What is it like to Co-Write a science fiction series?
An intro to the series
The Shattered Stars is the tale of The Burning Apollo. Similar to the Enterprise in Star Trek, their job is to explore new planets as a member of a large imperial power. But unlike the Star Trek, their federated colonies, which were once held together by all-powerful AIs that mysteriously vanished, are a collapsed shadow of their former self. Humans had long since spread to distant corners of the galaxy, altering themselves through bio-engineering to be better suited to whatever planets they might have landed on. But after the calamity, the disparate fragments of humanity were separated; planets lost touch with each other for hundreds of years, and sometimes forgot how the humans who lived there had arrived.
Now, in what was once the center of an empire, a few of the federated planets are attempting to put their empire back together. They’ve constructed a fleet using what remains of ancient technology, crewed by outcasts and criminals and, in general, whoever is good enough for the job. The Burning Apollo is one of those ships, and when the series starts they’ve been sent to the frontier—a disparate corner, once a part of the federation, which is so far away it takes a lifetime at near lightspeed to arrive there.
The Shattered Stars is the story of the Burning Apollo’s adventures on the frontier as they attempt to re-unite the scattered colonies of humanity and discover what happens to the ones went silent. But it’s been a long time, and there are new powers on the frontier—one that don’t appreciate the Burning Apollo being there. And that’s only one of many challenges they’ll be facing in their adventures.
About KE WOLFE
KE Wolfe is actually two writers—Kyle Muntz and e rathke. We’ve been friends for over a decade after meeting through a shared publisher, and for most of that time we’ve kept a conversation about books, writing, and life going on Skype. Somewhere in that process, our writing seems to have evolved in parallel. We already knew that we shared an obsession with character, weirdness, and a certain sense of how storytelling should work. But it was only in 2022 that we began actually writing stories together, and ever since we’ve been astounded and happy with the process.
But what does co-writing a science fiction series actually look like? Because of the episodic format of The Shattered Stars, each episode is somewhere between 100 and 150 pages. So far we’ve written 7 episodes, bringing the series to about 900 pages total, but the series is just getting started. Currently we’ve got plans for dozens of episodes stretching years in the future, and the best part is we can’t wait, because the writing process is so fun we actually look forward to it.
The process of actually writing each episode is both simple and intense—and so far, each of them has followed nearly the same structure. In general, Eddy (who lives in Minneapolis) starts each episode, aiming for 3000 words or more in his first session. Afterwards, he’ll pass the seed of the opening to Kyle—who lives in China—who will also aim for 3,000 words or more.
Generally we do this every day in a row (usually 3 to 5 days) until the episode is complete. The process is exhilarating, stressful, shocking, and surprising—not to mention rewarding, since the pages build up so quickly. Occasionally it’s almost like watching a TV show as the story just seems to write itself. Most of all, we’ve noticed that even though we enter each episode with exhaustive notes, the resulting text is always a surprise. Somehow, though the other person doesn’t actually do what we wanted them to, the actual story is always somehow better than we expected. The text tends to twist, go off in surprising directions, and then (usually) get to exactly where we wanted it to be—just with a few surprises along the way.
We’re especially fond of this method because it allows us to produce a first draft quickly. After that, though, comes the longer, more laborious process of editing. First comes a more rigorous content of the dialogue or certain scenes, usually done by Eddy. Next, Kyle tends to make multiple passes filling in places where he fills descriptions are missing and, in particular, smoothing out discrepancies in our individual style. That last part, though, is much easier than you might imagine. For whatever reason, it seems our styles just flow together—though what’s especially fascinating is how our individual strengths as writers seem to compliment each other.
E has a faster-paced, plainer, dialogue heavy style, whereas Kyle is typically more cerebral and deliberate, with heavier descriptive passages—and we’ve found, remarkably, that The Shattered Stars actually balances out deficiencies in our own styles. This was something we had never imagined before starting the series, but we’ve been very happy with this process as it’s actually allowing us to produce better work than we could do by ourselves, with the shared benefits of two very weird minds combining their creativity. (Though, if anyone is curious, the moment-to-moment style of the series generally hews closer to Eddy’s work, particularly his episodic fantasy series Howl, whereas Kyle’s novels such as The Pain Eater have a stronger connection to realism and literary fiction.)
We’re currently taking a break over the autumn, but we’ve only got one more episode to write until season 2 is finished. The best thing is we’re so excited to start again that it’s almost a bummer life has been standing in the way. The writing process for The Shattered Stars is tiring and stressful, but it’s also exciting and some of the most fun writing we’ve ever had, and for anyone interested in the series we hope you enjoy checking it out!
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