Nicky Drayden is the author of the novel The Prey of Gods, named a Wall Street Journal and Barnes & Noble pick for best read of the year so far.
Nicky Drayden is the author of the novel The Prey of Gods. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Shimmer and Space and Time. She is a systems analyst and resides in Austin, Texas, where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required.
To read an excerpt from The Prey of Gods and an exercise on foreshadowing later novel developments, click here.
In this interview, Drayden discusses throwing together random characters from her sketch file, creating consequences for fantastical elements, and getting readers to identify with characters.
Michael Noll
There are so many different characters in the book—and so many different aspects from various types of science fiction and fantasy genres. Were all of the characters and all of the elements (gods, artificial intelligence, genetic manipulation) present from the beginning, or did you discover some of them as you wrote?
Nicky Drayden
Right before I started writing The Prey of Gods, I picked six random characters from my character sketch file and stuck them in a setting together. I had a pretty good idea of what would happen in each character’s first chapter, so many of the plot and genre elements were at least seeded in my mind, but I had no outline beyond that. Weaving together these disparate storylines was one of the most challenging parts of writing the novel. But it was a lot of fun, too.
Michael Noll
In the same vein, there are so many wild things that happen in the book—which is one of the traits that reviewers have remarked upon, favorably. In a way, the novel reminds me of when I used to teach creative writing to third-graders, and every story they wrote gradually added new layers: dinosaurs, ninjas, robots, meteors, etc. At a certain point, their stories weren’t really stories anymore but accumulations of interesting things. Your novel is like that in a way–it’s full of scenes that seem more imaginative and interesting than the last one, but never collapses under the weight of so many cool elements. Was it ever difficult to maintain an air of plausibility? Did you find yourself cutting scenes or parts because they seemed like one thing too many?
Nicky Drayden
Wow, I would totally read a story about dinosaur robot ninjas in a meteor shower! Yeah, I probably walked right up to that line of “too much” and spit over it. I never questioned if I was throwing in too much spectacle, but I did spend a lot of time setting up consequences to the fantastical elements to make them more palatable. Mind control can be seen as your standard wish fulfillment scenario, but when you learn that every time Muzi control someone’s mind, he gets imprinted with that person’s darkest memory, all of a sudden readers are like….ohhhhh. The plot is outrageous and fantastical, but the consequences of those fantastical elements are real and relatable. At least, that’s what I was aiming for.
Michael Noll
Nicky Drayden’s debut novel The Prey of Gods is set in a futuristic South Africa where gods, drugs, genetic manipulation, and robots collide.
The basic premise of the novel is eye-catching, but we don’t really learn what it is until about 60 pages in—and that one short lab scene is just one part of the overall plot. One of the things that you sometimes hear as a writer is that the plot should kick off early. Did you ever experiment with front loading the plot in a different way?
Nicky Drayden
Establishing six different characters takes a bit of time, and basically you have the equivalent of asking your reader to start six different books. This requires a reader to put tremendous trust in the author, which can be tough with a debut novel. If you start off with interesting characters in sticky situations, I think you can get away with quite a bit before readers start wondering when the plot is going to kick in. A hallucinogenic drug. A secretly sentient AI. A nail tech giving magical manicures, and a little girl who discovers she can fly. You get all that in the first four chapters, which gives you a taste of the strangeness to come. And the upside of having six characters is that almost every reader will be able to identify strongly with at least one of them.
July 2017
Michael Noll is the Editor of Read to Write Stories.
Read to Write Stories 
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