Beyond A Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Thread For Writers Of Original Fiction

Great thread, Tiger!

Hmmm, let's see. When I wrote my first novel at 16, I swore I would be published by the time I graduated high school.

When I was in college and working on my 10th, I swore I would be published by the time I graduated.

At 28, finishing up my 30th original novel, I swore I'd be published by the time I was 30.

Now, at 35, I hope that I might be published posthumously. If I'm lucky and anyone cares.

Yes, 30 novels. Some good, some bad. Some embarrassing. Not little 50,000 bits, but 120,000+ word novels. (One was a good 300,000. It was one of the bad ones, though, so it doesn't count.) I have about 5 that, as an adult, I would be willing to say were publishable. I've had reject letters that have basically said we didn't publish you because we didn't get to you, and others that were less cordial than saying we just didn't care. I've won local writing contests where the win was to meet a professional agent, only to find the agents there didn't represent sci-fi and fantasy.

Writing the book is the easy part.

Have I given up, you ask? (Okay, so you didn't ask. I'll tell you anyway). I'm pounding out fanfiction instead of trying to get my stuff published. But I've not given up all hope. I will undoubtedly submit again since the pattern of rejection and submission goes in cycles for me. My thesis chair published a whole science fiction trilogy in the 80s and wasn't able to get anything published thereafter. It's a harsh field.

My advice to any young men and women dreaming about published original fiction (as opposed to self-published or internet fiction) is to write to your heart's content, but don't let it consume your life. Having let that happen for a good five years, I can say there were many things I missed out that I wish I could go back and recapture. Four years of college and I didn't go on Spring Break once. I wrote thirty novels, but the only thing that sticks to me was how very lonely I was until I met my wife and started living again.

Carpe diem. Seize the day, for tomorrow you may be married in a full time job with kids.

Cheers!

Darth Marrs

 

I love writing. Give ma an afternoon with my best friend I have ideas enough for a whole bookshelf. the problem is just that...

I suck writing plot.

There are several good ideas waiting to be written, but I just can't get a credible arrangement of scenes transporting the characters from A to B to the end. But I get better. Currently, I feel like the queen of short stories, but I hope to get longer things written one day. Real plot included.
I realize that now I'm writing a lot fanfiction, my way of writing improves. I jot down scenes and return when their time has come, something I found impossible a few years ago.
And I get more characters in my stories. I am up to two protagonists by now, not that far from the cast you need for a full novel.

Well, I have my fist novel finished, a silly teenage love story, and I have number two all laid out. Only problem is I'm outdated and hate mobiles, even in stories....

I might get published, though, if only as translator. *shrugs* Nobody really wants to hire me there, either.

 

Darth_Marrs: Don't give up. A lot of authors go through lots of rejection. PG Wodehouse got so many rejection notices early in his career (in the 1900's when there were a lot more paying forums for short fiction) that he could paper the walls of his flat. One of his characters in Not George Washington actually does that.

I've read that the usual way the break in the sci-fi/fantasy field is with short stories.

MsLanna: There are only a few basic types of plots. I've heard anywhere from two to twelve-ish. Make your characters want something from the get-go and the plot will come.

I've always been good with plot. It was thinking up characters that I was bad at. When I started to actually set pen to paper the characters just came and dove-tailed into my scenario.

Another big influence of mine Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who is one my favorite authors (along with Hermann Hesse). I think that if you're going to read just two novels in your entire life make them Siddartha and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

 

What if it's all a big mental thing? That is, what if you pretend that the story you're writing is a fanfic set within someone else's universe? And just as with the GFFA, when you don't know a particular details, you make something up - something believable. Something that works within the constraints of the universe... Before you realize it, you may be able to create your setting without stressing over it.

Ponder that, if you will.

 

I was always told that there are only two kinds of plot: "Leaving on a Journey" or "A Stranger Comes to Town". It seems to boil down most plot types nicely, even if you have generalise wildly with them. Not that it really matters from a storytelling point of view - your plot will automatically fall into line with one of these from the merits of the plot points you choose.

Writing a FanFic set in the Plunderverse would be a wacky adventure to undertake Lots of folding furniture, I'd imagine.

 

B- but I don't wanna rip off somebody else's 'verse.

Maybe I need to do that, then AU it to the point of no-recognition.

 

Someone once observed that all art is theft.

George Lucas got sued by Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov for plagiarism. A number of people claim that JK Rowling stole ideas from them. Tolkien has been accused of plagiarizing Wagner. Eragon is basically A New Hope set in Middle-Earth.

An important thing I've noticed about world-building is that any world's actual depth is much less then its apparent depth. The greater depth is merely hinted at. Lucas didn't come up with even a thousandth of the back story that's hinted at when he was writing the original scripts. The Clone Wars were just a little bit of filler dialog for 25 years. Rowling didn't map out the complete history of the Wizarding World or all the laws of that universe.

 

I notice that I can get writing a story and then a few pages in I begin doubting everything about it and get so discouraged I give up on it. Any advice?

 

Anyone have a problem with writing OF vigs?
I can do FF vigs al you want, w/ ether canon or OC characters.
But I usually blank in OF. I guess its the feeling that even though I know my character, the ppl reading it don't. So its hard to hint at stuff and explain why some things are the way they are. I mean, in FF even with OCs they are surrounded by a familiar, to the audience, galaxy and events. Plus most of my OCs are Jedi, and everyone knows the basics of what that entails. But in OF...well...you don't have any of that to lean on. And thatâ??s hen it gets into the "will they understand this without all the background stuff?"

IDK, does that make any sense?

 

Sometimes that can be part of the storytelling/reading experience. When I read William Gibson's Neuromancer, I had no idea what the hell was going on in those first few paragraphs. In fact I didn't really understand the setting until several chapters in. Little details, clues, bits of dialogue, they finally painted the picture.

I suppose that's the advantage of writing a short story or novel vs. a one-shot - you have more time and a bigger word count to stretch things out. But even a vig can give just enough to let people know what the background is if you work it the right way. I think it would be harder with scifi, fantasy, or alternate history - in those genres the background info makes a big difference in the story.

And of course, never underestimate the readers. They may not need to know some of the details in order to get the story's theme or plot resolution. Plus I really like stories that finish and leave me asking, "Hey, what about such-and-such? I want to know more about that." They make my brain work.

 

I've had problems with introducing setting. I'm writing a military sci-fi story; the reader has to know how we fight wars in the future and how we changed from what we are now into what we become. I tried to set the stage as quickly as I could, but when I was reading through it I realized that as cool as I thought the information was, it had taken up the space where the plot should have gone. I've since done a heavy re-write;

Heinlein's Starship Trooper is one of the best examples of explaining the world's background without reading like a textbook. The story started with a big action scene, but even then small details helped set the stage. More was revealed in discussions between characters and, even better, through the actions and reactions of the characters. Definitely should give it a look. Don't judge it by its unworthy film adaption. Great, great book. Another good example is Bradbury's Farenheit 451.

 

Very good example. I actually just finished re-reading it a couple days ago. The new Battlestar Galactica is another good example of how to handle combat scenes, though it's a bit tough to translate to text.

Here's a little excerpt I just rewrote from the story I'm working on:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paul and Commander Goodfellow sat at a table in the nearly-empty officers mess.
?I?m not surprised that Captain promoted you to second officer, Paul. Everyone in your department thinks highly of you,? commented Goodfellow before bringing a spoonful of soup to her mouth.
?Thanks, commander. I suppose I just wasn?t expecting to be put in this position so soon. What do you think that installation on the seventh planet is for??
?Probably some kind of sensor array. The question is, why is it here? There aren?t any inhabitable planets in this system.?
?Maybe some kind of mining facility? The fighters did come from the asteroid field,? Paul suggested after taking a sip of his water.
?But why would they only send fighters??
?Maybe that?s all they had here. They probably didn?t expect this many ships to investigate the disappearance of the Cyclone.?
?Then why send them at all? If they had just left us alone, we might have left the system by now.?
?They don?t know what we?re here for. For all they know, we?re scouts for a mining fleet like my grandfather was.?
?Have I ever told you about why I decided to join the Militia?? the commander asked, changing the subject.
?I don?t think so.?
?I was in high school when the first Melbournes were being commissioned. That first run of them were flown over the cities they were named after during the commissioning ceremony.?
?I remember reading about that. They stopped after the accident at Johannesburg, didn?t they??
?That?s right. At the time, I was in secondary school in Dover, England. Everyone went outside to see the fly-over, and when I saw the cruiser, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.?
?That would be inspiring. The first time I saw a Militia ship was when I was on my way to Everest Station for the Acacemy tests.? Paul responded.
?Yes, it was. Amazing doesn?t even begin to describe it. I don?t think anyone paid attention to the teachers the rest of the day. We were all talking about the cruiser. Even after all this time, it?s hard to believe that now I?m the first officer of one of them.?

 

Sounds good! Definitely something I'd be interested in reading more of. I expecially liked the reference to the Johannesburg incident, for all the reasons I said a few posts back.

 

What's the Johannesburg incident?

 

I'm actually not sure. A big ship probably had a malfunction while it was over the city of Johannesburg, causing quite a bit of death and property destruction. Maybe even a cruiser during its commissioning ceremony.

I basically put that in there as a way of establishing backstory. Just a way of showing the reader that things happened in the universe prior to the start of the story I'm telling.

 

The element that reminds you that you're an outsider. I love trying to create those certain moments where the characters completely get it, but you're left way in the dust. It makes things feel more real, because any time you walk into any place in the world (or universe) that you've never been to before, you'll hear stuff like that, guanranteed. I've always wanted to write a fake graduation speech for a character, where every single line has in-jokes that are hilarious to the audience, but would make no sense to anyone else.



I write a lot more O.F. than I do F.F, but it's only with FF that I actually find myself with completed stories. It's so much harder to find the human support/motivation with Original Fiction than it is writing Fan Fic and posting it freely on here. There's also no danger of any sneaky someones making any more money on my fan fic ideas than I stand to make, which is a nice piece of mind to have, which is very much unavailable with OF, and at a fundamental level no less.


An important thing to remember about that daunting task of inventing EVERYTHING - it only applies to sci fi/fantasy. That's what set our genre apart from typical literature. But the most important part of any story ever, sci fi or otherwise, is the human element. And the human element has nothing whatsoever to do with clever worlds, magical inventions, bizarre aliens and weird star systems. Having a good story with believable, human characters, within a shoddily-invented universe, is completely okay, because at the end of the day, the universe is just the hanger we're putting our story coat. (not machine washable) It should never be the other way around.

If it is, you end up with, eh...well you end up with Eragon.

 

Ohhhh, burn!!

After watching AMC's "Mad Men" the past couple weeks, plus looking at this year's Hollywood Issue from Vanity Fair, I had a couple quick and easy ideas for noir mysteries. All the usual elements were there. Coming up with dialogue and description wasn't even that hard (it helps to be a TCM junkie). Coming up with a plot...well..I didn't worry too much about that when I started writing.

A couple of years ago when we had the first Mod Dare Challenge, Fluff-Slayer gave me a HUGE list of requirements and said I had to end my story like "The Birds." Throw in a couple of extended metaphors and lots of irony. Noir elements came to mind. I started pounding out one idea, but in the middle of it I'd just finished watching "Double Indemnity" so I immediately had an idea for another version.

I tell you, I have TWO VERSIONS of a noir-inspired fanfic just spilling forth out of my head, but a half-assed attempt at something I could actually make money off of. Bah. I still think this is all psychological.

Oh, and for those of you who have a muse, I highly recommend an essay by James Ellroy (author of The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential) called "Where I Get My Weird ****." Not for the faint-hearted, but still disturbingly funny.

 

Oh, I thought the Johannesburg incident was a real occurrence. Didn't realize it was part of your universe.

If I had the patience I would write down a bunch of character types, locations, twists, etc, and put them into a bunch of hats and just draw them randomly. Might get something good to work with.

 

Does anyone else have problems coming up with titles? I can think of some good ones, just not for what I'm writing.

 

Up.

 

As I mentioned up post, I have an origianl concept, but I'm doing little with it, because I'm not an epic writer. I too have trouble mappping things out or creating universes.

 

I can't sit down and think of a title. It either pops into my head out of the blue or I've got a title without a story.
However, in a pinch I scroll through my iTunes library and look for inspiration in music lyrics.

 

Titles are pretty easy for me.

 

I decided to keep my title to one word within the subtitle of the series. For example, the title of the series is The Penitence Cycle and the first book's 'subtitle' is Stormfront.

 

Titles for me usually rise up out of the unconscious, or else I crib them from certain songs. One fic I had planned out utilized certain key lyrics from King of Pain...yeah, how totally crack-induced.

Obviously, originality is not a strong point with me.