I first became a fan of Scott Westerfeld after I read UGLIES, and when I saw an ARC of ZEROES at BEA this year, I couldn't wait to read it, especially when I found out the other points-of-view were written by Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti. ZEROES will debut September 29, and I've already ordered a truckload for the Sacramento Public Library.
From
Goodreads:
Ethan, aka "Scam," has a way with words. When he opens his mouth, whatever he wants you to hear comes out. But Ethan isn't just a smooth talker. He has a unique ability to say things he doesn't consciously even know. Sometimes the voice helps, but sometimes it hurts - like now, when the voice has lied and has landed Ethan in a massive mess. So now Ethan needs help. And he needs to go to the last people who would ever want to help him - his former group of friends, the self-named "zeros" who also all possess similarly double-edged abilities, and who are all angry at Ethan for their own respective reasons. Brought back together by Scam's latest mischief, they find themselves entangled in an epic, whirlwind adventure packed with as much interpersonal drama as mind-bending action.
Scott, Margo and Deborah were also kind enough to answer some interview questions:
You've described writing as
a social process. How did the three of you come to write together, and how did
you divide the character stories among yourselves?
Margo:
Scott and Deborah got together first through their shared interest in
superpowers and Deb’s enthusiasm for the idea of the television
Writers’ Room. They wanted to write in that kind of team
environment, taking advantage of the conversational, brainstormy, and even
cheerfully competitive parts of their brains. Partly I guess they thought it'd
make the writing more efficient and partly they wanted to enjoy the spectacle
of stories being pushed to their limits by the energy in the room.
But
they realized that two people do not a team make, so they asked me along for
the ride. And it was only at our second meeting or so that Scott suggested that
I should take on two particular characters—and I got so busy thinking about them that I
don’t remember how the other four were divvied
up...
Deb: We came up with all six characters and then Scott said,
'Deb, you take [redacted] and [redacted]'. To which I replied, 'Ace!' (Note
that in Australian, ace means 'why, that's excellent, thank-you very much'.) So
then we started working out the personalities of our character and negotiating
how they would all fit together.
Scott: We outline together, in the same room, arguing how the
story will go. But once the outline is solid, we retreat to our separate houses
(and separate continents, sometimes!) to write the chapters. Everything gets
written out of order this way, so it's all a jumble that has to be put back
together. But that means that each chapter gets to be like its own little story
as well.
It definitely fits
together like complete parts to a whole, and I found it fascinating how the superpowers
increased the more the characters were
around others. How
did this concept develop, and how did it affect the characters and the
development of the plot?
Margo:
That feature of the powers was there pretty much from the beginning as a way to
unify the powers, and make them more varied. Sometimes there just wouldn’t be
enough of a crowd for Flicker to find a pair of eyes, for example, or to make
Anonymous forgettable. And sometimes there’d be way too many people around, and teens with
poor impulse control would suddenly have massive powers to do stupid things
with. It taught the characters about the dangers of their powers, also the
potential, and added good scary and anxious-making possibilities to a lot of
the scenes.
Deb: The social superpowers aspect originally came from
Scott. We were riffing on the idea that people born in the year 2000—supposedly
the year of the great Y2K computer meltdown—would
have very different experiences growing up to what we'd experienced. For a start,
there's the internet, and all the social advantages that presents. Advantages,
and dangers.
Scott: Collaboration is the human superpower. Humans can't
fly on our own, but when tens of thousands of us design aircraft and build
airports and create air-traffic control systems, flying becomes easy. So it
made sense to us that all these superpowers would come from the crowd.
It's sort of like Twitter: if you're alone on it, Twitter's
nothing. With a hundred friends, it makes the Oscars funnier to watch. And with
a million people? You've got the Arab Spring.
So true. It also comes out in characters'
voices--particularly Ethan's. In writing multiple points of view, how were you
able to keep the characters' voices so distinct? Did some voices come more easily
than others?
Margo:
Collaborating meant that we had three distinct writing voices at our disposal
to start with. We definitely wanted the powers to be very distinct from each
other, too, and we wanted to show how each power had formed each character as
they fought to deal with its consequences. That made it pretty obvious where
the voices diverged.
Some
voices did come easier than others. For instance, we spent a lot of energy
early on getting Anon to stop fussing like a nervous grandpa and start being
broodingly romantic instead.
Deb: We're not admitting who wrote which character yet, so
it's hard to comment specifically on this. But in my experience the voices came
relatively easily initially, simply as a result of *thinking* our ways into
each character. How would it *feel* to be Scam, for example? How would it feel
to be Flicker or Crash or Anon?
The funny thing was presenting our initial character sketches
to each other (word sketches, not illustration sketches) and being surprised by
the insights. Like, when I first presented [redacted] to Scott and Margo, they
both agreed the character was kinda [redacted], but in a good way. So I ran
with it, made that character as [redacted] as I could. My other character was
considered to be way more [redacted], which was good news, but turned out to be
way harder to write.
Scott: Oh, Deb. You're such a [redacted].
For me, what makes these characters distinct is the powers
themselves. Scam's voice speaks for him, Flicker sees through others' eyes,
Crash feels technology like it’s
insects in her brain. All of these powers change the way that point of view
works and the way that language works. Our objective was to make the way these
six characters see the world not only different from each other, but also from
any other person the reader has ever met.
You’ve
definitely succeeded. What are some of your current projects? Will there be
future collaborations?
Margo: We’re just
finishing off Book 2 of Zeroes, and expect to be busy with Book 3 until the end
of next year. My solo projects include two fantasy novels and the odd short
story.
We’ll have
to see how we weather the entire trilogy before we know whether we’ll
collaborate again, though we’re kicking along okay together right now.
Collaboration is pretty addictive; solo writing feels very lonely and laborious
by contrast!
Deb:
I'm playing with some solo novel ideas in my spare time, getting thoughts and
research and very rough words down on the page. I've collaborated a few times
on smaller projects and I'd definitely like to collaborate again. It's
occasionally exhausting but more often it's inspiring and stimulating and
invigorating. I recommend it for writers who want to be stretched.
Scott:
On top of Zeroes 2 and 3, I have a graphic novel coming out next year, called Spill Zone. It's about a young
artist who sneaks into an alien visitation site to take photographs. This art
is both illegal and very personal, as both her parents disappeared during the
visitation. Here's more:
For more information on Scott's other books,
click here.
For Margo's other books,
click here.
For Deborah's other stories and novellas,
click here.
