Tag: science fiction

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Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Pizzanomics and the Economy of Words

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde writes that people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. My friend Eric was not such a person. He assigned value to everything in terms of pizza.

You might price a throw pillow at fifteen dollars—he’d say it cost two pizzas. (This was back in the ‘90s.) He counted the cost in terms of the true value it yielded him, and what Eric valued most was pizza.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

His friends called this Pizzanomics. Decisions based on whether sacrificing that much pizza was worth the purchase. Talk about Opportunity Cost!

Opportunity costs means “What else could I have done with my money?”

Adem Selita, chief executive officer at The Debt Relief Company in New York, N.Y.

There is an opportunity cost attached to each word a writer uses. We need to draw readers into new realms where they can connect with and vicariously strive alongside our characters. We need to craft our expressions with intention—be it chapter, scene, paragraph, or word—to ensure our writing is concise but not boring. Remember, our readers are also counting their opportunity cost. Don’t let them wriggle off your hook.

What is in a word? Would that rose by any other name really smell as sweet? What else could we have done on the page? With that description?

Word choice matters. I remember a high school reading assignment where the narrator referred to the scent of bruised gardenias. If he had used “stink” instead of “scent,” what sense would that have conveyed?

Color your world… with words

The genre and setting should color our work. Don’t just close a door. If the story is set in space, let it whoosh. A stone castle door could grate or grind as it moves. Wooden village gates and doors might creak. Clues like this give readers a sense of the world’s setting and reflect the character’s unique POV.

Similes, metaphors, imagery, and expletives are prime opportunities to make strategic word choices.

Sandfly, a debugger in A Star Curiously Singing, book 1 of Kerry Nietz’s Dark Trench saga vents his frustration with an exclamation of “Crichton and Clarke,” two historical science fiction authors.

The amphibian dwellers of my water-covered planet mutter shells under their breath and taunt each other with sea creature insults.

And in Hidden Current, Sharon Hinck introduces the dancers of the Order with this beautiful imagery before she reveals they live on a floating world.

We lunged and poured our bodies forward. We moved like channels of water, divided, as if by an unseen boulder into two streams that circled the room, arching, flowing, reaching.

A ripple disturbed the flow.

Sharon Hink

This passage pours beauty and warmth into my soul. She did that with words.

At a Realm Makers workshop, Sharon said words should serve as double-agents, communicating more than their face-value to the reader.

Make each word earn the space it occupies. If it cost five dollars to use, would you still plug it in?

Don’t use the fanciest words to show off vocabulary prowess (or adept use of a thesaurus). Aim to transport readers, rather than impress them. If they think about the author while reading, we’ve missed the mark. But make sure to communicate all we can with that noun, verb, and article—so readers have a deeper sense of our world.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.

Proverbs 25:11 KJV

If a spoken word carries that much potential, how much more do words inscribed—utterances recorded to outlast the breath that launched them. Invest wisely in your words to compound the impact for your reader. They will be reluctant to emerge from this story and eager to plunge in to your next one.

Sophia L Hansen is an author and editor with Havok Publishing and loves to write In Other Worlds. She’s lived on a tiny island in Alaska, the bustling cities of New York and Boston, raised kids in Tennessee, and now resides just outside Birmingham, AL. After 30+ years of marriage, seven children, and numerous pets, Sophia still fits into her high school earrings.

You can follow Sophia’s words and worlds at https://www.sophialhansen.com/, Facebook, and Instagram.

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Strike the Earth

Any gamers in the house? I’m a huge fan of games: the creativity, the challenges, and the competition, of course. I love testing my wits and resolve in unpredictable settings and it’s fun to surprise my kids when I play one of “their” games. I may be a grandma now, but “Grannies are pernownin noobs!”

I started playing Dwarf Fortress after my hubby had been talking it up forever. It’s been around for over twenty years, and was one of the major inspirations for Minecraft, but much more complicated. He watched YouTube tutorials and Twitch streams and conferred with our sons as they all anticipated an upgraded release on Steam. I couldn’t avoid learning about it and was, eventually, hooked.

But Dwarf Fortress is HARD. You are expected to lose your colony several times, regularly even, so much so that one of their mottos is “Losing is Fun.”

Hmph. I didn’t like the thought of that but tried anyway. And I lost. And tried again. And lost again. But with each new try, I started with more experience under my belt, and I developed my own motto: “If at first you don’t succeed, just look how much you learned.”

“I never once failed at making a light bulb.
I just found out 99 ways not to make one.”

Thomas A. Edison

Growing as an author is like playing a new game. Unknown possibilities lie before you, but the path is untraveled. How and where do you start?

Choose Your Game

Do your tastes run more towards a first-person POV solo quest (like first-person shooter,) or an ensemble adventure (mmporp-massively multiplayer online role-playing game)? Are you a minecrafter (world builder,) puzzle solver (mystery,) or do you love Stardew Valley? (Sounds cozy to me.) Whatever you land on, make sure you love your story/world. You’re gonna spend a lot of time there.

Once you’ve chosen your adventure, you need to learn how your game works. Study the craft—query a friend who’s had some experience. Or search out tutorials. Don’t just visit the same old sources, but find out where the players are, whether Twitch, Substack, or Kindle Vella. Check out new sources for fresh takes on familiar obstacles.

When I play a new game, I want to know what the goal is and how do I reach it. In the writing game, this means I consider my goal–is this a first draft? Is it a brainstorm session or contest submission? Self-pub or a traditional publisher? Sometimes I’m competing with the game, and sometimes I’m just trying to improve my personal best.

I adapted some tips from this Wiki Walkthrough that should serve you in the writing game.

  • Stay calm—don’t panic. The challenge may seem overwhelming but if it were easy, you’d be bored already. Try something new, and don’t be discouraged if you falter. Starting over doesn’t set you back to square one. Each restart comes with new understanding and new skills.
  • Configure your controls the way you like them—your desk (standing or curled up on the sofa), keyboard (clicky?) or notebook with special pens. Then throw in some yummy snacks, good lighting, and a supportive chair. I like to have dark chocolate and mixed nuts in easy reach, as well as a supply of lens wipes. The key is, make your setting work for you.
  • Learn the environment—Where are attacks most likely to come from? Pay attention to the feedback that urges you forward or sets you back. What activities distract you, and which renew your resolve?
  • Communicate—Whether you’re playing solo or among strangers, you need a party. Not the balloons, cake, and disco ball kind, but that small contingent of trusted folks who are committed to watching your back and helping you stay on mission.
  • Practice—Gamers rehearse keyboard strokes to build muscle memory, striving to improve their APM (actions per minute.) Word sprints, writing prompts, and flash fiction are fun ways to strengthen your author game. Learn the rules for your genre; the conventions, expectations, and the tropes, so you can bend—and even break them when it serves the story. Havok Publishing is a great place to read and write flash fiction.
  • Develop your style—know your voice. Bob Hostetler’s writing wisdom, “God has given you a story that no one else can tell,” set me on this journey years ago.
  • Join a team—find your tribe. Don’t sequester yourself completely, even if you write in solitude. Find community that challenges and encourages you, the ones that inspire you to start, and start again. Groups like Writers Chat, Realm Makers, and the 540 Writers Community have been a huge encouragement for me.

Strike the earth. No matter how much you prepare, study, and research, you need to commit. To act. To enter the fray.

In Dwarf Fortress, you wield your pickax to break ground. Wield your words. Start your story. Write. This is the first win.

Sophia L Hansen is an author and editor with Havok Publishing and loves to write In Other Worlds. She’s lived on a tiny island in Alaska, the bustling cities of New York and Boston, raised kids in Tennessee, and now resides just outside Birmingham, AL. After 30+ years of marriage, seven children, and numerous pets, Sophia still fits into her high school earrings.

You can follow Sophia’s words and worlds at https://www.sophialhansen.com/, Facebook, and Instagram.

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

This Little Light

Sharing your fantastical words and worlds can be terrifying. You feel everyone’s eyes on you, weighing the thoughts you had the audacity to record.

What if I’m not good enough?

What if they laugh?

What if I make a fool of myself?

These are not the what ifs you want to dive deep with.

Of course we imagine the worst—imagining is what writers do best! But only you can change that narrative and write a different adventure. We are encouraged to identify the lie our character believes, but dare we dig deeper and challenge the lies we believe?

When you dream up worlds that don’t exist outside your mind and then people them with inhabitants from your imagination, it can be intimidating to reveal your creation. But if you find a kindred spirit it’s a little less scary.

Still, someone needs to make the first move, to confess,

“My name is Sophia and I write science fiction and fantasy.”

Two things can guide you through these unknown waters:

1- The spark you brought with you

2- The wisdom of those who have gone before.

Hold onto the candle of your imagination. Remember, you came because you had a thought, an idea, a story. You had a little light, and it led you into this universe. Your flame, whether large or small, is more than what meets the eye. Colored and shaped by the experiences that make you unique, this light is unlike any other.

Nurture it. Don’t compare it to the bonfires of those you meet.

Yes, learn from the professionals you want to emulate, those who’ve produced what you’re aiming for, but don’t judge your works by theirs. Study, practice, and follow their advice, then work it out with others whose lights are similar to yours.

Find support among your peers while you follow the pros. Critique partners, writing groups, retreats, conferences, and seminars are great opportunities to find like-feathered friends. Flock with them.

Remember, everyone starts as a beginner. so don’t be afraid to ask how they got started. Only those who haven’t gone through the trenches think writing is easy.

Be generous with what you’ve gleaned. We don’t all have the skills to teach a master class, but we can pass along the bits we’ve learned here and there. It all counts. Frequently, our experience provides what is lacking in another’s.

Share opportunities. Let your friends know where you’ve found beneficial input. Whether you call this networking or collaboration, it falls under the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. You don’t need to bring a slew of new contacts, but if you add even one person their circle is unique, which can add to and enrich all the parties involved.

You never know who’s hesitating in the wings, working up the courage to step out.

That little flame flickering across the way? It might belong to a new partner in your writing ventures and adventures. Bring your light close to theirs and increase your candlepower.

The funny thing is, once you gather a bunch of little candles, their lights combine and overcome darkness. The effect of the sum is truly greater than that of the parts, and together can illuminate new paths for many.

Sophia L Hansen is an author and editor with Havok Publishing and loves to write In Other Worlds. She’s lived on a tiny island in Alaska, the bustling cities of New York and Boston, raised kids in Tennessee, and now resides just outside Birmingham, AL. After 30+ years of marriage, seven children, and numerous pets, Sophia still fits into her high school earrings.

You can follow Sophia’s words and worlds at https://www.sophialhansen.com/, Facebook, and Instagram.

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Technology and Magic in your Science-fiction and Fantasy novels

An important part of what makes your story fit into the Science Fiction and/or Fantasy genres is an element of the fantastical. This comes in either advanced technology for Science Fiction or a magic system for Fantasy.

For this discussion, we are going to treat the exotic magic of fantasy as simply a flavor of the advanced technology of science fiction. As Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” They are one concept, but one that it is critical to speculative fiction.

Systems need rules

Readers need to understand your magic and technology and must believe it’s at least plausible within the world you have created. If they don’t, they can’t suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the story. Real-world systems have limitations, and your magic and technology should have them as well to give them a real-world feel. Here are some examples from popular culture: The Ghostbusters can’t cross the streams. The Delorean has to get to 88mph to achieve time travel. A wizard must be able to enunciate the words of the spell properly for it to work. The ritual must have the ancient artifacts to the open the gate to another realm. No one can defeat an Agent inside the Matrix.

These limitations can become the engine for tension and drama in your story. The heroes must find the sacred artifacts before the villain so he can’t open the portal to bring in his other dimensional army. The villain gags the wizard so he can’t cast. Now, how will he win? The engine breaks and the car can’t up to 88mph. How will Marty time travel home?

This also opens up great opportunities for your story when your villains or heroes have to break the rules. Spoiler alerts for a thirty-plus year old movie, but to win in the end, the Ghostbusters must cross the streams. No one can take on an Agent and win… until Neo does.

Your rules need to be integral to your story and not a simple plot device. Let’s say your character has a superpower gadget that needs to be recharged. Needing to be recharged can be a good rule and open up story angles for you. What if the hero doesn’t have enough power to defeat the bad guy. Should the hero use this powerful attack that will drain half his energy? What if the villain takes control of the charger? But you have to be careful. If you’re not consistent with how much power the gadget can hold or how much power each element of the suit takes each time, it will push your story past plausible in your reader’s mind and you’ll lose that all important suspension of disbelief.

Making it part of your world

One of the major challenges is explaining your magic or technology to your reader without resorting to long passages of expositions or telling through dialog. This is a crutch wherein the author slips an important piece of information into dialog so the reader will know it, but it’s a piece of information the other character already knows. If you can start the dialog with “As you know…” it’s telling through dialog. This should be avoided.

Your characters wouldn’t feel a need to explain their technology anymore than you feel a need to explain your mobile phone to your best friend. It’s simply part of your world. One way authors have solved this is by having characters brought in as students or neophytes who require training and therefore explanations. Even in this case, though, avoid pages of exposition and keep the story moving forward.

Think about how your magic or technology would affect the culture of your world. “Necessity is the mother of invention” but a magic spell that can solve the problem removes the necessity. Why spend years developing a telegraph if a wizard can cast a communication spell.. Why work on a steam-powered engines if a spell or artifact can teleport someone across a great distance in seconds? Why spend countless hours perfecting a light bulb if a Bard can sing a spell of illumination.

The real world gives both you and your reader a baseline for expectations. Science Fiction writers tend to be future focused, but looking at history is instructive. Over the twentieth century, we went from newspapers, to radio, to TV, to the Internet. Each advanced increased the speed at which information flowed and how many people any one person could communicate with. Vietnam was unlike any other war because, for the first time, the general populace could see it. People who heard the famous Kennedy/Nixon debates on the radio came away more impressed with Nixon, but those who watched it on those early TVs thought Kennedy would be the better leader. Whatever incredible technology or magic you create should have seismic effects on your culture as well.

This is also true as it relates to the speed at which technology develops. We’ve gone from the first powered flight to space travel in under a century, but we still haven’t successfully taken humans beyond our moon. Your story must explain whatever technological leaps exist in your world and give a plausible timeline.

How much to explain

Fantasy explains less than Science Fiction. It’s magic, right? But without defined rules, it can become wish fulfillment and whatever the writer needs for the story at that specific moment. Without rules, you can write yourself into a corner. Invariably, your readers will ask, ‘why didn’t they just do X’, and they will lose that all important suspension of disbelief.

Magic and technology is another of those goldilocks tightropes writers must walk. Reading widely in the genre is a great way to see examples both of the tightrope being walked with skill and also watching some authors flail right off.

F. Ted Atchley is a freelance writer and professional computer programmer with a passion for reading and writing speculative fiction. Whether it’s words or code, he’s always writing. His latest short story, The Preponderance of the Evidence, will be published by Havok Publishing on December 20th.

He writes the monthly Science Fiction and fantasy column for AlmostAnAuthor.com. In addition, he is a staff writer for BlizzardWatch.com, a premier fan site for the games produced by Blizzard Entertainment.

He lives in beautiful Charleston, SC with his wife and children. When not writing, you’ll find him spending time with his family, and cheering on his beloved Carolina Panthers.

You can find more about Ted at his website: https://tedatchley.com/

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

the eight types of time travel

Time travel is a stable in science fiction. Countless books, comics, movies, and TV shows have used it as their main plot device. Even more have incorporated it into a key moment of the story. Over the years, eight major types of time travel logic emerged. Recently, YouTubers Eric Voss and Héctor Navarro examined all eight types, and looked at which one gets it most correct in term of the real world science behind science fiction.

Type 1 Anything goes

Definition: Characters travel back and forth within their historical timeline.

This approach frees you to have fun and not get lost in the minutiae of how time travel works. Usually, there’s a magical Maguffin that to quote the great Dr. Ememett Brown, “makes time travel possible”. Writers have used a car, a phone booth, and a hot tub, among other options. This approach leads to inconsistent limits on the logic of the time travel, but this doesn’t mean the story is poorly plotted, won’t be enjoyable or won’t be an enormous hit. This approach is more science fantasy than science fiction with no basis in real-world science.

Examples: Back to the Future, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Hot Tube Time Machine, Frequency, Austin Powers, Men In Black 3, Deadpool 2, The Simpsons, Galaxy Quest, Star Trek TOS, Doctor Who, 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

Type 2 Branch Reality

Definition: Changes to the past don’t rewrite history. They split the timeline into an alternate branch timeline. This action does not change or erase the original timeline.

As authors got more familiar with the science behind time travel in theoretical physics, this type, based upon the many worlds theory in quantum mechanics, emerged. When the character travels back into the past and changes events, they create a new reality. Their original reality is unchanged. Branches themselves can branch leading to a multiverse of possibilities.

Examples: The Disney Plus series, Loki, used this extensively. See also: Back to the Future Part II, Avenger’s Endgame, the DC Comics multiverse, the Marvel Comics multiverse, Rick and Morty, Star Trek (2009), A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

Type 3 Time Dilation

Definition: Characters traveling off-world experience time moving more slowly than elsewhere in the universe, allowing them to move forward in time (but not backward).

This type is the based upon our scientific understanding of how time slows down as you approach the speed of the light. This is a forward-only type of time travel. There’s no going backwards.

Examples: Planet of the Apes, Ender’s Game, Flight of the Navigator, Interstellar, Buck Rodgers.

Type 4 This Always Happened

Definition: All of time is fixed on a predestined loop in which the very act of time travel itself sets the events of the story into motion.

This one can confuse and delves closer to the realm of theology than science. It feels gimmicky, and has become something of a trope making it hard to pull this off in a satisfying way for your audience. This type also invites the audience to question if your protagonist ever had free will or agency in the story.

Examples: Terminator, Terminator 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Game of Thrones-Season 6, Twelve Monkeys, Interstellar, Kate and Leopold, The Butterfly Effect, Predestination, Ricky and Morty-Season 5, Looper.

Type 5 Seeing the Future

Definition: After seeing a vision of their fate, characters choose to change their destiny or embrace their lot.

We’re stretching to call this time travel, but it provides your story with built-in conflict and stakes. Will the hero choose to walk the path knowing how it will end, or will they choose a different path?

Examples: Oedipus Rex, A Christmas Carol, Minority Report, Arrival, Next (Nicolas Cage), Rick and Morty-Season Four. Star Trek:Discovery-Season 2, Avenger’s EndGame with Dr. Strange and the Mind Stone.

Type 6 Time Loop / Groundhog Day

Definition: Characters relive the same day over and over, resetting back to a respawn point once they die or become incapacitated.

This type gained popularity after the movie, Groundhog Day, became a tremendous hit. Most of the other examples take the Groundhog Day idea and put a slight twist on it. Like Type 4 “This Always Happened”, the popularity of this type can make it harder to pull off in a fresh and innovative way.

Examples: Obviously, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Edge of Tomorrow, Doctor Strange in the ending battle with Dormammu, Russian Dolls (Netflix), Palm Springs, Star Trek TNG.

Type 7 Unstuck Mind

Definition: Characters consciousness transport through time within his body to his life at different ages.

Nostalgia for the past and dreaming of the future are core parts of the human experience. This type runs more metaphorically than scientific.

Examples: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Desmond in the series Lost.

Type 8 Unstuck Body

Definition: A character’s body or object becomes physically detached from the flow of time within the surrounding universe, becoming inverted or younger. Only certain objects or bodies are unstuck from time. Also called Inverted Entropy.

This one will blow your mind if you think about it for too long. Like Type 2 “Branch Reality”, this one comes from the realm of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. Scientists and mathematicians have all the formulas worked out to make this de-aging a reality, but currently lack the technology to control all the variables in the ways needed. It would like scientists working out than an object could break the speed of the sound in 1890. It would look inconceivable, given the technology of the day, but I wouldn’t put limits on human ingenuity.

Examples: Dr. Strange (the Hong Kong battle). Tenet, briefly in Endgame with Scott Lang and Bruce, Primer.

If you’re writing a time travel story, you’ll need to decide which one of these types you want to deploy. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. In many ways, its similar to designing your magic system, especially if you go with a Type 1 time travel story. The most important thing remains to have relatable characters and to tell a great story while being internally consistent with the rules and logic of your story world.

Ted Atchley is a freelance writer and professional computer programmer. Whether it’s words or code, he’s always writing. Ted’s love for speculative fiction started early on with Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and the Star Wars movies. This led to reading Marvel comics and eventually losing himself in Asimov’s Apprentice Adept and the world of Krynn (Dragonlance Chronicles). 

After blogging on his own for several years, Blizzard Watch (blizzardwatch.com) hired Ted to be a regular columnist in 2016. When the site dropped many of its columns two years later, they retained Ted as a staff writer. 

He lives in beautiful Charleston, SC with his wife and children. When not writing, you’ll find him spending time with his family, and cheering on his beloved Carolina Panthers. He’s currently revising his work-in-progress portal fantasy novel before preparing to query. 

Ted has a quarterly newsletter which you can join here. You’ll get the latest on his writing and publishing as well as links about writing, Star Wars, and/or Marvel.

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

advances in rocket propulsion to inspire your science fiction

There’s an important difference between Science Fiction and Scient Fantasy. Scient Fiction is based on real world science, even if that science is theoretical. Science Fantasy looks and reads like Science Fiction, but it’s not based on real world science. Science Fiction spends more time explaining how the technology in their created world works, while Science Fantasy treats it as akin to a magic system. The classic delineation is Star Trek is Science Fiction, while Star Wars is Science Fantasy.

Known and mundane

Chemical rockets have been powering human spaceflight for decades. Every rocket used this type of propulsion. Whether the fuel is liquid or solid, it’s burned with an oxidizer to create rapidly expanding gas. The design of the rocket gives the gas only the rocket’s nozzle as an outlet and thanks to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, all the force going out causes a reactive force pushing the rocket to the stratosphere and beyond.

SpaceX, one of the leading innovators in space travel, has begun tests on The Raptor, a full flow staged combustion (FFSC) engine. It’s still a chemical reaction, but it’s more fuel efficient and generates more power.

Are you telling me that this sucker is NUCLEAR?

Nuclear fission reactions recall visions of mushroom clouds and destruction, but much like how we can use fire or electricity for both destructive and constructive purposes, this potent reaction is being tested as a possible propulsion source. It works like a chemical rocket. Gases are heated and given the nozzle as their only escape.

The problem with fission engines is size. The current fission reactors are too large for a space faring vehicle, but research and experimentation continue. The other issues is launch failure. It’s one thing when a chemical rocket explodes, but a nuclear rocket could spread radioactive material over a large area. That is not ideal.

It’s electric

There are few sounds more iconic than the Twin Ion Engines of a Sienar Fleet Systems T.I.E fighter. This technology is getting some real application. The drives ionize particles and fire them out a thruster. They are fuel efficient and can even be solar powered. Real-world applications include Esa’s SMART-1 mission to the Moon and Bepi-Colombo mission headed to Mercury.

The major issue with ion drives is speed. They are too slow for any manned mission, but NASA is working on more powerful versions for a proposed moon mission.

Solar sails

Versions have of Solar sails have appeared in popular Science Fiction and Science Fantasy. The real-world versions rely on catching photons emitted by the Sun. They propel the sail through space. There is an inverse relationship between distance from the Sun and speed. The Japanese IKAROS spacecraft and the Planetary Society Lightsail-2 project have both employed this technology. Unfortunately for solar sail enthusiasts, these engines make the ion engines look fast.

Scientist continue to push the boundaries of our technology, chasing the dreams birth in them by writers of great science fiction. The writers inspire the scientist to reach new heights and the discovers the scientist make inspire greater and more fantastical stories from the writers. It’s a beautiful, symbiotic relationship.

Ted Atchley is a freelance writer and professional computer programmer. Whether it’s words or code, he’s always writing. Ted’s love for speculative fiction started early on with Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and the Star Wars movies. This led to reading Marvel comics and eventually losing himself in Asimov’s Apprentice Adept and the world of Krynn (Dragonlance Chronicles). 

After blogging on his own for several years, Blizzard Watch (blizzardwatch.com) hired Ted to be a regular columnist in 2016. When the site dropped many of its columns two years later, they retained Ted as a staff writer. 

He lives in beautiful Charleston, SC with his wife and children. When not writing, you’ll find him spending time with his family, and cheering on his beloved Carolina Panthers. He’s currently revising his work-in-progress portal fantasy novel before preparing to query. 

Ted has a montly newsletter which you can join here. It’s a roundup of links about writing, Star Wars, and/or Marvel with brief commentary from him.

  • Twitter: @tedatchley3
  • Twitter: @honorshammer (gaming / Blizzard Watch)
Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

How Genre Impacts Your Character Development

Sometimes it’s easy to think character development looks similar across genres. And for the reader, it usually does. Even in the best-selling books, character development is often very relatable. As it should be. Readers need to relate to the characters, after all. But when we use genre as an outside force influencing our characters, we take character development to a whole new level.

Let’s take Harry Potter. Harry lived in the cupboard under the stairs until he went to Hogwarts and discovered who he really is. This is a typical young adult character arc. But if we look deeper and notice the influence of genre, we see Harry’s development from a whole new perspective.

What makes Harry such a standout character is his very normal personality thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The normalcy of Harry contrasted with the unexpected and surprising details of Hogwarts and its professors acts as a dichotomy, highlighting just how much Harry needs to overcome. Yes, Rowling could have put Harry into a normal school with no magic and fleshed out his character, but not as deeply.

As you create your world, take note of your protagonist’s weaknesses. Harry repeatedly says “I’m just Harry!” which goes to show 1) how little he knows about himself, 2) how he’s in way over his head, and 3) just how much he will grow.

What is your protagonist’s view of himself or ideology of the world? Create a villain who undermines that in every way. Harry doesn’t think he’s important. But the villain sees his seeming unimportance, his innocence, as something that destroyed his agenda.

How do the rules of your world push against your protagonist’s views of right and wrong? Harry wants to free Dobby the house elf, but the rules of the Harry Potter world are strict about how a house elf can be freed. Harry has to play by the rules to help Dobby.

How do the rules of your world’s culture impact your protagonist’s interpersonal relationships? Harry wants to be friends with Hermione, but Hermione is looked down on for not having a magical family. Harry wouldn’t have had this interpersonal struggle if his character hadn’t been created in a magical world. The genre Harry was thrust into massively impacted his character arc, even at the interpersonal level.

As you create characters and decide what type of world to plunge them into, ask yourself some of the above questions. Based on their personality, fears, dreams, views of right and wrong, etc., would science-fiction or fantasy best reveal their character arc?

Put Harry in a public school somewhere in England and he probably would’ve stayed relatively insignificant. But put him in a wizarding world and he grows so much he defeats the dark lord and becomes not “just Harry” but Harry Potter, the boy who lived. As the author, it’s your job to make your characters shine, and much of that comes down to choosing the stage to put them on.

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi Uncategorized

Unlocking Science Fiction, the Secret You Need to Know

There’s something about a good sci-fi story that pulls me in and doesn’t let me go. In those moments, I’m completely satisfied as a passive observer, forgetting all the rules of how we should write active characters, strong plots, and keep the story moving.

I just want to be drawn in (passive), forget the rules (what?!) and let the story take me where it will.

What is it about truly great stories that draw me in this way? There’s a key answer to this question. As writers, if we realize what details in a story bring us to the point where we’re willing to become passive readers—simply for the sake of engaging in the story—it will make us better, active writers.

Here’s the key—find the science in the fiction.

Stories that focus on believability (however unbelievable the plot may be in real life) allow readers the safety net of realism. When realism is built into a story, the fiction aspects can stand on their own.

For instance, take the book Maze Runner.

The situation is something that would (hopefully) never happen in real life: put a bunch of kids in a walled garden, or glade as they call it, and watch them fend for themselves as they try to survive alongside creepy monsters.

There’s nothing relatable about that fiction. The fiction can’t stand on its own because we, as readers, have this thought in the back of our minds: It’s so far-fetched, that would never happen.

But throw some science into the story. Watch them figure out the details of the day and how to survive alongside other teenagers they would never be friends with in whatever used to be their day-to-day lives. The author draws on the psychology of humanity, of teens, and then uses that to drive the plot.

At its core, Maze Runner is a survival story.

What goes into survival? Science. Grab your psychology textbook from freshman year and in it you’ll find Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a simple pyramid structure showing what we need as individuals, from a basic need for food and water, all the way up to self-actualization.

Maze Runner focuses on the second level—safety needs.

Adding relatable, scientifically proven aspects to a science-fiction book goes a long way in helping readers engage with the story.

We’ve all felt the desire to be safe.

So, when we turn the page and monsters come out of the maze, attacking our favorite characters, we don’t mentally stop to think, would they really want to be safe from monsters though?

No way! The author already established the credibility of his work, basing it in actual science. When the fictional aspects come along, we’re already drawn into the story.

The fiction stands on its own, because it’s rooted in science.

That’s what makes great science-fiction.

That’s believable.

And believable sells.

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Writer, working with brands to grow their audience reach. She studied Strategic Communications at Cornerstone University and focused on writing during her time there, completing two full-length manuscripts while a full-time student. Currently she trains under best-selling author Jerry Jenkins in his Your Novel Blueprint course and is actively seeking publication for two books.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Realistic World-Building

The trend within the fantasy and sci-fi genres is to push for more detailed world-building within our stories. While this might work for some novels, it isn’t always necessary. When writing a sci-fi story set on earth in the not too distant future, less is actually more. A story can be just as effective—if not more so—when the writer keeps the setting simple. Keep in mind that in reality, the next generation or two probably won’t be living too much differently from the way we do now.

Names.

I personally know teenagers named William, Julia, Benjamin, Robert and Elizabeth. I also knew teenagers with these names when I was a young girl in the eighties. Today, we’ve also got names like Truxton and Abcde, but every generation will have new and different names. Overall, they haven’t changed that much. I would expect there will still be boys named James and girls named Grace in the year 2118. When creating your cast of characters, throw in an unusual name or two, but don’t bog the story down with odd names that are too difficult to pronounce. It’s perfectly futuristic to give your characters normal names.

Technology.

Computers have changed our way of life forever. Technology is moving at a faster pace each and every year. But that doesn’t mean earth will be unrecognizable in another century. With each new technology, it takes years of testing and then more years of production, before a company or government can implement it into society. Pharmaceuticals take decades to pass through the FDA. We may have the first self-driving cars on the road, but will that really mean all vehicles in our country will be self-driving in just a few decades? Most likely, not. Remember to incorporate some of these changes as occurring slowly over time within your story. However, no one will expect our skies to be filled with flying cars by the year 2068.

Geology.

What’s happening on our planet? It’s no secret that polar ice caps are melting and changes in our atmosphere are causing scientists to scratch their heads. But how will this affect our world in the future? Many futuristic stories include the same countries and landmarks that exist today, but use different names or have new alliances, causing the reader the need to learn about our planet as if it were not our own. But how will our world be different geologically? Including small changes in the natural world around us may be the key to your world-building without having to “reinvent the wheel” by creating all new nations just to make our world seem different.

The differences needed for world-building within a sci-fi story on earth don’t need to be complicated. Remember to keep things simple, pull from what is familiar to you, and think about the next logical step for the future of our world. This just might be the key to keep your reader reading, without getting hung up on complex details.

Laura L. Zimmerman is a homeschooling mama to three daughters and a doting wife to one husband. Besides writing, she is passionate about loving Jesus, singing, drinking coffee and anything Star Wars. You can connect with her through Facebook and Twitter @lauralzimm and at her website Caffeinated Fiction.

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Breaking Down the Worlds of Science Fiction

Which world, or sub-genre, does your novel belong to?

Bookstores have general genre sections in which to categorize their books making it easier for consumers to locate a specific subject. However, within each genre there are always dozens of sub-genres to help narrow down a reader’s search.

Science fiction is no different, encompassing a large number of categories. Novels in this genre often deal either with a natural science or technological science, but the variances can go even deeper.

Here is a brief breakdown of some of the most popular sub-genres within sci-fi.

The sub-genre of Alternate History asks the question, “How would our world be changed if a specific historical event had ended differently?” These books use actual historical settings to explore a fantasy world that does not exist but could have existed. A similar sub-genre is the Parallel Universe. These works consist of one or more worlds that coexist with our own, often reflecting an almost identical reality but with only minor differences that may or may not affect a major change.

Artificial Intelligence and Robot sub-genres are closely related in that they are both computer science based. These sub-genres reflect the idea of intelligent and self-sustaining machines. On the flip side, Virtual Reality stories dive into a world where computer-simulated environments play a role within which the characters are able to interact.

In recent years the idea of an Apocalyptic, Post-apocalyptic or Dystopian society have become quite popular among audiences. These novels deal with end of the world events and how mankind is able to survive in the aftermath of an almost global extinction. They are often a man vs. nature conflict and sometimes include a corrupt government that challenges human survival.

The Steampunk sub-genre of science fiction is by far one of the most popular. This sub-genre is set in the 19th century when steam powered engines were still in use and it often crosses over with the Alternate History category. Mixed with the traditional lifestyle of this era are more modern technologies such as computers, robots and futuristic machinery or weaponry.

Alien Invasion of earth or First Contact between humans and another unknown life form are other popular sci-fi sub-genres. In recent decades the subject of Mutants—humans that change or develop in some way to produce superpowers or defy nature—is another well-liked category. With the rise in popularity of superheroes both in books and on the screen, this sub-genre continues to grow.

Closely related to the previous categories are Space Exploration and Space Opera. The idea of Space Exploration usually stems from modern day reality answering the “What if?” question of a major space discovery and the effects on our planet or the near future. These books usually attempt to stay within the confines of our current knowledge of science and space travel. The category of Space Opera is often set on a distant planet in a universe unlike our own, with a mixture of human and alien characters, and various unknown languages and cultures. This sub-genre allows the story to go against the laws of physics and often makes the impossible, possible, through a source of magic or power.

The Time Travel sub-genre includes stories where one or more of the characters travel to any point within history or into the future. This subject remains a popular category within scifi.

Your work may cross over into multiple sub-genres within the world of science fiction. Make an effort to choose just one or two categories to narrow down your theme so it will be easier to market when the time comes. It’s important to know your book’s sub-genre so you can discover your target audience and in turn, your readers will be able to find your book!

Laura L. Zimmerman is a homeschooling mama to three daughters and a doting wife to one husband. Besides writing, she is passionate about loving Jesus, singing, drinking coffee and anything Star Wars. You can connect with her through Facebook, Twitter @lauralzimm, Instagram @lauralzimmauthor and at her website, Caffeinated Fiction, www.lauralzimmerman.com.

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi Storyworld

Entertainment in your Storyworld

Entertainment

We’ve spoken before about how little details can help color your storyworld. Societal habits, mating customs, dinner choices, and environmental aspects are all key to fleshing out a believable living space. Another aspect to consider is the way in which your characters entertain themselves.

Sometimes entertainment plays a central role in a book. The entire concept in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games is a deathsport reality show, partly to show the Capitol’s control over the Districts, but also partly to entertain the masses. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One shows a world in which reality is miserable and everyone escapes into a massively multiplayer online game. This “game” supports commerce, education, and other activities, but entertainment is a major aspect, especially considering the bleak reality outside of the virtual reality “OASIS.” And Aaron Gansky’s Hand of Adonai series presents a World of Warcraft type game in which the protagonists get trapped, Tron-style, and must figure out how to escape.

Hand of Adonai

In those three examples, the entertainment medium is actually the centerpiece of the novel, but it’s also the major point of tension. Specifically, each of the forms of entertainment is broken or twisted in some way, and the characters must overcome the challenges that arise.

Should entertainment play a major role in any other type of novel though? What if you have a story in the Wild West? Or a post-apocalyptic survivalist tale? A Space opera? I would argue that entertainment should be valued by your characters if you want them to feel like real people. That’s because all humans desire to have comfort and enjoyment at least part of the time (hopefully their lives aren’t always threatened by events like the ones in your novel!).

For example, John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades is a book about super soldiers defending humanity from a ghastly assortment of different alien species. And yet, Scalzi helps to make the storyworld feel alive with little windows of enjoyment. In one scene, a pilot is playing poker with some friends, in another, a father pirates a broadcast signal so his daughter can watch TV, and most importantly, an alien race is revealed to have no need for arts and entertainment. And this alien race realizes its lack of culture and strives to create it.

Or take Little House in the Big Woods. The novel chronicles the survival of a young girl and her family in the wilderness. Despite the struggles, there are times where she and her sister enjoy the musical talents of their father, or the two inflate and seal a pig bladder and kick it around like a ball. Personally that’s disgusting to me, but it really does help me picture the world in which little Laura Ingalls lived.


If your story is a non-stop adventure, you might feel like you don’t have time or space in your book to show scenes of enjoyment. That may be true. While not a book, the first season of the TV show 24 really pushed its story along with scant little room to explore its characters’ hobbies. Nevertheless, the first scene with the protagonist shows Jack, his wife, and his daughter finishing a late-night game. This one scene helps establish Jack’s normal life before the world started falling apart. It thus gives us an idea of what he’s fighting to get back through the whole first season.

Even if your story is very dark and the adventure extremely perilous, I would really encourage you to figure out some hobby or interest your character has to make him more personable. This is especially true if the world is very different from our own, because the character’s chosen entertainment could be used to show how foreign or similar that world is to ours. For example, a sorcerer in a fantasy adventure might enjoy magical sculpting – which might be a sort of enchanted pottery making. Or maybe he enjoys reading books of far-off adventure. In the first case, the hero has a hobby similar to one found in our world, but he clearly lives in a different reality. In the latter scenario, the sorcerer has an interest akin to that of your readers, making him relatable despite his extraordinary talents. Both are useful, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

That’s all for now, and possibly for a while. My wife and I are expecting our fourth child in a few weeks. Being a stay-at-home dad with four children ages 6 and under (and homeschooling the oldest two) will mean I won’t have much time to make regular updates at A3. So after two years of storyworld contributions, I’ll be taking a sabbatical for a little while. In the meantime, if there are any particular topics you’d like to see covered in the future, please leave a comment below and I can cover that subject when I return! Thanks guya and gals!

 

Ghost Brigades Image from: http://www.alisoneldred.com/imageJohnHarris-Illustration-2-58.html

Pig Bladder Kicking Picture from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/270638258827560791/

24 Family Picture from: http://www.buddytv.com/articles/24/hottest-tv-dads-jack-bauer-24-17503.aspx

 

Categories
Storyworld

Anatomy of Grays: Alien Digest

The autopsy window allowed Jim a clear view of the good doctor’s grim work. The gray-skinned corpse had been cut open from neck to … whatever was between its legs, and its internal workings were just as alien as its external ones. Over the speaker, Doctor Stein began commenting on how the ugly fellow might digest its food. Apparently the little gray invaders had multiple stomachs like cows. Jim sighed. So their world was being invaded by bipedal gray-skinned cud-chewers. Great. Just great.

This month we continue our series on alien anatomy, literally delving into the bowels of unusual creatures – specifically their appetites. I’ve already posted an article about food and its necessity to your characters, which are probably vertebrates. That means they ingest their food, break it down, absorb it, and then circulate it to every single living cell in their bodies (which is headache-inducing if you stop to ponder it – don’t). Unused consumables are then disposed of in the same way that publishers typically treat unsolicited manuscripts. But with an alien anatomy, it bears mentioning that exotic creatures might ingest, digest, and circulate food differently.

 

Self-producing

Take for example a typical plant. Its food is self-produced, using a special pigment called chlorophyll, plus sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. It still needs potassium, nitrogen, and various other nutrients found in the soil, but the energy the plant uses is the sugar it produces for itself. This may not sound extremely interesting as a plot device in a book, but wait until you read John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I won’t spoil who the green-skinned creatures are, but suffice to say Scalzi incorporates a creature that uses chlorophyll-infused skin to further enhance its energy (as a hint, they aren’t the Jolly Green Giants).

 

Externally Digesting

Other organisms like fungus and starfish actually digest their food externally. A fungus emits enzymes into the soil (or plant, organism, or whatever the fungus is feeding on), and its “food” breaks down around the root-like hyphae. The nutrients are then absorbed into those little tendrils. Try not to think of that the next time you get athlete’s foot. Arguably more gross is the starfish, which actually spits its entire stomach out of its mouth to digest its food externally. Creatures like this are likely to be pretty alien. Again, the world of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is populated with interesting characters. Take the Gehaar for example, which are blue, tentacled extraterrestrials that inject their food with acid and slurp up the mostly-digested syrupy mess into their mouths. Yuck. But who knows what your space-faring adventurers or fame-seeking wizards will find in their world?

 

Otherworldly Appetites

But not all creatures need to follow the same rules as those in our own world. The second book in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series (incidentally, no relation to the Pokemon craze), includes some creatures called Oni, which feast off of souls to prolong their life. They do this in an almost literal way, because the souls are actually stored in a stomach-like bag inside the creature, where they are processed and provide energy for the evil beings. Apparently such a malevolent metabolism makes a monster very hard to kill too, since an entire section of Alabama interstate was virtually destroyed in the process. You’ll have to read Monster Hunter Vendetta to appreciate it though.

 

Picking up a Monster Manual from Pathfinder or 3rd or 5th edition D&D can also give you some interesting ideas for aliens and fantastic creatures (Note: 4th edition is great to play, but the monsters typically lack back-stories). Examples from these books are Gelatinous cubes and oozes that tend to be mindless blobs of jello that are only semi-aware. If you touch one though, your skin will begin to decompose in their uniform acidic bodies. That’s because their digestive systems are little more than homogenous blobs of acid. Rust monsters are also interesting since they eat metal, including magic weapons. In one of the editions this meant that one of their waste products would sometimes be residuum, a magical substance used to enchant other weapons.

 

That’s all on the menu this month. Next month we’ll talk about alien sex and reproduction, but don’t worry, I’ll keep it PG. Still, you may not want to invite your grandma.

 

Gelatinous Cube Inspirational Photo from http://catsoftindalos.blogspot.com/2016/05/caverns-of-slime.html

Green Giant image from https://www.tellwut.com/surveys/lifestyle/food-drink/91881-jolly-green-giant.html

Categories
Storyworld

Fantastic Geographical Influences on Cultures

Tatooine

As Tatooine’s twin suns slowly inch to the sand dunes in the horizon, a lone figure strains his eyes as he scans the endless wastes to the west. Some of us are so familiar with Star Wars that we can’t remember the first time we saw young Skywalker against the backdrop of the two setting suns, but this scene is anchored in my mind as a brilliantly subtle method of showing a vastly different world.

Not every sci-fi or fantasy story has fantastic geographical elements, but some of the most memorable do. If you’ve considered writing a speculative fiction book, you’ve probably already considered a number of its aspects, but you’ll need to consider how the world’s geography shapes the culture of your storyworld.

The titular world described in the novel Dune by Frank Herbert served as a great inspiration to George Lucas’s Tatooine. Windswept sands and arid climates make for eye candy, whether reading about them or watching them, but the real gem in Dune is seeing how the local people survive in their environment. Water is such a scarce resource that it becomes a trade commodity and advanced suits are used to recycle their liquid wastes. But dehydration isn’t the only concern, since deadly storms whip up frequently and massive worms seek to devour anything that makes vibrations on the sands. The setting is incredibly perilous and consequently the indigenous people live a Spartan, nomadic lifestyle. I think because of the climate and the culture, Herbert models the people like a romanticized version of 19th Century Arabs, though with a sort of mysticism uniquely their own.

crater2Closer to home but no less exotic, Homer Hickham’s novel Crater takes place on our own moon. If the author’s name sounds familiar to you in a non-literary sense, that’s because Hickham was the real life main character in the movie October Sky. After a successful career at NASA, he’s taken up writing Christian Science-Fiction situated on a lunar landscape. Crater, the first novel in his series, deals with the difficulties of lunar survival on a well-established colony. The book is geographically interesting, from the ubiquitous low-gravity to the commerce routes used by space age delivery trucks. Starting in his home in a rugged Helium-3 mining town, the main character must trek across craters, canyons, and rocky plains to obtain a mysterious package at the moon’s main port of call. Because of the harsh setting and the rugged independence of these colonists, Hickham portrays the men and women of the moon similar to Appalachian miners.

PT_BtPoSWhile my first two examples take place in environments naturally devoid of water, the complete opposite is seen in Howard Andrew Jones’ Pathfinder Tales: Beyond the Pool of Stars. In it, Miriam Raas is pulled back into her family business of deep sea salvaging and must fight off monsters, pirates, and evil sorceresses along the way. But she isn’t without her tools of the trade: a magical version of scuba gear, complete with underwater breathing and enhanced mobility. The society that has grown up around her home in Desperation Bay is one of commerce and shipping, complete with nobles and merchants vying for importance through petty political squabbles you could expect in such an environment. The culture is probably most similar to that of Britain during the peak of its naval might, but the magical influence sets the tone as something distinctly different.

When you think of your storyworld, consider its unique geographical features and how civilizations might develop around them. As in these examples, you don’t have to invent environment-culture interactions from scratch. Readers expect people (and all sentient beings) to naturally develop functional cultures around their environment, and they expect these interactions to have elements similar to what we’ve historically seen on earth. So the more you borrow and tweak elements from our own diverse world for your own purposes, the more your settings will feel realistic.