In the past, I’ve talked a lot about the origin of Aiko’s Dive. But, as many times as I’ve mentioned where the novel came from, I’ve never talked about how it was created.

At only 1000 words long, the original flash fiction piece was far less than a complete concept. It told only a brief story, and my original goal in crafting the piece was to try and make the most of the dictated word limit. But, in spending so much time on The Octavius Job, I managed to create a world that planted the seed that would eventually become Aiko’s Dive.

Yet, despite the novel’s small beginnings, so much more went into its creation.

Note: If you don’t really care about my past, skip to “The Process” subheading below. Either way, this is going to be a long one…

Formative Fiction

I spent the better part of my youth consuming science fiction. Fantasy was alright, and I definitely enjoyed “the classics”, but my love of science fiction eclipsed any enjoyment I derived from the former. And, as I grew, my dive down the rabbit hole deepened far more than I would have ever expected.

Media

I still remember the first time I saw the Star Wars opening crawl. At the time, I didn’t really understand what Star Wars was, but from the moment those yellow letters burst onto the screen, and that fanfare began to blare over the subpar speakers of my father’s CRT television, I knew that the movie was special.

From that moment on, I had to see as much science fiction as my parents would allow. I likely saw Alien and Predator far earlier than I should have. But movies like that were tempered by far more wondrous titles like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Or Tron. Or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or a few dozen others.

I could probably name a hundred movies that I thoroughly enjoyed as a kid, but only a few captured my imagination and refused to let go.

The Abyss was one such movie.

There was something about James Cameron’s epic undersea adventure that kept me in rapt attention every time I watched it. And even when the movie ended, the adventures continued as I built small submarines out of Legos and explored the house as if it were an uncharted seabed.

It was these titles, and the sense of wonder they evoked whenever I watched them, that instilled in me a love for the worlds that science fiction could create. And no matter how many times I watched a movie – even if I had seen it a dozen times before – I could easily get lost in it the next time it came on television.

And that feeling of rapture only grew as I continued to discover new and wonderful facets of science fiction. I’ll always remember the first time I saw the “tears in the rain” speech from Blade Runner. And I’ll always remember watching The Matrix and being so blown away by the concept that I watched it again the next morning. These types of things are what make science fiction special to me. And it was ultimately these things that drove me to craft worlds of my very own.

Books

It’s one thing to watch science fiction movies and television shows, but it’s something entirely different to craft these worlds on paper; to make a reader see the environment around them as your characters trek across the depths of an alien ocean. But, luckily, I grew up reading titans of science fiction and fantasy.

While many kids my age were reading goosebumps (and I did read some of those, myself), I preferred books written by Ursula K. LeGuin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, Arthur C. Clarke, and others. All of these writers were very particular in their craft, and many of them wrote fantasy, but of those that focused on science fiction, the writing was rich and the worlds diverse. And not a few of them featured fantasy-heavy elements (which provides a good explanation as to why I have a soft spot for the space opera subgenre of science fiction).

Regardless of the genre, I gained a deep respect for the way “classic” science fiction and fantasy was written. Though I’m not a master of my craft, I’d like to think that I managed to absorb some of what I grew up reading (and I’d wager a lot of it would be far more prevalent in Infinity’s Heir than Aiko’s Dive).

A Brief History

Despite all the places I’ve gathered inspiration from over the years, there’s a big difference between consuming and producing. I did try to write when I was far younger, but my inability to focus only hamstrung my abilities and resulted in prose I wouldn’t even describe as subpar.

This lack of skill, coupled with an unwillingness to focus on improving, led to frustration. So, I stopped writing – creatively – for almost 20 years. In the interim, I turned to music and video games.

Until 2013.

It was a rough year, and I required catharsis that music, or video games, couldn’t provide. At that time, a very specific concept had managed to stick itself into my brain. And the more I thought on it, the more I felt like there was a story to go along with it.

I talked to a friend about it and he mentioned that this concept connected to a story he’d been interested in writing for quite some time. So, with his permission, I began working on a trilogy that would connect to his world…somehow (we never really fleshed out the details other than the fact that a few characters and concepts would be shared when both of our works were complete).

But I never finished the trilogy…

Self Discovery

Two years, and over 200,000 words later, I was half way through the third book in the trilogy.

At some point, I started to wonder whether writing was something I could do professionally. After all, I never expected to get through one novel. Or two. Or approach finishing a third. So, this begged a question: if I could produce full-length novels, could I get them published?

It was at this point that I decided to research how to do that. And, within a few weeks, I was sending out the initial draft of a query letter with pages from an unedited version of the first book in the trilogy.

I was roundly rejected, but the process taught me something invaluable: while I had managed to finish a novel, my craft was still unrefined. The bottom line was that there were steps I hadn’t mastered because I didn’t even know they existed. Instead of taking my writing to its obvious conclusion, I was leaving off before I was actually finished, like a farmer sowing seeds and letting them grow, but neglecting the harvest.

Luckily, my first ever try at querying led me to a robust writing forum. There, I learned. About writing. And about myself.

When I turned my attention back to the trilogy, I suddenly realized that finishing it would be a futile effort. It wasn’t a bad story, but there was too much wrong with it. I could see mistakes that needed to be fixed. And, the farther back I went in the trilogy, the more effort I would have to put into reworking what I had already written. Ultimately, I decided to stop writing the third book in the series when I came to the realization that the first needed to be rewritten. From scratch.

It was a hard decision to make, but the right one.

Moving Forward

The next two years were insanely busy from a writing standpoint: I started this blog, joined twitter, wrote three novels (including Aiko’s Dive), started three others (that I didn’t finish), dabbled in flash fiction, agonized over countless unpublished short stories, began writing articles for a website, and suffered the slings and arrows of the query process.

Besides all that, I’ve remained very active in the writing community that helped me grow my craft.

And, as I write this, I can honestly say that it was all worth it. Without pouring so much of myself into writing, Aiko’s Dive would have never existed. The simple fact that it does stands as a testament to the fact that perseverance breeds success.

But still, the journey to a complete manuscript was anything but easy…

The Process

As I’ve mentioned countless times before, Aiko’s Dive started as a piece of flash fiction called The Octavius Job. It was…popular…compared to anything I had written before, and much of the feedback focused on how dynamic Aiko and Fletcher felt.

Almost immediately, I was struck by the desire to expand on this universe I had created. The bit of flash fiction was only a window, but there was so much more beyond the threshold.

At the time, I was still working on Infinity’s Heir, so I didn’t immediately start on the manuscript that would become Aiko’s Dive. But even before I did begin to write the story, I put a lot of thought into what I wanted it to be. I thought about writing a sequel to The Octavius Job, but something about that didn’t feel quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but picking up where the flash fiction piece left off, or even jumping a bit farther into their future, didn’t catch my attention.

So what about the past?

That begged the question of how far back I should go. Putting it shortly before The Octavius Job, or even a few years earlier, would render the same result as putting it after: the relationship between Aiko and Fletcher would already be formed, essentially meaning that I’d be writing a longer version of the flash fiction piece. And, my fear, whether putting it before or after The Octavius Job, was that the magic of those thousand words would be lost in novel form.

Revelation

I quickly settled on the fact that I wanted the novel to be an origin story. For Aiko and Fletcher to have such a strong relationship, something must have happened to forge an ironclad bond between then. It seemed like a good idea, but the concept was still nebulous. Until a single line changed everything.

Today is adoption day.

When that line popped into my head, Aiko and Fletcher’s world snapped into focus. The glance through the window was no longer limited by a frame, because the frame was no longer there. Possibilities swirled around inside my head, and I could see an infinite number of signposts for a story that hadn’t yet been told.

For a writer (for me, anyway), the moment a story comes into complete focus is an unparalleled sensation. Weeks spent agonizing over an idea dissolve in that instant, replaced only by a singular will to create. Depending on the story, and its complexity, that “will” can take many different forms. For Infinity’s Heir, I wrote a linear outline. For the novel I just started, I drew a flow chart.

For Aiko’s Dive, I just started to write.

That single line fueled nearly ten chapters that would eventually be cut from the final manuscript, but it painted a picture of the world these two lived in. It showed how they met. It dwelled on their every interaction.

But, to say that the entirety of these chapters were cut from the final manuscript is untrue. While the bulk of them were, a few key interactions survived. They were the most important parts of these chapters: the conversations that defined the earliest moments of their relationships, the seeds that would sow frustration and conflict later in the novel, and the vehicle that would eventually lead to where the two would be when The Octavius Job takes place.

And they acted as a catalyst for the rest of the novel.

The Grind

Writing Aiko’s Dive without a clear goal in mind was interesting. I had an initial idea of what I wanted to do with the novel, but as began to move away from those initial chapters, the idea began to fade. The characters weren’t the same and no longer fit in with what I had originally planned.

So, the story changed.

The plot moved closer to home and the cast shrank. Instead of pitting Aiko against a human menace, I decided that she would be more challenged going up against an alien one; especially if that conflict was somehow related to Fletcher’s distant past.

From there, everything became much more personal. The stakes were much higher for every character involved, and the narrative finally began to take shape. By the time I was a third of the way through the novel, I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go, though I still wasn’t sure of every step along the way.

And that showed as I was nearing the climax. A final twist that would up the stakes even more decided to rear its ugly head. It would be a difficult thing to add, but made sense in the course of the novel for multiple reasons. I won’t divulge what the twist is here, but I’m very happy with the way it fit into the overall frame of the story. It makes sense. And it adds far more weight to the end.

After the Final Prose

Typically, the first draft will sit for about a month before I go back to it for an initial round of editing. That first round is usually exhaustive and goes a long way in tightening up the novel. Regardless of what it is I’m working on (an article, a short story, or a novel), this is the first thing that I always do.

For Aiko’s Dive, the first edit was followed by a round of feedback. The few people that looked at it provided enough to smooth out more of the bumps over the first few chapters.

Then, an agent was kind enough to look at the first ten pages of the work and give me some feedback. This is where the real magic happened for Aiko’s Dive. The feedback was that the story was interesting, but that, by the end of the third chapter, the hook still hadn’t appeared. This, it seemed, was a major hurdle for the work. And it was something that sorely needed fixing.

This particular feedback was what caused me to go back and rework the entire beginning of the novel. I wound up combining the first few chapter, deleting the next seven (save for a few choice conversations), and mixing everything else up so that the hook hit near the end of chapter three, while everything that came before was necessary setup for the characters and world. Overall, the change felt fairly good.

Feedback on the next round of edits was decent, though it was pointed out by one reader that far too many adverbs were used.

This prompted me to perform and “Adverb Apocalypse” edit to the work (seriously…that’s what the draft was named…). This resulted in many words being cut from the manuscript, but it was far tighter for it.

This resulted in what I called the “FINAL” draft of the work.

After this, I did get one more round of feedback on the first ten pages, which led to light edits and a “FINAL 2” tag.

Overall, the entire editing process took about six months.

Odyssey

From inception to completion, Aiko’s Dive took about a year and a half to complete.

There were times when I had nearly no time to write, and these days, sometimes weeks, felt like an eternity. During them, I was hit with crippling anxiety over not working on the project. But despite multiple conflicts – some out of my control and others self-imposed – I persevered. And I created a manuscript that I’m intensely proud of.

Of course, it takes far more than that for a writer to get published, but I hope that a few of the agents I send the manuscript to can see its potential.

To me, there’s nothing easier than pouring out pages of lovingly crafted fiction. But what comes after – the heartache of writing a query letter and the gut-wrenching task of distilling the essence of a novel into a page-long synopsis – are far more difficult.

For Aiko’s Dive, I’ve spent a fair amount of time doing those things in hopes that this work is the one that garners the attention of an agent and pushes onto the shelves of a local bookstore. Of course, I write for the sake of the craft, but I’d love to be able to walk into a store and run my hands across pages filled with words I wrote.

After all, that’s the real fantasy.

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For any who has taken the time to make it this far, I thank you. Writing is often a solitary pursuit, but being able to share thoughts and feelings with an audience makes the struggle (and the waiting) worthwhile. I appreciate you allowing me that luxury.

If you have any questions, or comments, about what I’ve written above, please feel free to share. I’d love to hear what others think about my process. And I’d love to hear about yours.

Sincerely,

 

Chase