Writer's Diary: Unexpected Guests
Thoughts and commentary on the third chapter of Rainbow Station
You can think of this as a commentary track for the third chapter of Rainbow Station (Unexpected Guests), so you should definitely read that first before reading this.
These were my thoughts as I was writing the piece, facets I’m considering as I move forward, things I was worrying about, and so on. Feel free to ask any questions about the piece below in the comments and I’ll try to answer as best I can.
As I mentioned at the end of the last Writer's Diary, I spent a lot of time on the dialogue in this chapter. In fact, I separated out the dialogue to a table to work on with my partner / producer Emily, and ChatGPT to try and ensure that the dialogue is actually as Shakespearean as I could make it.
This resulted in a lot of extra words that never made it into the draft, but it was necessary to ensure that V's dialogue was as consistent as possible for an AI that was 300 years old. What I first did was write the draft exactly as I would normally. Then, I showed the draft to Emily and asked for feedback on everything but the dialogue because I knew the dialogue wasn't exactly how I wanted it. After I incorporated her feedback on everything else, I pulled out the dialogue into a table and created four columns: Subtext (or the feeling/context of what I was attempting to convey), English Translation (what V would say if it could speak standard English), Original (what I wrote in the first draft) and Edited (the new version). This table allowed me to think about exactly what the AI was attempting to convey, as well as focus on a single line of dialogue in isolation instead of trying to think about all the lines at once.
There weren't many hard and fast "rules" that I used for V's dialect. The three I could think of are as follows:
It must refer to itself as "this unit"
It must refer to Leah as "this passenger"
It must refer to all AI as "units such as this"
Everything else was sort of developed based on feel and through inspiration that came from ChatGPT.
I'm planning on writing a separate Story Syntax on how exactly you can use ChatGPT and other LLMs in a way that is ethical and makes you more effective while not completely destroying your writing. But to give a specific example for this chapter, I told ChatGPT I was going to give it subtext and direct speech, and have it translate that direct speech into Shakespearean English. I don't think it quite understood what I was looking for as it ended up giving me many choices, which were each comprised of two parts (one that portrayed the subtext and the other, which portrayed the direct speech, both in Shakespearean English), but it was close enough to what I was looking for that I was able to use it.
I also, generally, didn't use the responses from ChatGPT directly. Most frequently, I took the speech and massaged it to fit what I was doing with V. In other words, I cut out the "thee" and "thou" and "thine" and used more modern English for those. But it did give me useful starting points, and sparked ideas that I was then able to incorporate within the story. Using an AI to generate dialogue for an AI seemed like a fitting thing to do.
V's full name (Viaago) sounds vaguely Shakespearean, which I also thought was good, and means lazy or idle in Spanish, which I thought was a bit ironic for an AI whose job is to take care of a whole ship. I've been very excited to introduce V as I think its arc is going to contrast pretty strongly with Leah's. V's pronouns will be difficult for me to use, though. I am non-binary and use they/them pronouns, but I find the "it/its" pronouns dehumanizing, even though there are people in the community who prefer it/its. Oh well. Part of writing is challenging your own assumptions and using your writing to really breakdown and interrogate yourself (on display for the world). It'll be interesting as I do that from Leah's perspective, I think.
I've never had a concussion before, so writing about Leah's concussion was a little tough. I know that you aren't supposed to go to sleep, that people generally feel nauseous, and something to do with bright lights. But as a result of not knowing anything about the medical field, I decided to text my cousin, Heather who is in nursing school, and ask her what a concussion is like. She helped me figure out the generic symptoms that I was then able to incorporate into this story (such as the sensitivity to light, irritability, and confusion). I think I ended up doing a pretty decent job of describing someone trying to deal with a concussion while also trying to deal with the fact that they have an AI in their house they hadn't expected.
While my main character is disabled as well, I am not and my partner is not disabled quite to the extent that Leah is. So I wasn't quite sure how people who couldn’t move their legs get in (and out of) pants. Luckily, I was able to find a YouTube video by Empowered Para that described how to put on pant, which I then used in reverse. I'm revealing the extent of her disability in drips and drabs. When I was originally writing the pilot, I struggled with deciding whether or not Leah had always been unable to move her legs, specifically with the following line:
She felt she was sixteen again, sitting outside her girlfriends house, about to meet the parents
This did establish her as bisexual or, at least, it did to me.1 I strongly considered when writing it, however, to change it to "standing outside her girlfriends house", which would imply her lack of disability in the past. I chose not to do this because of a lack of representation. Most people in media who are disabled are frequently portrayed as being able-bodied at some point in the past, which then changes due to an accident or something. It felt a bit like a cop-out to do the same thing for Leah.
However, I began to explore her past (at least in my own brainstorming) and I came up with some interesting ideas about where lack of mobility actually came from, and some interesting parallels with my partner's disability. This, again, raised a question though: should I go back to Leah's "start"?
Creating a second start for Rainbow Station felt a bit like cheating to me, at the very least because I'd already created a compelling beginning. Making another chapter that created a secondary start felt like undercutting the very idea of Pilot Season; the audience wouldn't be getting the story they were voting for. This would require changing the structure of the novel, which I think would disrupt the pacing.
My favorite structure for a story is the one that Ursula K. Le Guin uses in her fantastic book the Dispossessed which flashes back and forth between the main character at the beginning of his life and roughly halfway through his life. But that book also deals a lot with physics (specifically the physics of time), so this unique structure kind of made sense. And Ms. Le Guin had the option of writing both full storylines and then alternating them, rather than forcing herself to release the story a chapter at a time every two weeks.2
Instead, I've created a backstory for Leah that I will be letting out in drips and drabs, rather than using flashbacks to when she was able bodied. The majority of her backstory will be revealed in the next chapter (I think) as she continues her conversations with V.
I also mentioned in the previous Writer's Diary that I was worried about coziness in Troubleshooting and boy was I worried about it even more in this chapter! This one is pretty brutal. Leah has to struggle with a concussion and a sudden return of a single gee of force, so she vomits, drags herself down the length of the ship, all with a pounding headache and a lot of confusion.
I was worried about this until I wrote the final scene, where Leah is sitting at the metal table at the mess and staring out at the Izra-rise, and her realization that she had water on her the whole time when she was complaining of thirst. This realization was something that came to me in the moment, but fit perfectly into the story, and her reaction to it was what made me, at least, feel cozy. That sudden hysterical laughter which is a more common than not reaction to ridiculous hardship.
I've been having some plumbing issues at my house recently. After a long, harrowing day where a toilet backed up on me and I had to try and stick my whole arm down the toilet to fix it, drenching my shirt, pants, and sweater in raw sewage, one more thing went wrong (I don't remember what) and I started to laugh. Because in the ridiculousness of that moment there was nothing left to do but laugh at how badly everything went. I took that energy and put it into Leah to hopefully remind people of a way to respond to the world around them that might, just might, make them feel better.
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Girlfriend could just mean "girl" + "friend", although it doesn't (at least not to me).
This is the first time I've felt a bit of a downside by writing this project in a serialized fashion. So far the pros FAR outweigh the cons, but it is interesting to note.