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Science and Fiction by Ryan Edel It's a sticky situation. You're writing a story about an evil computer and how it takes over the world. The protagonist has tried everything he knows, but the computer is still winning. What do you do? Some wrong answers would be "throw in a sex scene" or "time for Wide Screen Stereo." Instead, you want to craft a story exploring some element of science in a way that drives it home to the reader's heart. Nothing slick, nothing catchy, just good, solid science fiction that your reader will pick up twenty years from now and say "man, that was a good story." Where do you start? With the computer? With the protagonist? What details are relevant to your work, and how do you know whether you're writing fiction or stereo instructions? There are no hard and fast "rules" for writing science fiction, but here are a few general concepts I have learned from my own writing and workshop critiques.  |
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 Most
science fiction readers are looking for a good story with a solid,
believable plot that portrays technology in a realistic manner. This
sounds much easier than it is in practice. The first step in good
science fiction is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Are you writing about
an alien invasion during the testing of the first fusion reactor just
as it causes the sun to go supernova and destroy all of humanity?
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Avoid the chewy mouthful. Ambition is good, but it also has limits. A story with too much to it will collapse in on itself. This is particularly a danger in writing short stories. Often, it's tempting to write a short story from several character perspectives and address multiple plots and subplots, but this can't be done in something shorter than a full-length novel. So the simplest place to start is to choose a protagonist and a technology of interest. Give your protagonist a name, and viola! You're off and running. After that, the fun begins. According to Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog, true science fiction is about science, and the central idea for the story should be based on science.A single question can generate the idea needed for your plot- what if a space satellite crash-landed and unleashed an alien plague? The next step is to decide where to go- does the plague kill humans? How? Does it kill anything else, too? Is it a virus, or an infectious particle that has never been seen before? Details are important. |
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