David Drake

NEWSLETTER 66: January 5, 2012

Dear People,

Jeepers, a new year yet again. I hope you all–and all of us–have a good one.

I’m at work on the plot for my next Tor fantasy, which at the moment I’m calling Demons from the Earth. By ‘working’ I mean that I have detailed (though not polished) scene-by-scene descriptions of the first five chapters (I hope more by the time you read this) as well as a pile of more or less organized material sufficient to fill the remaining two-thirds of the plot. I’ve got some 3K words at the moment.

I’ll polish the plot after I complete it; then I’ll write the book. Nothing is certain (after all, Elijah on good authority was translated directly to heaven without passing through death), but at this point I’d say that completing the novel is just a matter of time. (And a lot of work, of course, but I’ve never minded work.) continue reading…

NEWSLETTER 65: November 7, 2011

Dear People,

I’ve finished the plot for Into the Maelstrom, which will be the sequel to Into the Hinterlands when John Lambshead writes it next year. (Next year isn’t nearly as far away as I think it ought to be.)

The series is a space opera based on the life of George Washington. Hinterlands took him through the French and Indian War (as it was in North America). Maelstrom picks up fifteen years later with the events leading up to the Revolutionary War and runs through the Battle of Trenton. continue reading…

Dear People,

I have a rough plot outline for the next RCN space opera, The Road of Danger. (The title is from a poem by A E Housman.) Whee! A rough plot may not seem very exciting to other people, but it certainly was to me after months of work to get there.

Almost four months, to be precise. I’ll refine and expand the plot; then there’s the real job of writing the book, but to a considerable degree the rest of the job is mechanical. Somebody else could take what I have now and turn it into a book. The result would be different from what I will do, but there are people who’d like someone else’s result better than mine.

continue reading…

Written for the Tor/Forge May 2010 Newsletter

THE MOTORCYCLE WAY TO COMPLEX PLOTTING

Writers use various tools in their work. One of my tools is my motorcycle.

Well, plural: my motorcycles. Bikers learn quickly that if they expect to ride every day, they’d better have two. (And that’s if they’re Japanese, as both of my current rides are. More exotic bikes tend to be two-wheeled versions of owning a Lotus Elan.) continue reading…

Cover art: Donato

My friend Mark Van Name is, among other things, a business consultant. After I sold the final trilogy in the Isles Series to Tor but before I started work on the three books, he asked me if I would like him to do a business analysis of the Isles fantasies. I said I would appreciate that. (It would never have occurred to me to ask.)

Mark shortly provided a written report, which he went over with me. I won’t describe his methodology, but even if it hadn’t seemed valid on its face, I would have accepted it anyway: Mark is an expert on the subject; I am not. I don’t argue with experts in their own fields. continue reading…

How complete do you make the plot of a story before you write it?

I do very heavy plots. I usually have at least 10% of the story/novel wordage in the plot. Here’s an example: the plot for The Far Side of the Stars, with the working title The Far Side of Heaven. Scenes were re-ordered numerically as I wrote the book.

Do you write sequentially, from beginning of the plot to the end?

I do plots beginning to end, and I do very long plots, but there’s not a right way.

Did you take the plot of THE SHARP END from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo or from Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars?

No, I took the plot from Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, his first novel (a fixup from novellas he’d written for Black Mask magazine in the late 1920s). Kurosawa took Hammett’s plot for his fine Samurai film (I’m told there may have been a Japanese gangster novel as an intermediary, but I haven’t seen it myself), and Leone then turned Kurosawa’s film into the first of his Spaghetti Westerns. I’m familar with (and like) both films, but I read Hammett before I saw them and have reread him often since then. I’m a little surprised to be asked this question so often, because my credit to Hammett in the front of the novel is explicit. Apparently a lot of people expect more originality of the film industry than I do.

Dear People,

I intended to start this newsletter by saying that I’d completed the plot of the next RCN space opera and am at work on it. Those things are true (we’ll get back to them), but in my mind the big news is that I’ve returned from BookExpo America (BEA) in the Javits Center on Manhattan.  continue reading…

Video Interviews:

Moses Siregar III posted a YouTube video in four chunks of the panel “The Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy” recorded at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus OH October 30, 2010. Dave is on the panel with John R. Fultz, Blake Charlton, David B. Coe, and Freda Warrington.

—–  continue reading…