411 on Books, Authors & Publishing

Note from the Author:

When Your Main Character’s a Starship…

By J.B. Rockwell

Umm, so yeah. I did this. At the time I was thinking, “How cool! This will be really different!” And it is. That’s one of the things I love about the Serengeti series: you just don’t see a lot of books written with a sentient AI warship as the main character.

And there’s a reason for that: it’s hard.

Okay, so that’s probably not the only reason you don’t see a lot of books written from a starship’s point of view, but I’m going to go down on record as saying it’s one of them. And here’s why: close your eyes and think about every book you’ve read or written, every movie of TV show you’ve watched and how the characters interact with one another. All the physical posturing and non-verbal cues. Now imagine one of those character’s is a ship and most of the rest of the characters are moving around inside her.

See what I mean?

Being the brilliant writer I am (*insert extremely heavy dose of sarcasm*), I never thought about this when I blithely sat down at my computer one day and started pounding out words on my ‘OMG everyone will love this!’ little story. But it wasn’t long before I realized this book was going to be a lot harder to pull off than I originally thought. And since I didn’t have a whole lot of other, similar books to fall back on for research, I basically figured things out as I went.

So, how does one go about using non-verbal cues with a main character that lacks arms and legs, hands and eyeballs? Well, if you’re me, you cheat. (*puffs up all proud*) And since some of you out there may be reading this and considering doing something as stupid…er, brilliant as me, here’s how:

Let’s start with the eyes. Or lack thereof. Eyes play a major role in conveying characters’ feelings without repeating boring things like: ‘She was sad’, or ‘She was mad’. Eyes squint and widen, flash and darken to tell readers just exactly what is going on with a particular character at a particular moment. We use words like ‘glance’ and ‘glare’ and ‘stare’ to help convey interactions between characters and indicate who’s speaking to whom.

Well, Serengeti doesn’t have eyes (she’s a badass warship, remember?) but she does have cameras—that’s Cheat the First. By turning cameras, zooming in and out, or simply flipping through one lens and another I can show the reader how Serengeti’s focus changes. I can flash a light on a camera to draw another character’s attention to it, and use it as a focus of conversation when their speaking to Serengeti’s AI, rather than having them do the Star Trek thing and just randomly yell ‘Computer!’ in the general direction of the ceiling.

Cheat the Second is similar to Cheat the First, in that it involves Serengeti’s fittings, in this case the many data panels scattered across her bridge and elsewhere on her ship’s body. By flashing panels and sending discrete messages, even cute little emoji, Serengeti is able to interact with her crew on a more personal and private level, offering information and encouragement, sharing worries and fears without broadcasting that information through her speakers for everyone with a working set of eardrums to hear.

Cheat the Third when it comes to eyeballs is also Cheat the Fourth which helps to replace the pesky lack of appendages that comes with Serengeti having nothing more than a ship’s body. Namely, robots. Throughout Serengeti and Dark and Stars, there are many and various situations which prompt Serengeti to download or connect a portion of her vast consciousness to one of her maintenance robots (Tig, Tilli and Oona) or another robot she comes across in her travels. Though non-human, these robots handily come equipped with legs (for flailing, and waving, and otherwise shaking about) and faces (backed by motile, bright blue lights) that can be animated in a multitude of manners to emulate human gestures and facial expressions, providing easily digestible cues to Mr. and Ms. Reader of My Book. Plus, they’re cute as the dickens and snarky as all get-out—who doesn’t like that?!—and provide a break from all the camera looking and talking. Characters interact differently with cameras than they do with robots, no matter who’s in the driver’s seat, so letting Serengeti run around in a robot body for a while really gave me more latitude to change things up. And, as an added bonus, robots can go places Serengeti the ship can’t. Like space stations, for instance—I can’t exactly have whopping big Serengeti pitter-pattering down a space station’s hallways—allowing me to expand the story’s universe and take the action out of the stars once in a while.

So, that’s how I did it. That’s how I got around writing a book (and a sequel, and a prequel) whose main character was a starship. It wasn’t easy, but I’m proud of the result, and that used a story device that so few others have tried. More importantly, my agent liked it and signed me on in part because I offered up something that was fresh and new. I also like to think it’s because I’m incredibly entertaining and funny as all get-out, but I’m not sure my agent would agree…

J