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Warren Ellis writing a new thing

THE WILD STORM always starts as scribbled pages in a notebook. Technically, I've been working on this next block for months, filling a page or two with notes over a glass of wine at lunch. At the end of the TWS bible I describe each of the four volumes of the book in three lines. That's the guide - the points I have to hit for the entire Wildstorm revival project to work as a whole. Everything else is mutable. Like writing a novel - I often only want the spine in front of me, so I can wander around the rest as the mood takes me.

At some point, I open a plain .txt file and just start typing, filling in structural progressions. Which characters do I need to check in with? What needs to be explained? What do they know and what do they need to know? Eventually, I'll find a sequence I want to hear, and I'll start writing dialogue, with just a couple of lines for location and activity. (Where are these characters and what are they doing?) I'll just let them talk. I'll edit and rewrite it later. Just let them talk and see where it goes. Trying to hear their distinct voices. I was in it for several hours om Saturday night, introducing a new character, trying to learn them and who they are as they walked down a corridor in an IO black site in the ninety seconds before their cover is blown. With a parenthesis in the middle reading (fight scene). Action scenes work a different muscle, so I'll leave that for another time.

Warren Ellis, Orbital Operations 28 May 2017