Karen Collum">Australian Children's Author

It may sound strange, but up until my first Year of the Edit workshop, I had no idea that the novel I’d written was science fiction. Sure, it revolves around the ethical dilemma (from a Christian perspective) of what might happen in the future if geneticists push the boundaries too far, but all that is over and done with in the first few chapters. The rest of the book deals with the repercussions of crossing those boundaries and focuses heavily on the personal and spiritual journeys or two men. I was somewhat taken aback when the workshop group and my tutor, Kim Wilkins, stated it was clearly science fiction. I almost argued with them! But of course, they are right. This week I discovered another element of my story that is common in science fiction – time travel. The only problem was, the time travel in my novel was entirely unintentional.

I’ve been working with the scene map I created for my homework in Workshop 1 and I can’t believe how useful it has been. My novel is almost unrecognisable from just a month ago. Scenes have been reclustered around POV characters to provide a smoother read, chapters have been strategically ordered to provide a commentary of events from various characters and leave people hanging at the end of a chapter whenever possible, and the overall flow of the book has been improved. I’ve also gone through and added a comment next to scenes that needed work – and there were many. This week my goal was to rewrite all those scenes and I’m glad to say, that with a few early mornings, I’ve achieved my goal. (Remind me NEVER to head-hop again!) Then came to next step – working out a timeline of events.

Perhaps I should have done this right at the beginning. My novel was planned using the Snowflake Method so I had a pretty good idea of the major plot points although there were still some surprises along the way. I had a general feel for the time frame but up until yesterday, I hadn’t sat down and actually worked out what happened when. Enter the unintentional time travel. It turns out I had many of my chapters out of chronological order and although time travel is often an element of science fiction, it actually doesn’t belong in my book.

The two main characters are on separate journeys, both geographically and metaphorically speaking, and I had to work out exactly what date they arrived and left each place, before ending up in the same location towards the end of the book. The book finishes on Christmas Day, so I started at the end and worked backwards. It was surprisingly mind-taxing to have to work out how long it would take to ride a horse or walk a long distance (the catastrophic event rendered all modern technology unusable). I googled lots of questions and gradually found the answers I was seeking. Once I’d done the figures, I added an extra column to my scene map and noted the date each of my scenes took place. This was such a fantastic exercise. It gave me a perspective of my book I hadn’t had thus far.

In all, my book takes place over a seven month period, although there is a time of calm in the middle that is conveniently skipped over. No-one wants to read the boring bits, right? The real action centres around the six weeks after the catastrophic event at the beginning of the book and the six weeks before the climax of the book at the end. It was great to see where my characters were in relation to one another, and once again I’ve been able to shift chapters around to create an authentic flow.

My next Year of the Edit workshop is on Sunday and I can’t wait. I really feel like I’ve done everything I can to my novel with the knowledge I have thus far. I’m going to take myself to my local Harvey Norman and print out a brand new version of my novel to work on. Now that I’ve got someone leading me through the editing process it’s not nearly as painful as I thought. In fact, don’t tell anyone, but I’m actually starting to enjoy it. Just as surprising is the fact I’ve written a contemporary Christian science-fiction novel. Who’da thunk?!