Inventing Reality Editing Service Blog

Sometimes you simply must include exposition into your story, especially in science fiction when you’re dealing with entirely new worlds, alien races and technologies. Good writers handle this dilemma by embedding expository information into their stories.

Here are some ways to that:

n Viewpoint character recalls the information – The “captain’s log” convention is a way to accomplish this. Note that most log entries are only a couple of sentence long and focus on conflict.

n Viewpoints character seeks out such information and discovers it in notes, journals, articles, etc. which is then summarized – Mr. Spock and Data often do this in “Star Trek” by giving the relevant facts from the library computer on extraterrestrial species, exoworlds and historical events.

n Another character tells this information to viewpoint character - This other character must have a plausible motive for telling it, however. In addition, the character who the information is told to shouldn’t disappear once he hears the background, instead he needs to play an integral part in the plot beyond being the receiver of an info dump. An example of this successfully being done is in Steve Alten’s “Domain,” in which the reader needs to know the basic layout of a psychiatric treatment center; in the opening chapter, Alten has the center’s chief of psychiatry explain it to the main character, who is on her first day of an internship at the center. Alten wisely limits the description to a few brisk sentence.

n Viewpoint character experiences the world through his five senses – The character should capture details that infer background information the reader needs to know. If you need to describe the physical makeup of a world, give the tour of it through the viewpoint character’s five senses.

Ultimately, it’s best if readers learn about the setting or novum as a byproduct of engaging action. As science fiction writer and editor Stanley Schmidt recommends, “Know as much as you can about your background – and tell no more than you have to.”

Whatever you do, avoid embedding exposition by having one character say to another, “As you know …” This is commonly known in science fiction as a “Stapledon”.
 
Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: exposition, info dump, novum, setting, show vs. tell, stapledon, viewpoint character

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Should you avoid reading science fiction stories that involve the novum you’re fascinated by, so as to ensure originality?

There is some benefit to this, especially if you want to avoid unwanted influences and used furniture. But ultimately you’ll probably end up reinventing the fixed pulley. You won’t advance discussion about the novum at all but instead unknowingly hash over what’s already been said.

Tags: novum, originality, setting, used furniture

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There’s a cardinal rule for all science fiction authors to follow: Limit your story to one novum. This better allows you to maximize reader interest in it while helping maintain a sense of believability about the new world you’ve created. The more you ask writers to suspend their disbelief by accepting new concepts/ideas that stretch their imagination, their greater the risk you run that you’ll lose them.

Of course, asking many long-time SF readers to accept more than one novum isn’t necessarily bad – some readers expect it or they believe you’re not fully describing the universe you’ve created. But often writers borrow and reuse novums from other stories. After all, how many times have we read science fiction stories involving faster than light travel, ray guns, multiple star systems of varying kinds (trinaries, binaries, etc.), transporter-like devices and holodecks? Many of these concepts aren’t truly novums at all but simply science fiction conventions that make your universe seem like a truly interstellar society.

Tags: believability, conventions, novum, setting, suspension of disbelief

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Creating a novum for your science fiction story isn’t as simple as making up a cool name and then giving the device some interesting function. As a writer, you should understand the device inside and out. This will allow you to more fully incorporate it into your plot and to more fully explore its implications for the world.

There are several questions you should ask and answer when creating a new invention, sometimes referred to as a technological novum (We’ll discuss the aliens and extrasolar landscapes in future entries):

n Why did this change occur? No technological advancement occurs without reason. Cars were faster than horses, the atomic bomb allowed a country to win a war, computers improved office productivity. Any technological novum should address some need that exists in the world you’ve created.

n What are some uses for the novum beyond its intended one? Often people find unintended uses for new devices. The computer, for example, originally was thought of as an enormous calculator for scientists and the military. Video games, Internet-based businesses and chat rooms are all unintended uses of the computer.

n What are some ways this technology can be abused? There’s always a scam artist or someone with designs on power out there. The inventors of the Internet didn’t envision phishing or spam.

n Who benefits from this change? Nanotechnology obviously will make some corporations rich. But will it allow firefighters to wear suits that mend themselves when burned or to remain cool when placed in flames, saving lives?

n Who suffers from/disapproves of this change? For every winner there are dozens of losers. If fusion technology became a reality in personal transportation, for example, the fossil fuel industry would collapse. That would plunge parts of Texas and Louisiana into economic ruin. Refineries and gas stations across the United States would close, leaving many out of work.

n What are some professions this novum will alter? How would the medical profession change if nanomeds became widespread? Would there be new specialists in the field or could a family doctor now replace the cardiologist and urologist? Would lab techs and nurses at hospitals need to learn new skills so they could monitor the progress of the nanobots?

n How does this change affect “official” public life? If we become a spacefaring civilization, will the regulating of spacecraft be left to each nation or will an international body oversee it? If the latter, how do people of once powerful nations feel about an outside government establishing rules that govern them? Or would the powerful nations establish standards that ultimately exclude poorer nations from participating in space industries?

n How does this change affect the average person’s daily life? Video games result in obese children and many of us now take telephone calls in the park, on the street or at restaurants, a world quite different from one that existed before the 1980s. Each new invention subtly affects our lives so that several new inventions leaves in a world greatly different than one lived in by our grandparents (or even parents).

n How does this change affect personal behavior? In the 1980s, you’d get strange looks if you walked down the street talking to no one there with an electronic device stuck in your ear. Today, it’s normal. Each new invention can alter our sense of etiquette and relationships with others.

Tags: invention, novum, plot, setting, technology

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Most science fiction readers don’t think like an academician when reading a story set in space or the near future. They don’t say “Aha! There’s the novum!” when you mention the “time sled”. They do have very real expectations, however, about how you use the “time sled” in your story. Every literary genre follows various conventions and rules, and in science fiction how the author handles the novum is among them, even if the reader can’t list what they may be.

As a writer, however, you need to be cognitive of what those rules are:

n The reader should be able to understand what a novum can and cannot do – Warp drive allows a spaceship to travel faster than the speed of light. Simply using it as a vague propulsion system without explaining its actual purpose (FTL travel) can leave the reader wondering if warp drive really is up to the task of taking characters between star systems and serve as a distraction to your story.

n The novum must be plausible – It must be based on the laws of science as we now know them. For example, with continued research and a few breakthroughs, widespread use of nanotechnology is a very real possibility for our civilization. Humanoid invaders from the planet Venus, given our understanding of that world as a dry and superhot, isn’t plausible.

n The novum must be fascinating – A room in which holographic images are so real that they can deceive a person into thinking he’s actually in the location projected is interesting as it opens a number of dramatic possibilities and possibilities for philosophical introspection. After all, what if the faux worlds created on the holodeck are far more intriguing to people than the real world? What would happen?

n Borrowed novums should be improved upon - It’s okay to borrow novums used in other science fiction works. But the novum should be treated in a new way or the story runs the risk of lacking originality. Indeed, one of the ways our genre grows and remains vibrant is that authors further explore and play off other authors’ ideas and novums. So if a phaser -like weapon is the centerpiece of your story, have it do more than incinerate objects or knock a person unconscious. Have it burn a person from the inside for hours so that the victim dies painfully, creating an ethical dilemma for one of your merciful main character.

Tags: conventions, ftl, novum, setting

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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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n Anthropologize - What might a group that exists now be doing in 50 years?

n Brainstorm/extrapolate - Imagine a new invention. How might it change a profession? What dramatic tale can be told if these changes occur?

n Create maps of imaginary places – Draw coastlines, mountains, cities, nations, star lanes then develop a story around them.

n Distill conflicts into lists - What are incompatible desires and aims that someone could experience? Then match it to an appropriate “What if?” (a situation that aggravates or accentuates conflict).

n Fictionalize yourself in an unresolved situation that someone else faces – How would you resolve the problem?

n Find conflicts in everyday life - Look at the problems those around you are going through and have your characters resolve them in their universe.

n Keep abreast of scientific research and technological development – Resolve the current mysteries of science through fiction. Good sources for new science news are Science Daily, New Scientist, Astronomy, Nature, Astrobiology.net, and my astrobiology blog, Alien Life.

n Place a person you know in a different setting - For example, place an urbanite on a Southern farm or a school janitor in a corner office of a high-tech firm. How does their lifestyle and view on life change? You now have a character and a setting. Next, imagine that a problem occurs, upsetting their routine. You now have a plot.

n Read both science fiction and other good literature - You’ll get ideas by noticing points that are unexplored consequences of the central premise, or turn the central premise on its head. Read bad literature, too – if reading critically, you’ll learn from their errors.

n Start with a “novum” and ask “What if?” – A novum is some element introduced to our world that doesn’t now exist in it, such as the arrival of aliens, a spaceship that can travel faster than light or an artificial intelligence. Ask “Who would fear that? Who has something to lose by the addition of this novum to his world/universe?

Tags: brainstorming, getting started, novum, stoy ideas, writers block

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