how to write sci fi
May. 1st, 2006 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Those of you who know me will also know that I am very sceptical towards How-to manuals of writing. I own half a shelf-ful of these, and I find myself drawn into reading online versions of advice to would-be novelists so it's not that I am immune or dismissive of them. Far from it! I tend to be all too diffident towards them, and this then intimidates me and hedges me in with rules and prevents me from writing with enjoyment and from posting!
So, I've decided that my attitude needs to be one of open-minded scepticism and of testing, not of believing. Some of the advice I will discard as outrightly misleading ('write what you know') or theoretically unsustainable ('show not tell') but other bits of advice may prove to be useful in that they spur me onto discovering something for myself. This can include discovering that a piece of advice serves useful purposes in certain situations, or that another piece of advice turns out to be useless (at least for me).
I am going to use these 'How-to' pages as a kind of laboratory for writing experiments!
So here are a few selected tidbits from a site called Being a Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction, by one David Smith.
This David Smith person mainly refers to generic novels and short stories, and these tend to have more stringent 'rules' than general literature. He also refers mainly to a kind of late 20th C. writing that privileges film scripts as a model for plot construction, that is: alternate scenes and summary, make characters be the focus of action, and so forth. Still, I found some of his points intriguing and am going to test them out in my wraith fic (which is, I have decided, going to be a mix of experimental cosmic planet pov and film script type action).
• black box scene analysis
In a scene, your characters go into a black box, and at the end they come out of it. What has happened to them in this black box? Make the scene count.
• peripheral character ego
Marginal characters are full-fledged with their own motivations and off-screen actions.
• rules of engagement
Invent a world and stick to that world's rules. (See my previous post on wraith anatomy!!)
• objective correlative
I've found a jargony and ugly term to describe what I have been calling metaphors of place. Some object that externalises / symbolises a character's internal emotions.
• shoot the sheriff on page 1
A plot ploy to draw people in early. This is related to:
• hook and engage
In a novel, hook your reader in the first chapter. In a short story, on the first page.
It is also related to:
• if you want the reader to care about a character, do horrible things to that character early on
I've read this advice several times around the place, including in an interview given by my novel god David Mitchell, so I was glad to note that I had already done this in my wraith fic! It clearly lends itself to this kind of plotting! :-)
• good guys overcome strong obstacles; don't underserve
Make the enemy a good 'un. (Yeah! Wraith!) This is related to peripheral character ego (see above).
• laughtrack (avoid)
Make your reader feel something, not your character.
• dare to be stupid; dare to stretch
(bolder, more imaginative, more personal, more emotionally powerful)
I want to add: more playful with words and styles. :-)
So yay, I get to throw away the post-it wot i scribbled this on now! LJ as my personal decluttering out-tray.
So, I've decided that my attitude needs to be one of open-minded scepticism and of testing, not of believing. Some of the advice I will discard as outrightly misleading ('write what you know') or theoretically unsustainable ('show not tell') but other bits of advice may prove to be useful in that they spur me onto discovering something for myself. This can include discovering that a piece of advice serves useful purposes in certain situations, or that another piece of advice turns out to be useless (at least for me).
I am going to use these 'How-to' pages as a kind of laboratory for writing experiments!
So here are a few selected tidbits from a site called Being a Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction, by one David Smith.
This David Smith person mainly refers to generic novels and short stories, and these tend to have more stringent 'rules' than general literature. He also refers mainly to a kind of late 20th C. writing that privileges film scripts as a model for plot construction, that is: alternate scenes and summary, make characters be the focus of action, and so forth. Still, I found some of his points intriguing and am going to test them out in my wraith fic (which is, I have decided, going to be a mix of experimental cosmic planet pov and film script type action).
• black box scene analysis
In a scene, your characters go into a black box, and at the end they come out of it. What has happened to them in this black box? Make the scene count.
• peripheral character ego
Marginal characters are full-fledged with their own motivations and off-screen actions.
• rules of engagement
Invent a world and stick to that world's rules. (See my previous post on wraith anatomy!!)
• objective correlative
I've found a jargony and ugly term to describe what I have been calling metaphors of place. Some object that externalises / symbolises a character's internal emotions.
• shoot the sheriff on page 1
A plot ploy to draw people in early. This is related to:
• hook and engage
In a novel, hook your reader in the first chapter. In a short story, on the first page.
It is also related to:
• if you want the reader to care about a character, do horrible things to that character early on
I've read this advice several times around the place, including in an interview given by my novel god David Mitchell, so I was glad to note that I had already done this in my wraith fic! It clearly lends itself to this kind of plotting! :-)
• good guys overcome strong obstacles; don't underserve
Make the enemy a good 'un. (Yeah! Wraith!) This is related to peripheral character ego (see above).
• laughtrack (avoid)
Make your reader feel something, not your character.
• dare to be stupid; dare to stretch
(bolder, more imaginative, more personal, more emotionally powerful)
I want to add: more playful with words and styles. :-)
So yay, I get to throw away the post-it wot i scribbled this on now! LJ as my personal decluttering out-tray.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 10:15 pm (UTC)*memories*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-02 11:02 am (UTC)I've hit a bit of a barrier with my experimentation. I'll have to think of some new strategies to wake myself up. Asking people to give me prompts for gift ficlets didn't really work because the prompts were too vague and I got lazy and just wrote what I can pull off fastest. It's not what I want right now, confirmation of what I know I can do well. I want to come up against obstacles. Heh, I want to write slashily! Like all those slashy men, coming up against resistance and falling in love with guys they are supposed to hate and having the kind of sex they've never had before and sort of hating it but loving it deep down. That's what I want right now!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-02 11:14 am (UTC)i am admiring your zest for challenge, lobe. i need me some of that! too long have i rested in the comfy couch of my complacency -- i find it hard to find my way through 'well, apparently i have some natural talent and i do what i do well' vs 'a writer really has to work hard'.
do you know what your weak points are, that you want to improve? i keep my weak points so submerged in my consciousness that they are like nasty sodden roots in a swamp, just waiting to rip the bottom out of my little coracle.
ah, your yen for slashy UST conflict fics! i understand that! i understand that totally. is that not what we lovingly, affectionately, call 'angst'?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-02 09:40 pm (UTC)My weak points are: plot structure. I am totally hopeless at long fic, at the kind of thing you managed to finish and publish, in fact! I have got mired in two longfics in my life (HP, for example, is currently at 80,000 plus words) and they just eat my brain. I admire the kind of plot that is constructed like architecture but I just can't build it myself. I am very 'and then', 'and then', and all I can think of is to alternate povs and maybe insert a few flashbacks. Also, I just can't keep the momentum up for longfic, I lose heart and I don't finish the damn things. This is what I want to practise next: not just the micro-structure of style in a snippet but the macro-structure of plot.
I also am not very good at straightforward zero-point style. I can do the lyrical-metaphorical, and the objective-scientific, but writing like Resonant or Cesperanza or Shalott? I find that tremendously difficult.
I am not good at omniscient intrusive narrator. Maybe I woud be if I practised it more but slash is not very conducive as we are too eager to crawl inside one person's head. To maximise the ANGST factor!!!
Can't think of any others now. They are the ones that come to mind. No doubt, outside readers would point to other weaknesses.
Why do you find it bad to sit in the comfy couch of your complacency and enjoy your natural talent? Because if you have the natural talent, why not enjoy it??