So why is this book different? What did I do differently?

1. I Chose a Familiar Premise – I have a tendency to get ahead of myself. I’ll think of a story concept that seems pretty fresh and original, and I’ll start dreaming of how someday it will change Science Fiction forever. But then I start feeling this pressure as I write. The insecurities begin their assault – am I good enough for this? Who do I think I am?

This time, I decided to start with a story setup that was familiar – Robin Hood. A Knight returns from a big war only to find that his home has changed for the worse. He takes it upon himself to correct the injustice, partnering with people who’ve been abandoned by society along the way. Starting with something familiar helped with the rest of the planning.

I’m not talking about copying a story – that’s plagiarism. This is no linear retelling, and the Merry Men certainly never had access to destructive Plasma weaponry. Starting in familiar, mythological territory gave me the security of knowing that the premise is at least attractive enough to have lasted for at least 700 years. And changing the location gave me the freedom to shape the story however I wanted.

2. I Planned Ahead – Being a fan of the Self Publishing Podcast, I took a page from their playbook and wrote story beats. I’ve tried outlining before, but story beats allowed me to get the general story ideas for each chapter out of my head in a “dump” format and then craft details and nuance into the rough draft as I wrote it.

I basically outlined chapters at least three at a time, having an overall outline to guide me. While neater than my usual technique of bullet points and panicked typing, it was still a bit messy. But it was the right kind of messy – the kind that allowed me the freedom I needed to change details in the story as I crafted it. If I didn’t follow the beats perfectly, I didn’t stress because I probably had a good reason. I might rewrite the beats if I changed something in the middle of a chapter, but usually I would just rewrite the beats for the subsequent chapters.

Planning was critical to my success because my writing time was limited. I needed to maximize my output when I would get an hour or two here or there, and story beats helped me accomplish that.

3. I Built The World “On The Fly” – My habit in years past has been to try and completely craft a world and then write a story within it. This method was no good for me because I would inevitably encounter something in the story outside of what I knew about the world and it would freak me out. This time, I started simple and made the necessary changes as I went.

First, I knew the planet would be heavily forested. A lot of the story’s imagery revolves around the forest and the animals who live there. However, eventually (right around chapter 5, if memory serves) I asked myself some questions: How would living on a world that was mostly forest affect the planet’s residents? What kind of customs would they have, what kind of language and idioms? What kind of names? So I took a break from the story itself for a few writing sessions and just thought about the answers. I’ve always believed that a story’s setting should matter, and I hope that came through in the final draft.

4. I Held Back – I’m not saying I was lazy in crafting the story, quite the opposite. What I mean is that by the time I thought of the tree problem above, I had pages and pages of notes about the world – how it works, which House is allied with which, and even the history of how the world was colonized and how the different ethnic groups interact. However, the reader doesn’t need to know all of this – it would bog down the story. A Test of Honor probably has about 10% of all the information I created about the planet Caledonia and the wider universe in which it sits.

Fear not – if you’re reading the book and wondering why this or why that, your answers are coming in books 2 and 3. But I knew as an author that I had to leave some element of mystery or else risk boring my readers. And boring my readers is something I try to always avoid.