Mousetails Summer 2020 Awards [FINISHED]

Interview with cc6164

Interview with cc6164:

author of Arlington, first place Sci-Fi

What inspired you to write Arlington, and how did you shape the world and create its characters?

Arlington can be boiled down to two major inspirations for me. I started writing it about three years ago and my partner has always been a massive Marvel fan and they got me into all the movies. I loved all the characters and the stories but there was something I couldn't ignore... the lack of diversity. As amazing as those movies are, there could be so much more. Marvel was doing the bare minimum for inclusivity and it frustrated me, and the acknowledgment of Iron man potentially/having PTSD and that just being dropped really ground my gears. That is a conversation that can't be ignored, we need to talk more about mental health and these characters people idolize are an amazing medium to do it through! The second part was that Aviva Arlington's creation came hot the heels of another series I wrote, my previous main character was hot-headed and pretty cliche if I am being honest. So when I started daydreaming and trying to craft my next main character I drifted more towards someone who was logical and analytic and thus my favorite gay genius was born.
Shaping the world and characters is something that has happened over a three year period. Every time I write the next book, I go back and adjust and add and tweak to make the characters distinct. Every new character and MC needs to be different from the first, even if its in subtle ways. The most important part of building my characters is making them as real and flawed as I can. Superhumans are still humans after all and my characters are centered around their morals and flaws. Shaping the world was more of a game in a way, how far can I mold reality to make it more fantastical? How far can I stretch this idea until its completely unrealistic?
What was the hardest part of the story to write and why? How did you overcome it?

The ending is always the hardest part of every book I write. How do you tie up potentially hundreds of pages of plot and character development well? I can be a little indecisive as well so sometimes choosing the tone and plot of an ending is impossible. I don't think its necessarily something I have completely overcome at this point. I've more gotten to the point as an author that I always know the first ending will not be the final product. I actually rewrote the ending of Arlington twice, and the ending of Faith three times (the next book). It's about practice, a little faith and just having the courage to wing it and start over.

Do you have any advice you'd like to share for writers in the science fiction genre?

Science fiction as a genre is a weird balancing act, this genre isn't always a straight-up fantasy world, and there are usually some aspects of reality that will enter and affect the book. If I had to give advice, go as hard as you can with the fun, weird, fictional things that could never exist outside of our minds! Make it fun and crazy and then find some ways to ground the story. Don't worry about the first drafts coherency or relatability, tackle the world-building and everything else can follow after. Molecular manipulation? If that isn't pretty crazy, I don't know what would constitute as wild!