BEHIND THE MURDER
MY RESEARCH PROCESS
WORLD-BUILDING
I began my research for my setting by checking out different media interpretations of space travel and actual pictures/videos of people in space. With the setting planned, building it meant asking questions like: how does power work? How do doors work? How does any of this work?
People's backgrounds, travel standards, and even clothing all have to be checked and referenced, not to mention thinking about how the future would change things.
THE EVOLUTION OF MY WORK IN PROGRESS
The Writer's Desk
PLANNING IT OUT
WHO: DESIGNING THE CREW
With 12 characters in total, they had to be designed in a way that each one was distinct both in their thoughts, speech, and actions. Over the course of writing, initial designs would also naturally mutate, which made their personalities feel more natural but also meant a lot more updating of the script whenever their original actions were now too out of character.
Orianna for example traded braincells with Cyril, their good cop-bad cop dynamic flipping so that their current personalities almost the complete opposite of how they were originally.
Other special mentions include Percy going from cold and mysterious to angry gremlin, Dr. Prince becoming nicer, Grace and Bella switching roles, and Ramirez changing jobs several times.
WHEN: A PROJECT TIMELINE
Deciding to have everything set in the future was easy to decide, but really hard to execute. If it was too near-future, a lot of things couldn't really be invented/mass-produced yet, and if too-distant, then it'd be weird if some things didn't exist. While the year 2163 is essentially an arbitrary number, the time frame fits nicely into the sort of a post-earth world where today's pop culture is old, but not ancient.
WHERE: DESIGNING THE ISM
The two categories for possible location were as follows: planet, or space. Having a killer loose on a fledgling martian colony, or a larger and more commercialized space station, or even on the Hermes six itself were all good ideas; the reason why an old falling-apart station was chosen was ultimately because of the environment. With the ISM, things are spacious but not too large for the dwindling cast, there are more options in terms of deaths and what happens to bodies, and escape is not an option.
