DIVISION: Special Features – The Making Of Part 1
Since Division’s release in January, I’ve had some questions regarding the stories and where they came from. It got me thinking. I’m always one who enjoys watching the special features of movies I like. For example, the sci-fi action movie The Edge of Tomorrow has over an hour of special features that really added to the experience and the story. And Pixar. Pixar. That’s all I need to say, right?
So I thought, since there was interest, that I might do a few short special features for Division. This is THE MAKING OF. And if there’s anything in particular that you want to see, let me know in the comments and I’ll give it a shot!
DIVISION: THE MAKING OF PART 1
Division actually started off with just three pieces: Dissimilation (then simply called The Simulation), The Grey Wall, and Beauty (then called CTR-Transcend).
1. DISSIMILATION
I remember starting Dissimilation in an old, creaky house near the beach. I was on holiday with my partner, a week away from the world after a few years of ridiculously stressful work for him, and for balancing that ridiculously stressful work with law school for me. We’d planned it to be a creative retreat – songwriting for him, and songwriting and writing for me. We brought up guitars, basses, pedals, my keyboard. The dinner table was strewn with cables. In between them, I nestled my laptop.
We’d been talking about education. I get pretty damn passionate about education, in that I feel the current education system is failing our kids, our generation, and our world. So I was arguing that kids should learn much earlier on what it’s like to work in the real world, whether with their hands or their minds, so they get those essential skills before it’s too late. It was a short jump from there to writing about children learning through simulations. I started with gusto, sure that I was going to write a short story about education in a futuristic, better world, and nothing more.
I’d heard about characters hijacking stories. But I’d never experienced it myself until I met Sara.
I ended up leaving that story half-finished for about five months. It bewildered me with the shapes it had taken and Sara’s quiet, desperate obstinacy. When I came back, it was with fresh eyes that could see what she wanted. An escape. So I gave it to her.
2. THE GREY WALL
Writing The Grey Wall was magical. I don’t quite remember what was in my head when I sat down to write my quota of words that day. I just started and it rolled out, as thick as guilt and heavy as shame. I didn’t know where I was going, but I felt the heaviness and the magic of it. And I realised soon that I was writing a fairytale. A science fiction fairytale.
I finished it over two days. When I was done, I read it over again and felt like I had produced some sort of malformed, unloved child. I loved it. I wasn’t sure if anybody else would. It was weird. It felt like dark fantasy but it was science fiction at its heart. And I’d never written anything else like it stylistically.
I tried sending it out to beta readers, just by itself. I never heard back from them, maybe because it was just that weird. I tried again, because I still loved it. This time, I sent it out to publications. One responded back telling me that it was too mainstream for them. Once I picked my jaw off the floor, I tried again. Each time, I was told that it was good, but not the right fit for them. And I completely understood. I’m a slush pile reader for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and given the limited number of spots and the vast numbers of stories they receive, you start getting a feel for the character of the magazine and what they will and won’t publish. The Grey Wall was just one of those oddities, bobbing out sadly in space.
But I couldn’t let it go. I loved it. I loved the ending of it, the punch and the darkness. I decided to publish it. I thought about publishing it by itself at the time, but then realised that it would suffer by itself, because it was so different. So I thought: Hey, maybe a collection…
3. BEAUTY
I had it in my head now, the concept: Science Fiction Fairytales. Beauty just seemed to blossom from that. It had a few edits to undergo before its current form, however. I am indebted to Carey M Rulo in particular, one of my beta readers, who suggested I include the train scene and that haunting image of Damian looking around him and seeing the same three faces staring back at him, again and again and again.
So there it is DIVISION: A COLLECTION OF SCIENCE FICTION FAIRYTALES – The Making Of Part 1, and the three stories that started it off. Let me know below if there’s anything you’d like me to explore, or a particular question you want answered. Would love to hear your thoughts!