h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's really very obvious I would have thought. If it's unkillable, you just have to destroy it instead. Or you could banish it, or you could cause it to never have existed using a terribly complicated temporal maniuplation device, a spell or a small black box you can get by mail order from FREEPOST The Ministry of Evil, enclosing twenty-six pence for the box, four hundred and twelve Ningis for the instruction manual and eighty-seven billion, twelve hundred and forty-two Deutschmarks for the postage, packing and insurance.

Or not...

Urm, well, I'd actually decided on the banishing - it seemed the easiest

<BB<

Yes, and it presents the opportunity for lots of very difficult spells, people dying trying to cast them, fantastic light shows, whole castles getting sucked in with the demon, the sacrifice of a beautiful virgin maid... or several...

I'm getting a bit silly now. Perhaps I should go to bed.

Hmm - I'm glad you're getting really involved in this - but mine wasn't quite that type of tale. Perhaps you should try writing your own? I think you'd enjoy it! Although, perhaps a little too much...

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Well I don't know what kind of tale you're writing! And I do write my own - sometimes. Got a big story about half-done at the moment, but that'll take months and months to finish. I'm re-writing the first chapters at the moment, and it's not easy... doing things interestingly but trying not to contradict too much of what comes after is hard. Although in fact most of the plot of the first part is changing because it was a bit contrived before... now we have traitors, defectors and vanishing spaceships to provide some kind of explanation for the enormous war they find themselves embroiled in by the end of part one.

Arcadia could be described as being a Miltonic Fantasy poem about Heaven, Death, Mortality and Perfection, with side-effects of Infinity, Eternity, Heart and Purity, if that makes it any clearer
So, what is the title of this Big Story of yours?

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Well at the moment it's a story that consists of Part One, Part Two and Part Three, but none of Part Three has been written yet. We're attempting to make Part One and Part Two good before we do that.

Ah - a cunning plan.
I wonder how many stories have been called simply "Part One", "Part Two" and "Part Three". It would be interesting to know...

<BB<

Well they're just working titles... provisionally we're calling them "The Dusk", "The Dark" and "The Dawn", but I think "The Dawn" is a bit too optimistic a name for Part Three...

Ah...
...I notice the "we're" - how many people are involved?

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Me and another Researcher named Zem42.

Ah... So, who's doing all the work?

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Neither of us at the moment. He's doing his GCSEs and I'm doing my end-of-year exams and absolutely piles of other stuff. I write a chapter or two now and then though. Currently we're reworking parts One and Two to be better and more consistent (and changing some of the plot) before we start on Part Three, which is the one with even more violence, dry sarcasm and not-so-subtly-disguised references to the three-letter s-word, although how two nonhumans from different sides of the galaxy intend to do it I have no idea...

Ah... So, you are stuck in the re-writing cycle... Is it true that if you tag at one thread, you have to change everything?
I tend to write to a three stage plan:
1.) Finish.
2.) Polish.
3.) Publish.
although sadly I've not really done much about stage 3 so far... But it feels better to finish something before taking it to peices, unless something is seriously flawed in it.

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Yes, well, when the story is in serious need of an overhaul, it's a bit difficult to do 1 in the first place...

I can understand that...
How did this happen? Conflict of vision?

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Change of mind, and a realisation that parts of the plot were a bit thin. We had this war, but no buildup, no reason for it beyond the machinations of two characters, which hadn't been revealed at that point anyway, and even with their scheming it still started too fast. Now we've got preliminary attacks, ships vanishing, fleets gathering, and then three of the main characters get caught in the middle of a planet being invaded. What fun!

Ah - I see. Sounds a lot more dramatic. Is there much dialogue involved? Just curious. I've always found it difficult to try and deal with galaxy-wide war and things on a personal basis in the same story.
Just wondering how you deal with it.

<BB<

It's difficult. Very difficult. We focus more on the characters than the war as a whole, although we do have some diversions to remind the hypothetical readers that there's still a war going on... there's an account of one of the first battles (which the nice people lose quite spectacularly) and a couple of principal characters get stuck in a prison camp on the homeworld of one of the nice races, which has been captured by the nasty people. That's unpleasant - Zem's writing that part. He seems to be very good at unpleasant... I think he gets it from thinking about exams

As for the actual personal stuff, we have a budding romance, some flirting, feuds, blind stupidity... giving characters depth, even the incidental ones, is what I want to do, but it's not easy at all. Nigh on impossible really...

To kill an unkillable demon, give birth to it.