With Space Race Championship out in the world, I’ve given some looks into the planning behind it. For Racing Month, it makes sense to focus the behind-the-scenes on the challenges the competitors face. The plan, even from the very start, was to have the qualifier and five challenges. With the final one being a flight through the asteroids. In the original plan, only the qualifier and final event had focus, with the other four all within a single chapter titled Simple Challenges.

Despite that, all the challenges remained the same. Though in the asteroid flight, things were meant to be different. The creatures that linger within had a name. And could be communicated with. Which would be how the situation would get resolved. In the released version, those creatures are an unknown. Dangerous and wild. It’s a lot faster and frantic event than the original draft allowed.

When it came to drafting out what events would be part of these challenges, I wanted variety. I looked to more than just standard racing events, fitting them into the world of spacecraft racing. There would be no two events with exactly the same rules, allowing each to have its own identity. Naturally, the first event would be the standard race, named Checkpoint. It had been built up with the game of Space Racer, after all.

Even with all the training, Tom would have no experience of racing in reality. The aim was to show his skills did translate from the game to reality, but not have him win. So a perfect chance to continue the rivalry that began with the qualifier. Which continued into the second challenge of Retrieval. An interesting note on the names is that they were a later addition, which shows just how little they mattered in that original draft. As long as Tom got to the final event, the journey there could be a simple note.

Those first drafts were from around 2010, so my writing skills were just starting to develop. The original draft had chapters just a few pages long, at least for the first half of the story. As I’ve always said, any drafts I wrote in the old days were always just the first half. The chapter breakdowns are very telling, however. Just as chapter 8 had the name of Simple Challenges, chapter 6 was SRC Briefing. With a chapter between those for the qualifier, things were a lot more segmented.

Events seemed as though they would not be allowed to flow between chapters. Character development and drama also seemed like it would be non-existent. With later drafts, when I decided a book titled Space Race Championship should have more focus on said championship, the briefing of the SRC happened a chapter earlier. The challenges could now be more spread out because of that, which is how the 2-2-1-1 pattern for them became a thing.

One other thing that I felt needed to happen when the challenges got a greater focus was a ranking. A ranking that detailed where each competitor finished each of the events. That was part of how the second half of the story became so easy to write. I knew the events, where the people finished them. So it became easy to interweave the interactions among them all. Giving that finale a strong end.

For the events, Retrieval was all about heading to different areas, collecting an object, and returning to home base. It was pretty much capture the flag as a race. For the non-standard racing events, I looked to shooters instead of racing disciplines. After all, modes from shooters can easily be repurposed as races. Since by definition, a race is a competition to be first.

For a more regular race, Speed looked to rally events. Each person released after 30 seconds from the previous release, with everyone following a course to set the fastest time. This was originally meant to be the last of the standard challenges before the asteroid race, but with later drafts, I felt it would be better to have the non-standard races spread out a bit more.

Which is how Accuracy became the fourth challenge. The hardest of the events to come up with, I eventually settled with a boss-like event. A special spacecraft with a lot of defensive weaponry, to make it race-like I required each person to get three hits on this spacecraft. What I also wanted was for Tom to have a win during this championship. After a tough journey, and knowing he wouldn’t be winning the final event, I wanted a win for him.

Originally, the asteroid flight wouldn’t have involved the support. It was to just be one long flight through the space rock. When it came to getting the ending written, I realised that there needed to be certain things happen I hadn’t accounted for. That’s how the events that occurred came to be changed. How Lee had a larger role in that finale. Which also helped the finale become stronger.

That is a look at the challenges of the Space Race Championship. Four events and the finale. The qualifier was always going to be a free-for-all dogfight. Such would be a good test of a pilot’s skill and awareness of their surroundings. And it served as a good way of quickly whittling down the numbers from the highs of 60 to the standard 20. Ready for the final four of each challenge to be knocked out until just four remain.