by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
As I enter the second act of the scifi novel I’m writing, I’m dwelling on the big ideas this story addresses. The story itself is kind of weighty and cerebral and deals with some issues that don’t see all that obvious to the average person, but I hope if I insert enough drama, action and innate conflict into it that someone, somewhere will find it entertaining enough to finish.
Two books I may read and reference a lot in this novel are The Clash of Civilizations and Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare and the Birth of the Human. A lot of this novel deals with the critique of the Western tradition from both the Left and the Right and how Humanity would deal with the innate conflict associated with an outside force’s decision to “pick a winner” in the clash of civilizations. I have been thinking about this concept for the better part of five years, so really most of my thought is going into character development at this point.
The series I really want to replicate the success of is the Millennium series. That was a really entertaining, really accessible series that you just couldn’t put down once you got into it. But I have extremely low expectations. I’ll be happy if I can just get, like, one person I don’t know personally to read the first book and ask me when the next book is coming out. That’s how low my expectations are at this point.
As it stands, what I’m interested in, what my goal is, is to write a female character as interesting as Lisbeth Salander. My character would be a little bit older, maybe about Natalie Portman’s age, but she still would be compelling. It’s urgent I have at least one character who draws people in given how otherwise cerebral the story is in general.
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