(Photo by cottonbro studio)

“The Solar King” came about after watching an episode of Intentionally [Blank] where Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells discussed bad story ideas. The bad idea in question was Darth Vader dying and then being remote controlled by some low level Imperial Officer who was trying to hide the fact that Vader was dead.

Was it a good idea on my part to base a story off of an admittedly bad story idea? Maybe, maybe not. I spent more time figuring out the plot than I usually do, and perhaps some of that was due to me over thinking things, with my subconscious fretting over the fact that I was using a bad story idea.

Originally, I meant for “The Solar King” to be a three to five part story, just playing with the idea of the Big Bad Guy getting killed by accident and then some underling having to take control of him. That initial plot ended with Chester getting the hang of things and more or less just carrying on with his life, working in the necrology lab and keeping the Solar King acting like normal.

The plot took it’s first turn away from the original design when Smythe Hark became a saboteur. Initially he was meant to be a bit of a foil for Chester as they argued over how best to manage the Solar King. Looking back now, I don’t remember why I introduced the fringe rebellion sub-plot, though I think it must be from the Star Wars connection working in my subconscious. Either way, as soon as Smythe Hark changed from being a loyal citizen into being a saboteur, I couldn’t rectify the differences in objectives. Chester wanted to maintain the status quo and Smythe wanted radical change.

While things spiraled out of control for Chester, I was busy re-working the plot, still trying to find an end to the story before it got too much bigger. Unfortunately, the story kept going while I kept looking for a solution to my plot issues. That meant I didn’t have a clear ending in mind for the story, and so no clear path for the story to follow. That kind of meandering is fine for a rough draft of a story but not generally what I want to have for stories I’m putting out there for all to see. With each new complication in Chester’s story I found myself looking at a longer and longer story with the ending only getting farther away from me.

Writing a long story was not my concern, though. I don’t mind writing a long story. What I didn’t like was how uncertain the story was in my mind. Was this going to turn into an epic war between the core and fringe worlds? Was Chester going to become a leader among the fringe rebels? Was Chester destined to become the next Solar King, after uniting the solar system and casting down the corrupt leaders who used to rule it all? I certainly tried out a few plot lines that went that way, with Chester getting off the moon and into the fringe, seeding drones all along the way and granting him a wide network of spies…but that plot for “The Solar King” turned into a plot for more than one novel.

Putting my writing online at the rate that I do means I only have a few opportunities to review and edit things before I post them (and I’m sure you’ve all noticed more than a few spelling errors here and there). It also means I can’t anticipate too far ahead where a story will go if I stray too far from my initial plot/outline/rough draft. Writing a multi-novel story would simply not work for how I work right now. Not without some significant plot holes or retconning certain elements as I go along. Again, that sort of thing is fine in a rough draft since I can go back later and fix those things, but not here.

So, what to do? How do I get Chester off the moon? Do I let him get caught and killed? Go out in a blaze of glory? The constant struggle with this story meant that I was also getting burned out with this story and the thrill of writing it was waning fast.

Most of the time when I’m working on a story, it’s as though the characters are living in my head, telling me what they would do, and all I have to do is type it out. With my motivation for “The Solar King” fading, those voices were going quiet. I was also dealing with some health issues about that time so I took a couple weeks off from writing. Well, not entirely. I still worked on the story, I just didn’t try to write any new chapters. I poked and prodded the story, trying out different pathways to go, but still I couldn’t find a direction to go in.

By this time, Chester had assimilated the colony twice and I’d more or less painted myself into a corner. With the technology available, how could Dawnstar not catch Chester? He was stuck on the moon and he needed to be off of it ten chapters ago. As I sat back down to begin writing again, I felt the weariness Chester felt at being stuck here for so long. I was done fighting this story, just as Chester was done fighting the escape. So we both took the nuclear option and blew everything up. It was messy, to be sure, but it gave me a way to end the story. Chester got off the moon and no longer had to worry about the Solar King tracking him down.

It was not my most graceful ending to a story. In a lot of ways it reminded me of how abruptly “Across Lives” ended, though in that stories case I hadn’t had as many plot issues along the way. Still, the structure was awkward and left me a bit dissatisfied. In both cases I would like to go back to these stories some day and fix their issues. I did want to see how Chester would fare out in the fringe, just as I wanted to see Nis in “Across Lives” go back to Dural and tell the archivists about their lost history.

Anyway, all of this is just to say that, while I do hope you’ve enjoyed “The Solar King”, it got away from me and wasn’t as good as I think it ought to have been. I’ve got some new stories that have been brewing for a while now. I’ll focus on short stories for now, to give me a bit of a break from the longer form stories that take so much more time and effort.

Thank you again for reading and I look forward to sharing with you all the stories I have yet to write.