wherein Liz starts with space battles and somehow ends up with racial diversity and gender balances

[edenfalling]

I am back to picking away at the damn space battle in "Intervention." Hegev has brought up the mineral mcguffin issue when Jayavanti made the perfectly logical objections about, you know, there being a plague and no reason to tell the pirates it's in the process of being cured and probably not cross-species transmissible anyway. Hegev is now

Comments

[askerian]

Hehe. ^^ I love the way you reason out that stuff. The way you approach character building is interesting.

I tried to do the same thing about the number of important women for my mermaids in space plot, but I have to admit my default mode tends to be "so he's like that" and then I pause, look back, and aw hell three quarters of the characters are male. Okay, genderbending time. It's frustrating to have bought into "this character is an astrogater, this other character is a space pirate, this other, other character is a girl."

I've got a lot of characters who are varying shades of brown from a dozen mixed background as well but since it's so far into the future as well, I get scared that either people will totally miss the color indicators and assume whiteness, or that they'll be all "those characters are only decoratively black/hindi/arab, they're written like ethnically white people in exotic skin!" It's kind of daunting.

[edenfalling]

I have found that if I start out by writing up full character descriptions or anything of that sort, at least 60% and sometimes as much as 85% of the information will be proved wrong as I actually write the story. So I tend to pin three to five "signature" traits/qualities/quirks down and get to know the people better as I write. With some stories, those points are more plot-centric than others.

For example, in "Intervention" most of the characters are not just doctors, but rather low-paid doctors for the Red Cross who spend up to a year at a time out on deep space missions. That right there says a lot about them. And I had a pre-determined plot that involved a pirate fleet with a lone ship doing a desperate last stand thing (as per valles_uf's prompt), so I need some people who are both willing and able to get into that situation

[vehrec]

Wish I'd thought this up sooner, but here's some food for thought. This ship has a tiny crew, not a lot of crew to spread out jobs among and have redundant members, yes? It's like a modern supertanker, big but automated to hell and back, and there's not particularly much to DO between point A and point B but monitor the systems and keep from falling asleep at the wheel. However, with such a small number of people, you can't afford to have any job that is critical going undone.

The solution, in my opinion, would be to cross-train each and every crew member, maybe on multiple subjects. So a nurse could also have a few other jobs on the side, things that aren't part of the normal skill set, but do cover things like damage control or piloting. Or maybe, in the case of someone who's done a tour of duty on the Klingon border, basic starship evasion and Electronic warfare.

[edenfalling]

Ah! Yes, fair point; Hegev cannot be doing all the monitoring and repairs on her own; she has to sleep sometimes. Also, I have already shown Jayavanti, Zhi-ren, and Elakwa all being the acting communications officer at various points, plus I have kind of hinted that Zhi-ren and Inez do most of the navigation. It would therefore make perfect sense for Jayavanti to be trained in piloting both the main ship and its shuttlecraft.

This stint is Jayavanti's first real time in space, so she has no actual crisis experience. Hegev, though, might well have been doing something potentially dangerous before she decided to work on Red Cross ships for a while. *ponders options*