(Part 2) Top products from r/scifiwriting

You're pumped, you want to be a science fiction writer, but you're not quite sure where to start. I'd like to recommend a couple of things to you.

First, no matter what genre you go into, science fiction, fantasy, horror, you're going to need to become a competent writer. This isn't a cut, it's just that writing is a craft like woodworking or sewing, and everyone is crap starting out. The way to get better is by practicing writing, so you write crap until...one day it's not so crappy. Everyone who sells books has had to go through this.

I recommend you start by writing 5K words per week, not including social media or texts, just writing. You can write anything, dreams, revenge fantasies, stream-of-consciousness writing, and especially dialogues. Start getting familiar with writing down two people talking to each other, making it sound like a real conversation.

And the second thing is I think you might profit from reading a good book about writing. Taking a class on fiction writing would be even better, but it's challenging to find any sort of fiction writing class until you get to college. No matter. You can do what most writers have done, which is to teach yourself.

Have a look at James Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel. You might find it at your local library. And browse that whole section of books at your library, books about writing. There are a few books about specifically writing science fiction, but being a good writer in general means you can write whatever you want anyway.

In regards to your current story, you've done some worldbuilding and created a scenario in which your story or stories can take place. Now you want to figure out what kind of story you want to tell in this environment, a rambling adventure, mystery w/ sleuth, lighthearted action, serious hardcore action drama, romance, comedy, military SF, post apoc/dystopian, etc.

Then you want to start populating your world with characters, so you want to make character profiles that describe the personalities and appearances of your characters, as well as their idiosyncrasies. This will make it easier to write dialogues later, if you come to understand your characters as real live people.

Haven't done one of these in a while, so I'll be more general as opposed to line edits (as I'm out of practice on those). What you'll get is my opinion of the piece itself in a more broad way, which is probably more useful anyway. It's not intended to be mean or harsh, but honest. I approach these in the way I approach my own fiction, and also fiction I buy off the shelf.

To start, it might seem like a nitpick, but I absolutely hate the protagonists name. It's also said that you want to generally avoid tropes, and being super blatant about the 'teenager trying to escape the small town' thing might get you side-eyed in a not so good way. It's horribly overdone these days. Anyway, that's just initial impressions. Lets dig into the actual writing.

> America Boggs gripped sticky, tattered pleather while the school bus climbed a muddy mountain road. She was the remote route’s only high school student, so her bright green eyes and curly blond hair towered over the surrounding mob of spastic little kids. Sitting alone, she listened to faint music through a pair of duct taped headphones.

Okay, I lied. I'm going to show you a minor edit. It'll mostly include word removal and small editions to keep the structure from being unsound.

> America gripped the tattered seat as the school bus climbed the muddy mountain road. As the remote route’s only high school student, she towered over the mob of spastic middle schoolers. Sitting alone, she listened to faint music through a pair of duct taped headphones.

Like I said, a minor edit. There's a lot of unnecessary detail the distracts from America and her situation. The self-description is also a bit jarring as she would know these things about herself. Describing a character like this should only be included if they're important to the story itself. Does it matter that she's a blonde with green eyes? Is that unique? If so, does she get funny looks? If not, don't bother. People forget these details and largely substitute what they imagine the character looks like. We also tend to only notice our flaws as they more directly impact us, unless someone is a super hot narcissist. Moving on.

> They passed sagging mobile homes roofed in blue tarps. The neighborhood’s displays of poverty provided America with constant reminders that a future beyond the Appalachians might be impossible. She dreaded a hardscrabble life in the dilapidated village and resented the rugged landscape for turning civilization into a dream.

'They' is vague in a strange way. You could say the bus passed, or the sagged mobile homes passed, but 'they passed' directly into 'sagging mobile' feels very passive. In the second sentence, the 'neighborhood's' agency (displaying, providing, etc), reads odd. I'd put the reader more firmly in America's head. I like the use of 'hardscrabble', but it highlights an issue for me. Namely, none of this feels like science fiction yet. That may be by design, but already the introduction is very slow, lacking action, emotion, or firm setting and placement. So far, it reads as very easy to put down.

> Avoiding such depressing thoughts, she signaled her antique cellphone to crank its feeble volume. The phone’s original memory only held twenty songs before her homemade upgrades, but she found and repaired it herself. Plus, her dad paid the bill if she did extra chores.

She's not avoiding the thoughts, really. She was previously reveling in them. She's turning from them, or dismissing them, but not avoiding. If she was avoiding them she wouldn't have really thought about it to begin with.

The detail of the phone: how is she 'signaling' to it? Also, the volume is feeble and it could only hold twenty songs? How familiar are you with technology? Is this set in the early 90s because phones could hold hundreds of songs relatively quickly. I'm having a hard time figuring out the time frame we're in.

> America’s sixth sense for electronics, including her body’s ability to broadcast radio waves, provided many temptations for mischief as modern technology trickled into the isolated region. Usually, she listened to her dad and hid her strange powers.
> “If anybody finds out,” he explained, “they’ll get scared and call the cops. The cops’ll tell the Feds and the Feds’ll dissect ya.”

Wooooaaah okay wait. Super-powers? Note: A sixth-sense isn't typically technomancy, but that's not really the issue here. Why am I being TOLD she has super-powers several paragraphs in? I should be shown this, and shown it much earlier. Also, if she can generate radio-waves, can she also receive them? How does it work? Why can she do it? This detail needs to hit hard and fast in some way beyond her just imagining a conversation she had with her father.

> A boy drowned out America’s favorite song by bracing his blaring video game against the backrest beside her ear. She felt its vulnerable wireless port pulsing an open invitation and pulled out her phone, sending brief bursts of silent, coded radio frequencies to control a customized hacking app. The program’s powerful algorithms discovered his pitiful password in seconds.

Watch the alliteration, because I'm seeing it a lot. Also, this reads as both weirdly specific and weirdly non-specific and, while this may not be the case, it FEELS as a reader like you have a layman's understanding of the technology involved. It uses buzzwords in a way that make it like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

> Her tiny screen scrolled the game’s operating system until she found and spiked its battery temperature readings. Pocketing her phone, she held tight as the bus crested a ridge and lurched to an abrupt stop. The boy, pummeling his blank screen instead of holding on, bounced his face off her backrest.

'Screen scrolled' <- alliteration again. 'Pocketing her phone' is a dangling participle. You tend to want to avoid those as they confuse (especially in this case) the subject and the sequence of events. Also, the wording of the last sentence seems to imply the boy purposely bangs his head on the seat in front of himself.

> Rain peppered the metal roof like buckshot. America hoisted her bulging backpack, nodded at the driver and leapt through the exit. She trudged up her slick, washed out driveway, wishing for a different life.

Good first sentence. Very active and strong wording. Your prose needs more of this. 'Bulging Backpack'. If she's so remote, why are there so many kids and no other high schoolers? Are the young ones required to live outside city limits? I thought she was on her WAY to school because of the presence of more kids, just that she was the only one from that direction. Her returning home surrounded by children seems odd.

The last sentence kind of highlights a new problem... Why is her life so bad? She's maybe lonely, but has super-powers, seems like her dad (implied) is weird but kind of okay. I'm not really 'feeling' it with this. It just seems like an extended introduction to the character - the kind of thing really strong writers can get through in a paragraph.

I'll stop there, as I think the first page / chapter pretty much says everything that needs to be said, and if it's not exactly satisfying most people will stop there (or earlier).

It's not a bad effort. My critiques tend to be hard because an editor / agent, who is going to look at this wondering if they should spend money on it, will be a thousand times harder. I'd suggest taking some time looking into in medias res and learning how to apply it, because if you DO have a unique and compelling science-fiction story to tell, it's hiding behind this early chapter with only a brief clue as to what I can expect from your story.

The first part of a story is a promise, and this doesn't promise much I can latch onto.

Here's a recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Traitor-Baru-Cormorant-Seth-Dickinson/dp/0765380730/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505314872&sr=1-1&keywords=seth+dickinson

This book is a good example of an author using punchy prose, quick pacing, and strong characterization to make the 'young girl not entirely pleased with her life' trope into something striking and compelling. I highly recommend reading it, spending a little time depressed over how well its written, and then using that as inspiration to keep writing. You're in for a long, tough road from here. Good luck.

Here's something I've been wondering about.

Can some of those posters who typed "No it wouldn't work because it's not on a subject familiar to teenagers" please explain why they feel familiarity with a small part of the premise is important? Sorry if that sounds rude but to be honest, I really can't understand why "It has to be familiar to teenagers (beyond the sense of it being about teenage issues in general, ie in the sense of subject if you know what I'm saying) is an important factor for judging if something is YA or not.

Here's an example of what I mean. This probably isn't a good analogy but I hope what I say is clear.

Say you have a book set in Australia (I live here and I'm an Aussie) about an Italian-Australian girl who discovers her father is an admirer of Mussolini and believes Italian fascism was a great thing and should be implemented over here and the story is how she deals with the fact that her father is a fascist and the judgements she faces when this news gets out.

Maybe my friends are a different group than most young adults, but I think most people I know would be more familiar with Fidel and Che (if vaguely) than with Mussolini beyond knowing that he was a fascist and the leader of Italy from the Great Depression to WWII and that his regime were allies of the Nazis. He also had a number of sympathisers outside of Italy, as did Franco and Hitler.

I probably know a bit more than the average person my age about Mussolini, although it's not that much: for example, one of the things he did while in power was to go to Southern Italy and help out in the fields for a day (make it look like he was sympathising with the rural workers) then return to his Ducal Palace.

Anyhow, the point of this example is to ask this: If a book focusing on teenage issues told from the perspective of Che Guevara's clone is called adult fiction because it has

>a plot involving historical events

then a book about a girl whose father is literally a fascist and follower of Mussolini would also count as adult fiction for the same reason. Because anything serious involving a historical figure has to involve the events they were involved in in some way as well. It's pretty much unavoidable, even in books like [this one which has twin brothers who are Hitler clones as protagonists] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Goodness-Gene-Sonia-Levitin/dp/0525473971)

As long as you put your desire and hope in the act of writing itself, as opposed to the desire of wanting to have written something, you will do well.

I would suggest a few pieces of light reading, a few pieces of heavy reading, and some listening for you too.

Light reading:

Stephen King's "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" This book is not meant as a book of lessons so much as the formula that assembled one writer. It's short, it's heartfelt, and it has some wisdom in it.

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. - This is a short book, it gives a good starter set of rules that we accept for communicating with one another in the English language.

Heavy Reading:

Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. - This is a short book but it is very thick with information and esoteric names from all cultures. Why is that? Because it deals with, very succinctly, the fundamental core of nearly all human storytelling, Campbell's "Monomyth" premise can inform you all the way from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Star Wars a New Hope

Writing Excuses This is a Podcast about writing by Brandon Sanderson, of "Mistborn," "Way of Kings," and "Wheel of Time" fame, Howard Taylor, the writer and artist of Schlock Mercenary, a webcomic that hasn't missed a day for a long while, Mary Robinette Kowol, a Puppeteer and Author of "Shades of Milk and Honey" and Dan Wells, from the "I am not a Serial Killer" series It has been going on for more than a decade, and nearly every episode is a wonderful bit of knowledge.

I kind of find myself wondering what makes you want to write if you don't actually read to begin with. I mean... what's the point?

Anyway.

First off, read Foundation by Isaac Asimov. It's not on Kindle, because someone apparently hates money. Either way, buy the physical book and fucking read it. In fact, read the whole trilogy. All the books are brilliant, and are a really easy read. Written in the 1950s, it's set about 20,000 years in the future, charting key moments in the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the "Foundation", a nation set up to shorten the chaotic interregnum and bring about a Second Empire.

In terms of that kind of price range... there's a metric shit-tonne of absolute wank on the Kindle Store, and all for free. Like, more than you could ever read in a human lifetime. It's incredibly over-saturated. The challenge, then, is cutting through that and finding good stuff. Here's some stuff I found:

The Time Machine. A classic, and a must-read as part of your cultural education, never mind a desire to write. Free.

The War of the Worlds. A classic, and a must-read as part of your cultural education, never mind a desire to write. £0.80

This is a selection of Philip K. Dick's short stories. Free.

Consider Phlebas. The first book of the fantastic Culture series. £1.59 (don't know what that is in US dollars)
Don't start there unless money is a really big issue. It might be the first one in the series, but it's also the worst by a significant margin. Fork out a bit more money and read The Player of Games or Use of Weapons. All the books in the series are standalone stories with no major connection other than the universe. So you're not missing out by starting on one of those. It's set in a civilisation at the absolute peak of technological advancement, where most things are run by machines.

*

Now, here are a few other books outside your stated price range, but which are worth reading:

Dune. A classic and a must-read. £7.59

The Martian. A very modern book and different from the others I've posted. Fun and engaging, even when its roots as a web serial stand out jarringly in places. £4.99

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Do you hate laughter? Then you'd better not read this. Seriously though, it's the funniest set of books I've ever read, and that's not hyperbole or exaggeration. £4.99**

I doubt you want to read a 700-page book in search of insights, but Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 is the best take on local colonization that I have ever read. One idea that I hadn't seen elsewhere is hollowing out asteroids and spinning them. Then you can put tens of thousands of colonies in any orbit you want.

He also puts a lot of people out on all the gas giants' moons, for what that's worth. But you've probably thought of that.

Plus one, it's really the best source.

Also, you can't go wrong with the book, Putting the Science in Fiction by Dan Koboldt. It's a far wider range of science topics than space, but very useful.

>neural prosthetic, as it’s called in-universe

We're all "in-universe" here, dog.

If you have an opportunity, check your library or used book store for Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind. His premise is that intelligence, sapience, is the a product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts. According to Minsky's theory, the human mind is made up of parts which are not themselves sapient. But when you throw them together with the right sets of connections, you end up with a sapient mind.

William Shunn's format is pretty much the standard, so much so that some magazines/publishers refer to it in their submission guidelines.

And, as others have commented, English prose is written in paragraphs. Some style guides to English writing:

Short handbook: Strunk & White, Elements of Style. 4th Edition

Exhaustive reference: Chicago Manual of Style. 16th Edition which is kind of expensive. Or get the 15th Edition for the price of a latte.

and
https://www.amazon.com/Helix-Sword-John-C-McLoughlin/dp/0385173121

Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I just read a book called Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness. It's written by physics professors, so it's not very metaphysical / philosophical, but it does discuss the reality of the counterintuitive weirdness of quantum mechanics.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Light-Alex-Scarrow/dp/0752893270

Definitely dystopian / apocalyptic, not very sci-fi though. Follows a family over a week as England and the world fall into chaos during a catastrophic oil crisis

If your terrorist group is pro-slavery, would it really elevate a member of the enslaved class to its leadership? I mean, wouldn’t that call into question the whole ideology that undergirds the system?

To my knowledge, even though antebellum white Southerners claimed that their slaves were happy with their lot, no African-American slaves actually volunteered to fight against abolition. However, you can find many historical examples of colonized/oppressed groups siding with “the other side” in a civil war: first-century Jews siding with the Romans (the most famous being Flavius Josephus), Tories during the American Revolution, Irish Catholics aiding the British, Palestinians who collaborated with the Israeli government, and so on.

Why would someone choose that side? (a) They believe (possibly because they have absorbed the prejudice of their oppressors) that if their ethnic group wins the war, the resulting government would be even worse; (b) They believe that their ethnic group is doomed to lose so they might as well side with the eventual victors; (c) They have been promised special favors or rewards in return for collaboration.

ETA: Something to keep in mind — nationalist revolutionary groups are often more brutal to suspected collaborators than they are toward the government they’re rebelling against, because the first step of a successful revolt is to deny the occupying power the ability to keep order within occupied territory. See the book Violent Politics.