I’m currently creating a world and characters for a science fiction story (hopefully eventually a novel, but I don’t know if it’ll make it that far).
I’m currently trying to create a reasonably consistent and well fleshed out world to set it in and characters to populate it with.
Problem is that I’m not a details person. I can come up with them if asked, but have a tendency to gloss over them when working on my own. Further, I’m admittedly somewhat inexperienced at this kind of scale of things.
So, I was wondering if there’s anyone here who has some experience with this kind of thing (or even who doesn’t) and would be willing to help me out? Basically it would just involve me e-mailing you copies of what I was working on, and you asking questions and making suggestions as you see fit. Not exactly particularily strenuous.
In the (admittedly unlikely) event that it does get published, everyone who helped will of course get due recognition.
Anyone willing to help? C’mon, pwease. You know you want to.
Sure, send it to me. But I’ll be savage in my editing, and the suggestions I make may not suit you. I obsessed over details in my own fan fiction writing, so maybe I can help.
By “not a details person”, you mean that you naturally gravitate to “big picture” aspects of things? (For example, do read a book a second time, and read parts you have no memory of, and probably skimmed/skipped) Or do you mean that you are impatient with attention to detail? The later would not be good, because writing a novel generally requires a GREAT DEAL of attention to detail, and as much reviewing as you can stand.
In terms of “creating a world and characters”, writers probably gravitate to what’s easiest. Clearly some science fiction, fantasy and mystery writers start with some unusual concept that intrigues them, and then work through the details. Other people, for example Dickens, seem to enjoy writing one chapter at a time and “seeing what happens”.
The couple novels I’ve finished (which I’m supposed to be submitting… groan) started with a plot more or less complete (say 1500 words explaining the whole thing, with an emphasis on early chapters). The characters are only seen in a very vague way. As they react to people and events in the story, the details of their personalities become clearer. So I do considerable rewrite once I understand the characters better.
This process is probably typical for inexperienced writers, or for those writing unusual novels. When an author’s on their eighth novel of the same genre, I think they tend to pull “character types” out of a portfolio.
A college creative writing course might be helpful, since you’ll have other people working through similar problems, and a professor who’s adept at working around “roadblocks”.
“The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver” presents some quite challenging writing problems, and how to work through them.
I’d be happy to have a quick look at what you’re writing, especially because it would be a excuse not to prepare submissions for publishers. My e-mail address is in my profile.
Bryan: Savage is good. And feel free to make suggestions I won’t agree with. I’ll just say ‘no’. (well, after a reasoned discussion of why).
partly_warmer: The former is exactly what I mean. I see things as a big picture and miss details myself. However, I don’t get impatient with the details. I merely sometimes need help seeing them.
The way I have tended to write in the past was just to create a basic setting and let the characters and plot develop as they went along. This worked badly, so I’m trying to create a more structured background and characters before I begin the actual writing.
AFAIK my university doesn’t offer creative writing courses, but I shall look into it. Thanks for the suggestion.
I’m currently writing up the basic outline, I should have it sent to anyone who wants a copy by tomorrow evening (GMT).
My main problem is just HOW to connect things. Like, I’ll have a couple good scenes, KNOWING that there needs to be a connection and yet not quite being able to find it…
As for detail, I tend to be a HOUND about it. Well, with characters, but not with plot…the connection thing…just can’t seem to find it.
To create a world, the best thing to do is start from the top: Governments, societies, who runs what, that sort of thing. Since you’re dealing with science fiction, that means aliens (probably), which means you want to make them SEEM alien, as opposed to just weird-looking humans. Figure out the history of those aliens, how they evolved, what sorts of features are prominent in their evolution (for example, if they came from a world with higher gravity, they’d have stronger muscles and bone structure).
From there, you can figure out how they may see the world… religious views, philosophies, opinions on other species. Of course, you don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming all members of that species will share the same personality and mindset (like the Klingons in Star Trek… they’re all the same).
Also, figure out such things as clothing and mannerisms. Keep in mind that, if alien and human societies have been intermingling for a long enough period, clothing and mannerisms would begin to blend (for instance, I have a sci-fi novel going that’s set 4,000 years in the future… which I consider plenty of time for an alien species and humanity to have exchanged their fair share of customs).
I would recommend that you try to keep the number of details down to a minimum… only what’s necessary. When writing sci-fi, it can become very tempting to flood the reader with amazing details about the fictional world that you’ve created. You should have far more details about your fictional universe floating around in your head than you actually put on paper. But that’s just my opinion.
kitarak, one thing that might help you is to practice writing descripions of things you can see: write up the real world as if it were a fantasy setting, explaining the goverment, the social structure, the religion, etc. Then try and read that as if you were ocming from Mars and see if it would make any sense to you, or give you a picture of what the world is really like. You may notice things like Hey! Ididn’t even mention housepets! You can’t begin to understand humans if you don’t know about housepets! and that kind of thing. I really don’t know if this will help, but I am sure it wouldn’t hurt.
Spoofe: Nope, no aliens. Or rather, if they’re aliens then they’re basically human aliens, with minor physiological differences (I’m going to describe them as human throughout the course of the story. Parallel evolution, artistic license, whatever). As to details, I’ll bear in mind not to include too many in the story, but in my general background of the world it might be a good idea to have them written down - The problem with details in your head is that they change, leading to inconsistencies. I will bear that in mind 'though, thanks.
Manda JO: Hmm. But that would require, like, research. That would be… work. Thanks for the suggestion 'though. I may give it a try.
I finished the basic background earlier than I thought I would, so I’m sending Bryan_Ekers and partly_warmer. Anyone else want a copy?
The professor for my senior fiction writing class was adamant about this sort of thing: if you’re not good with details, or not going to put them in because it doesn’t jive with your writing style, don’t bother writing science fiction. Ever. He might have a point, since you owe it to your readers to fully describe unknown realities.
On the other hand, he was a tremendous blowhard and actually liked the story I handed in to piss him off-he advised us also that “new writers shouldn’t write in anything but the 3rd person,” which was fairly insulting: most people in the class had been writing fiction for at least eight or ten years at that point. So I wrote a store in 2nd person, and he liked it! I don’t think I wanted him to like it…
As I said, I can do details if pressed. Often quite well, and I don’t have too much difficulty fitting them into the writing. The problem is that when I’m creating the world itself, I’m not very good at seeing what details need to be put in. That’s why I was asking for help.
I’m intrigued as to how you wrote a story in the second person. I tried it once and it was absolutely awful. Granted, at that point so was most of my writing. If you still have a copy of it, may I take a look?
Mods, I am not sure about the copywrite on this link, but the story appears on a University website, so I am assuming that it is ok. If you feel different, please feel free to delete the link.
Another possibility, though I hesitate to mention this, is to get thee to you nearest Gaming store and ask the clerk to show you the Gurps supplements. Don’t worry about the actual game, but the supplements are meant to be guides to various world settings. Read a few there, buy one, take it home and write ytour own 'gurps supplement" for yoour world–basically steal their headings and orginization to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Hmm. The ‘Girl’ story is kindof odd. Thanks for the link 'thoguh.
It’s funny you should mention GURPS, as I used to do a lot of world creation for it. I had a semi-regular ‘column’ (not really a column, as it was just me posting it to a newsgroup) on them (please don’t look them up. Young kitarak is a horribly embarassing person :)). When you’re just doing it in brief, attention to details isn’t neccesary.
Worldwise I never really liked the GURPS premade settings ('though I did like the reference books), but I’ll take you up on that suggestion. I’ll be very near a store that sells GURPS books tomorrow, hence time for some browsing. Thanks.
Incidentally, I’m actually using GURPS Space for a reference for world creation, just to get some rough numbers.
Here’s a tip: Don’t try to turn a short story into a novel. The focus is entirely different. Short stories are generally event-driven, and can get away with a lot more reliance on a “gimmick” (especially in SF or fantasy). Novels are generally character-driven: A gimmick gets old after a few hundred pages, but you need that many pages to properly develop a character.
As far as how to do your world, write as much as you can about it on paper, a paper that has no story on it, and use it as a reference when necessary. Keep the details out of your story except where it’s necessary and/or cool, but have a clear and precise picture of everything so you don’t trip yourself up later.
Hey all, I’m curious, have any of you been published? How does it work, particularly for science-fiction/fantasy? Do you just send out manuscripts, and hope that a publisher accepts it, or do they ask you to revise certain elements before they even consider it?
And how much do y’all get paid as a first or second-time novelist?
Just curious. I write stories (it’s more like I start them), but I’m nowhere near the point of publishing anything.
This is a minor hijack, but this thread has been dead for a while, so…
