Of course, what this is also doing is delivering a bit of background exposition via the convenient professor character. Not subtle, but hey. It had to go in somewhere.
Soundtrack: The Portal 2 soundtrack. Quirky, weird, experimental. Hopefully a bit like this story.
Vision
This is one of those chessboard chapters, by which I mean it’s all about positioning the pieces just right. It’s setting up the series finale, which inherently involves a bit of exposition. The trick, therefore, is to do it in a way which is hopefully interesting and justifiable, without resorting to “As you know, Bob,” style clumsiness.
One way to sidestep that is to grab every opportunity possible to surround the exposition with authentic character reactions. Therefore we get to see Kay, Marv and Cal responding to the dialogue and events. The idea is to prevent the dialogue from simply being plot, and make sure it is working on other levels as well.
The big thing in ‘Vision’ is the introduction of spectres. I’d like to say that they were in the plan right from the start but, really - they popped into my head during the writing of this chapter. Or, at least, the specifics: natural camouflage was always going to be a theme in the story at some point. As with the other powers, though, it’s about exploring the practical consequences of these conditions, rather than simply presenting them as ‘powers’.
Invisible babies being lost? Genuinely freaks me out. Both this concept and a lot of the stuff in ‘Interlude #1’ have a lot of ‘me’ in them compared to the rest of the story.
Anyway, I kinda want to do a flashback episode set entirely during the time when spectres were common. Hmm.
Soundtrack: Deus Ex Human Revolution score, because it’s the sound of change.
Infection
Although there have been a couple of action-ish moments in previous chapters - the glimpsing of the rooftop fight, and Cal’s unfortunate encounter with Kay’s dad - those have been either mostly off-screen or somewhat blundering and accidental. ‘Infection’ marks the first bona fide, full-on action sequence.
Action sequences are a lot of fun to write.
I suspect I find them a little too much fun, and probably get rather carried away. The main challenge is to not just turn it into a visual description, at which point it’s more like a movie synopsis. I don’t find that prose fiction makes for a particularly natural home for action, honestly - visual mediums are far better suited.
So with ‘Infection’ I knew it had to have some kind of decent structure, and that it had to have hooks back into the characters so that it (hopefully) had some kind of resonance.
The other thing to remember is that for Marv and Kay, this is not normal. Cal’s led a pretty extreme life, but otherwise everyone in A Day of Faces lives fairly mundane lives. That’s kinda the point. I didn’t want them to suddenly turn into superheroes.
That said, the setting does give me some license to have fun. When you have a reptilian protagonist with venomous fangs, that’s fairly inevitable. Undercutting everything is a vein of self-deprecating humour, especially on the part of Kay, which I hope keeps things light without short-circuiting the drama.
Anyway. We’re nearly there. Two episodes to go. Gulp.
Soundtrack: Went back to the Matrix scores for the first time in about 10 years. I’d forgotten how good they are, and how apt for a heist/infiltration scenario like ‘Infection’.
Lineage
After ‘Infection’s stealthy, heist-like shenanigans, ‘Lineage’ turns things up to 11 with a full-on shoot-out.
Something that’s become a bit of a stylistic theme of A Day of Faces is having little mini time-jumps between each chapter, so that the cliffhanger from the previous instalment doesn’t get immediately resolved. It’s usually a chance to inject a bit of Kay’s personality into the narrative, or some additional detail which would otherwise get run over by the plot.
Hence we don’t see how they all got back together, or how Kay and Marv managed to get up the remaining floors and up into the Aviary itself. That stuff might have been pretty cool, but it would also have just been a continuation of ‘Infection’s action sequence, without really adding anything new into the mix. Better to skip forwards to when something interesting is happening, and infer what came in-between.
Something I was acutely aware of by now is that there’s a number of unanswered questions, with more coming in every episode. Hopefully I’m doing it in a way which is fun and intriguing, rather than drawn-out and frustrating. Time will tell.
The big entrance at the end fairly obviously links back to the character of Holt from ‘Interlude #1’. Originally this would have been Holt’s first appearance, as ‘Interlude #1’ was a last minute addition to the story, providing a diversion into stuff that isn’t going to resolve itself for a while. It changes the entrance of the scarred man in ‘Lineage’ from being completely out-of-the-blue into something more intriguing - it’s still not entirely clear where the characters from ‘Interlude #1’ fit in, but the puzzle’s starting to reveal itself.
That’s the idea, anyway.
Soundtrack: Repeating myself, but you can’t beat the Matrix scores for writing this kinda stuff.
Apex Predator
‘Apex Predator’ marks the big finale for the first ‘story arc’ of A Day of Faces. If this was a book, it’d be the end of part one. If it were a comic, this’d be volume one’s conclusion. If it were a TV show, this would be the final episode of the season.
Instead, it’s an online serial, so I’m not entirely sure of the terminology. Bear with me on that one.
There’s two things I want to reference here. The first is the computer game Deus Ex - the original, from way back in 2000 (or thereabouts). It was a sprawling epic, traversing multiple continents through a very twisty-turny plot. Crucially, though, by the time you got to the end of the game you could look back and see the incredible path you’ve been on, and marvel at just how much had changed. The journey itself made you catch your breath.
Deus Ex isn’t unique in that, obviously, but it’s a particularly acute example that’s always stuck with me. All good stories have a plot that goes somewhere or characters which change during the story. If you get to the end of something and everything still feels very status quo, it feels like you’ve been wasting your time.
Thus, hopefully by the time you get to the end of ‘Apex Predator’, and think back to what was happening in ‘Generation’ at the start of the series, it’ll feel like you and the characters have gone on a legit and unexpected adventure. That’s one feeling I wanted to invoke.
The other one is exemplified by the conclusion to season 1 of the 90s TV show Babylon 5. In that episode, ‘Chrysalis’, the show completely pulls out the rug, redefining itself in the process. It’s not just an exciting finale, with everything back to normal by the start of season 2. It has proper ramifications, and things are never the same again. You have a sense that things will be different from now onwards.
‘Apex Predator’ should have that feeling in spades, if I’ve done my job right.
This experiment of writing a weekly serial has been really thrilling, and I hope the results are worth your reading time.
How to write an online serial
I don’t claim to be an authority on this topic, given that A Day of Faces was and is my first attempt at such a thing. What follows is a collection of tips based on my own experience.
Why online?
Self-publishing in any form used to be considered a joke; something only failed writers did to create their own vanity projects. Back in the 90s, before the internet properly took hold of the mainstream, perhaps this had an occasional element of truth. Arranging a print run for your own book and pushing it into bookstores when agents and publishers had rejected your work took a certain amount of ego. That’s why it’s been called the vanity press.
Fast forward to now and the landscape is entirely different. Self-publishing isn’t the same thing as it was back then - pre-internet
, self-publishing was a way to bypass or combat the traditional publishing industry. These days, it’s simply another part of the broader creator movement. Self-publishing for a writer is no different to a filmmaker putting their work on YouTube or Vimeo, or an artist showing their work on DeviantArt, or a photographer exploring Instagram, 500px and Flickr.
That comparison goes both ways. YouTube is full of absolutely terrible videos. It’s also home to incredible short films and creative teams like Corridor Digital, who release hugely innovative videos almost every week. Amateur filmmakers have forged professional careers based on their YouTube channels.
Online self-publishing is the same. There’s an almost infinite amount of crap, sure, but you’ll also find a range of incredible work available for free. The next generation of professional writers are emerging from this scene.
It’s a mistake to think of online self-publishing as competition for traditional publishing (on shelves or digital). Just as YouTube doesn’t stop people from going to the cinema or watching television, self-publishing online has turned into something different (although it should be noted that young viewers are increasingly choosing YouTube as their primary platform, above scheduled TV - in sharp contrast to previous generations).
Basically, don’t be embarrassed at the thought of publishing online. It doesn’t mean you failed to get published traditionally - it just means you’re going a different route. And hey - there are more and more stories of self-publishing also leading to traditional publishing success, so one doesn’t negate the other.
The most important thing is that you’ll be getting your work in front of readers. Prior to online self-publishing, if you didn’t get a traditional book deal it basically meant that you work would never reach beyond friends and family, save for occasional genre magazines. You either had to be a full-on professional novelist, or you were nothing. These days, you can choose your own level of involvement. If you have an urge to write but no particular desire to make a living from your work, you still have the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of readers.
Why serialised?
In this context, I’m defining serialisation as being a regular stream of content, spreading a story out over a long period rather than releasing it as a single entity. Although you’re reading the ebook collection of Arc 1 of A Day of Faces, the story started life as a weekly serial published online.
Serialising avoids the curse of endless editing. Many unpublished writers, myself included, have used the excuse of “I’m working on a novel” for far too long. The manuscript has sat around on a hard drive for years, making only minor progress. You tell yourself that it still needs editing, that it’s not ready, and a decade later it’s still not been seen by eyes other than yours. Perhaps it’s a fear of releasing it into the wild, or you simply don’t ever find the time to dedicate amongst the other important things in your life - job, family, pub.
When you switch to serialising your work, all those excuses evaporate. You don’t need to have a 100% finished work before you start publishing it. Write a chapter, then publish it. Or if that’s a bit too intimidating, write five chapters then start publishing, so that you have a buffer. The point, though, is that you’re freed from the tyranny of endless editing.
A Day of Faces has a weekly publishing schedule. Every Monday I put a new chapter up, no matter what. That keeps me honest and it keeps me creative. It gives a point to the writing.
The online world is one of bite-sized chunks. People browse the internet and there’s always something else to discover. Serialising keeps your story small and manageable, with people able to consume as much or as little as they want, without demanding too much of their time. 1000 to 3000 words per week seems to be a good target, being enough to have some substance but short enough to be read on the train or bus to work, during the lunch hour or in the evening without occupying too much Netflix time.
You’ll start to develop a cumulative audience. If you release a novel in a singular form, you have once chance to make that launch count. If you turn it into a weekly serial, you have a new promotional opportunity every seven days. Each chapter will bring in some new people, and you’ll gradually gather your readers. They’ll start to get excited about the arrival of a new chapter. Over time, that momentum gives you power.
Another benefit is that you start to receive feedback on your story before it’s even completed. As long as you don’t let this freak you out - it’s still up to you how much you pay attention to criticism - it can lead to a responsive and exciting way to write. Assuming your work is good, it also acts as the perfect motivational tool - when a new chapter receives a bunch of positive comments, it really helps you get on with the next chapter. It’s an encouraging feedback loop, which simply doesn’t exist if you’re writing a novel in isolation.
Serialising A Day of Faces has helped me becomes more productive in 2015 than the previous few years combined. And not just with ADoF - I’ve also written two screenplays, have been blogging on a more-or-less weekly basis and have started creating content for my YouTube channel again. I doubt any of that would have happened if I hadn’t embraced serialisation.
Writing tools
I don’t want to tell you what to use to write, but I will tell you what I use. If you prefer a quill and paper, that’s totally fine. My particular preference is Scrivener, however.
Scrivener is a word processor of uncommon sophistication and practicality. Word processors - Word, Google Docs - are primarily designed for very short form work: letters, small reports, essays, very short stories. For that kind of thing, they’re great.
As soon as you move into anything of a larger or more complex form, you need to switch tool. And for prose fiction (and a bunch of other things) that’s where Scrivener comes in.
Scrivener is a super flexible framework for developing your manuscript, which can then be compiled into all sorts of formats, including PDF, ebook and, yes, Word. Being able to export to multiple formats, perfectly formatted from a single manuscript is an enormous time saver.
It also provides an interface that perfectly suits the structure of a larger writing project. You can split your story into multiple parts and chapters. There are dedicated areas for storing research, character and location notes, front matter and anything else you might want. You can customise the whole thing to suit your own workflow and the project’s requirements.
Rather than having an ever-expanding single Word document of scrolly doom, instead Scrivener organises your work in a way that can be seen at a glance. This becomes invaluable when you get to the editing stage, especially if you’re working on something novel-sized. Rather than an impenetrable wall-o-text, you can easily see the flow and structure of your work. You can drill down as precisely as you want.
On top of that, you need a decent backup and cloud storage system. The former is essential for any kind of work, the latter is useful for writing on the move. If you project is in the cloud, you can grab it from any computer and carry on working. I use Google Drive, but Dropbox is also excellent. These services automatically provide a backup of your work, so even if you forget to manually bury the physical backup in the garden, you’ll still have that online copy.
The only drawback with Scrivener is that it doesn’t have iOS/Android/Chromebook versions, so editing on mobile devices is a non-trivial exercise. So if you write primarily on your tablet, you might need to investigate workarounds or alternatives.
Note-keeping is also a writer’s best friend. Again, you can keep notes however you prefer, but just make sure that you do. I use a combination of a physical notebook and Google Keep. If I think of a cool idea, I will write it down. I have my tablet by my bed at night just in case something pops into my head as I’m drifting off - because I will have forgotten it by the morning. Why a tablet? Because I can use it in the dark without waking up my wife - a traditional notebook wouldn’t work.
Planning
This is both a very personal preference and something wh
ich is likely to change from project to project. Some writers prefer to be free from all prescriptive plotting, finding their course as they go, while others will spend just as much time detailing their fictional universe and intricate plots as actually writing the prose. Either way is completely fine.
One caution, though: serialising generally means publishing before the entire story is finished. This puts you in quite a different situation to a normal project, where writing without a plan is completely fine because you’ve always got editing, right? When you’re publishing on a regular basis, you don’t have that luxury. As such, it’s very easy to write yourself into a corner and have no easy way out. Equally, it’s easy to fall down a plot hole and only realise once your readers point it out.
In terms of planning and plotting, I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. I work at multiple scales. The top level stuff is mostly thematic, with a couple of very broad story points. This gives me a very basic direction for the story - it’s no more detailed than the blurb on the back of a book.
For A Day of Faces I have split the story up by ‘arcs’. This ebook collects Arc 1. Think of them a bit like seasons of a TV show. Each arc has about 12 episodes. When I started writing the story, I had each chapter of Arc 1 planned out, but Arc 2 and onwards were only vague notions. This meant I was secure on a chapter basis, and always knew roughly what was coming up each week in terms of writing challenge.
So the description for Arc 1 ended up being this:
Follow Kay as she gets mixed up with the Anomaly: a guy called Cal who doesn't fit any known pattern, and in fact can switch between any other pattern, and is being hunted by the authorities (who want his power). Break into Aviary, encounter dimension messaging machine. Cal gets dimension hop power. Holt attacks. Ends with Cal changing and jumping away with Kay and Marv.
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