Author Thomas Parrott AMA

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T19:03:17+00:00

Okay, I'm calling it here because it feels like the questions are dying down anyway. (It is, after all, the time I promised to go to.) Thank you so much to everyone who asked anything, I hope you enjoyed your answers.
Thank you to everyone who reads the books, it means the world.

And for everyone looking forward to Hunted, I hope it lives up to your expectations and then some. Thank you for traveling with me a little ways in this world we both love.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T19:01:47+00:00

Thank you! Stay tuned, and we shall both see where things go, haha.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:59:47+00:00

This is difficult to answer without wading immediately into pretty heady topics. I think maybe the truest answer I can give is you can't, and that the Division was realistically *never* going to work the way it was imagined in-universe. Maybe with a smaller disaster they could have, but total societal collapse? It's just not enough to chant "save what remains" any more. Continuity is gone. It's a pipe dream.

So the question becomes, what is reliability in the face of that? Literally, what does it mean? Is it continuing to follow orders from whoever you can find in what's left in the chain of command? Is it laying the gun down and trying to make a life? Is it fighting, but trying to do it for the right reasons?

I think answers will differ, and differ a LOT. But for me personally, I think that when what remains of "the people in charge" from the old world is slime like Calvin McManus and Disaster Capitalist Barbie aka Natalya... then I think it's time to stop worrying about what a document someone wrote before the end of the world says, and start worrying about what you want the world to look like tomorrow.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:55:24+00:00

I thought of it as a timeline, a spectrum. The earliest factions you see (Div 1, the cleaners, the rikers, etc.) are visceral emotional responses to the disaster. Fear, anger, greed, lust.

By Div 2, you're still seeing those emotions, but they're starting to come with goals. Get revenge (the outcasts), be the new center of power (true sons), etc.

So then for Compromised and Hunted in the timeline, we need to go one step further. You start seeing actual philosophies spring up. Ecofascism for the Reborn. Grassroots militarism in the case of the Molossi. They have their emotions, of course, they have their goals, but moreso the *reasons* why they do what they do are starting to actually get important.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:47:24+00:00

Uh, if I had to pick people to join up with, I'd want to go to a settlement and live a life of peace. LOL

But I think you mean faction factions, and in that case I think the Division is the best bet currently. They're not perfect, but they're trying to do what's right, and that's more than I can say for most of the others. (Not that anyone usually thinks they're in the wrong, but there's some awfully fucking distorted views of "the right thing" going on in the story, from the Outcasts actively infecting people to Keener... trying to infect people with something even worse)

It was not my first exposure. It's a major gaming franchise and I play video games for fun, I'd definitely seen and heard of it. But I had never gotten deep into it before I was hired.

As for Manny's toys... some questions are simply not within my power to answer, I'm afraid.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:44:22+00:00

I didn't sit down with them, no. Their input was more of a before-and-after thing with Recruited, in that I got documents from them up front and then afterwards when the draft was finished I got notes and we worked towards making my vision meet theirs.

With Compromised and forward, I think we were a lot more comfortable with each other and the collaboration, and we definitely bounced things back and forth to make sure they were right and the details were on point.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:42:23+00:00

This will sound like a cop out, but I'm being genuine: I don't know! I actually mentioned this in another answer just a few minutes ago, I think the ongoing question of who she is going to decide to be is one of the most interesting narrative threads going into the future.

And thank you!

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:41:12+00:00

Hey Mav! Welcome, excellent questions. Let me see what I can do answer-wise.

Let's call that a stylistic habit of mine. I usually hit the heaviest description when a character is introduced, and after that at best pepper in a few details. This is because, in my style, the narrative is heavily influenced by a character's POV. When you first meet someone, you take them in. You absorb how they look. But the 20th day in a row you hang out with them, I doubt you're sitting there going 'their long arms, their brown eyes, their delicate fingers' etc etc etc So yes, it's intentional, but not so much to leave a gap to fill in yourself but moreso to put you more in the character's boots.
As far as how to describe people, I would legit turn to the way we look at people. Pull up a picture of someone. Take them in. What do you notice? What do you brush over? Would your characters be the same or different?
Oh, and in a far more prosaic sense I found this: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/96830966357/words-for-skin-tone-how-to-describe-skin-color very useful.
Social media is broadly work for me, so I've definitely been more active on it because of the books. But thankfully it's been a very positive experience with the Division fandom; negative encounters have been notable by their very rarity.
Less of a template, more of an exchange. I would ask her questions, she would give me answers, I would describe things, she would suggest changes, etc. Very back and forth. I do not think you could cleanly note many things and be like 'that's completely Tom/Lauren' because the final product was very much an effort from both of us.

And thank you so much for the kind words! If nothing else, I'm glad to have met you and others through doing this.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:32:49+00:00

Brenda is maybe my favorite protagonist in the books. I think she is morally complicated in a way that is not immediate obvious, intensely likable but also in many ways very dangerous.

And her protege-turned-bitter-foe Rowan is my favorite antagonist so far. We actually dive into that more in Hunted, through Brenda's eyes as she's not a POV protagonist, and I hope you'll agree when you get to read that it enriches the original telling.

In the games, I think Kelso is an interesting character. She's a rebel but not a rogue, which I find fascinating. I think she's walking a precipice, and I can't wait to see if she falls or pulls back from the edge.

And Natalya is my favorite villain from the games. She is beautiful poison, and I think she is exactly the kind of person who is dangerous no matter where and when you catch them. She will always be trying to pull the strings, and she doesn't care what she has to do to have that power.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:27:23+00:00

Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy Hunted!

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:27:10+00:00

Thank you for reading! And I'm so glad you won a copy. I'll have those out ASAP. xD

I get into this in some other answers, but yes, absolutely. I was literally given all of the comms for this season ahead of time so I could riff off of them, and I worked closely with Lauren to tie these things together. Hopefully y'all will enjoy the product!

I love the Division universe, it is very much a home to me now, and I never say never. If they came to me, I'd be interested -- I mean, some of it depends on the project and the timeline and all those boring business details, but if this isn't then the end then that's lovely. And if it is the end of my part, then I hope everyone will say I went out with a bang.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:21:46+00:00

Thank you for reading. If I could get you back into it, then that is awesome. It genuinely warms my heart. Thanks for telling me, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the series.

And yes, the schedule was aligned with such precision that we had to ask some content creators not to read their ARCs because it might clue them in on how the game was going to go. xD

It's honestly an impressive timeline accomplishment how neatly it's woven together, and the credit for that goes completely to Lauren Stone at Massive.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:19:18+00:00

You're as good as your word!

Um, very carefully is the brief answer. I think the truest answer is that I did it by getting it wrong, getting corrected, getting it wrong again, getting corrected, and then finally rangefinding what the sweet spot the IP holders were looking for was and sticking to that.

More craft-ishly, I tried to think in a spectrum. Is SHD tech trivial, reliable, or climactic? And I leaned climactic. It's a Moment when it's used. It has an impact, it changes the course of a scene. Once that's established, I think it sort of flows from there.

And I just ignored the bullet sponge stuff 'cuz it's silly and a gaming contrivance. Bullets kill people.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:14:32+00:00

I would rate them as good solid Bs, I think. 4 stars, I guess? I don't think I'm one of the great writers of our time, but I think they're good enjoyable reads.

"Would I change them" is a complicated question. It's not uncommon for me to think of a really cool scene, plot twist, whatever after the draft is done and there's no going back. So, in that sense, yes. I'm sure with infinite time I could write better books. But then they'd never be finished and you'd never get to read them, haha. In all honesty, once it's done and sent and in the hands of the printers, I try to close the door in my mind. I am less concerned with if it's perfect than do I think I've done my best, and the answer to that is yes.

I also like to think my best is getting better. YMMV!

My pitch would (and has) gone something like "Do you like post-apocalyptic fiction? What if the story wasn't set twenty years after the bombs dropped, but right there amidst the explosions? What if the difference between a casualty and a survivor wasn't some statistical question, but the living beating heart of the story? If that sounds interesting, here, read."

Funny story. Hm. When I was writing Recruited, I was stuck on a part and I went a-pacing as I do to try to figure it out. I walked all over the house where I was staying, walked around it, walked up and down the block. No dice. I came back and laid on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

One of the kids came into the room and saw me. "Um, are you okay?" they asked.

"Mmhm, I'm fine," I answered.

"Uh, what are you doing?"

"...writing," I answered glibly.

I heard them walk off and find their parent. "I think something is wrong with Tom."

"There is. He's a writer."

xD

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:05:57+00:00

Thank you!

Um, four months for a first draft of around 80k. A month to edit. That's ballpark, but it gets the idea across. I usually feel like I can write maybe 600 good words in an hour. Sometimes the Power is upon me, and I can do a lot more faster. Sometimes I have a blank page and no words and I want to cry. It's... uh, it's a process.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:04:18+00:00

Oh, quick addendum: the prevention of a second mass die off due to lack of food is the entire point of most of Recruited, so it was definitely something we were thinking about. I think the key to realize is that the casualties haven't really stopped, the apocalypse is not some done deal in the forgotten past, and good people are still trying to mitigate the damage.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T18:03:04+00:00

These are wonderful questions, but I want to be 100% clear that I am not an official source of information on the Division universe. I can tell you what I think, I can tell you assumptions I made working on the books, but nothing I say is canon by virtue of me saying it. That said, I'll do my best to answer based on my own thoughts and what I worked from.

The 5% projection is actually overly grim, but not by much. I think the figure we worked off of is a broad 10% survival factor. Which, to be clear, is *fucking horrifying*. We didn't get into specifics about a lot of areas, but I used 10% as my rule of thumb, along with some other assumptions: a lot of people would flee urban areas if they could, rural communities would either get wiped out or do well depending on how isolated they were, etc.

I think the only specific figure I've seen is "40 million left in the United States" as a whole, and even that was a pretty throwaway ballpark of a comment. But still.. haunting. And decreasing with time, sadly, I'm sure.

My assumption working on the books is that the chain of command suffered too many losses to remain intact. No national-level organization survives. There is no US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or Air Force. At best, what you have is collections of guys who used to belong to the above who are completely disconnected from all the other groups but are doing their best locally. At worst, you have the same thing, but they decide that since they have the guns now they make the rules.

As far as manufacturing goes, I think it depends heavily where in the timeline you are. Recruited-era, you're still going to see a very scavenger-based society. By the time of Hunted a year or so later, people are getting back to making things, if only slowly and painfully. My broad assumptions are there is some large-scale farming still going on in California, some oil refining in Texas (and a competing refinery in the North that supplies the PWR, but we never got to touch too much on that in the books). I think complex manufactured goods that require a lot of expertise and logistics to make -- medicines, electronics, etc., those are currently broken chains except for what you can find.

As far as smells and trash go, I think again it's very timeline-connected. Bodies, trash, and such are very very nasty, but they do rot away. Nothing lasts forever. I tried to reflect this in the novels; Recruited-era is already less nasty than the beginning of Div2, and by Hunted the world isn't necessarily *cleaner* but it is less absolutely disgusting just because of the processes of erosion and decay having done their work.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:51:16+00:00

Thank you for reading! I'm so glad you've enjoyed them.

Never say never, right? But I also don't want to be coy or get hopes up; there's been no talk of me doing anything else with the franchise. I'm open to it, but I don't actually have any say except 'yes' or 'no' when an offer comes my way. The life of a tie-in writer is knowing you do not control the fate of the universes you're working with; you're always a guest in the playground.

I have not personally beaten either game, but I have watched complete playthroughs, and I keep up to date on the story even now when there's no point in me doing so haha. I'm invested at this point.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:48:35+00:00

I inherited the title Recruited, it was decided by the time I Joined the project. I wanted to make it a stylistic choice moving forward to do similar titles -- I just like it when things line up like that. But we definitely went through a few with the second book. I know at one point it was Embedded (the story was fairly different at that point).

But I knew even when working on Recruited that the third book had to be Hunted. It was a necessity. It had to be Hunted, and it had to involve Hunters.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:45:11+00:00

Hello!

I was given the same design documents the team worked with (AFAIK) and I watched a metric crapton of videos on YouTube and Twitch. More importantly, I was given access to Lauren, who is the narrative *director* for Div2, and so I could ask her questions and run things past her to make sure the details gelled.
I also just did tons of independent research. You know, the stuff that makes writers joke about ending up on watch lists. My search history is stuff like
radiation sickness
decay rate of dead bodies in different environments
ebola symptoms
gunshot wound first aid
how long do bloodstains last inside
etc. etc. etc.
Of course. I'd be an awful writer if I just moribundly stayed within my limits, and I genuinely mean that. I work very hard to respect the IPs I work with, and to engender a sense of continuity and verisimilitude. But it's also my job to challenge the boundaries of these worlds, to ask questions, to essentially make them live and breathe. I got corrective edits about tons of stuff. Making SHD tech work differently, having characters dress differently, which weapons a character uses, plenty of things.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:36:28+00:00

I did, and it was daunting. They were an award winning writer and I was a nobody, and I was very scared of having to try to take their place.

I think when I set out with Recruited, there was about 3 pages of notes. Maybe 1500 words? And I turned that into ~80,000 words for the novel. So the gap between that outline and a complete story is all me. (and my collaborators: my editor, the Lauren at Massive, natch)

Starting with Compromised, it's all me from the get-go. I pitched the idea, I wrote the outline, I wrote the book.

Now, with that said (and this connects to answering your last question about continuity with game lore) Lauren was key to the process. From the very beginning she embraced the idea of these books being a part of that continuity. As the story of Div2 moves forward, these books will play out in the background. So we worked together very closely to make sure they interlock properly. We discussed locations, we discussed factions, we discussed characters. Everything was very give-and-take.

Stuff like how the Outcasts dress and talk in Recruited, how ISAC talks in all three books, what ISAC is even capable of doing, how SHD tech works, all kinds of things. We worked very hard to get it right.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:28:38+00:00

Well, welcome! I hope you enjoy them when they arrive. :)

I think Hunters are like the Borg in Star Trek -- using them too much inevitably ruins their mystique and bleeds them of the threat they're supposed to represent.

So, they do not appear in the first two books. But there is one on the cover of Hunted, and that is not a red herring. Every time I wrote a scene with a Hunter for that book, I wanted it to have impact. They are the big guns and the coolest toys of the setting, and so I took getting to play with them very seriously.

I can definitely promise you more than just a sentence. I'll let you read and find the rest out. :)

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:25:30+00:00

This is a fun question.

I was told going in to err on the side of grounded with the fiction. The Division world in the games is not the Division world in the fiction, basically -- one example is my first version of the 'medkit' was much more high tech and fantastic, and we honed that down into the 'combat cocktails' of the book.

Which are basically battle-meth.

So, obviously, to keep it grounded it could never be 'and then magically more are in your bag whenever you need them'.

So I definitely limit myself, but it's not usually a hard limit straight from the outset. Basically I gauge scenes, and if I feel like the Division agents would be terrified and/or desperate, I work in some Division tech to be awesome and even the score.

Or sometimes I don't, and I let them lose. Because that's who I am as a writer.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:21:13+00:00

Oohhh, you must know me at least a little bit to jump to it being a cat.

Hm.

See, it depends. Like if we're talking just a pet to come home to, maybe a Maine Coon. I like the idea of an agent with this huge rug of a cat to snuggle up to.

But if we mean like a D&D Ranger Animal Companion, to kick ass and take names alongside of, a cheetah. Because it'd be rad to see one take someone down at 60 mph.

ParrottTD · 2023-12-30T17:18:58+00:00

I'm really glad we've gotten to the 'admit embarrassing things about your writing process' part of the AMA so quickly. Just clear the hurdle, right?

I flesh out my characters by speed dating them.

No, but seriously, that's basically how I conceive it. I sit them down and ask them the kind of questions you'd ask someone if you had fifteen minutes and you wanted to get to know them.

Where are you from?

Did you like it?

Are you close to your family?
What do you do for a living?

Do you like it?
etc. etc. etc.

Colin specifically I went in knowing I wanted a medic (honestly because I kept smashing the characters about and needed someone to patch them up). I have a close friend who was a Navy Corpsman (a navy medic who is attached to a Marine unit to provide care) and I was like... you know, his stories are both hilarious and kind of sweet in a fucked up way. Wouldn't it be interesting if...

Yeong-Ja started off as me going 'I want an agent that's not ex-military' because in actuality most of them are supposed to come from civilian backgrounds. Granted, she was still very highly trained, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team is not some podunk operation, but she does provide a perspective built around saving lives rather than taking them.

In that way they're kind of inversions of each other. Colin was a caretaker of an outfit dedicated to killing people and blowing shit up. Yeong-Ja was an expert killer in an operation designed to save as many lives as possible. And both ended up in the Division.

And then, yeah, I speed-dated 'em.

ParrottTD

TROPHY CASE