HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY paraphrased from Orson Scott Card's book

INFINITE BOUNDARIES

• Read lots of sf and fantasy

• know the difference between sf and fantasy or you'll get rejected for submitting to the wrong category, sf has bolts and plastic

Possible Settings

• future

• alternate past

• other world

• ancient earth

• contradictory physics ie magic

• settings set the mindset of the character

WORLD CREATION

Where ideas come from?

• brainstorm

• draw a map and fill out its stories

• play ideas out

Make Rules

• eg. think of the 'price of magic'

Space Travel

• you need to figure out how people got where they are, it affects who they are

• everybody knows hyperspace, you can use it

• generation ships

• cryotravel

• ramdrives

• time dilation

• the ansible - allows instantaneous communication (Ursula K LeGuin)

• don't use 'warp' speed

Time Travel, if you go back in time...

• you can make changes because time travel takes you out of the time stream (Asimov's The End of Eternity)

• you can make changes that destroy present society, time travel is guarded secret (John Varley's Air Raid /movie Millenium)

• you can make changes with minor disturbances if you go back far enough

• you can make changes as long as they don't have long term effects or change your future

• you can go back but you're invisible and can't make changes, but you can watch

• you can jump back into someone's head (Carter Scholz's "The Ninth Symphony")

• you can jump back into your own mind

• you can go back as a hologram

• you go back as an avatar

History of your world

• your notes will come through in your writing

• create it, at least in your notes

• consider evolution

• consider alternate evolutions

• the context of history creates characters attitudes eg. (ed) in Footnotes in Gaza - muslim history made the people accept events as god's will

• develop characters biographies in your notes

Language

• don't use made up words for already exisiting english words, unless that thing is something completely different

• translate phrases right after their use in italics

• if you use jargon,dialects or made-up languages, you have to do it really well or it sounds stupid, most of us are not Tolkien so beware

Scenery

• think of the effects changes in worlds have to the physics, eg. 2 suns on gravity, lighting, temperature

• "hard" sf cares more about the science than the fiction - the best sf is good at both

Typical hard-sf formulas

• independent thinkier comes up with great idea, bureaucrats screw it up; thinker straightens it out and puts them in their place

• something strange is happening; independent thinker figures it out after many false starts

• a new thing is being tested and either kills everyone totally or nearly, or everybody lives happily ever after.

STORY CREATION

Whose Story is this?

• Who hurts the most?

• Who has the power and freedom to act? put the viewpoint with them eg. with soldiers not generals

• the viewpoint character must be present at main events, involved in them, and have personal stake in them

Where does the Story Begin and End?

• the beginning sets up the end

• MICE - Milieu, Idea, Character, Event - one idea will dominate and that can determine your beginning and end

• Mileu story - is the world, if the stories mainly about the world, it begins and ends with the characters entrance and exit eg. Dorothy, *Gulliver's Travels, Shogun

• The idea story begins by raising a question and ends by answering that question eg. 2001 - What is the monolith?

• The Character story ends when the character is transformed

• The Event Story begins with the world put out of order and ends with a new order eg. LOTR, Dune, Macbeth, Beowulf

• DON'T WRITE PROLOGUES, skip reading and writing them

• you can tell which kind of story you have by what you love the most and spend the most time on

WRITING WELL

Exposition

• balance it

• trickle it into the story

• start in the middle of the action see Illiad, Odyssey

• today people tend to use tight third-person-limited-point-of-view name things as they are revealed to viewpoint of character

• abeyance - explain your concepts in due time - sf readers usually know new things and concepts should get explained

• watch literalism - new words like 'seed village' can be taken literally in sf - make it clear it's not a metaphor

• you can pique interest by hiding and revealing delicately, the trick is to show just enough

• good eg. read [Wild Seed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Seed_(Octavia_Butler_novel)

Language

• as noted before, be careful using diction and made up languages - it only works when done really well

• good eg. Tolkien, bad eg. (ed.) Stephen King - Wolves of Calla FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU

• If your characters are upper class - they should speak well but keep it readable, same goes for lower class

• profanity and vulgarity, make it appropriate or its distracting

THE LIFE AND BUSINESS OF WRITING

• dated 1990, times have changed for markets

• submit to the best market available first do your best and send it out, you're continually growing, love what you're now doing.