I always shake my head when I hear new fiction authors (and even non-fiction) talk about what they want to write. It’s not that what they want to write is a bad idea, they have enormously fascinating ideas. Still, when you want to put your foot in the water, it would be nice if it were not over your head. You see, the task of writing is daunting enough just to keep it organized and flowing with great dialogue and imagery and a plot line that works. However, when you fixate on writing science fiction set in the year 2170, you have a whole new set of problems. The amount of research into the cutting-edge science just to get into space today requires an Isaac Asimov level of background education. The average high school or college grad doesn’t have that background. Sure, some of your inventions can be totally fanciful. No one can prove they won’t exist, but you can’t get much mileage out of that. Most people have expectations based on real science. Even fantasy writing has expectations and in that environment you are beginning with a completely unknown world that you have to invent without even the benefit of a scientific basis. It’s totally unknown. Very creative…and very hard.
When Wendy and I started writing together we were faced with two problems, what should we write about and how should two people who live 700 miles apart manage the logistics of it all. We decided that the only way it would work was to write what we know. What we knew was a park ranger living in the middle of nowhere and raising a daughter by himself. We figured with those sideboards, and a skeleton plot outline, the experiment might get off the ground without disintegrating. Just finding time to write would be hard enough. We were careful to use settings that we had both lived in, and we knew the routines and how people functioned in those places and organizations. We weren’t writing true stories, but we were using our experience and sense of people and place to wrap the fiction up into a story. Do you work in a gas station or a tea shop? Are you a student in a school environment? Are you a nurse who deals with doctors and patients? The background you have for potential stories is limitless and only your imagination is necessary. Use what you know to populate your story with detail and then you can concentrate on the really hard work of making a plot line that works. Characters and how they interact make the real story! Happy writing!
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Greg
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