Author's Notes on: Writing Sleepless vs. Cardinal
Having just hit Mission Log 7 in The Cardinal Directive and with Sleepless's Chapter Three on the way, I wanted to write a short article talking about a few of the similarities and differences on my end between writing them so far.
You don't need to have read anything from either of them to understand this article, and it will be spoiler-free for sake of convenience.
Writing Style
I don't think my main writing style differs all too dramatically between Cardinal and Sleepless. That is to say, the basic structure of how I write doesn't change.
I will say, though, that Sleepless chapters that are written from Margo’s perspective definitely have a very different feel from anything else I'm writing. This is intentional, as Margo is meant to perceive and interact with the world in a very different way from others even in her same story.
While presenting a story that flows logically is still very important, the rules of logic and where I'm able to bend them are different in Margo's segments. Parts of Sleepless that are explored through other characters are meant to feel more grounded and less colorful. Pound for pound, Margo’s entries make use of more personification and symbolism by far. Things are vivid and described in off-beat ways. Things most people don't take notice of are expanded on heavily because many of them are new to her.
Cardinal has also seen some experimentation with being written through other characters’ eyes than our main protagonist, Alison. Thus far though, they lack the stark contrast that Margo shares with her other narrators. It’s possible that as I find the “voices” of each character, this may grow and change, but as it currently stands the differences are minimal at best regardless of who is speaking.
Planning
Writing Cardinal vs. Writing Sleepless can be an entirely different ballpark at times just due to how each is planned out. My original intention was for Cardinal to be a series of small vignettes, where each Mission Log dealt with, well, a single mission. This isn't exactly what happened. I ended up going for a more plot-oriented story that thus far hasn’t lent itself all that well to my original plan.
As the project progresses we may see more entries like that, but it felt necessary to take a longer, more plot-heavy setup to get all the characters and plot elements established before I made that shift.
Cardinal’s planning has always been looser than Sleepless’s. Sleepless’s main advantage is that it has an outline, which was eventually settled on after over a year of planning. Cardinal has no such thing. I started out with three or four logs planned, and currently, at the beginning of the week, I sit down and write a rough outline, then just start writing and see where it takes me.
There are some things that I know about Cardinal’s story. I know where I want “season one” to end and subsequently where I want “season two” to begin, but how exactly the story gets there is still under development. Every week I write for Cardinal, I get a little closer to knowing what I want to do.
Sleepless meanwhile has an outline that I’m already pretty happy with. There’s some points that I’m a bit shakier on, but all in all how the story goes and how it gets there is pretty much done — it just needs to be written down. However, I still surprise myself every now and then and have to edit things just a bit.
Chapter Two ended in a different way than I had written down in my notes — one that I liked a lot more. However, it has meant that I had to change the plans for how I wanted Chapter Three to go. Much of the content is the same, but the setting and tone have been modified to fit better with the chapters preceding it. Notably, I like the revised Chapter Three better than the one I had planned for originally.
That’s the nice thing about having an outline but still keeping your ad-libbing skills sharp. Writing for Cardinal keeps me on my toes with my plot and thinking quickly to keep everything still relevant and in line with what I’ve established before, and I’m able to transfer that skill to Sleepless when I can sense that I need to deviate from the plan.
Pacing
The difference in pacing has been very interesting between the two, and I can only imagine that they’re written the way they are because I view Sleepless as a book and Cardinal as a series. Cardinal doesn’t have a set schedule for when it needs to reach any specific plot point, so there are times when the pacing is significantly faster or slower than I would normally do for a book like Sleepless.
I don’t have a number in mind for when we reach the end of the “season”, so if I feel like writing a fast-paced entry or a slow-paced entry, it’s not that big of a deal.
I expect to see this trend continue, especially if we start getting into entries that read like stand-alone adventures, where a single mission log contains a single mission.
Sleepless meanwhile is meant to be read as a book and follows a fairly standard outline when it comes to its pacing. There are certainly parts that go faster or slower than others, but I’m more rigid when it comes to sticking to my outline and what kind of pacing I had in mind.
There are more than a few differences between writing Sleepless and Cardinal, and I think it’s really helped me start rounding out my experiences as an author and writer to be working on multiple projects at once like this. There’s more that’s different between them I’m sure, but these were the main points that came to mind!
That’s all for me today, catch you all in the next article!