CBSTEVE'S BLOG

cbsteve

Reflections on Writing the Dr. Tam Journals
Thursday, December 6, 2007

Spoliers ahead if you haven't read the all the journals yet.

It's finally finished and I heave a sigh of relief and also feel a little sad. I've been writing the Dr. Tam Journals since August and, other than my Master's thesis, it's the longest I've ever spent on one project. At first it was going to a be just a one shot, with Kaylee finding something about herself, confronting Simon and then the ramifications of that. But then I thought, mmm, why not make it more. But how? The first few chapters just had Kaylee reading and it had the two voices, hers and Simon's, with mine thrown in occasionally as a narrator.

At first I wanted Kaylee to read the whole journal in one night but after two chapters I found that illogical and impractical from a story point of view. If it was just Kaylee reading the journals, which is basically the TV show and movie from Simon's point of view, wouldn't that get tedious after a while? So I started out with a thread of an idea from a comment someone made about how mad Simon would be if he found Kaylee reading it. So that gave me a nice little subplot. And then others kept popping up. Inara leaving, Mal and Inara getting together, Jayne's betrayal, the cargo for Harrow, the Alliance still looking for the Tams, and of course, the big one, Simon, Kaylee, and River leaving Serenity, which a lot a people hated or at least thought was crazy.

By the time I got to chapter ten or so it felt like the secondary stories were taking center stage from the journals themselves so I had to be careful to balance both sides and make them fit together which was not easy at all. I watched every episode before I wrote, took notes on where Simon was and what he was doing, who he interacted with, and what would he know and not know, that we the audience knew but Simon couldn't cause he wasn't there.

Other problems: getting everyone's voice right; thinking on how Simon would view all the events, his reactions to the crew, the ship and this criminal lifestyle; Kaylee's reaction to Jayne's betrayal and Jayne's counter reaction to being discovered; Mal's reaction to Kaylee leaving, and finally how to get them to leave the ship. They were always going to leave the ship and that was my ending I had in mind after the first three chapters.

No angst. Well, not much anyway. No violence, no gun play, not in the present day stories, but with of course a lot in the journal readings. All action contained within the ship for many chapters. So to overcome these plot limitations I got into Kaylee's mind as a mechanic and had her and River do an inspection which was a great way to explain a lot of things and how they worked on the ship. Also the daily routine of the ship had to fit in there somehow, with meals, bedtime, laundry, cleaning dishes, and all that.

Finally, having a logical but not contrived way for them to leave the ship and for that I needed a new character P.T. Beauregard, whose last name I got from a Civil War general, from the south also, like Jubal Early. I think that worked well; least I hope it did.

The epilouge was always going to be the way I've written it and this was my ending in mind for many months now. Not all the details but the basics, a long view of the rest of their lives until Simon's death, funeral, and Kaylee giving the journals to their children. Mal's eulogy came as an after thought and I hope it made someone laugh and maybe also cry a little cause that was the intention.

Anyways, thanks to all the people who read and those who made comments and I'm glad someone out there liked it or got a little pleasure or at least was able to read it without falling asleep. Stay shiny Browncoats everywhere in our verse!

COMMENTS

Thursday, December 6, 2007 7:40 AM

SHAMROCK


*claps* I applaud you, Cbsteve, I really do. You know how to write good stories. I enjoy reading them! I <3 Simon so when I saw the title it was motive enough to read them. Then the story grasped me and I didn't want to stop reading. :)


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