Practical logistics

 In the novel I’ve been re-writing I’ve had to invent a whole new world.  And because the story is set on an orbital shipyard, that’s presented me with quite a challenge.

When I wrote the original novel thirty-plus years ago I didn’t put as much detail in about people moving around the shipyard.  But in this rewrite my characters move about there a lot, so I needed to know where they were going.

I described the shipyard in my original manuscript as looking like a massive, multi-levelled, metal snowflake.  I’ve always liked that description, so I decided to keep it for my new novel.

In chapter two I have a character arriving on the dock and making her way to meet with her new employer.  The shipyard has three massive rings tied into a central core.  To get from one ring to another you take a transfer tube into the core, then another transfer tube out to the ring you want.  There are six levels on each ring, so there are lots of elevators moving people between levels.

In my new draft I have one of my characters explaining all that to the newcomer.  And it comes shortly after I’ve sent her on a tour of the new starship she’ll be living in.  The poor woman must’ve been totally overwhelmed by all the information being thrown at her in the space of half an hour.  Certainly the reader was.  The chapter is info-dump central.

I left it as it is until I finished the draft of the novel, which I’ve just done.  So now it’s time to go back and sort out that mess.  The reader does need to know about the layout of the starship, but that information doesn’t need to be imparted as a shown scene.  I can remove all the dialogue between the two characters and just tell the information, describing the ship from her viewpoint.

Then I had the poor woman going on a long journey from one ring to another.  There’s a shorter way to get there, which might make it easier for me to describe how the shipyard looks if she sees it from the outside.  So I shall shorten that journey scene to do that.

The practicalities of logistics have been an issue often in this novel.  I have maps of each of the three rings, with the six levels on each ring.  When I drew up the maps I managed to find a place for most things, but I had to add things as I wrote the manuscript.

I added in the locations of named restaurants where my characters ate.  At the end of the book I have a big ceremony which thousands attend, and I  decided the shipyard’s biggest park was the place to hold that.  Sorting out the practicalities of the logistics has been an interesting challenge.