Amethyst, a novel in progress

I wrote a 2,000 word chapter yesterday in "normal" narrative style that takes place 6-7 years before the events of the book.  One of the reasons writing in the "primary source" style I describe below was going to be difficult -- one of the many reasons -- is that it would be almost impossible to tell stories like that one without it seeming forced.  I've also decided that a gimmick narrative style just isn't best for this book -- this book in particular, but also my first (of what I hope is more than one) book.  I might be able to use the "primary sources" mixed in with the narrative, but even if not, I've found that working on them helps me learn about (and develop) my characters, what they know, how they feel about it, how they're likely to act, so I'll keep writing them.

One of the main characters, probably "the" main character, is a 15-year-old girl, and you can't really understand what's going on with her unless you know her story before everybody moved to Pharos. I'm pleased with the chapter I wrote (80% pleased, I told Leah last night, and I think that's right for a first draft) and I think it will help readers start caring about the character and her brother, another very important figure in the events of the book.

It's a nice milestone, particularly since I haven't gotten to anything particularly exciting yet, just exposition.  I have at least three "chapters" to fill in inside what I've already done, too, and once those are done we still won't have heard a word out of the mouth of the main character.  That's kind of neat, but I guess it could also be a problem.  I don't think anyone will miss how important a character she is, but it would be bad if I were wrong.

Soon I'll have to write an extremely important "chapter" -- a transcript of a meeting between the main character and a representative of the Marines -- where everything has to be exactly right: It all has to make sense when you read it, and then make sense on a different level later in the book.  I don't know if I'm explaining that right.  Anyway, I'm sure it will be written and rewritten over and over. 

I also haven't written the first "chapter," which has to be poignant, expositive, and contain a little misdirection.  And because it's among what publishers will see, it has to kick ass.  Maybe I'm just putting off the hard parts. 

This is a blog about the novel I'm writing.  Its working title is Amethyst, which doesn't refer to the gem, but to an eye color.

250 years in the future, mankind has established a presence on some half a dozen worlds outside Earth's solar system.  I'll blog about how they get there sometime, because I don't think it's going to make the book.

Genetic modification has also become cheap and almost universally available.  It starts out being expensive and only available to the very well off.  Politicians, themselves mostly well off enough to afford to have their children genetically modified, take up the populist cause of assuring longer life, stronger, healthier and more beautiful bodies, higher intelligence, and so on are available to the voters.  In relatively short order, unmodified politicians capitalize on the hypocricy of promising to make the technology available to the poor and middle class while availing one's self of it, and an elite, ruling class of unmodified legislators and executives emerges.  Once the market itself makes modification inexpensive enough to be available to just about any family, access to the technology has already become a signature political issue. 

Through a series of compromises and power plays, being "Stock," Genetically Unmodified, is a prerequisite to being allowed to hold office, vote (many elections are held by acclamation, mostly due to the small number of participants in the vote), own a company or intellectual property, or be an officer in a publicly traded company or the military.  The narrative is that Mods have traded the ability to be wealthy and run things for genetic advantages.  As a result of this regime the only kinds of people who will not choose longer, healthier lives and other advantages for their children are those who have a religious objection to modification, and those who prize power and status over all else.  This results in a Government that has abandoned almost any pretense of selflessness and greater good, and exists to perpetuate its own rule. 

Mods mostly endure this oppression, but some liberty-minded people decide to do something about taking back their futures.  A group of Mods and one like minded Stock organize the exodus of 3,000 people to the planet Pharos, off limits to travel and settlement because of the presence of a mysterious colony essentially banished by the government 75 years previously.  The 3,000, minus some lost on the trip, arrive to find plenty of room on the small habitable part of Pharos for two colonies, which leave each other alone and have no contact whatsoever.  The only exception is a J-band radio the "Pharos 3,000" gives to the banished settlement with a message that if they ever need anything they should use it but that otherwise they'll never hear from their new neighbors. 

Amethyst tells the story of what happens six years later when the Government arrives with what appears to be an overwhelming force of Marines -- enough to flatten the entire planet even if every inhabitant on it were armed to the teeth, which they are not.  Why are they there?  What took them so long?  Can the Pharos 3,000 settlement be preserved?  And what if anything does the mysterious banished colony have to do with it?

I'm about 9,000 words in, but in a narrative style that I'm not sure I'll end up going with.  I read and loved World War Z, and reading it gave me the idea to tell the story of Amethyst not from the same oral history perspective, but from the perspective of a Government investigation into the events leading up to and including the Marines' quashing of an armed resistance to repatriation by the Pharos 3,000.  There are custodial interviews with settlers but also other primary sources: For one of the main characters, an exit interview from the Army and the transcript of an arraignment on charges arising from attempting to resupply an illegal colony on another planet some years ago; vlog posts, after action reports from the Marines, and recorded voices once a main character is jailed then released with a bracelet that records everything she says and has said to her.  A couple entries from the Wikipedia Galactica are also planned. 

I have also started to write the story in a straight narrative style, third person omniscient, from multiple points of view.  I've already found this a lot easier that it would have been because I've put so much effort into the interviews etc., and even if I do decide to do a straight third person omniscient style, the work I do on the "primary sources" will be valuable.  There may even be a way to include some of them in a narrative story.  For now, though, I'm planning and writing the "primary source" style and believe it's the way I'll go.  It all depends how successfully it tells the story and makes the reader care about the characters. 

Anyway, in the coming weeks and months I'll talk to you about those characters, the process of telling their story, the difficulties I have and decisions I make.  I want this to be a record for the future when the book is hopefully published but also part of the process of writing it, valuable in the present.