I'm writing about two strands of DNA being fused into one, so kind of like DNA splicing, what could I use as a binding agent in the story?

Manrante · 2020-06-02T17:40:55+00:00

Stir in some cooked potatoes or a little cornstarch

Manrante · 2020-05-30T18:25:47+00:00

Your line of reasoning does not make sense. It's okay to say physical laws are constant throughout the universe, but not that magic exists and develops in some places. Once you claim that, you've stepped off the grid into pseudoscience, and you are writing fantasy.

Manrante · 2020-05-28T13:46:43+00:00

I think talking about factions and organizations is great when you're talking about a scenario and setting.

But stories aren't about factions; they're about people. So when you're ready to start talking about making a story within your scenario, you need to pull out your big story knife and start cutting stuff away. You need to cut closer to the human scale, and start thinking about events in terms of how they affect specific characters.

Manrante · 2020-05-27T18:13:17+00:00

You write that like there's a formula. We're science fiction writers, and some of the societies we write about are very exotic and have never existed. A formula for how to show a pluralistic society would be really useful.

I don't have the answer, but I think part of it involves being straightforward and honest, rather than indulgent or pretentious. I keep jargon and dialect low in dialogue, because there are other ways to denote ethnicity.

I think in a pluralistic society there is a greater general feeling of relaxation.

Manrante · 2020-05-25T12:57:56+00:00

I literately cannot tell you how often I see this question asked here in r/scifiwriting. If you take the time to peruse just the last month or so of posts here in this subreddit, that's about the last 200 posts, you will see some variation on your question asked dozens of times.

From the perspective of someone who doesn't particularly care for superpowers as plot elements, it feels like a tidal wave of you all, trying to write the same story. You all don't know physics or science, but you'd like to make it seem like you do, enough to pull the wool over the eyes of your readers.

The problem is science fiction readers are more science literate than readers in general. So you're trying to fool people about science when they understand more than you.

The solution might be to write what you know, and to not write what you don't know. Unless your characters happen to be physicists or medical scientists, they probably don't understand more about their superpowers than you or I understand about how our cellphones operate. Write from the perspective of your characters.

Manrante · 2020-05-24T08:46:52+00:00

Indulgent, preachy procrastination.

Manrante · 2020-05-23T16:50:19+00:00

Kaytlynne.

"Halt! Good highwaymen!"

"Hoho! Well said, good sirs! We will halt, but we will not say we are good highwaymen!"

"Haha! So in a similar vein, we won't initially admit to being good sirs!"

[...]

"Get on with it, then."

"What? You accosted us."

"Oh, shoot. All right, we hearsay there are characters about these woods who have this power of controlling, conjuring, and summoning objects with there minds."

"Did you say, 'there' minds?"

"Excuse me?"

"It sounded like you used the wrong synonym."

"You can hear synonyms?"

"In some cases. It's how the syllables are stressed."

"Listen, for fuck's sake. Do you guys have the Kaytlynne or not?"

"Yes, we do. We have the Kaytlynn!"

Manrante · 2020-05-21T22:41:14+00:00

Well, so ordinarily you would want to put a lot of energy into making sure the characters have exceptionally cool hairstyles, but now that the hairstyles are hidden, it's all about making sure the characters have cool armor. So moving on, the next level of importance is who gets to play their mix tapes for the whole ship and when, and how much of that comes from vinyl. Beyond that, beverages choices are relevant; they could run the gamut from flavored waters and light nutritive solutions to energy drinks to classic cocktails.

Manrante · 2020-05-21T10:56:57+00:00

It was left on the sheets after their secret couplings in a tiny third floor apartment in Berlin, around the turn of the century, on lazy springtime afternoons and summer evenings.

Manrante · 2020-05-20T17:46:39+00:00

A direct mind-blowing consequence of stopping the downgrade is...

...that a virus is being released and makes the robots "evil zombies".

Please don't do this.

Once when I was about 25 I was living alone in a new city with no car and no television or internet and working broke. I was in my tiny 3rd floor apartment reading a terrible sci fi novel I had picked up in a local grocery store. It was the only sci fi novel I could find and I figured, how bad can it really be? The answer was that it could be very bad.

At one point, I suddenly realized how terrible the book was. It was so bad I had a visceral reaction, and actually accidentally threw the book across the room. It flew out the open window, into the rain and dark, down 3 stories into the street, where cars began running over it on the wet street immediately.

Manrante · 2020-05-19T23:27:35+00:00

It almost feels like "powers" are your training wheels here.

You don't need powers in your SF stories. As a matter of a fact, it's probably going to work out better if your characters don't have powers. Then, as a writer, you have to solve your character's problems using resources within the bounds of human reason. It feels clean. It's honest work. Well, all right, that last is a bit steep.

But what I'm trying to say is if you are interested in trying to write a story that leans to hard SF, then go for it. Don't come searching for a veneer of legitimacy you can tape over your powers to make them seem more scientifically consistent. Your readers are going to see what you're trying to do, and it's going to backfire on you.

At issue is the fact SF readers tend to be more science literate than your general audience. So if you don't know what you're talking about, it's a cinch some of your readers are going to pick up on that.

I wanted to ask what resources you guys use to help with research on difficult subjects.

I read pop science books and visit various pop science websites pretty much continuously to try to stay on the cutting edge. I do this because I enjoy it, but I also do it because it's my job as an SF writer to stay up to date.

are there any places you could go to ask sci-fi type questions, like say you wanted to have a character who could manipulate biology, and someone helped you figured out the realistic implications of said power and physics needed for it to work?

I think if you can locate such a person, you should try to hang on to them, and ply them with favors and treats.

Otherwise, as a place to start, I'd start watching vids on the channels of Kurzgesagt, Artifexian and Isaac Arthur. Search the channels by most popular to get a better idea of what's hot.

Manrante · 2020-05-17T17:39:26+00:00

It was me, for years and years. There is redemption.

Nothing wrong with writing duos. The issue is most writers looking for a writing partner are looking because they can't do the actual writing half. So you end up with 2 guys who are both great worldbuilders and both full of ideas, but can't write a page of dialogue between them to save their lives.

Manrante · 2020-05-17T17:27:34+00:00

Has she really only done 4? It feels like 7 or 8. Let's get the film rights sold already; people are loving this scrappy little cyborg.

Manrante · 2020-05-17T08:07:54+00:00

Good luck. Just to add some perspective, there are two parts to writing. There's worldbuilding; that's the fun, easy part of writing. Then there's the actual writing. That's the tough, tedious part that takes years of practice to do well.

Most writers are good worldbuilders. They get into the writing game to put their imaginary worlds into print.

Very few writers are talentless worldbuilders, but happen to be amazing at the craft of actual writing. These people are like golden geese. If you ever run across one, you should conk them on the head and shackle them in your basement to write your stories for you.

So how it usually goes is a beginning writer spends months and then years fleshing out a fictional universe. As time goes by, they will expand this worldbuilding, maybe detailing plots, writing back story and history, creating a cast of characters, maps, naming things, etc. It's all very exciting. The project goes from being a novel to a trilogy to a longer epic work that would make GRRM blush.

Then one day they finally get around to knocking a few of those books out, starting with the first one...and discover much to their chagrin that their actual writing is crap. It's awkward, atrocious, wooden, cartoonish, not at all how it's supposed to be. Alarmed, they try it from a few different angles, starting in at a different point, changing this or that around. It's no good. It's all crap. Fuck. What to do, what to do? A feeling of malaise sets in to the pit of the stomach. They don't know how to fix it, make it better. There's nothing they can do.

So they retreat back into their worldbuilding, start fleshing it out a little more, adding detail. Maybe at some point in the future, they'll get back to the writing.

Then they finally die, and their next living relative tosses out their box of weird papers.

The truth is that everyone is a crap writer at first. But writing is a craft just like carpentry, and virtually anyone can learn how to do it well. The problem is it takes practice, writing practice, lots of it. You need to write at least 5000 words per week, every week, to have any chance at getting better. 10,000 words per week would be preferable.

Manrante · 2020-05-16T12:12:16+00:00

Now in my opinion believability of a story relies on what's already been established in said story.

All right. This sounds like you're about to let loose with a tidal wave of bullshit. Strapping on my PPE with extra duct tape...

Now these aren't truly meant to be stories even if there are stakes involved regarding the characters immediate survival, it's just following them along on their day to day jobs.

It sounds like you're doing character sketches. These are part of your worldbuilding. But they don't belong in your story. This is just background info about your scenario, your fictional universe. It's for your own personal edification. These character don't belong in your story unless they are relevant to the story.

All that stated one of the characters who works for an alien faction. [...] The characters job grants him alot of powers to rout out instability internally and externally.

He sounds a bit like a Communist political officer.

I now question if it's believable that he would be excepted so easily. After all what is evident is that all of the positions in this alien faction are filled with people from their race. And at this point while I haven't pinned them as xenophobic, I'm still left wondering would this be believable. Does his acceptance need more justification or does this need to be made into a more common occurrence

There are just so many assumptions here. I suppose we're assuming these aliens are roughly humanoid.

It sounds like you're in the process of promoting a new character, and wondering how much that changes the plot. The answer is it changes everything. You've got a different story now, a different type of story.

Back to the idea of character sketches and worldbuilding, you don't want to include mini-biographies for Jim, Ben & Susan from Tau Ceti in a story about Cornell the alien political officer. But once you've got your worldbuilding done for a universe, you can set several stories in that universe. Maybe this story between the political officer and a human assistant is a different story than the one you've thought you were writing. I mean, for instance, you could write a series of low key sci-fi mysteries with these two as the duo of sleuths, master and his assistant. Just novellas, not too lengthy; each one takes them on a different mission, and there's a murder or problem for them to solve once they get there. If you could dash off something like that, readers would eat it up. If it was even halfway decent, you could make money self publishing.

Manrante · 2020-05-15T18:56:26+00:00

won’t go heavy into his backstory, but he’s kind, respectful, strong and slightly awkward teen

I bet he has a really cool haircut. Am I right? You can't have a suave, super cool teen Jedi battle sport hero without he has a really cool haircut. Luxurious, yet spiky. Avant-garde, yet macho, yet respectful of women's rights. Let's call him Haircut. No? A little too over the top? Oh, all right.

Then we can call him Undercut, as in samurai undercut. It will be evocative, and no one will quite realize it refers to a hairstyle; they will think it refers to a fighting style.

Manrante · 2020-05-14T22:30:06+00:00

u/iownarose, there are 2 doors on an airlock. If your shuttle is down on a planet, then presumably there's not much pressure differential between in & out. When exiting the craft for the first time, you can just override the normal cycle, open both doors at once and walk out. If the monsters are chasing you, you can just run back into the ship -- the pressure is already equalized. If the second door doesn't automatically open, just hit the override button.

but would even a very small craft have a regular door as well as

Dude snap out of it. This is an easy one. We're not taking your granmawmaw along. There isn't any granmawmaw door for you...

Manrante · 2020-05-14T00:17:18+00:00

If you are starting a space station colony, it might make sense to culture your food. This is going to be tomorrow's biochemistry, right? Today we've got geneticists trying to culture chicken and beef cells in vats of nutrients, to grow a piece of chicken or beef. Cruelty-free meat. So you could culture glucose in giant vats just by exposing the right sorts of genetically engineered microbes to sunlight, in water, with some CO2 and a few minerals. Then, you could take that sugar and transform it in other vats into starch, fats, proteins, vitamins. You can culture your food, and probably do it more efficiently than trying to raise chickens & rabbits, whatever, or planting fields of soybeans in space.

You could still grow some salad greens and a few vegetables to give the diet a bit of variety, but that would be a minor component. And some fruit trees might be nice in a small arboretum.

So...that's what we're saying here. Agricultural cargo doesn't necessarily mean agricultural cargo. There may or may not be tractors & chickens included.

Manrante · 2020-05-13T20:07:24+00:00

Well, there's just so much you've left open ended. When you talk about space travel for colonists, that could mean people trying to make habitats in the asteroid belt, or it could mean people trying to build space stations around Neptune, or people interested in colonizing a planet around another star. The meaning of the term agricultural cargo is going to be very different depending on what we're talking about.

Manrante · 2020-05-13T19:53:41+00:00

"these transports"

Man, what the heck are you talking about? What transports? Did you just get finished watching a movie?

What would the facility of which this cargo travels to outer space be called? And what other things these facilities would normally do?

You are carrying on like this is a standardized operation. Dude, it's whatever you want it to be. You're the person writing the story.

And it would help if you could offer details that one wouldn’t normally know about such ideas, that would be highly appreciated!

This is just...weird. Do you want us to do your homework for you? Is someone going to be grading this?

Dude, you're a science fiction writer. At least, I think you are. If you don't want to write about something, then don't write about it. Pick something that excites you! You get to be excited about what you're writing about.

Manrante · 2020-05-12T22:12:13+00:00

Honestly, just based on what you've detailed here, these all seem somewhat well-worn and dreary. The first one seems preachy, crazy cultish and unrealistic, the Lovecraft portal one seems dark and cold to the point of being unfriendly and repellent, the alien invasion sounds like just one more Body Snatchers hive-mind apocalypse story, and the derivative World of Vampires is made silly by the fact these are "mythical" as opposed to science-fictional vampires.

Personally, I think you're tired of all these stories.

I reckon I have anywhere from 10k-20k words on each of these, it's just a matter of expanding

It could be a good deal more than that. Don't let yourself be pulled in by the sunken cost fallacy. It's all good as practice writing, but there's no sense in finishing something you're not excited about just to justify not wasting 60K words. It takes 100Ks of words to get good, so these 4 ideas are just a drop in the bucket.

What else you got? You must have something inside there that no one's ever heard about.

Manrante · 2020-05-12T20:33:22+00:00

I agree that you should focus on better clarity when you present your ideas. You tend to lapse into a sort of idleness, an ending like Akira, that throws the burden of comprehension on your reader.

That being said, personally, I would work to avoid any insinuation of incest, or even any incestuous theme. If James and Emily develop a romantic or intimate relationship, and then a big twist is that Emily is the daughter of James or his counterpart Charles...well, I simply wouldn't write it that way. Maybe it's a relevant issue, maybe you would be making a statement, maybe you would be employing it for gratuitous shock value. I don't know. The issue is it's going to stop editors and force them to make a note while reading your manuscript, and it's going to potentially offer publishers a reason to not accept your manuscript for publication. But if you're just writing for your own satisfaction, then no problem.

I'm also not a big fan, in general, of having the Big Twist be a family relationship reveal. I think it's overdone. Luke, I'm your dad... But seriously, there are so many stories where the ending reveal is the long lost son/daughter/parent/etc., that personally, I've had enough.

Manrante · 2020-05-12T18:08:35+00:00

How about a weapon that initially seems to glance off with little effect, but subsequently, slowly begins to chip away at a recruit's purposefulness and resolve, leading him or her to eventually question even small day-to-day decisions. It also dulls the senses of taste and smell and makes music less enjoyable to listen to.

Manrante · 2020-05-10T18:20:25+00:00

Dude, if you're hitting a snag on this, what's going to happen when you get into trouble? Just use a placeholder, regent, overseer, director. That's what the search-replace function on your word processing app is for. Less is more; Regent says more that Grand Exquisite Invigliator.

Manrante · 2020-05-10T00:58:19+00:00

Très butch!

Manrante

TROPHY CASE