Ask the Author: Vidar Hokstad
Answered Questions (3)
Vidar Hokstad
From a Western series. Which is a bit weird, as my books are scifi.
My inspiration was a series called Morgan Kane by Louis Masterson (Kjell Hallbing) that I grew up with in Norway (the author is Norwegian). It was not anything specific about any of the individual books that inspired me, but the overall approach. When I was much younger I kept working on very literary stuff, and it went nowhere.
But Morgan Kane is fun. It's not meant to be very serious. The author churned out one a month at the peak. Not all of them were great writing, but they were great entertainment as *stories*. As the series progressed the writer got better, and years later he revisited the series in an acclaimed 6-book cycle. All in all, including a spinoff, he wrote nearly 100 books with that character.
Re-reading one of them made me realize that if I wanted to actually complete a novel, I needed to focus more on the stories and less on the prose.
Of course, there's a middle path - you can't *ignore* the prose, but without the story you have nothing, so that has to come first. Once you have a fun story, *then* you can polish the language.
After that it went fast, because a realistic depiction of space, incidentally, is in many ways similar to the wild west, and while you need to introduce unexpected and new elements, the overall structure is the same:
Vast, empty stretches where most action is chases and ambushes, punctuated by watering holes and small outposts where anything more complex goes down, and with similar sets of scenes. If you've watched the Mandalorian in particular, which is on purpose made "extra Western-y", you see this laid out very clearly.
Having a simple, well understood basic structure made it easy to plot out what I hope is a fun story on top without getting bogged down in trying to make it more complex than necessary.
The Year Before the End (my most recent book, out now), is essentially a Western heist novel in space.
But that is not all it is - like with its inspiration, there's an overall bigger arc for the characters. Unlike its inspiration, my arc is planned out (Morgan Kane sees a massive character arc, but it unfolded as the series progressed; it was not planned out ahead).
My inspiration was a series called Morgan Kane by Louis Masterson (Kjell Hallbing) that I grew up with in Norway (the author is Norwegian). It was not anything specific about any of the individual books that inspired me, but the overall approach. When I was much younger I kept working on very literary stuff, and it went nowhere.
But Morgan Kane is fun. It's not meant to be very serious. The author churned out one a month at the peak. Not all of them were great writing, but they were great entertainment as *stories*. As the series progressed the writer got better, and years later he revisited the series in an acclaimed 6-book cycle. All in all, including a spinoff, he wrote nearly 100 books with that character.
Re-reading one of them made me realize that if I wanted to actually complete a novel, I needed to focus more on the stories and less on the prose.
Of course, there's a middle path - you can't *ignore* the prose, but without the story you have nothing, so that has to come first. Once you have a fun story, *then* you can polish the language.
After that it went fast, because a realistic depiction of space, incidentally, is in many ways similar to the wild west, and while you need to introduce unexpected and new elements, the overall structure is the same:
Vast, empty stretches where most action is chases and ambushes, punctuated by watering holes and small outposts where anything more complex goes down, and with similar sets of scenes. If you've watched the Mandalorian in particular, which is on purpose made "extra Western-y", you see this laid out very clearly.
Having a simple, well understood basic structure made it easy to plot out what I hope is a fun story on top without getting bogged down in trying to make it more complex than necessary.
The Year Before the End (my most recent book, out now), is essentially a Western heist novel in space.
But that is not all it is - like with its inspiration, there's an overall bigger arc for the characters. Unlike its inspiration, my arc is planned out (Morgan Kane sees a massive character arc, but it unfolded as the series progressed; it was not planned out ahead).
Vidar Hokstad
I plan things out in advance. I don't really write full treatments, but use a spreadsheet of chapters or scenes with notes. If I get stuck, I just pick another part. If I get really stuck, I subdivide things further and add notes - there are always things that you can write because they are "book-keeping".
E.g. a character needs to get from place A to place B. How do they get there? What happens on the journey? If you have answers, you now don't have writer's block anymore. If you don't have answers, just pick something, anything, and go back and revise afterward, or ask questions about some other detail. What does the place look like? What is the character thinking about? There are so many avenues to go down.
E.g. a character needs to get from place A to place B. How do they get there? What happens on the journey? If you have answers, you now don't have writer's block anymore. If you don't have answers, just pick something, anything, and go back and revise afterward, or ask questions about some other detail. What does the place look like? What is the character thinking about? There are so many avenues to go down.
Vidar Hokstad
I'm revising the manuscript of my first novel, a relatively hard sci-fi story set in a universe where humanity has had first contact (via radio) 40 years prior, and everything is leading up to the opening of a gate to Alpha Centauri.
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