The second episode of Map Makers, "Tongue Tied," went through the most revisions before it reached it's final form. It went through twenty-five drafts whereas I wrote seventeen drafts of the first episode and only eight of the third. Part of the problem is that I really didn't know where the story was going when I started. In one of the earlier drafts, the portion of the story formatted as a stage play and written in iambic pentameter stopped just short of them asking for directions and continued like this
[Author's note: While I respect William Shakespeare--or Christopher Marlow--whoever--for writing their plays in iambic pentameter, I find it quite impractical. Just look at the Iambians: they have been on Iambus for almost eight hundred years, and they are still living like they are in seventeenth century England. Have you ever tried drafting a comprehensive tax code in iambic pentameter let alone a physics textbook? My iambic pentameter is not much better than Bear's, so I confess that I copied Act II from a play I found marked only with the initials C.M. I seem to have lost the third act, so I will continue this story aboard the pirate ship.]
The glowing display of the built-in clock transitioned to 5:00 P.M. As Rusty stood up, Also ran to the door. When Rusty reached the door, it slid open. He followed Also to the galley to eat his supper in silence once again. In the galley, he pulled pickles and mayonnaise from the cooling unit. He was dumping both into the blender when he noticed several sheets of paper that appeared to have been dropped. He flipped a switch, and the blender whirred to life. He stooped to pick up the sheets. After flipping through them for a few seconds, his rushed out of the galley leaving the blender running.
Rusty burst onto the bridge. He ran straight to the control panel and fidgeted with several toggles until the ship’s course appeared on the screen. He stared at in contemplation for a few moments and then flipped through the stack of papers in his hand as if to double check something.
"Who is this C.M. guy anyway and where does he get off writing my character like a selfish jerk?"
The grate in the center of the bridge rattled loudly.
"I guess you're right, Johnson. That's exactly how I have been acting, but I'm going to change that. We've got to get everyone off of this planet by dark, and we do not have much time."
Rusty crawled into Reliable, and opened a hatch in Reliable's bridge. He gathered up body armor, various hand weapons, and grenades. With body armor on...
ACT III. Scene II.
...Rusty ran out the entrance of the pirate ship.
The idea was that Rusty had found the copy of "Tongue Tied"--the story he was a character in--I had lost. He read ahead and discovered "something bad" happened on Iambus after dark. I wasn't even sure what this "something bad" was going to be, but it was probably going to be something to do with space zombies or vampires. Then the story would have continued along the lines of a more or less conventional action plot. I think I was just tired of writing in iambic pentameter.
I really enjoyed the bits on interpersonal relationships about hanging curtains in the pirate ship and such that I had done earlier in the story. There is no shortage of action-packed pulp stories. I decided I wanted to explore the interpersonal relationships between the archetypes found in those action-packed pulps rather than follow the action. Once I decided this, the rest of the story flowed much easier.
