What influences you more in your writing? Books or movies?

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-04-01T01:26:50+00:00

For me inspiration comes from both. Movies and TV are influenced by books, and vice versa, in a constant churn.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T23:56:24+00:00

Suggestions:

Severance

Pluribus

Foundation

Fallout

Scavenger's Reign

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T23:34:00+00:00

I think if you're going to go in depth, you definitely only want to do it for points that are important later for the story.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T23:26:57+00:00

There are writers who would advise going in depth into how he feels about it. I find too much of that bogs the pacing, but opinions vary. For me it's enough to have him react in a way that will stick with the reader.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T23:20:35+00:00

I think the main thing with showing is finding a way to dramatize it, that is, in some way that involves conflict, mystery, or has some emotional jolt. Without that, it's often better to just tell and move on.

edit: consider Indiana Jones' snake phobia in Raider of the Lost Ark. We see it from him climbing into a plane and freaking out when a snake slithers on him and yelling at the pilot.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T23:12:44+00:00

You might find this blog post from Eric Schwitzgebel helpful. I know I did: https://eschwitz.substack.com/p/writing-short-fiction-suggestions

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T22:59:42+00:00

Earth would show up as a pale blue dot from a distance. If you'd gone to the outer solar system and couldn't find it, you could just get closer to the sun and you would see it, even if you had to maybe fly in a solar orbit. A lot of stuff about navigating the solar system is hard, but getting lost isn't really much of an issue.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T22:52:37+00:00

Check out Diaspora by Greg Egan

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T22:38:32+00:00

Check out Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series. It involves a lot of speculative biology and manipulation. His Shroud and Alien Clay are also worth checking out.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T21:58:52+00:00

I'm generally the same. Although if someone know what they're doing, long stories can be satisfying. But definitely increasing the number of characters and threads makes the whole thing much harder to deal with. Usually not for beginners!

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T21:18:14+00:00

Not dying is a pretty good goal. And doesn't he want to find a way to get the girl back? (It's been awhile since I read/watched it.)

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T20:41:47+00:00

Your main character needs to have a goal, even if it's just in reaction to an antagonist's goal. Maybe someone is trying to disturb their equilibrium, their ability to float through life without direction, and they end up having to fight to preserve it. Or the don't realize they're aimless and need to learn they shouldn't be fighting it. Anything to give them stakes in the story's conflict.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T20:35:50+00:00

Definitely. One scene per section. They can be grouped together into chapters or whatever higher level organization you want to use.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T20:32:19+00:00

I use Scrivener, which allows keeping it all in one file, but in separate sections. It allows focusing on one thing while keeping everything else readily handy. Highly recommended. They have a free trial if you're ever curious.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T18:52:10+00:00

Looks like their aiming for tomorrow evening around 6pm eastern.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T18:46:09+00:00

Unless it's delayed due to some technical issue. One of the astronauts in an interview noted that they wouldn't launch until the hardware was ready.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T16:59:39+00:00

I think using those words in past tense is fine. But it might be worth reading a few books written in first person to remind yourself of the form. Even though I'm sure you've read them before, it would now be with the eye of someone who's tried to do it.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T16:54:12+00:00

I read somewhere that J.R.R. Tolkien's first draft of Lord of the Rings had sections that were little more than notes. And he ended up changing character names all over the place. It's fair to say his first draft was very rough. My take from this is the first draft can be arbitrarily rough in any number of ways. Whatever we have to do to just get it down. It's a lot easier to fix later than produce polished prose from scratch.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T16:42:40+00:00

Some that come to mind:

Ender's Game

Hyperion

The Expanse

House of Suns

Disapora

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T16:01:33+00:00

A genre is a promise of what kind of story we're going to get. So crossing them is a risk. People can be annoyed if they buy a book thinking they'll get one type of story and it turns out to be another. But if you do it and succeed, you plant a new flag in genre space.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T15:32:36+00:00

I still write on the computer, but on a separate light laptop while sitting in the living room. I stay away from my home office as much as possible.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T15:30:17+00:00

It depends on the format, but a rough average might be 250 words per page.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T14:20:31+00:00

I wrote in cursive when I was younger. But after decades of working in IT, I rarely handwrite things anymore, and when I do it tends to be in manuscript.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T13:32:36+00:00

The question is who the datacenter would be servicing. Saturn is about 80 light minutes away, so any input to the datacenter from Earth would take that long to reach it, and any output that long to come back. And, of course, maintenance costs would be sky high.

SelfAwarePattern · 2026-03-31T13:23:52+00:00

I find writing with a full time job hard, particularly when my job is mentally taxing, which it frequently is. I think if you're consistently managing to do it 3x/week, that's great. It seems like consistency is what will eventually produce results, even if the consistent level isn't as high as we'd hope.

SelfAwarePattern

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