Author Topic: Writing advice  (Read 1267 times)

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A friend of mine recently self-published a collection of short stories. That and Authortutta's success have made me want to try my hand at some writing. And since we have at least one professional author on these boards, and a bunch of amateur authors, I was hoping I could get a little advice on my first writing project (that I plan to complete, that is).

I'm writing a short story set about 100 years in the future, about a small squad of soldiers on a special operation.

My first question is:
Since there will be some science fiction elements, I need to know how and how much to describe them. When  I introduce a piece of technology that the protagonist would be familiar with, but the reader wouldn't necessarily be, do I find a way to contrive some exposition, do I put it in a footnote, or do I skip past it and hope for the best?

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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It depends on what type of story and style you want to tell/use.

Explaining technology in the context of the story through a character device whereby one is explaining it to another can be an effective way of inserting the audience into the novel - the reader has a surrogate character.  Think of every book, film, or TV series that dumps a protagonist who knows effectively nothing of the larger universe straight into the story, and the rest have to explain things to him.  Luke Skywalker in ANH is a great popular sci-fi example.

In other circumstances, you may prefer to leave the workings of the technology or mechanic as something of a slowly revealed mystery, which can drive reader engagement to learn more.  This needs to be carefully done to avoid appearing contrived.  If you've ever read Patrick Rothfuss (fantasy), "The Name of the Wind" is very good at this. 

The third approach is to "just go with it."  This is largely the approach taken in sci-fi that is character, rather than era, based.  The Expanse series does this, and its an effective way of driving narrative details without getting bogged down in technobabble.  It can be a double-edged sword:  from film/TV you may be familiar with the expansion of ridiculous technobabble in Star Trek Voyager that drove viewers crazy; conversely, the Star Trek reboot film with the ridiculousness around Spock's race to use the red matter to save Romulus is an example of writers underestimating the audience (anyone familiar with Star Trek at all was going to do a 'wtf' at that).

The best writing takes a bit from a couple approaches to match the style and tone of the story the author wants to tell.
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I was planning for a Luke Skywalker style of introducing stuff, but I've run into a couple of issues. So like Obi Wan explains the Jedi and lightsabers and that he knew his father, which is good for the audience too. But nobody explains about blasters or light-speed travel, because you can just see blasters blasting, and light-speed is called light-speed which is self-explanatory. So if I have something techy that wouldn't need to be explained by one character, but would be useful to the reader...

I am having an idea suddenly. Some more editing and stuff could help. (additional comments still useful)

All right, second question: would you recommend being detailed in physical descriptions of people and places, or would you say it's better to be more general and let the reader's imagination fill in details?

 

Offline The E

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All right, second question: would you recommend being detailed in physical descriptions of people and places, or would you say it's better to be more general and let the reader's imagination fill in details?

I would recommend (and this is just personal preference) to reduce character descriptions to the bare minimum necessary. Mention their gender (if that is applicable), their general physicality, and maybe some distinctive feature, and let the reader fill in the rest. If you go into too much detail (and this is true of any descriptive text), your story loses momentum. Which can work in a longer tale, but which will absolutely kill a short story dead.
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Offline Mongoose

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Also, and this probably goes without saying, do everything you can to avoid the "As you already know..." method of exposition.  I've seen my share of anime over the years, and while it's certainly not exclusive to that medium, it has a hideously-annoying pattern of cluing the audience in to unfamiliar mechanics by having one character drone on about them to another who by definition would already need to have that knowledge.