Anyone here ever try to write science fiction?

[Gatekeeper]

I am 80 pages into my latest novella, and am definitely a "gardener" when it comes to writing — with a bit of carpenter tossed in, too.

I absolutely love it when I get on a roll when writing. The words, images and more fly from my mind onto the computer screen and, honestly, there's almost a "high" associated with it, at least for me. Heh. On the opposite end of the spectrum is writer's block, and God knows I've suffered from that (and will again).

BTW, what does 80 pages, single-spaced, on an 8.5x11 writing area translate into in the paperback format? One hundred pages?

Gatekeeper

 

[Bishbot]

I've tried a couple of times and still intend to continue. My procrastination really pisses me off though.

I've got a really detailed mental outline for the first part of a fantasy trilogy that I really need to just bash out. The problem is the one someone mentioned upthread - I know the story so well that actually writing it is kind of boring. I'm a great believer in standalone books though so although I know the titles of the other two books and some of the events, the plan is that the first stands alone and the sequels are optional, Star Wars style.

I've been wrestling for a while with a really ambitious Science Fiction story that I might have to concede is beyond my skill to tell. The issues are too big, too political, and it keeps throwing up questions that I can't personally answer.

 

[backstept]

I tend to just write, and go back and outline what I've already written

I love the 'eureka' moment of thinking up something new for a story

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

How to write science fiction well. Think of a normal story, then take away reason and believability.

 

[Christopher]

BTW, what does 80 pages, single-spaced, on an 8.5x11 writing area translate into in the paperback format? One hundred pages?

Depends on the font and size of the text. Generally a paperback book has something like 250-300 words per page, though. A single-spaced 8.5x11 page with 1-inch margins is typically going to be maybe around twice that. So you're talking more like 150-175 pages, at a very rough guess.

As a rule, editors expect manuscripts to be double-spaced, though I think there are a few exceptions.

 

[Mistral]

I've tried a couple of times and still intend to continue. My procrastination really pisses me off though.

I've got a really detailed mental outline for the first part of a fantasy trilogy that I really need to just bash out. The problem is the one someone mentioned upthread - I know the story so well that actually writing it is kind of boring. I'm a great believer in standalone books though so although I know the titles of the other two books and some of the events, the plan is that the first stands alone and the sequels are optional, Star Wars style.

I've been wrestling for a while with a really ambitious Science Fiction story that I might have to concede is beyond my skill to tell. The issues are too big, too political, and it keeps throwing up questions that I can't personally answer.

Sounds like its time to hit the books and add to the learning process. Research is an author's greatest tool after his pencil.

How to write science fiction well. Think of a normal story, then take away reason and believability.

Riiiiigghhtt. The voice of authority has spoken.

 

[S. Gomez]

I've been thinking about putting out a novel serially as I write it, maybe on a blog or something, mostly for my friends. It's primary purpose is to keep me disciplined as I write; an audience bugging you about where the next installment is can be a wonderful motivator, I imagine.

But I'm also worried about copyright protection and the Internet and all that, so I don't know if a blog is the best way to do it.

If the blog is open to anyone, then your novel would be considered already "published" by many houses and therefore they wouldn't be interested since the public already has it.

What if I was planning to revise later and what was on the blog was really only a first draft?

I can also think of an example that would disprove that rule: Podiobooks.com. They provide hosting for people with microphones who read their books out loud and release them as podcasts. HarperCollins and Random House are just two publishers who have signed authors from that site to have their work published in print--and release audiobooks (in one case, based on the original master files the guy released online).

I'm not saying I have any pie-in-the-sky dreams about this particular book. Actually, I have every reason to believe that outside my family and friends there would be a very small number of people in the world who would really be interested.

I've also already put out the blog and the announcement (though not the actual story), so we're more in let's-see-what-happens mode.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I've been thinking about putting out a novel serially as I write it, maybe on a blog or something, mostly for my friends. It's primary purpose is to keep me disciplined as I write; an audience bugging you about where the next installment is can be a wonderful motivator, I imagine.

But I'm also worried about copyright protection and the Internet and all that, so I don't know if a blog is the best way to do it.

If the blog is open to anyone, then your novel would be considered already "published" by many houses and therefore they wouldn't be interested since the public already has it.

Or if your blog is private (members only who have to sign up and/or get your approval for access), anyone can easily snatch the text off it and then your work is out there beyond your control.

The internet has made traditional marketing of your work much more complex.

--Ted

John Scalzi serialized Old Man's War on his website before it was picked up by TOR's senior editor. His book Agent to the Stars, which was written before OMW, was released as shareware in 1999, then again as freeware in 2004. Subterranan Press put out a special edition of the book before TOR finally published it as a paperback last year.

Cory Doctorow, a proponent of creative commons/shareware, has also released his works online, for free. That's how I got his book Little Brother.

Of course, there could be a downside. If your book doesn't get enough hits or downloads or whatever that could prognosticate doom for your book in stores, meaning it might not move. Now that's speculation on my part based on my own personal research into the publishing industry. But if someone is serious about publication then I suggest reading several of the literary agent blogs out there like Nathanal Brandsford--Literary Agent or Pimp My Novel, which is written by someone that works at a publishing house. These blogs are unabashedly truthful about the joys and perils of publishing.

And of course, there's also the advice of our board members who are published authors, who have contributed greatly to this discussion.

I tried my hand at writing a science-fiction novel in high school. I wrote a great deal of background material and a few chapters of what I imagined as a grand, multi-book space opera that I called The Near Future. It now sits in a box in my parents garage back in San Diego.

For my graduate thesis in creative writing, I wrote a contemporary lit novel sans outline... well, that's not exactly true. I sketched out various scenes in my journal first, fiddled with several bare bones outlines, and generally jumped into the deep end, which is why there's a great deal of background exposition in the novel. It passed but I am less-than happy with it, but at least I finished it and learned several lessons from the experience. Now I'm pulling it apart, outlining on 3x5 cards so I can move the pieces around easily and see where things work better in the larger structure.

Fiction is damn hard work. Writing, in general, is damn hard work.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

How to write science fiction well. Think of a normal story, then take away reason and believability.

Riiiiigghhtt. The voice of authority has spoken.

You didn't know I was quasi-referencing "As Good As It Gets".

Woman: "How do write women characters so well?"

Nicholson: "I think of a man, then I take away reason and accountability."

 

[Mistral]

How to write science fiction well. Think of a normal story, then take away reason and believability.

Riiiiigghhtt. The voice of authority has spoken.

You didn't know I was quasi-referencing "As Good As It Gets".

Woman: "How do write women characters so well?"

Nicholson: "I think of a man, then I take away reason and accountability."

Nope. Missed that completely.

 

[Dark Gilligan]

I've been wrestling for a while with a really ambitious Science Fiction story that I might have to concede is beyond my skill to tell.

If the story is too big try breaking it up into smaller units. Are there individual themes or characters that might work in a short story format? Writing short fiction is the best way to strengthen your skills before tackling something grand.

 

[Gatekeeper]

BTW, what does 80 pages, single-spaced, on an 8.5x11 writing area translate into in the paperback format? One hundred pages?

Depends on the font and size of the text. Generally a paperback book has something like 250-300 words per page, though. A single-spaced 8.5x11 page with 1-inch margins is typically going to be maybe around twice that. So you're talking more like 150-175 pages, at a very rough guess.

As a rule, editors expect manuscripts to be double-spaced, though I think there are a few exceptions.

**whistles** Goodness. I didn't expect it to be that lengthy. And, FWIW, my margins are .5 inch on either side of the page.

Do editors prefer double-spaced because it's easier to read and to make corrections, if necessary?

Gatekeeper (who has hundreds of pages of material "published" online — quality, however, is in the eye of the beholder! **LOL**)

 

[Christopher]

**whistles** Goodness. I didn't expect it to be that lengthy. And, FWIW, my margins are .5 inch on either side of the page.

Good grief, that makes it even longer.

Do editors prefer double-spaced because it's easier to read and to make corrections, if necessary?

Yes. Also wide margins are easier to write notes in. Plus a double-spaced page with 1-inch margins is fairly close to the word count of a single page of a finished book, so I'd imagine that's a consideration too.

 

[S. Gomez]

Anyone have any advice on getting across exposition in an interesting way? I'm about to write a scene where a character starts talking. He's also showing something off, but it could be awkward.

 

[Christopher]

Anyone have any advice on getting across exposition in an interesting way? I'm about to write a scene where a character starts talking. He's also showing something off, but it could be awkward.

That's a tricky one. It helps to have something at stake emotionally in the scene, or to provide some kind of tension. I read a suggestion from Analog editor Stanley Schmidt once: have one character coax the exposition out of another who's reluctant to reveal it. If the character's hiding something, it makes the readers curious to find out what it is. And if it's important for one character to hide it and another to unearth it, that makes it something that has impact on the story and characters rather than just being an infodump to the audience.

That might not work for your story, but there could be other ways to create tension. I've been working on something with a sequence where the characters arrive at an exotic alien location and there's a long scene describing it. I thought that was too much of a travelogue scene, but then I decided to rearrange the story so that a sequence in which the characters make a decision to commit a crime in that location comes before their arrival rather than after. So they're not just oohing and ahhing at this exotic locale -- they're casing the joint. They need to know its attributes to plan their caper. That raises the stakes of the exposition scene.

Let's see, what else might work? Maybe the character urgently needs to get the information to another character but is unable to reach them. Maybe the character needs to get the information to one person quickly, before the arrival of another person who wants it and can't be allowed to have it, but who could barge in at any moment. Maybe he seems to be conveying the information for one reason, but he and the viewpoint character have an ulterior purpose behind the discussion that others in the room are unaware of. Maybe the information symbolizes an aspect of the deep personal conflict between the speaker and the listener, so that it's fraught with emotional subtext and double meanings.

One thing I observe in a lot of SF I read -- and probably don't do enough of in my own -- is giving exposition by not giving exposition. It's a "show, don't tell" kind of thing. Instead of explaining a world to the readers by showing it through the eyes of a character who's just learning about it and needs it explained to them, a lot of stories will tell the scene from the perspective of a character who inhabits that environment and takes it for granted, so that the reader has to figure it out from context and from the way the character thinks of it. Similarly, a good way to give exposition about an alien species is to write from the viewpoint of an alien looking at a human and noticing how they differ. If the alien thinks, "The strange human creature had a tall, gangly frame with no tail, absurdly small eyes, half the sensible number of arms, and a head topped with long, stringy things that didn't seem to be proper feathers," that tells you a lot about the alien's appearance by implication.

 

[S. Gomez]

^Those are good suggestions. In my case, it's fairly early in the story, but the protagonist is thrown into a mysterious situation she doesn't know anything about. Through happenstance she's present at a key moment and, to a degree, disrupts it. She's at the point now where she's holding someone at gunpoint and demanding explanations; he evades with humour (his way of coping with pressure), but says he'll show her what it's all about. He's not sure if he really wants her to be hearing all this, but he's in fact been told that he's supposed to by the people in charge. A somewhat cryptic synopsis I know.

Hmm. Maybe I'm not in as much trouble as I think. Just have to figure out how often the protagonist cares to interrupt his oratory. Extra tip: step back from your story every so often and get the big picture, so you can see if it's all working together. They tell you to do that in art class as well.

You know, Ian Fleming was actually able to do this really well. And they are literally info dumps because James Bond is reading his top secret file or getting a briefing. I suppose the context of him being an intelligence agent gives it more credibility so the reader goes along with it.

 

[Christopher]

^Sounds like you're already basically following Stanley Schmidt's suggestion. There's certainly plenty of tension in that situation. And humor sure doesn't hurt.

 

[Warped9]

Yes, but I suck at the science part.

I try to read what I can regarding respected science theory and speculative technology. I just finished reading Wil McCarthy's Hacking Matter (published six years ago) and Gregory Benford's Beyond Human as well as other sources (such as Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near) to get a better handle on extrapolating and projecting forward advances in new materiels and their manipulation as well as speculations on artificial intelligence, robotics and man/machine interfacing.

It's not that I want to write reams of technical exposition (something I have little patience reading), but rather when I depict my ideas I want them to seem as credible as possible no matter how far-fetched they may seem from our current perspective. Often the effectiveness is in finding just the right word for something rather than reciting a technical description or explanation for it.

I've been reading some books by Michio Kaku lately. Not for research, but for fun. But it might help me from the science angle. I tend to learn more from fun reading so some of the science and speculative science might sink in.

I've got three of Michio Kaku's books. His most recent, Physics Of The Impossible, was the most enjoyable I thought.

I don't read this stuff just for research. I enjoy reading it for the pleasure itself. It's rather like watching the special features on a movie DVD and learning the nuts and bolts behind the magic.

I will say, though, that while I'm reading this nonfictional material I'm often struck by some inspiration for something that I can apply or adapt for my own efforts. In particular speculative science and technology from particularly Arthur C. Clarke, Michio Kaku, Robert Forward, Gregory Benford and Wil McCarthy and others have all inspired ideas I've been able to spin in my own way.

 

[Maurice]

Ran across this today and thought I'd share, in the event you hadn't see it before (pulled from Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Writing ).

In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Vonnegut qualifies the list by adding that Flannery O'Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.
​

These also apply to longer works, methinks.

Don't think you are a master enough to ignore them, especially if you're a beginner.

 

[Taylirious]

^

Good advice! I am trying to write something now...I always have several ideas floating around in my head. I have such a clear vision of my story then when I sit down to write it I just freeze up and go blank. Why is that?


S.