bookish_magpie asked Martha Wells:

I have just finished reading the first Murderbot book (and, needless to say, I LOVED it!) One thing that caught my attention from the start was how you wrote Murderbot. I was wondering whether you had started out with a different writing style, such as 3rd POV or a series of internal commands? Also, did you find it easier/harder writing a novel as short as MBD #1? Were there any challenges? Thank you so much!

Martha Wells Thank you! My other books are written in third person personal, but All Systems Red was written in first person from the first early notes. I never really considered writing it in third person.

All Systems Red is a novella, which is usually defined as under 40,000 words, about 1/3 the size of a novel. It was originally intended to be a short story (with a sad ending) but while I was working on it I realized it needed to be a little longer to really tell the story. And I decided I wanted to give it a hopeful ending.

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