Write what you know about life, and about people”.

One of the common threads in all my novels, and indeed most of my short pieces, is the inclusion of a confidant. My MCs don’t stand alone; while they may be the focus of the story, the second-most important character is their closest friend. It may be someone they’ve known for many years. It may be someone they meet at some point in the story, then bond with through shared struggles. But either way, the close bonds people form in stressful situations are always central to my stories. And there’s a personal basis for this.

Throughout my adult life, I’ve always had at least one or two very close friends at any given point in time. Though I may socialize with a large group of people, I’ve always had one or two people very close to me who know me very, very well. I speak to them frequently, lean on them for support, and gain fulfillment from supporting them. Even at times when I haven’t had a romantic partner, I’ve had strong, platonic friendships bordering on familial.

Part of this has always been practical: I live far from my family. Even now, I know my parents would do anything they can to help me in times of need. But, living so far away, there are, and have always been, hard limits to what they can do. In times of crisis, I need people on my side who are close enough to rush to me when my family cannot, however much they may want to.

But it goes beyond that, in a way that circles back to my family. When I was growing up, my family was very close-knit. We did everything together, and formed very close bonds with one another. When I moved away for college, at first I was eager to go out and be on my own. But it didn’t take long for me to realize how much I needed that sense of closeness to other people. Humans are social creatures: we need others, whether we admit it or not. We crave close relationships with other people. Over the years, I created a second family for myself: the family in Cincinnati. And while I still had my parents’ voices over the phone, I now had people close to me, privy to the details of my daily life.

No man, or woman, is an island. Thus, whenever I write a story, the second character I create after the MC is their closest friend: the person they’ll share their remarkable experiences with, take strength from, and become a better version of themselves because of. I have absolutely no plans for any romance between Karen and Fazil, as I believe it would cheapen their relationship. While I consider the woman I love now my best friend, I refuse to reduce Karen and Fazil to a literary trope: “Friends to Lovers”. Rather, I hope their close, platonic friendship will serve to reinforce the simple idea that romantic attraction isn’t necessary for two people to be extremely close. And that their friendship, which will be tested, is exactly the sort of bond we all need in our lives.

Everyone needs at least one person who always thinks the best of them. Who would never give up on them. And who serves to make them a better person. When I first began the novel I’ll be querying soon, I named it The Pioneer, as it was intended to be the story of Randall Holmes: a man apart, lonely, isolated. But as I wrote it, his close bond with Nina Stark (his love interest) and William Ford (his eventual best friend) became the backbone of the story. I began to realize those two characters were simply too important to Holmes to be viewed simply as “supporting characters”. This wasn’t a story about one incredible guy and the little people who helped him along the way. This was a story about three extraordinary people, and how they helped each other.

Thus, after completing the first draft, I changed the name to Pioneers. – MK