Written by KDraconis |
Tuesday, 11 October 2011 18:57
News -
StarCraft II
Recently, StarCraft: Legacy had the pleasure of interviewing Nate Kenyon, writer of horror novels such as The Reach and Sparrow Rock, about his latest book, StarCraft: Ghost - Spectres.
The interview can be read below.
StarCraft: Legacy: How did working with a licensed, well-established property like StarCraft instead of an original universe change your general writing style and your approach to the characters and the plot?
Nate: Well, this is the first tie-in that I’ve done and it was very different from my original stuff. I think there are two different kinds of writers, there’s the outliner or planner, and then there’s what Stephen King describes to be his writing style: you have a general idea, you have some notes, and you dive in, which was the way I’ve written in the past. With a project like this, obviously there’s a lot more input from other people, and there’s an entire universe that’s already been built, and there’s things that you have to be true to. You just have to be much more careful and there’s certainly an outline that others will follow. So it was very different from the outset. But it was also really exciting for me because I hadn’t done anything like that before or collaborated in that way before. And I think that was one of the first things I said to Blizzard when we started talking about all this, how much of a blast it was to get on the phone with all those guys and just kind of brainstorm and talk things through. Something would spark, an idea, and you’d just feel the energy building and everybody was getting enthusiastic. It was really fun. It was just a very different, more collaborative experience for me.
SC:L: How did you prepare to work in a world like this? Did you read the other novels, read the manual, or have you played the game?
Nate: I’m not a huge gamer. I knew of it of course, and I played it a long time ago, so I was not a hardcore player. So, for me, in order to take this on, to be able to do this properly, I built in as much time as possible ahead of time to research and learn as much as I possibly could. I read all the books, I went on the wiki and read page after page after page on there, and talked to fans and talked to a friend of mine is a huge fan of the game. I spent a solid couple of months probably while we were starting to develop a story to familiarize myself with what had come before and higher backstory and characters that would work. It was a pretty intense experience for me. But I felt good. By the time I started writing, I felt like I was pretty comfortable with everything, that I had a good handle on what I wanted to do, what Blizzard wanted me to do with the characters and the world that they created.
SC:L: What was it like working on a sequel to a novel that had been written by somebody else, and then just working in a universe that had been created and touched by so many other authors? Do you feel like you were able to find your own voice in there?
Nate: Absolutely, yeah. Building on my earlier answer, in a weird way it also felt really exciting and collaborative, even though I wasn’t sitting down with those authors and a lot of the folks that had created this stuff. I still felt like there was this collaborative energy around it, and it was really fun. When I first started thinking about doing the project, I was concerned about that. I was worried that I’d feel constricted. You know, I’d want to try to write in somebody else’s voice, or write dialogue the way somebody else had written it. But I pretty quickly found that it made me more at ease. It felt like it was all this stuff that I had become familiar enough with, that I felt comfortable enough with, almost as if it was my own stuff. So I felt like I had a real base to build on. I did feel like I found my voice in this, this does not feel different from any of my other works in terms of writing style or any of that stuff. I feel like it’s my book. But at the same time, I had a lot of stuff to draw from. So I never had one of those moments that happened in my own work, where I’m sitting down there going, “God, what am I going to do with this? I got to come up with something out of thin air.” There’s always something there. There’s something on the wiki, there’s always a fan that I can talk to, somebody at Blizzard, the lore team… There’s always an answer. And that’s kind of fun, it allows you to really focus on the story and the characters and what you want the story to do, which is really neat.
SC:L: Was it difficult to be creative? Because the book bridges the gap between the Ghost Academy manga series and the events of StarCraft II. Was that tough knowing where the things had to end up and where things started?
Nate: It gave me a framework. Which was nice, especially for my first tie-in book. I think it gave me a beginning and an end. So I was free to do some fun things in between. And Blizzard was great about it too. I mean, I think we came up with some really creative ways to make the story my own, and I came up with some neat twists on things that still worked within the lore. Even some characters. There’s a couple of minor and larger characters in there that are more or less either brand new or reimagined from what might have come before, and that worked really well. We still stayed true to the story and what had come before, but we were able to be creative too. It was a real blast to do that. The Blizzard team’s fantastic, so it was fun.
SC:L: What are you most proud of in this book?
Nate: Oh boy. I think I’m most proud of just writing something that lives in somebody else’s universe but that I feel is my own and that is a hell of a lot of fun. I mean, that’s what I set out to do at the beginning of this thing. I loved all the lore, I loved the detail, but I didn’t want to get bogged down in it. I wanted to write a book that just galloped forward from page one. It was just a flat-out, crazy ride. A lot of action, a lot of over-the-top fun stuff. And I think I did it, I hope I did. It moves really quickly and feels like a game in a way but still feels like a fleshed-out novel. It’s just something that’s a lot of fun to read. At the same time, I hope that it can be approached by people who aren’t a huge fan of the game, and they can read it without knowing all that backstory and still enjoy it. I think I did, I guess we’ll find out as more people read it, but hopefully that’s true.
SC:L: When writing a book like this, how do you determine how long it’s going to be? Obviously hardcore fans want as much detail as possible and the story to be as fleshed out as possible from beginning to end. Where do you start those parameters when you start to write?
Nate: Good question. Some of it’s set by the publisher and by Blizzard. Pocket has an idea roughly about what they want, and Blizzard has a rough idea. Again, they’re very flexible and they’re great to work in that way. I don’t know how much we’ll talk about the Diablo novel too, but that was even more a free reign in a lot of ways and Blizzard and Pocket both said, “Make it as long and detailed as you need it to be.” With Spectres I felt a little more like I needed to hit a certain word count. But I didn’t want to get bogged down like I said earlier, I didn’t want to get bogged down with so many details and so much lore that it distracted from the story. That’s a great question. I mean, it’s a balance. It’s one of those things where it’s not necessarily true that you have a list of rules in front of you and you know the whole time whether you’re doing it or not, but by the end of it you know whether you did it or whether you didn’t do it. You have a good feeling for whether the pacing’s right and the story flows in the right way. This one actually, even more than the Diablo book, I didn’t feel at any point that I was going off track with pacing, with length, or that sort of stuff. It just fell into place really quickly. It came out in one good, long draft. I think, other than tweaks for lore and stuff here and there, it’s pretty much what you’re reading today.
SC:L: Now that you’ve written a book, how intimately do you feel you are acquainted with the universe? Do you feel comfortable with jumping right back in and writing something else? Is that something you’re interested in doing?
Nate: Yeah. I mean, it’s funny you say that because I was just thinking about this in preparation for talking to you. Writing two novels for them back to back in two different game worlds was a challenge. And I feel like, in some ways, I was just immersed in StarCraft for six months and then I just had to jump out of it and jump into Diablo, which I had the same level of familiarity with that game as I originally had with StarCraft. So I had a lot of work to do, and just sort of jumping to that entire lore and backstory and immerse myself in that. I’m just coming out of that, and looking back at this manuscript as this book comes out, I’m flipping through and all of a sudden things are coming back to me and all of a sudden I’m dropped back in to the StarCraft universe. Which is fun, and I’d love to work with them again. There’s so much story to tell. It’s such a detailed universe and so many great characters, and great story arcs. It’s just a blast. I’d definitely be open to doing stuff again.
SC:L: You said you were flipping through the wiki and other sources online. Was there anything that caught your eye, that you would be very interested in exploring? Or are you content at Blizzard saying, “I need a story that does this and this,” and you’d love to do that too?
Nate: Right. That’s a good question. There absolutely were pieces, areas where as I explored the timeline and the world, and thought, “Gee, there’s a good story.” But I’m also happy to defer to Blizzard. They have their own goals of course, in terms of what they want to develop and the stories they want to tell based on a much larger, more detailed picture of where they’re trying to go with everything. In a larger sense, that’s their call, but I’d love to sit down with them and talk about various ideas along the timeline and what would be fun to do. I got to tell you, this was in many ways a sweet spot for me. I really think that the whole idea of the Spectres and how dark they wanted to take this book, and the elements of the Spectres are right down my alley. So this book, in many ways, was just a perfect storm for me.
SC:L: As you were browsing the web, I’m sure you realized that you were working on a brand that a large, passionate, and sometimes very critical group of fans. Did you feel a lot of pressure to live up to the expectations, or to conform your tone or style into the universe as it is? Or were you thinking, “I’m going to write the best story I possibly can, and hopefully the fans will like it?”
Nate: I think the latter. It’s sort of a general writing philosophy for me. I just don’t think stories work very well when you try to force them into something that they’re not or you’re not. So, my thought is, I’m going to give every ounce that I have, not just in writing but in terms of committing to it, in terms of learning the backstory, immersing myself in the world, and learning everything I possibly can about it, so that I’ll know that I did everything I could to prepare to write the best story possible, and then just let the story go. And then, hopefully, that works and that works for the fans. I was definitely very aware that there was a huge, rabid fanbase, and that they can be very critical. And I think that’s good. I think that’s a great thing, because they’re completely invested in the story, they love the characters, they love the universe, and that’s awesome. That’s why we do what we do. So I don’t have a problem with that at all. I was definitely aware of it, and I don’t want to let people down, but I also felt like I had a real support network. I think Blizzard is fantastic with that, and they have a huge team of people that are dedicated to this. They have an entire lore team that was there for me, if I had a question or if I was worried about something. I knew if I messed up on some detail, the way a weapon fired or a species of Zerg, or certain things that might not be accurate, I knew that they would pick it up in the initial readings and let me know and we’d work through it. And they did. They did an amazing job when they read the draft and we went through a couple of revisions and cleaned up things that they caught. But I think, hearing from them, their reactions and stuff I think I did a good job. I think they were surprised at the level of accuracy that was in the book already because of all the research that I’d done. That made me feel great.
SC:L: What would you say the most difficult part of writing this book was? Was it wrapping your head around everything that was out there, or what?
Nate: Yeah, I think so. We had a pretty aggressive deadline, so I felt a lot of pressure to get the book done. Which is fine, it needed to get done and needed to get out there. And I think what you said is probably pretty true. I think the biggest challenge and the biggest pressure came from the amount of stuff out there, and trying to make sure that what I was reading was accurate and making sure that I understood everything. The backstory, the characters, all those details, so that I could write with confidence. Because that’s really what it’s all about. In some ways it’s no different from writing Sparrow Rock, which was my last original novel. It had to do with Armageddon basically, nuclear fallout, and it got crazier from there. A lot of research went into that. In order to write a scene, and have confidence in your writing, you really need to understand, through good research, what you’re writing about. When the bombs fell in that book, I really wanted to feel like I was confident about understanding what that would be like. Same thing here, on an even larger scale. You may feel like you really want to know what a particular planet’s going to look like, what the alien species is going to look like, the way the weapon’s going to fire, the skillsets of the soldiers you have, the Ghosts that you’re working with, whatever. You just need to feel confident with that so you can write the best scene you can.
SC:L: I know this isn’t your first science fiction work, but, coming from a more horror-based background, how did that help or how was it different writing something like this aside from working in a universe that wasn’t your own?
Nate: I hadn’t written a lot of sci-fi. I wrote Prime, which was a science fiction novella. And I’ve written some short fiction. So it really was a big leap for me. Ultimately, I didn’t find it all that much different. I think part of it was that Blizzard and Pocket and I all wanted to have a pretty dark book here. If you’re a horror fan, there’s some familiar aspects to this novel, some familiar setups. I think that was helpful for me. But, ultimately, you’re writing a story, and in some ways it’s all the same. You’re trying to make readers connect with the characters and you’re trying to bring suspense and move the plot forward. The rest of it’s all kind of window dressing around that. So long as you become familiar with the detail, that, like I said earlier, through research to flesh out the scene, the rest of it is pretty familiar when it comes down to it.
SC:L: Did you have a favourite character? Did you become attached to anyone in particular in the universe, or when writing about someone in the book?
Nate: I did, kind of all of them. Whenever you write something, if you do it right, you end up really feeling like they’re real people. It’ kind of weird, you feel like you’re schizophrenic or something. You’re talking to yourself in your head. Of course, Nova, I love that character. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to do the book. Just reading about her, understanding her character, I love the tragedy. I love the whole idea that she’s intentionally signing up for the Ghost program to erase memories of her past. It’s just a great setup for drama and bringing all that back to her, the trauma that would cause, the catharsis, what she can deal with and can’t deal with, and the guilt around her whole backstory. There are just some great dramatic aspects to her story. And Gabriel and Kath, they’re all a blast to work with. Even Leo was a lot of fun too. He’s actually a really neat character. His current state, and how he interacts, and what drives him now that he’s not even really physically there was really fun to play with. I think there could be a lot more to him down the road too, I think he has a really interesting backstory.
To learn more about Kenyon and his work, check out http://natekenyon.com
Also check out some teasers for the book here and here.
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