Inventing Reality Editing Service Blog

One common understanding of what makes a story “science fiction” is it involves the intrusion of some new invention, discovery or alien being into a world not unlike our own. How this intrusion modifies the “real world” forms the thrust of the story. After all, what is Martians existed? Of course, they’d leave their dying world and invade ours. Or what if we could travel faster than the speed of light? Of course, we’d travel to strange new worlds.

The invention, discovery or alien being that intrudes upon our world sometimes is referred to as a “novum”, which literally means “new thing”. SF author Brian Stableford coined the term.

The idea of a novum being key to science fiction existed long before Stableford established the term, however. In 1972, Darko Suvin after examining several decades of science fiction defined it as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.” If the “author’s empirical environment” is literally the “real world”, then the introduction of something new is needed to create an alternative “imaginative framework.”

Tags: genre, novum, science fiction, setting

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One of the most common mistakes novice science fiction writers make is failing to be creative enough with their new universe. Many have developed a great plot and intriguing characters, but their setting is uninteresting – despite that they’ve taken great pains to describe the alien landscape and appeal to multiple senses.

The problem is that they really haven’t created a unique universe. Instead, they’ve set the story in an all ready established universe have merely changed the names to give it semblance of originality. For example, the story boats a spacecraft, armed with quantum torpedoes, representing a great interstellar alliance that is exploring the galaxy. The crew is largely human, except for the alien first officer, who hails from Alpha Centauri. If the universe sounds like the USS Enterprise of “Star Trek” fame, it is, albeit with a couple of not so subtle variations.

When writers set a story in another author’s universe and then changes the names to conceal it, they are guilty of using “used furniture.” It’s a term from screenwriting in which furniture and props from other productions are reused in a new episode or show.

Readers generally feel cheated when a writer borrows another universe. Think of it this way: Science fiction can take the reader to utterly new worlds and vistas – in fact, it’s one of the appeals to readers of the genre. Reading a story set a universe one has already experienced often is like getting the same meal for dinner that you had for lunch. Sometimes a sequel works, but more often than not it’s a lot like eating leftovers.

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: originality, screenwriting, setting, used furniture

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If tempted to write a utopia, keep in mind that the society will face several problems among readers:

n It will stretch plausibility - No society can be so perfect that it all problems disappear, for often what matters most to us are personal problems, not larger economic/political/philosophical issues. Even if every one of us is fed, medically cared for and materially prosperous, there still will be the plagues of love gone wrong, of office politics and of death.

n It will read more like a description than a story - That’s bad news because usually the descriptions of a perfect society are downright dull. Consider Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.” The journey through Hell (the dystopia) is far more interesting than the journey through Heaven.

n It will run against the cynical bias of our times against utopias - Even if you address the personal psychological problems and human interaction and provide beautiful descriptions, the world will seem more like a suffocating dystopia to some readers. Indeed, some blog sites are even dedicated to showing why Star Trek’s “socialist” society would never work.

Tags: description, dystopia, plausibility, typesof science fiction, utopia

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In an age of the hydrogen bomb, industrial pollution and global warming, most readers find utopias naïve. Still, a deep yearning runs among science fiction readers and people in general for a better world: one with no war, no disease, ho hunger and no poverty. The United Federation of Planets of “Star Trek” fame appeals to many science fiction fans for this very reason.

Despite this, many science fiction stories today are more likely to be dystopias than utopias. A dystopia is the opposite of a utopia: it’s an example of a bad society in which all has gone wrong. There are many famous dystopias in science fiction, including George Orwell's “1984”, Aldous Huxley's “Brave New World”, Ray Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451” and Anthony Burgess's “A Clockwork Orange.”

A couple of other ideas closely related to the utopia and dystopia also appear in science fiction.

One kind is the “outopia,” which is a utopia that could not unrealistically exist. “Outopia” literally means “no place.” The perfect Earth of “Star Trek” arguably is an outopia, as a world without personal conflict seems unlikely, even if war, disease, hunger and poverty were ended.

Another is the “heterotopia,” which literally means the "other place” or a world of imagined possibilities. An example is Samuel R. Delany's novel “Trouble on Triton,” in which the independent society of the human colony on Triton is compared to the culture of Earth and of colonized Mars.

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: dystopia, heterotopia, outopia, types of science fiction, utopia

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Among the earliest types of science fiction stories are utopias, or stories that describe ideal societies. Such tales are a perfect match for science fiction, which extols the benefits of science and technology. If reason and new inventions can make our lives better (as they have done by reducing disease, increasing food production and distribution and offering material prosperity), then there may be no limit to what such progress may yield.

An example of a science fiction utopia is Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward.” In his society, people only do work that they enjoy and that supports the common good. This leaves them time for cultivating the arts and sciences.

In an age of the hydrogen bomb, industrial pollution and global warming, most readers find utopias naïve. Still, a deep yearning runs among science fiction readers and people in general for a better world: one with no war, no disease, ho hunger and no poverty. The United Federation of Planets of “Star Trek” fame appeals to many science fiction fans for this very reason. Indeed, utopias often aren’t practical blueprints for human society, but they are extremely inspirational.

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: dystopia, getting started, types of science fiction, utopia

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Converting passive to active voice is a simple process. First, identify the sentence’s subject, or who/what the sentence is doing something. For example, in the passive sentence “Through him was running an icy shiver.” “Shiver” is the subject.

Next, place the subject at the sentence’s beginning. You would then have a sentence that reads “An icy shiver through him was running.”

Tags: active voice, being verbs, passive voice, style, verb tense

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Tags: active voice, being verbs, passive voice, style, verb tense

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So you’ve written a scene jam packed with action, ripe with conflict and filled with tension – but every time you read it, the writing feels flat. The problem may be that you’re writing in passive rather than active voice.

Active voice is when the subject of the sentence does (or acts upon) something. In the following active voice sentence, the subject (streak of light), does something (arcs):

The streak of light arced across the sky as if a falling star.

Passive voice, however, occurs when the subject is acted upon. For example, the above sentence in passive voice would be written as:

Arcing across the sky was a streak of light, as if a falling star.

Passive voice generally should be avoided, for a couple of reasons:

n It’s dull - It’s like telling you something “exists”. In the above the example, the author really is saying “In the sky exists a streak of light.” Sleeker and more economical, active voice speeds up the story.

n It’s awkward - Notice how the phrase “as if a falling star” seems stuck to the end of the sentence, as if it is out of place. Rewriting the sentence so it’s in active voice would give the phrase a place to fit.

n It’s wordy - The passive voice sentence above says in 14 words what the active voice sentence says in 13 words. One word may not seem like much, but in a 100,000-word novel, it can mean a few unnecessary pages of copy.

Of course, sometimes “passive voice” is needed. You do need, on occasion, to tell people that something “exists”, especially when writing exposition. In addition, you don’t want to overdo it with active voice. The reader can only go at high speed so long before getting sick.

Tags: active voice, being verbs, passive voice, style, verb tense

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Sometimes when attempting to create tension and suspense in a story, writers can undercut their own efforts by adding “organ music.” A term coined at the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop, organ music us providing “details that countersink an emotional response before anything happens.” An example is crackling lightning before a character is murdered. Avoid foreshadowing as a way of creating suspense, however; foreshadowing actually gives away what is about to happen. It’s akin to the villain telling the hero, “And now I will shoot you.” Just have the villain fire his atom blaster.

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: foreshadowing, plot, rising action, suspense, tension

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Many science fiction and action-adventure tales give their main character a finite amount of time to solve a problem. The ever-accelerating starship has only so many minutes before its structural integrity will fail. The terrorists’ nuclear bomb will explode in so many hours. Only a few days remain before the asteroid strikes the Earth. These time limits are called “ticking clocks.”

To some degree, all stories employ a ticking clock as part of their plot. If they didn’t, the tale would careen aimlessly. Because the story must end, it must reach a breaking point, or climax, where the problem either is or isn’t solved. That climax is when the ticking clock strikes twelve.

To increase dramatic tension, the main character should recognize throughout the rising action that time is running out for him. His sense of urgency should increase as the time available to him diminishes.

Tags: climax, main character, plot, rising action

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Space opera is characterized by a number of conventions:

n Good guys - The two-fisted hero, the brilliant but eccentric scientist and his beautiful daughter all inhabit this genre.

n Bad guys - Our good guys invariably must confront invaders from space, space pirates, interplanetary smugglers, space dictator and his henchmen or other evil-doers.

n Dazzling new invention - To resolve conflict, good guys usually have to devise a dazzling new invention and then fight the bad guy in hand-to-hand or ship-to-ship battle with the dazzling new invention playing a key role in the victory.

n Heaps of non-explained technology - Space opera isn’t about science. It’s about good guys defeating bad guys and the neat gizmos they use to do it. How the gizmos work is irrelevant.

Given these characteristics, space opera isn’t concerned about internal conflicts among the characters, or at least none of worth. As there are no incompatible desires and aims to drive the story, the story typically becomes no more than mindless, pointless violence. It’s the kind of story we love as kids – and really only love as adults either because we fall in a nostalgic mood or because we haven’t quite yet grown up.

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: genre, plot, space opera, space western

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When the general public thinks of science fiction, they most often think of one kind of SF – space opera. In such a story, action forms the plot, usually in a space battle or on another planet. It’s the Buck Rogers of 1930s and 1940s radio and Saturday matinee dramas.

This type of science fiction also is known as a “space western” because it largely adapts the conventions of the Western genre to space: horses become spaceships and Indians become aliens. To a large degree, it utilizes “used furniture” and in part because of it is rarely critically acclaimed.

This is not say that all space operas are bad. “A Mote in God’s Eye” by Larry Niven and James Pournelle, for example, stands out as a worthy work in this genre.

Tags: getting started, plot, space opera, space western, used furniture

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One of the most common mistakes novice science fiction writers make is failing to be creative enough with their new universe. Many have developed a great plot and intriguing characters, but their setting is uninteresting – despite that they’ve taken great pains to describe the alien landscape and appeal to multiple senses.

The problem is that haven’t really created a unique universe. Instead, they’ve set the story in an all ready established universe have merely changed the names to give it semblance of originality. For example, the story boasts a spacecraft, armed with quantum torpedoes, representing a great interstellar alliance that is exploring the galaxy. The crew is largely human, except the alien first officer, who hails from Alpha Centauri. If the universe sounds like the USS Enterprise of “Star Trek” fame, it is, albeit with a couple of not so subtle variations.

When writers set a story in another author’s universe and then changes the names to conceal it, they are guilty of using “used furniture.” It’s a term from screenwriting in which furniture and props from other productions are reused in a new episode or show.

Readers generally feel cheated when a writer borrows another universe. Think of it this way: Science fiction can take the reader to utterly new worlds and vistas; it’s one of the appeals to readers of the genre. Reading a story set a universe one has already experienced often is like getting the same meal for dinner that you had for lunch. Sometimes a sequel works, but more often than not it’s a lot like eating leftovers.

Tags: setting, space opera, space western, used furniture

| | del.icio.us

When writing the conclusion of your story, be sure to follow a few simple guidelines:

n The conclusion must complete the action of the story - At this point in the story, the main character clearly has either overcome the central problem or has so failed that there is no hope of him ever overcoming it. If the conclusion isn’t connected to the story’s action, it will appear tacked on.

n Reaching the ritual ending must always be in doubt - If you do use a ritual ending, generate enough dramatic tension that the reader remains uncertain if the crime will be solved or that order will be restored so that a humorous ending is possible. Simply following a plot structure without dramatic tension is akin to creating a “cookie-cutter” story. The story would be the same as any other and lack any unique flavor.

n Your ending must surprise and delight - Often what is most memorable about a story is its conclusion. A conclusion does mark the last words that are read, after all. Make them count.

Tags: conclusion, denouement, plot, resolution, ritual ending

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Genre stories often have expected endings, called “ritual endings”. Mysteries, for example, include the main character reciting how he made the connections that that led him to solve the crime. “Star Trek” episodes typically end with the exchange of a joke that relates to the story’s theme. Part of the fun of such stories is seeing how the characters reach this ritual ending.

Tags: conclusion, denouement, genre, plot, resolution, ritual ending

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