Concept Sci-fi

Gary Reynolds talks to Sean Williams (August 2008)

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing?

I guess it started from reading, which means I guess it really started with my parents, who were both big readers and excellent role models in that regard (and quite a few others too, I hasten to add). Being raised by two schoolteachers, one of whom later became a priest, was bound leave some serious psychological scarring, and I'm mightily relieved that it was confined to wanting to write for a living.

For as long as I can remember, I've loved books and dreamed of being a writer. From when I was a wee lad mainlining Agatha Christie and Terrance Dicks' Doctor Who novels, that mad urge has always been present. I can't imagine it ever going away.

Of course, having an urge and doing something about it are two different things. How I got from 'wishing' to 'doing' to 'being' is a long story, and one not so different to that of many writers: numerous part-time jobs feature, as does dropping out of university and eating too much junk food. Around the time I started making my first short story sales, I learned that I had been suffering for years from panic attacks that had the side-effect of keeping me inside, writing, when most people my age should have been out having a social life. Those extra hours of practice paid off in the long-run, setting a very solid foundation on which to base the rest of my career, and in hindsight in can say that in a very real way those anxious years really made a positive difference -- although it was vital, of course, that I eventually got better. No amount of success is worth enduring a mental illness.

Ever since then I've strived to maintain both healthy professional and personal lives. Having gotten married for the first time last year, I'd say that things are going rather well in that regard. Hurrah.

How do you approach the art of writing a novel?  What techniques do you use in novel design/planning and editing/ revising?

The birth of a novel is marked with fireworks, but that's not the real miracle. Ideas are cheap, just like conceptions: it's what happens next that really matters. Every now and again an idea comes along that's so dense with possibility it has its own gravity. Other, lesser ideas are drawn to it, one by one, and pretty soon the agglomeration hits critical, unstoppable mass. Once the boulder starts rolling down the hill (to careen wildly to another metaphor) I know it's time to start taking some serious notes. Not to start writing the actual story, because I don't really know what the story is yet; I just think I do, like those mornings you wake up sure you have an entire dream in your head, but the moment you try to put it into words, it evaporates forever. Putting pen to paper at this point almost certainly guarantees an unhappy result, as the untamed thing blunders its way downhill, through power lines and unsuspecting villages, leaving a trail of devastation and dead-ends in its wake. I need to understand it better before even considering taking a ride on its back. I need, first, to be sure I can direct it where I want to go.

The point I feel comfortable doing that usually comes when I have the title, the ending, and the arcs of at least two of the major characters. A clear sense of the world, too. All of these things may evolve during the writing of the book, but I still need the illusion before I start. That illusion will sustain me through all manner of hold-ups, disorientations, and moments of lost concentration.

From then on, for three months or so, all I do is write. Every day. I don't like taking time off from a book while in mid-gallop. It's hard for me to get back into the saddle and whipped back up to full speed. If I can find that kind of uninterrupted stretch, I usually produce a first draft in three months or so, and once I have that, then it's just a matter of understanding what the book was really about and doing everything in my power to bring that out.

It is a kind of power. As first reader and editor of my own work, I can do anything at all to the evolving story. I can add, cut, mutate, rearrange -- whatever. When I was a new writer, I found it very hard to tinker with my own texts, probably because I lacked the confidence in my ability to know what was right and what wasn't. Of course, things are rarely so clear-cut, and I've learned in time to follow my instincts and hope for the best. There's a giddy kind of joy that comes from cutting a page from a draft, consigning to the dustbin words that took so much effort to write, but I know that at this point it's not really about the words: it's about the book as a whole, and words are just dots on the back of the leopard. You wouldn't have one without the other, but we all know which one has the teeth.

The mechanics of how I edit aren't that interesting: at least one read-through on-screen in a different font, followed by paper edits, usually laid out to look vaguely like a book (two pages per A4 sheet), then reading aloud just to make sure I haven't added any repetitions or godawful dialogue. All these stages help distance me from text I'm far too familiar with and need to read objectively. If I'm happy with it after all that, I send it in. If not, repeat until done.

You've had both short stories and novels published.  Which do you prefer writing and why?

Novels. That's the literary tradition I most loved as a child, so that's the form to which I instinctively gravitate. That said, though, there's something satisfying about capturing an entire story in a day that you can't get from the seemingly endless slog of bringing down a novel. One requires real skill, and luck, whereas the other can take nothing more than persistence. Of course, writing well is hard work and the effort that goes into it should never be undervalued, but short stories do feel like a more pure extraction of the art. Whatever that is.

To answer your question another way, I wrote 100-odd short stories in ten years then wrote none at all for five. When I put my short-form hat back on in 2006, it was surprisingly pleasant -- a delightful change of pace, and I definitely produced some good work, perhaps my best to date -- but it's not something I could do all the time. I know my place, and it's behind a desk every day without fail for three months, then starting over again from scratch. That would drive some people mad, but I thrive on it.

What's the worst piece you've ever written and why?

Where to start? I've been writing since I was ten. There are mountains of juvenilia, including all the poetry I wrote when I was a teenager. Everyone goes through this phase, but most people don't go on to be published writers. And if they do, they don't usually publish it on the web. I did exactly that last year, when I found a box of the stuff while moving house. The worst of it isn't, surprisingly, what we might now refer to as emo poetry, but instead the endless rhyming couplets inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. I kid you not. There are some excerpts here, if you dare:

Star Wars: Force Unleashed is your latest book to be published.  What's it like writing in a universe where many of the main characters and concepts are already defined?

It's fun to write in a universe I know and like so much, otherwise I wouldn't ever do it. The deadlines are pretty cruel, and the work is very hard, and with the US$ on the way down the money isn't even that great any more. But it's a different kind of writing, and I crave both variety and a challenge. The Force Unleashed was unlike anything I've ever written before, and all the more interesting to me because of it. How to take such an important story and make it sing?

The key clause in the first sentence of the paragraph above is "in a universe I know and like". I grew up on Star Wars and I find writing within the constraints of that universe a pleasurable experience. Like a lot of writers, I quite enjoy having some aspects of imaginative freedom taken away from me, from time to time. It forces me to find new ways to flex the usual muscles: like taking a break from aerobics to try weight lifting.

But I couldn't write for a franchise I didn't know or like. "Star Trek", for instance, isn't a show I've ever really gotten into --through no fault of the show, of course. It's just never grabbed me. So to try to write a book in that universe would be a horrible chore, requiring endless research into characters, setting, philosophies, etc. about which I presently know nothing. It'd be like writing a thesis on a subject I didn't care for. Why would I ever consider doing something like that?

To date, the only other franchise I've worked in is Doctor Who. Just a short story, but it was tremendously exciting. I invested as much care and love in that piece as I would an entire novel, and I think it's one of my most successful efforts.

That's one of the great truths about writing: investment always shows. Readers can tell when a writer's heart isn't in it. If you're writing just for the money, or the fame, or the egoboo, you'll end up fooling no one, least of all yourself.

How is writing in the Star Wars universe different from writing a non-fandom novel?

Well, it's a collaborative process, for a start, requiring consultation with editors, continuity experts, licensing heads, other writers, and even fans sometimes, since they can be a great source of specialist information. I know that my version of the story has arisen out of the combined effort of a lot of people, and will join that shared pool once it's done. Or: I am rhythm guitarist in a cover band that plays the occasional original. I'm getting the odd solo every now and again, and you never know -- maybe one of my tunes might stand out from the ones most people came to hear. Anything more than that would be unreasonable to ask for.

I do enjoy collaboration, so that's not a challenge for me. I've written twelve novels with a friend of mine, Shane Dix, including three Star Wars novels, and I found the process thoroughly enjoyable. It taught me a lot about myself as a writer that I might not have learned on my own.

Tie-in jobs and collaborations give me the opportunity to take a holiday from my own obsessions. There's a freedom that can only come from chucking in the usual concerns and adopting someone else's. Behind that new mask I can do or say things that wouldn't normally be in my repertoire. I am play-acting -- and as anyone who has trod the boards knows, that's often the best way to get to know oneself.

Which Star Wars film is the best?

Me, I prefer Episode IV: A New Hope over any of the subsequent movies. While I reckon I could mount a pretty good case for it actually being the best, I may just feel that way because I was 10 when it came out -- and that's the perfect age to be introduced to space opera.

What are you currently working on?

I've just wrapped a couple of very different series -- Astropolis (gothic space opera with a character who speaks solely in Gary Numan lyrics) and the Broken Land (dark Australian-inspired fantasy for kids) -- so I find myself looking for new projects to focus on. Foremost among them is another series for kids, this one definitely lighter in flavour and aimed squarely at boys. I have a couple of stepsons looking for fun books to read. If I can write them something that will make them happy, I'll consider that a job well done.

I have a couple of other contracts in the pipeline, waiting for me to get to them. One's a John Wyndham-esque thriller that I've been wanting to write for years. He's another of my literary heroes. I couldn't count the number of times I've read The Kraken Wakes. I'm really looking forward to diving into that kind of narrative.

I've also started a PhD, which keeps me busy between deadlines. Because, you know, life is supposed to be interesting.

What can we expect to see from you in the future?

The last Astropolis book, The Grand Conjunction, follows Earth Ascendant (out in the UK this November) and completes the cycle that started with Saturn Returns. When I started this series, I thought it might be my last space opera. I'd previously written over a dozen novels in that excellent sub-genre, and I worried that I might be (a) running out of ideas and (b) breaking something in my head by getting this one down. It was so big, so ambitious, so mind-blowing, at least for me. Characters changing gender, a plot that crosses two million years (and that's just the beginning of the larger story), the complexities of capturing an empire spanning the entire galaxy -- one hundred thousand million stars -- without breaking any of the really important laws of physics...how could I possibly ever work in the field again? By the time I wrote the last scenes of the last book, I felt like a marathon runner, all limp spaghetti and relieved that it was finally over.

Anyway, the boulder soon started rolling again. "A Glimpse of the Marvellous Structure (and the Threat It Entails)" is a novella that will be published in an anthology called Godlike Machines later this year (alongside Stephen Baxter, Cory Doctorow, Greg Egan, Robert Reed, and Alastair Reynolds). It's set in a universe I first played with fifteen years ago, in a story called "A Map of the Mines of Barnath", and to which I'd been intending to return ever since. All I needed was a nudge. Now there's also "The Inevitable", which will appear in the Strahan/Dozois New Space Opera 2 in 2009. That the ideas are flowing -- and selling -- so well from this world tells me there's at least a novel in there, somewhere. All I have to do is wait until it picks up enough momentum to sweep me away again.

Can you tell us something interesting about yourself that isn't related to writing fiction?

Hmm. Let's see. Apart from writing, my other love is music. When I was in high school I used to write strange experimental pieces for all manner of instruments (and electrical equipment), and even won an award or two for them. I later moved on to writing on a computer, but the technology wasn't as powerful as it is today. If it had been, I might have chosen tunes over words for a career and been just as happy.

My great unfulfilled dream remains to find time to start dabbling with music again -- but one never finds the time to do anything. One has to make it, and the fact that I haven't yet suggests that the dream might remain just that for a little while longer.

Still, it's vitally important to have dreams. And in honour of that younger me's obsessions, I've posted a couple of little pieces to my website for your amusement. There but for the grace of, well, something... :-)