Inventing Reality: A Guide to Writing Science Fiction

Looking for a place to publish your science fiction story? Here's a good one, though perhaps not for novice and unpublished writers. One of the top SF magazine markets, the award-winning Fantasy and Science Fiction was founded in 1949. It is the original publisher of Stephen King's “Dark Tower”, Daniel Keyes's “Flowers for Algernon” and Walter M. Miller's “A Canticle for Leibowitz”.

n Pay: 6 cents per word to 9 cents per word on acceptance

n Word count (maximum): 25,000 words

n Seeks: Character-oriented stories

n Mail to: Gordon Van Gelder, Fantasy & Science Fiction, P.O. Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030.

Tags: getting published, submitting your story

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Looking for a place to submit your science fiction short story or novella? Analog generally is considered one of the two best science fiction magazines in which to be published.

n Pay: 6 cents per word to 8 cents per word for short stories up to 7,500 words, $450-600 for stories between 7,500 and 10,000 words; and 5 cents per word to 6 cents per word for longer material

n Word count (maximum): 2,000 and 7,000 words for shorts, 10,000-20,000 words for novelettes, and 40,000-80,000 for serials

n Seeks: The writers’ guidelines says the magazine open to any brand of science fiction, but Analog really is known for its hard SF. The writers’ guidelines hint at this when noting that the magazine wants “stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse.” The magazine is known for specializing in hard SF.

n Mail to: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Dell Magazines, Stanley Schmidt, Editor, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352

Tags: getting published, hard sf, submitting your story

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Looking for a magazine to send your science fiction story? Generally considered one of the two best science fiction magazines in which to be published, Asimov’s Science Fiction began in spring 1977 as a quarterly.

n Pay: Beginners get 6 cents a word to 7,500 words, 5 cents a word for stories longer than 12,500 words, and $450 for stories between those lengths.

n Word count (maximum): 15,000

n Seeks: Character stories; “all fiction is written to examine or illuminate some aspect of human existence, but that in science fiction the backdrop you work against is the size of the Universe”, according the magazine’s writers guidelines.

n Doesn’t want: Sword & sorcery, explicit sex or violence, serialized novels

n Mail to: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sheila Williams, Editor, 475 Park Ave. South, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10016

Tags: getting published, isaac asimov, submitting your story

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So you’ve written a science fiction short story. Where are you going to send it?

The good news is a lot of markets exist for your story – far more than if you’d written a western or a mystery tale. The bad news is that you probably won’t get paid much (if at all) for your story. In addition, science fiction magazines go in and out of print faster than Jupiter rotates on its axis, so sometimes a story gets sent back marked “We’re no longer taking submissions” or “Out of business.”

Whenever submitting to a magazine, there are some general rules to follow:

n Know your magazine - Reading a few copies of the magazine so you’re familiar with the editor’s tastes always is a sound strategy. After all, you don’t want to send a hard SF magazine a character-oriented story. You also don’t want to send an editor a story similar to one he’s just published.

n Follow manuscript form - One of the quickest routes to the rejection pile is sending a manuscript that makes an editor’s eyes go buggy: handwritten, type too small (or large), typed on both sides of the paper, lacking pages numbers …...

Tags: getting published, manuscript form, sase, simultaneous submissions, submitting your story

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So you’ve written a science fiction short story. Where are you going to send it?

The good news is a lot of markets exist for your story – far more than if you’d written a western or a mystery tale. The bad news is that you probably won’t get paid much (if at all) for your story. In addition, science fiction magazines go in and out of print faster than Jupiter rotates on its axis, so sometimes a story gets sent back marked “We’re no longer taking submissions” or “Out of business.”

Whenever submitting to a magazine, there are some general rules to follow:

n Know your magazine - Reading a few copies of the magazine so you’re familiar with the editor’s tastes always is a sound strategy. After all, you don’t want to send a hard SF magazine a character-oriented story. You also don’t want to send an editor a story similar to one he’s just published.

n Follow manuscript form - One of the quickest routes to the rejection pile is sending a manuscript that makes an editor’s eyes go buggy: handwritten, type too small (or large), typed on both sides of the paper, lacking pages numbers …...

Tags: fan fiction, getting published, manuscript form, reading period, reprint, sase, simultaneous submission, word count

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Given the many different ways of coming up with a story title – using a character’s name, using a line from the text or drawing from a conceptual object in the story, to name a few – just about any word or phrase would seem to serve as an adequate appellation.

Not so. In fact, you want to avoid writing an “adequate” title. You want something that stands out, something that grabs your readers, something that makes them wonder what the story is about and proceed to page one. While every reader has different tastes, some titles seem to appeal to the common elements of science fiction readers’ psyches and stand out: “I, Robot”, “The Stars My Destination”, “A Clockwork Orange”, “Fahrenheit 451”, “Lord of the Flies”, “Ringworld”.

To avoid creating an adequate (or even a god-awful) title, don’t use titles that are:

n Unpronounceable - Science fiction readers like to talk to one another about what they’ve read. But it’s difficult to talk about something that they can’t pronounce. Even worse, they might want to ask a book store clerk if that title is in stock.

n Embarrassing to say – Ditto.

n Difficult for others to spell -...

Tags: gobbet title, style, titles

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Sometimes authors start with the title and build the story around it. This is called a reverse gobbet (you may recall that a gobbet is a title taken from a story’s text). James Tiptree Jr.’s novel “Brightness Falls from the Air” is an example of a reverse gobbet, with the title originally appearing as a phrase in a poem by Elizabethan Thomas Nashe (well, sort of – it’s a misread line). The reverse gobbet may seem like an odd way to write a story, but sometimes a single evocative phrase can rouse the muse.

Tags: getting motivated to write, gobbet title, reversed gobbets, style, titles

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Selecting a title marks one of the most important decisions you’ll make about your story. The title blares across a novel’s cover and is listed in a magazine’s table of contents. For science fiction readers, those few words hint at the story’s meme (or subgenre, such as alien invasion, space exploration, time travel); some readers prefer certain memes over others and will pass over a story (or give it a try) simply because of the meme your title suggests.

The great problem facing writers then is to come up with a catchy – and memorable – title. There are a number of approaches authors take in selecting titles. With examples from “Star Trek: The Original Series” episodes, you could name the story after:

n Characters - “Miri” is the name of an episode about a 300-year-old child survivor of a plague that wiped out all of her planet’s adults; she’s the story’s pivotal character who must mature if the Enterprise landing party is to successfully cure the disease and prevent their own deaths from it.

n Attributes of characters - “The Enemy Within” is about a transporter accident that splits Captain Kirk into two: one that is gentle and rational,...

Tags: gobbet title, style, titles

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Not every character in your story needs to be fully developed. Sometimes you need characters who engage in readily recognizable relationships and actions simply to keep the story moving.

Such a person is known as a stock character. The personality and manner of speech for such a character already has been set down in the genre by previous writers – set down over and over, in fact.

In science fiction, a common type of a stock character is the absent-minded professor. A genius of sorts, the absent-minded professor’s focus on his academic research often causes him to be unaware of his surroundings or to forget some important, non-academic matter. Other kinds of science fiction stock characters are robots and Star Trek’s infamous redshirts.

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Tags: absent-minded professor, characters, redshirt, robot, stereotype, stock characters

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Avoid starting a paragraph - and especially a story - with “It”. As a pronoun, “it” is shorthand for another word that preceded it, such as: “The phone rang. It woke up the baby.” You know that “it” is the phone ringing. If the opening sentence starts with “it”, however, the reader doesn’t know what “it” is.

Tags: opening sentence, pronouns, style

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One of the quickest ways to ruin a story’s texture is to repeat the same word between sentences and paragraphs. For example:

Koorana quivered as Birray’s scent grew stronger than ever before, so strong that the teenager thought it entwined with her very blood. For a teenage male with such wide shoulders he possessed the sweetest smile, she mused, and so tall, too. He motioned to look up, and Koorana realized everyone else in the tent was standing. She broke her stare, quickly stood. Averting her eyes to the dirt ground beneath them, Koorana vowed to concentrate on the service, but a moment later she allowed herself one last look at Birray. He was still staring at her and winked. The teenager turned back, happy, and even in the dim light could see the flowers adorning the altar.

Notice how some words, particularly “teenager” and its variant “teenage” are repeated? The paragraph could be improved by eliminating two of the three uses of that word, perhaps by replacing the first “teenager” with a synonym such as “adolescent” and simply using the pronoun “she” for “The teenager” in the last sentence.

Flaubert recommended never using a word more than once on...

Tags: invisible word, repetition, rhetorical effect, style, texture

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Have you ever wondered why some television characters always wear the same clothes? Gilligan of “Gilligan’s Island” always dons his red shirt and white cap while Fred Flintstone always wears a spotted leopard’s wool. Such characters appear less real because in the everyday world, people wear different clothes from day to day.

Likewise, you don’t want your characters to always refer back to one another with the exact same word throughout your story, particularly in a novel. Such a word is called a “referent”.

In the real world, different people refer to us in different ways. Suppose your name is Amanda Philips. Your co-workers might call you “Amanda”, your close friends “Mandy”, your significant other “Snookums”, your professional contacts “Ms. Phillips”, your kid sister “Manda”, etc.

Consider how “Star Trek: The Original Series” handled referents for its characters, particularly Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy refer to him as “Scotty”. Mr. Spock calls him “Mr. Scott.” Others call him “Engineer Scott.” This is a realistic way of handling referents.

Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell

Tags: characters, dialogue, referents, style

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Sometimes the only purpose of a story’s sentence is to say that nothing happened. Such sentences are called “nulls”. An example would be the sentence “He said nothing.” Fortunately, nulls are easy to spot: if your story were occurring in real life, nulls would be the points where nothing happens. Nulls can be deleted from the story. They slow down the piece’s immediacy and dramatic tension.

Tags: dialogue, dramatic tension, nulls, style

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Tight writing is using the minimum number of words necessary to convey an idea or to describe an event. Writing tightly allows your text to be punchier and for the plot to move more quickly. At the very least, tight writing reduces your word count, allowing you to spend more words on text that truly advances your story’s or builds dramatic tension.

Here’s a list of common expressions , which I’ve run into during my years of editing, that should be tightened.

“a blonde girl”

Just write “blonde”; a male with light-colored hair is “blond” (no “e”)

“knelt down”

Just write “knelt”; the act of kneeling implies one is going downward

“nods his head up and down”

Just write “nods”; this gesture alone indicates the head is moving up and down

“nods yes” or “nods to the affirmative”

Just write “nods”; this gesture alone means “yes” or indicates agreement

“shakes his head no” or “shakes his head to the negative”

Just write “shakes his head”; this gesture alone means “no” or indicates disagreement

“stood up”

Just write “stood”; the act of standing implies one is rising

“the two of us”

Just write “we”

“they both”; “we both”

Just write “we”...

Tags: style, tight writing

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Often the setting of a story contains some item that later plays a role in the story’s plot. A strange looking statue on the mantle, for example, may hold some clue or jog a memory, allowing for the story’s mystery to be solved.

When describing the setting, however, be careful not to place a “rhinoceros in the room”. This term is some item or attribute that is obvious to everyone except the people closest to it. It was coined at the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop.

A common example of a “rhinoceros in the room” would be some missing item that is sitting in clear view of all looking for it. Like a rhinoceros, you couldn’t miss it.

But the “rhinoceros in the room” isn’t just limited to items that form the story’s landscape. It can refer to cliché plot lines (such as splitting up in a dark mansion to look for clues), recurring tropes, tics and fetishes. Each of these plot devices and character attributes ultimately cheapen the story because they are contrived. Like that missing item that is sitting in clear site of all looking for it, the notion that someone can’t see it comes off as an artificial...

Tags: cambridge science fiction workshop, plot, rhinoceros in the room, setting

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The plot of a story is more interesting and exciting if the characters have something to gain or lose.

Because of this, the characters in your story should something at stake, or some personal interest or involvement in solving the story’s conflict. Establishing what these personal interests or involvement are early in the story and then returning them through the rising action generates reader interest.

The “stakes” always revolve around two basic questions: “What does the protagonist want?” and “What if the protagonist fails to get it?” For example, in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation,” the character Salvor Hardin wants to ensure his home planet of Terminus (one of two depositories of scientific knowledge and reason in which humanity’s future depends) survives the collapse of the Galactic Empire, which is fragmenting into several war-like kingdoms. If he fails, Terminus will be taken over by the warrior kingdoms – and humanity will fall into a dark ages that lasts thousands of years. Those are high stakes.

Remember that virtually all stories center on a character that possesses some want that if unfulfilled means some disaster. The plot of the story is little more than the obstacles that the character must overcome as trying...

Tags: characters, conflict, plot, protagonist, rising action

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Since dialogue in fiction is contrived, a challenge facing authors is to find ways to make it sound realistic. Try these techniques:

n Pay attention to speech rhythms – Read the dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural. If it sounds like you’ve written a homework assignment or like the characters are too dumb to say more than a couple of words at a time, then it probably needs to be revised.

n Create generational tags –Each new generation creates its own slang that separates it from those who came before. Your characters, even if living in the 26th century, probably will do the same.

n Devise local tags/slang - Colonists on other worlds will have specialized slang that arise out of their new surroundings; just think of Australians. Mark Bowman in his short story “The Drop” uses such future slang words as “spliced “touching down” and “cropping the juice” and aphorisms such as “Time is energy” in light of their technology that allows space travel.

n Develop economic class tags - People of the future, if there are economic classes, will have ways of identifying themselves as different from one another, merely based on their lifestyles....

Tags: characters, dialogue, jargon, mannerisms, slang, tags

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No doubt your novel will include dialogue in which characters speak to one another. Unfortunately, too many beginning writers drag their story into a furrow of tedium by poorly handling dialogue. The problem is that their characters’ dialogue mirrors actual conversations too closely.

Realistic dialogue in a story isn’t a copy of how we really speak in everyday life. Our daily conversations are filled with niceties, formalities, repetition and the mundane. They often are tedious and even banal.

Writers can’t afford to waste a word of their story on such dialogue. Instead, they should keep in mind that dialogue in a story – unlike real life – always must have a conversational goal. Dialogue is a means of characterization, a way for characters to push forward their agenda vital to the plot. Characters engage in competition and verbal combat via their dialogue.

“You know, Upir, I’ve changed. I just can’t help you.” 

 

The alien raised his hands. “But what of Ala and I? It took all three of us to lure the human spacecraft to that asteroid.”

 

“But two of the humans died when the spacecraft...

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Tags: characters, dialogue, plot

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Sometimes you do need to include the information provided in the info dump in your story. The best way to accomplish that is to incorporate it into your tale:

n Rewrite so that it’s part of the description or so it’s implied in the dialogue - This is the best way. You are now showing the information rather than telling it.

n Have the characters read or see a news report – If the information can’t be rewritten, use this ploy. Only give the information necessary to the plot, however, not the entire news article or report.

n Provide journal entries or captain’s logs - In 10 seconds, Captain Kirk gets you caught up on the plot. Usually some conflict needs to be noted or implied in the log, however, so that there’s dramatic tension.

Tags: dialogue, exposition, info dump, setting, show vs. tell

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An info dump is a chunk of exposition that is insufficiently integrated into the story being told. It’s also known as an “expository lump” and is a specific kind of exposition.

The info dump usually involves sharing your research notes with the reader, just to prove that you’ve done the research. While it’s sometimes necessary to give such information, make sure it sounds natural in your piece and not like a cut-and-paste from an encyclopedia.

Often an info dump is given by a Stapledon, a character serves no purpose other than to relate exposition, usually at great length and without interruption. As in real life, such characters are dull.

Another kind of info dumping is “maid-and-butler dialogue” in which characters tell each other things that they already should know so that the reader can overhear them. Unfortunately, those characters sound simple minded as the lines they deliver in real life would be inane.

Having said this, even the greatest science fiction writers are guilty of info dumping. Isaac Asimov is notorious for it in “The Foundation”, often regarded as one of the best novels in the genre. Frequently, however, these writers were allowed their transgression because the story the info...

Tags: exposition, expository lump, info dump, maid-and-butler dialogue, setting, show vs. tell, stapledon

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