OtherWor(l)ds

Ralph Walker is an architect as well as a writer. I’ve seen some of his top-notch architectural work, but it’s obvious he also knows how to build a story. I was thankful to be able to interview Ralph about process and about his sci-fi novel Rebirth Interrupted, which is currently being submitted for commercial publication.

Victor Sweetser: One of my favorite things about your work is your ability to create richly detailed, exciting and believable worlds. What is your world building process?

Ralph Walker: Thanks Victor. That is kind of you. Most of my stories start with a place before I find the characters. I realize that is the reverse of most writers, but I am an architect first and a writer second. No not figuratively, literally. I think a lot about potential interactions within a place before I start populating it. I like to consider what happens at different times of day, or different days of the year. In my writing I like to visit a place in one situation and come back to it again in a completely different moment.

For me world building is about time. I build a place in my head, a home, a fortress, a colony and move forward and back with the clock and the calendar. What happened before I arrived to tell my story? What might happen after I go? Is the place cold or hot, crowded or desolate, loud or quiet? How do the elements erode or evolve this place over time?

In Rebirth Interrupted the story began when I imagined two young women taking a row boat through someone’s front door to scavenge. After Katrina and the Tsunami and Sandy and so many other coastal disasters I kept projecting forward to settings where nature had fought back and ravaged today’s civilization, kind of kicking over our ant hill. My worlds aren’t dystopic in the traditional sense, they are successful productive places, but there is struggle even in the shallow water.

VS: Your current project, Rebirth Interrupted, features a protagonist who must die in one place in order to be reborn across the stars. That’s part of how futuristic teleportation works in this world you’ve created, and it’s a terribly awesome concept. When the protagonist doesn’t die and there are two Zells, this leads to further complications. With so many setting details to deal with to satisfy the sci-fi setting, how did you also manage to fit in the psychological complications of character?

RW: I came to the idea of rebirth by thinking more about the challenges of deep space travel. The human body is fragile and the idea of hurtling it millions of miles on a firecracker just doesn’t seem right, so I kept thinking there must be another way. Technology is advancing at an incredible rate, and with the advent of 3d printing, the mapping of the genome, cloning and many other technologies I figure it is just a matter of time before we put together all of the pieces. This piece we haven’t figured out is how to capture memories in a visceral way. That is the idea of the Ripple; a device that captures your essence and can transmit / embed it in an authentic way. In my story I think of the Ripple as the second or third generation of this technology. It works brilliantly, but it is still clunky, kind of like a fax machine. The technology is pointing towards ‘beam me up Scotty’ but it isn’t there yet. Given that level of potential glitches I added a few of my own. The critical piece is that you remember your life in reverse, meaning you may know and understand complicated issues from your recent history before you understand the events that led to that moment. It also means that your physical skills and social graces return in the opposite order in which you learned them. The challenges of relearning a life makes for some complicated moments, but I don’t want to say more than that.

VS: What is your preferred workspace for getting work done and why?

RW: I write at home in a personal office. At times I’ve written on the train to and from work (thank you NJ Transit), but that gets pretty choppy. I take notes everywhere, but when I really sit down to write it is at home. I usually take my stack of notecards and post it notes and put them up on the wall in front of me and start picking away at the fragments I picked up along the way. Sometimes it is linear and I can take an idea and stretch it. Other times I am really working in collage, crafting a sentence or two and setting it aside to fit into some future moment or scene. They both work as long as they end up on the page.

VS: Are there any stages in your process–from brainstorming to the final draft–that you’d be willing to share, and which stage would you say is most important?

RW: I have been learning that I am a terrible editor. I can create in whole cloth with a blank page, and bust out moments and scenes and characters, but when I begin to wring them out to get to a better version I struggle mightily. I never realized what authors meant when they talked about bleeding on the page until I really focused on editing.

Since I am really a very young writer (not young mind you, just young as a writer), I don’t know that I am skilled to the point of saying which stage is most important. The process is important. Creating, and writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and reading and sharing and rewriting and rewriting again is important. I guess I would say that rewriting is important, but I am not sure if it is the most important the second or third or twenty seventh time.

VS: If there was only one piece of advice you could share with other writers, what would it be?

RW: Don’t hide your work. Share your stories. I have only ever gotten better as a writer by letting my stories have air.

VS: Along those lines, do you have any advise for juggling other very important things, like family, with writing?

RW: Family comes first. It always does and always will. My kiddos win over my characters every time. That said carve out time to write, every day. Even if it isn’t going well, keep at it. It only gets better.

VS: What can you tell us, that you haven’t already, about Rebirth Interrupted?

RW: This book is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I love writing, and I love complicated stories, but writing an intimate, complicated story about a daughter losing and re-finding each of her parents was harder than I was prepared for. For all of the world building and technology and science fiction fun (of which there is a lot) at its core this book is about a daughter chasing down her father to remind him what it means to be a parent. I hope when it comes out you’ll pick up a copy and check it out.

Victor, thanks so much for the opportunity to talk with you and your audience. You can find out more about me at http://www.ralphwalkerauthor.com or on twitter @RW_Igloo