David Drake

Cover art: Steve Hickman

One of the problems when you’re writing of either the past or the future is ‘How much should I translate?’ I don’t mean simply language: there’s a whole complex of things that people within any society take for granted but which vary between societies. (But language too: I had somebody complain that the Arthurian soldiers in The Dragon Lord talked like modern soldiers. My reaction to this was that I could write the soldiers’ dialogue in Latin, but the complainant couldn’t read it; and if I’m going to translate into English, why on Earth wouldn’t I translate into the type of English the same sort of men speak today?) 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.