Inventing Reality Editing Service Blog

Not all stories are about restoring order in the universe or overcoming some personal conflict. Sometimes the plot revolves around the search for an item that will elevate the main character’s position in the world or will prevent an evil force from gaining the upper hand. This item is called a macguffin, a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock.

The macguffin could be a chalice that promises immortality (King Arthur’s holy grail stories), the One Ring (“Lord of the Rings”), a valuable piece of art (“The Maltese Falcon”), a magic jewel, a secret formula – anything that is so highly desired that it creates obstacles and challenges for the main character who tries to obtain it.

If using a macguffin in your story, two questions must be answered. First, why is the object valuable? If the importance (and usually the exoticness) of the object is explained, the reader will quickly lose interest as the story has little point. After all, every one of us spends time looking for mundane objects. A second question to answer is why are the characters motivated to obtain the macguffin? To say the object is valuable is not enough, for one man’s treasure often is another man’s junk. Usually a character needs some overwhelming reason to desire an object, such as the thirst for immortality or a desperate need for money.

Tags: inciting incident, main character, opening, plot, rising action

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A vital part of your story is the opening lines, also known as the inciting incident. In this section of your story, we learn who the main character is, the central problem facing him and a little about the setting.

For example, in the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “The Doomsday Machine” (written by Norman Spinrad), the opening section reveals that Captain Kirk (the main character) is trying to determine what destroyed another starship, which in turn likely poses a threat to his own ship (the central problem), while in deep space, specifically near solar system L-374 (setting).

If the inciting incident fails to be interesting, the audience almost certainly will stop reading or watching. Some writers pay so much attention to this section of the story that it’s far more interesting than the rest of the story – yet despite diminishing returns, readers or television viewers keep on with the tale just because the opening was so gripping.

When writing the opening of your story, follow these guidelines:
n Start the story in media res, or “in the middle” - “The Doomsday Machine” doesn’t start with the starship Kirk is looking for engaged in the battle that results in its destruction. That would delay us from being the main character and result in less dramatic tension. Dispensing with the story’s background and starting “in the middle” has been a time-honored way of telling stories since Homer’s “The Iliad”.
n Introduce a crisis that affects the main character - This jolt sets the story in motion. For readers, finding out how this problem will be resolved is the reason to keep turning the page. In “The Doomsday Machine,” Kirk’s capable friend is in charge of the destroyed starship; if something can destroy his friend’s ship, then he knows he’s also in trouble.
n Present a “challenge of the unknown” - That your main character facing something thought impossible is fundamental in science fiction plots. The exoticness of an alien locale or an extrapolation of known science is part of what brings many people to this genre. In “The Doomsday Machine”, this exotic unknown is some force that can wreak havoc upon starships, the very device our future Earth depends upon to protect it.

You Do It
Page through the previous pieces you’ve written for these exercises. From them, draw an idea for a story. Now write the opening 100-150 words of the piece. Make sure you’ve introduced the main character, the central problem he faces and the setting in those first 100 words.

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

Tags: central problem, opening, parts of plot

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Establishing the setting at the beginning of a story is no easy task. Imagining a science fiction world involves thinking about every aspect of how it differs from ours in sights, sounds, scents and even tastes and feel.

Rather than fully imagine such a world, some writers instead create a quick, unformed facsimile of their own. For example, they start the story with the line, “She awoke in a white room”. The white room is the white piece of paper facing the author. This is known as “white room syndrome”, a term coined a few year ago at the Turkey City Workshop in Austin (a group that has included authors William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker and Walter Jon Williams).

They officially define white room syndrome as “an authorial imagination inadequate to the situation at end, most common at the beginning of a story”. In short, because the science fiction world wasn’t fully imagined, it can’t support the story that unfolds from it.

Sometimes this occurs because a writers’ inspiration for the story is from a setting in which he found himself. If the writer takes some extra time to think about and develop this world, however, such inspiration can be put to good effect. This is the case in the non science fiction story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

White room syndrome also can occur because some writers believe that they should simply start writing and let the world evolve from there, a la the Beat writers’ approach. Sometimes this technique does work, but all too often the writers misses the full potential of this kernel of a setting that is planted in the opening line. Even worse, the writer creates an inconsistent setting because he haphazardly creates a new world.

The lesson here: Think a lot about and fully develop your setting before committing to it.

You Do It

Re-imagine a setting you now frequent. For example, if sitting at a coffee shop, imagine what it will be like a century from now. How will the sights differ? What new sounds will there be? Will the smells be the same? What of taste – will coffee taste different and will other foods exist? What about touch?
 

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.

(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: opening, scene, setting

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