Writing a Space Opera for Dummies

I've noticed that there are a ton of threads on how to improve your writing in general, but I don't think that there has been enough talk about how you make a piece of writing have a distinctive Star Wars feel. Now, I understand that guidelines are meant to be broken, and that some of the best writing are those that don't adhere to the rules, but I still think it would be interesting to study what makes Star Wars fan fiction....Star Wars-y.

Any thoughts?

 

There needs to be a ledge and a chasm for people to fall into.

 

And monsters. Gotta have monsters.

 

Um, two words... the force


EDIT: If there was any other fanfiction that mentioned ?the force? being with a character, I?d wonder why they had police following them




EDIT # 2: Ant can't spell

 

And people poking things with sticks.

 

In a more serious response than my first, in fanfic writing there tends to be a lot of introspective works.

IMO, the films are more plot driven than character driven. That's not to say that character development doesn't occur or that it isn't important, but there seems to be a driving force behind everything that shapes the characters rather than the other way around.

Quite a few fanfics occur totally within the minds of a character and there's no real "action" per se.

That isn't to say that introspective works aren't Star War-sy, they just aren't required to be a visual medium like the films are.

 

Space battles. And droids. Lots of them.

Those are very characteristic of Star Wars.

 

And terrible dialouge! Involving sand.

-Krystal

 

That's where visual storytelling and written storytelling understandably differ. Unless you have a narrator voice over in key scenes (like in Stand By Me, which is a great film, but definitely not Star-warsy), film storytelling can't get all that introspective. A well written story can be both introspective and give a good visual description.

To me, Star Wars is a balance between action, romance, adventure and a bit of spirituality in it... oh and don't forget drama... and good lightsaber duels and epic spacebattles thrown in


and don't forget the droids

 

Hiya Manion!

Make all the major heroes and villains related to one another and unaware of it. Also - the word 'snap-hiss' will elevate any average work of fiction into a fanfic masterpiece.

Seriously though - I agree with alot of what Herman said. The Star Wars films are action-oriented, they rely on plot to make things happen to characters rather than the other way around. There's a certain amount of authenticity you can get by using all the right terminology and props (fill your backgrounds with aliens, make some main characters alien or droid, etc).

The rest I think comes down to a certain tone of writing and style. Sometimes I think one of the biggest pitfalls of Star Wars fanfic is that people forget to include humour, which is a big part of the films if you think about it. George Lucas has always described the Star Wars movies as a kind of futuristic version of the romantic 50s, which means fast pace and much melodrama. Things don't have to be entirely 'realistic' per se - they're just supposed to be overblown, exaggerated and above all fun.

As a side note, don't shy away from injecting a new tone or style into the story however! Some of the best fics are ones that take Star Wars in a new direction

 

Y'know, I never did get how people heard "snap-hiss!" in the lightsaber ignition sound effect. Always sounded more like, "kSHHHHHH-Vmmn!" to me..


It's true, a Space Opera does have a lot to do with being plot-driven. There also needs to be a clear sense of archetype. There needs to be a hero, there needs to be a mentor, a rogue, a shapeshifter, a villain. The hero can't be the rogue, or the mentor. Not really. He/She has two possible faces in a Space Opera: the child who comes into his/her own, or the aloof yet highly competent adult who gets the girl. Incompetence is unacceptable. Moral dilemmas are okay, but only if they make the decision we expect them to make at the end. Outside of that, the archetypes can be mixed and combined as much as you like. But they must be there. You can't leave one out just because you don't like it.

It has to start in one of two places: Small. A farm, a safe village, a refugee camp, a hidden cave city. A place far removed from the outside world from which we can slowly learn of the galaxy beyond and it's many complex problems. Or, it can start within the greater galaxy, but at a time of dull stability. Everything should be in a state of peace and regularity. In the first, the inciting incident puts the main character in a position where they must leave safety to go exploring in the big beyond. In the second, the inciting incident sets up the Problem that the main character must ultimately solve.

There needs to be some sort of clearly defined, tangible goal. Space Operas don't climax at the character realizing what his place in the world is, they climax with the destruction of a doomsday device, or the recovery of a sacred object. The deeper stuff happens later, or not at all.

 

Take everything Yod just said, and watch the The History Channel's Star Wars: A Legacy Revealed; and that is the bare bone basics of what George put into Star Wars to begin with.

It's completely possible to add your own Space Opera to the GFFA, just make sure it's something YOU would want to read.

 

The professor for my scifi literature class said that space operas are separate from traditional science fiction. I took that to mean, take an adventure and throw it into space. It's not really going to be a deep satire or some grand metaphor for whatever war is occurring at the time. It's not going to have a "literary" feel to it - you don't have to think too hard to get the point. On the other hand, the story doesn't treat you like a moron.

Another way I think of it - a space opera as a film is best viewed on a gigantic movie screen. Translate as much of that into a story. Atmosphere, visuals, rumbling sounds, action, those are going to be very important.

To me most of the novels have a different feel from the films, so to me they're not space operas. They're pretty good scifi, though.

 

Honestly, in a lot of ways I think Star Wars has more of a fantasy feel than a science fiction one--just, fantasy in space. You've got a magicial Force, Knights, royalty, evil empires, heroic destinies, all classic staples of fantasy. Even in the novels, when they go for a scientific explanation of something, it tends to be "impressionistic" and when it isn't, I think it can sometimes come across as rather jarring. I'd call it "science fantasy" or something I suppose. I think it's important to get that sense of something other than hard science fiction in there. In Star Wars, it's all about destiny and adventure, not the science itself too much.

 

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought Wow, a bit harsh on the readers, huh?

This is a good idea for a thread, and has already produced some interesting thoughts. I look forward to more, and maybe contributing some of my own when I have time.

 

Just work off of universal archetypes, Joseph Campbell's hero-with-a-thousand-faces cycle, find some Jedi and droids, and tur on your imagination! I think it is really stretching your creativity rather than working off of a formula.

 

Ahh, Joseph Campbell - A true source of inspiration if I ever knew one. To combine that with what SakuraTsukikage posted, I feel the term 'space fantasy' really hits the nail on the head.

I really like what Herman Snerd noted about plot-versus-character driven, and Yodimus' point about the motley crew, the humble beginings, and the epic climax.

If I may contribute myself, I feel that one of the requirements for a true space opera is that everything needs to be big. Huge. Blown out of proportion. For instance, the massive starships plowing through space, suddenly dwarfed by an even bigger ship, a planet-destroying superlaser, the massive seamonsters, an army of giant walking bunkers marching across snow-covered plains, a pair of wizard-powerhouses duke it out, ripping apart a building in the process.

At the same time, amidst the epic space battle, the true struggle of good and evil rest in the hands of a one-on-one conflict. The small things can be thrown into sharp relief due to the massiveness of the surroundings. I don't know if that makes sense to you guys, but it does in my head.

But finally, I think that it is important to point out what Luton (or Futon ) said, a key aspect is humor. It really is an important, if subtle, aspect to the way Star Wars is told.

Just remember that these aren't key to telling a good Star Wars story - but they may help!

 

It actually does make sense to me.

To me it's one of the challenges of writing SW fics. As you point out, conflict is very personal, e.g. the conflict between Jedi and Sith and Empire and Rebellion are boiled down to the conflict between Luke and Vader. The trick is to remember that these conflicts, especially depending on the timeframe of the story, occur w/in the context of larger events.

 

Excellent point. The turning point isn't a grand battle strategy, but instead rests on a choice made by the hero or villain.

 

*whew* Well, thanks guys.

There is one hitch though... similar to what Yodimus posted about the classic character archetypes that I've always felt a little uneasy about. They seem to be almost essential to Space Opera-esque works, but what if I don't want my heroes to consist of the same character archetypes as every one else? I'd hate to see my story end up just staring a re-hash of characters everyone else has written. How could one get around that?

 

The thing to remember is that just because a character is archetypal doesn't mean he or she isn't also a person. (Er, a fictional person. You know what I mean.) Don't be afraid to use basic character types, ideas, or situations that you've seen a thousand times, but treat each one as an individual.

Of course, if you're writing canon characters, then you kind of are writing characters that people have already written a bunch of times. But go by your own interpretation of them based on the movies (or books, I guess) and what works for and develops within your story -- I saw someone talking about feeling as if they had to go through several iterations of every character-based thread on the forums to do a canon character justice, and I simply don't think that's needed at all.

 

I think that the biggest differences between space opera and "literary" science fiction are twofold:

1) In olden times, it was writing quality:

Frank Herbert's classic Dune contains many elements similar to Star Wars--prophecies, ordinary people with superhuman/mystical powers they get through training, royalty, etc. Another work is EE Smith's Lensmen saga. It has epic battles, mystical powers, Chosen One, etc. But Herbert wrote so much better than Smith, despite Smith's once great popularity.

In fact Smith was essentially the progenitor of space opera and his work contains all the classic cliches of the genera because he invented them.

Both works revolve around similar themes of a young man being the fulfillment of a long breeding program to produce a superhuman who becomes the Most Important Person in the Galaxy. They both have "magical" technologies that are hardly described and are essentially epics. But again, Herbert wrote better than Smith.

2) In modern times, it is writing focus:

So much of mainstream sci-fi involves characters who want to essentially become machines. They use robot bodies, become cyborgs. The want to be more machine than man. Space opera, by contrast, sees a human future.

 

And it's that human element that makes it work, I suppose. You can have all the cool spaceships and the alien creatures and the ever-obligatory universe-destroying superweapon, yet the triumph of the human spirit is what it's all about. Luke destroyed the Death Star not with the fancy targeting computer, but by trusting the living Force. Not a power of programed intentions, but the power and energy of life.