In September of 2020 my story, “The Flight of the Brolga” finally found a home. The story is about a young ecologist and rock climber, Dean Maitland, and his attempts to find meaning in life after suffering a catastrophic accident. The story begins with Dean’s fall from an empty sky to his death in the Kakadu wilderness of Northern Australia, wearing a wing-suit; the subsequent plot describes how this curious and tragic event came to pass.

It had made the rounds of my friends, who all said they loved it. After that it started kicking around the slush piles of numerous magazines, and even made it to the semi-final list of The Writers of the Future, a prestigious contest for new writers of science fiction. Again, the editors all had words of praise but somehow it was not quite right for their particular magazine at that particular time.

This article describes the genesis and development of the story and how it finally found a home in Scot Noel's DreamForge. As such it will necessarily contain details about the plot of that story— i.e. spoilers.  READ THE STORY first and then, if you really like to get into the nuts and bolts of the author's changes between first and final draft, you can see the Line Edits as well. (The line edits feature is available only to paid subscribers and supporters.)

Like many of my stories, this one was born while kayaking. Many of my ideas come when I am doing something physical and rhythmic, such as cycling or running, swimming or kayaking. A lot of people find those kinds of activities boring but I enjoy the almost trance-like state that they induce— like meditation but without the years of effort required to master that. Kayaking on flat water is especially conducive since it does not even have the worry of traffic and road conditions, or avoiding head on collisions with other lap swimmers in the same lane.

A group of us were on Corio Bay, which is an off-shoot of Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne in Australia. The day had been calm when we set out from Geelong and headed to the far side of the bay for lunch. But on the way back, the winds picked up and we were suddenly aware of how far we had come that morning. And my wife and I were both in river kayaks, with broad cross-sections and minimal draft— only one step up from taking to the water in a bathtub. 

Our strongest paddler, Peter, had come better prepared and was in his sea kayak, and he had a tow rope. After some discussion he attached it to my wife’s kayak and we continued our journey to the far shore, with myself in the rear of the group, pushing into the wind. So, there was nothing to do but turn off my brain, lest it complain about the situation we had found ourselves in. I put my body into auto-pilot mode and simply paddled.

My mind turned to the water around us: not open ocean but a sizeable body of water. And below the choppy surface I imagined I could sense an entire ecology, with creatures oblivious to us struggling on the surface. I saw a similar self-contained ecology on the distant shore. And then I looked up and thought “Why not?” And that is the beginning of what I would come to think of as my “aero-ecology” — a full and self-contained world in the sky, unknown to humans.

I immediately liked the idea, and started embellishing it. I knew there were numerous instances of spiders found thousands of meters in the air, using a thin filament for buoyancy. And what could they be doing up there if not hunting for even smaller prey; wherever there is food, nature will find a way to harvest it by some predator.

So, I had an idea, a concept, an image. But it was a long way from being a story. It might make an interesting article in some speculative science magazine, if there were such a genre. I know a lot of science fiction has often been little more than science speculation dressed up with characters and a minimal plot. Personally, I think that an entire genre of speculative scientific articles, without the encumbrance of character and plot, would be very interesting. But for now, there is not much of a market for that sort of article.

That was as far as I went that day. But a story needs people, and on subsequent exercise excursions I started to think about how to get someone up into my aero-ecology. I dismissed the obvious methods such as balloons and planes— not much fun there. But I remembered a terrific music video clip that I had seen and loved – a group called Rudimental, with Emeli Sandé singing vocals on a song called “Free.” You may have seen it— it has had almost 60 million views. If not, I urge to have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDPW_g2AhAU. 

The video is about wing-suit flying and features Jokke Sommer, who is described as an “extreme athlete”, and it is spine-tingling. I watched it again and knew that this was now the basis of the story. But there were certain issues, such as the fact that the longest wing-suit flight by a human was less than ten minutes— not enough for the story I was imagining.

The next step was to construct a character who could do everything that Jokke Sommer did in the video, but do it for days on end— a man who can live permanently in my aero-ecology, just as humans have learned to live in almost every environment on the planet.

The elements of the story developed quickly after that. I had toyed with the idea of setting the story around Corio Bay. But I realized that would never work: the area is heavily populated. Surely someone would notice a complete ecology a few thousand meters up. And the weather around Melbourne is not exactly conducive to permanent living in the sky. 

But I remembered a trip to Kakadu in the Northern Territory some years ago. It is extremely remote; there might even be areas not yet explored. And it had that ring of exotic otherness —the Jules Verne element— which is quite difficult to find anywhere these days. And someone had told me that the winds in the Territory during winter, when a large high-pressure area settles over central Australia, are some of the most consistent on the planet. Perfect, I thought. Never mind the cyclones in the summer— I would cross that bridge later.

Now, with the locale settled, it was relatively easy to construct the characters. The main character would be an “extreme athlete” who was perfectly at home in the outdoors in the Northern Territory. But he would be able to fly, not just for ten minutes, but for days at a time. To make that at least a semi-realistic possibility, he would have to lose a lot of body mass— specifically his legs, which are less important in wing-suit flying than arms (not that I have ever flown, and probably never will now that I am 70 years old. But I am a writer— when all else fails, I use my imagination.)

Putting that together with the Kakadu locale, I soon had my main character: an ecologist and a rock climber, comfortable in the outdoors, with superb upper body strength and a reason to be out in the wilderness. There are no mountains in the Northern Territory but there plenty of escarpments, and rock climbers are among the fittest athletes in the world. And an ecologist would have reason to be out in the bush, and a catastrophic car accident in the wet season would be more than plausible.

Notice that I say “construct,” since that is the way that my mind works. Hopefully the final result is anything but obviously “constructed,” and yes, I wish I could write a whole and organic character without having to work at “constructing” that person. But my mind does not work that way, and I venture that most writers would have to do the same.

That settled the first part of the story: the speculative element, the setting, the main character and his problem. The next question was the structure of the story. I personally find that “I did something wonderful” stories told in the first person are extremely grating. So, this would be told from an external point of view— the “Doctor Watson” method.

Yes, it is a cliché, but only because it works so well and has therefore been used so often. Doctor Watson is the ideal vehicle to narrate the external action of the Sherlock Holmes stories while still leaving the reader guessing about the internal workings of the great detective’s mind and therefore the true nature of what is taking place. And Watson and Holmes are a perfect fictional complement, with sufficient contrast to highlight the strengths and short-comings of each man: Holmes is brilliant but moody and unstable, while Watson is not exactly stupid but stolid and reliable without ever rising to great heights— the perfect everyman.

So, I needed my own everyman, someone to relate the story to the reader: a fellow ecologist and climber, but one who responds to the shared tragedy of the car accident, not with the unquenchable thirst for life that Dean exhibits, but with a subdued acceptance of the fate that has befallen the two men. Dean was never going to accept his fate without fighting back but Trevor Siddons might.

I also knew that I needed a bit of a “kicker” near the end— something unexpected but obvious in retrospect. I decided that there would be another person already up there; someone already flying would make it much more believable that Dean could also live in the air. Of course, it would have to be someone who was also uniquely adapted to permanent life in the air and who had an equally good reason for doing so. And as quickly as the thoughts came to me, Meilin was born.

The title is the first thing that any reader will see when they pick up your story and if that person, whether it is a slush pile reader or an editor or the final paying customer, does not like it, all is lost. Titles often don’t make themselves obvious until well into the writing of a story, and sometimes even after a story is written they still prove elusive. But every story needs a title, and it better be a good one.

I have never been a fan of long titles that sound poetic but have little to do with the actual story. For this story, something related to flying seemed the obvious choice. So the first component of the title: “Flight.” It implies movement, action, something out of the ordinary since very few people fly regularly. But who or what is flying?

Many writing books advise never to use a person’s name or a made-up word in the title: the reader won’t know what you are talking about and therefore won’t care. (Never mind obvious counter-examples from “Romeo and Juliet” to “The Hobbit.”) In this case, at about the half-way point of the story, I introduced the brolgas, the large cranes of the Australian tropics, and I decided that would be a possible choice. The word would be unfamiliar to most people, but it is a real word and it might pique the reader’s curiosity. And it was directly relevant both as an event in the story and thematically.

The next most important element of a story is the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph. It should grab the reader and never let go. This sentence came to me as I started to write: “You may have heard that they found Dean Maitland’s body.” And I was very proud of it. It introduces the main character and implies that he is dead. The reader does not know who this Dean person is but at least there is a mystery. And the rest of the paragraph gives a lot of quick background— he fell out of a clear blue sky, still wearing his wing-suit. Hopefully that is enough of a tease to keep anyone reading for a bit longer.

This sentence also makes it clear that this story has a “frame,” a device that surrounds the main action. By giving away the ultimate fate of the main character in the first sentence, it sets the reader’s expectations: this will not be a “what happened” story, but rather a “why did it happen” story, a slow burn as mysteries are uncovered. Hopefully, those mysteries are enough to hide that fact that nothing really “dramatic,” in the sense of rapid action, happens for most of the story.

Finally, the first word “You” sets the narrative tone. This is a tale told by an old friend over a couple of beers in a pub, as befits a story set in Australia. Hopefully, it will be all the more plausible because of that informality.

If the first sentence is the most important one, the last sentence is a close second. Tolstoy said, “My instinct tells me that at the end of a story or a novel I must artfully concentrate for the reader an impression of the entire work.” He might also have added that, being the last sentence of the current story, it may be the first thing an editor remembers when he decides whether it is worth reading your next submission, a very important consideration for any writer who is not Leo Tolstoy.

There are two main types of endings. On the one hand, there is the O. Henry story with a twist in the tale’s tail. This type of story has gone out of fashion but it can be quite powerful when the twist is profound rather than just a verbal trick: have a look at Ambrose Bierce’s "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

Of course, usually the last sentence will be a more gentle summing up, as recommended by Tolstoy. The sentence itself is unlikely to become apparent to the author until well into the writing of the story, and even then it might not come easily. Hemingway said that he wrote 39 different endings for “A Farewell to Arms” (they are all in the Hemingway Library edition released in 2012). So, the only advice is to keep at it. Hopefully, my story’s ending sums up the main character’s attitude toward life even under the most difficult of circumstances, and will linger in the reader’s mind: “Why walk when you can fly?”

This was at least three months after the original idea. But there was no hurry. I am firm believer in Stephen King’s dictum (contrary to almost any other writing advice that I have read) to NEVER carry a notepad. If an idea is any good, it will stick with you and keep rising to the top of your consciousness. If it does not, if it fades away and disappears, maybe it wasn’t an idea worth spending time pursuing.

I started writing. This was going to be a “gentle” story with no huge conflicts, internal or external, to propel it. So, I decided the best way to retain a reader’s interest through what was going to be a long slow-burn of revelations would be to start with the ending— something incongruous and intriguing that would (hopefully) carry the reader through the slow bits.

After that it flowed easily; I knew what had to happen to get the characters to that ending and it was just a matter of taking the images from my mind’s theatre onto the page. The only difficulty was relating some facts that my narrator could not know at the time, and the concept of extracts from Dean’s journal was born. It is a bit of cheat and jars my mathematician’s sense of the purity of a single point of view throughout, but it seems to work and be accepted by most readers.

This might be a good time to talk about believability, or verisimilitude as the lit courses like to call it. In science fiction (as opposed to fantasy or magical realism) the author generally only gets one or two speculative elements. And I believe that for true SCIENCE fiction, the other aspects must be hyper-believable so that the reader will accept the speculative additions. 

With that in mind, I wrote lengthy descriptions of various elements of the story:
      *  The car accident that precipitated the whole thing (over 2000 words)
      *  The details of the aero-ecology (over 3000 words)
      * The rehabilitation of the characters (1000 words)

The punch line to this is that, even though every editor said they “loved the story,” none wanted to take it. “Too long,” they said. And though they didn’t say it, they probably meant “Too many boring bits.” 

And they were right. In my mind, this was still a story about the ecology up in the sky. That was the genesis of the story and to me it was the most interesting part. But to a reader, that was almost incidental; the aero-ecology might have been the GENESIS of the story but its CORE was now the way my two main characters faced the massive challenge that life had thrown at them. And for that, those long sections that I thought added verisimilitude were no longer necessary.

Of course, any writer, especially a relative beginner, rarely sees things that way. But Scot Noel (bless his heart) was the only editor to suggest that I try editing it, the only one who was willing to spend time working with a new and unproven writer on a story that might never make it. And he asked that I cut it not just a little but a LOT! 

I was getting desperate to see this story, which I knew was pretty good, into print. And so I took the version I sent to Dreamforge, at over 13000 words, and I started cutting. 

And yes, it hurt. It really HURT. But if this precious child of mine was ever going to see the full light of day, I knew it had to be done. The final version is about 8500 words— still a large investment in both money and “real estate” for a magazine to make in a new author. But Scot Noel did publish it and I am forever grateful.

Before leaving the question of believability, there is one other point I would like to make, and the best way to approach it might be to ask: What kind of toilet paper does Mr. Spock use? Does he need toilet paper at all, or is he somehow differently configured? We know a lot about Mr. Spock’s personality, his background and how he reacts in a crisis. But neither Gene Roddenberry nor any of the subsequent writers ever gave us this detail about him, even though it presumably comes up every day in Spock’s fictional life.

The reason I mention this is because it bears directly on the question of believability. I spent a lot of time contemplating just how much verisimilitude is too much. In particular I wondered if I should go into the full details about Dean’s life in the air. Or would the whimsical nature of the story carry the reader past the need to know those mundane details. 

I did leave in explanations about Dean’s life regarding food and water and sleep. I cut most of the others. But I couldn’t resist leaving in the front and rear flaps that Dean fashions into his suit for you-know-what kind of activity. Is that necessary? Does it add to the believability of the story? Or does it suddenly jerk the reader out of the whimsical haze that envelops the rest of the story with a dose of unneeded reality? You tell me.

I think it is important to mention the place of conflict in this story. Every text about writing will tell you that you need conflict, and I tried to practice that for a long time. But it rarely worked. There are some great stories that have true conflict between two humans, or a human and a society or even a human and nature. But my experience is that there are vastly more stories where the conflict is labored and artificial— something put there as a kind of literary Click-Bait for the editor and publisher, who think the readers need it.

Instead, in this story I deliberately chose not to have conflict in the normal sense of the word. My main characters are confronted with an awful life accident. But this is not something that can be fought. Instead, they must decide how to accommodate themselves to it and make the best of their new situation. Some might call this “conflict” but to me it is simply learning to live with what life has thrown at you, and to determine what you can and cannot do with that fate.

To me, this ability to differentiate between what you can and cannot change, to determine what is possible and not possible in any situation, is the true beginning of maturity. Our society relentlessly pushes the idea that anyone can do anything— it is the staple of most fiction and the huge self-help market. There are vast amounts of money to be made in telling people what they want to hear. But should that be the limit of an author’s ambition: to merely tell people the stories they want to hear?

It is wonderful to follow dreams that are truly yours and not borrowed or imposed by family or society, and fiction can reflect that. And it is often possible to accomplish much more than we first imagine. But there is a fine line between persistence and futility, and there are tragedies to be written about mistaken judgements made on either side of that line. So, this is a story, not about conflict and overcoming impossible odds, but about accepting the situation and making the best of it. 

Most of all, it is a story about contrast: life before and after the accident, life on the ground and in the air, and most of all the contrast between the main characters’ responses to the challenge that confronts them. 

The story does not even contain the internal conflict that many writing manuals would say is absolutely necessary. I could have made Dean conflicted about whether to stay on the ground like his friend Trevor or take to the air permanently. I could have had him ruminate at length about it, to anguish over it and suffer. But that would have been a lie. Dean was a free spirit— once he had learned to fly, he was NEVER going to simply accept his fate and stay on the ground. So why pretend that he might. 

After all, why walk when you can fly.