Long Ridge Writers Group

Writing Craft - Genres

Mary Rosenblum, your web editor, has published three SF novels, four mysteries as Mary Freeman, and more than 50 short stories in multiple genres, as well as nonfiction! She also teaches writing, and over the years, has created many, many new universes!

Creating the Universe on the Run
Building the World Without Slowing Down the Story

by Mary Rosenblum

Those of us who write in the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres are doubly tasked when we begin a new story. Not only do we need to hook the reader with a strong opening and embed that backstory, http://www.longridgewritersgroup.com/rx/wc05/embedding_the_backstory.shtml , but we also need to build enough of our world in those few opening sentences that our reader knows whether we’re on Mars, or in the Demon Wood! But of course, we can’t stop the story and go on at length about the ecology, culture, history, and politics of our world. Not if we want to keep our readers reading!

Start With a Strong Hint

Our readers don’t need to know everything about this new world we’ve just dropped them into. But they need a few clues right away. They’ll happily fill in the picture as the story unfolds. This is where strong visuals and a good action scene will really help you. If our character is doing something – especially if you add an element of urgency -- his or her actions will tend to carry a fairly rich load of visuals without feeling slow. Consider this opening for a story I recently sold to Asimov’s Magazine: Abrim looked down, watching the pitted surface of the C-type asteroid rise up to meet their silver ship-feet. Setting down, Miriam murmured in his ear, twin-mind to those feet. Light as a feather, brother! Abrim tensed. Every landing was stressful, no matter how many times they’d done it together. You only got one mistake out here in the Belt. "Smell any water, Miriam?"

This opening gives the reader several clues about what is going on. We are in the asteroid belt, and water is the issue, we have Miriam, who might be a person or might not, and our POV, Abrim. That’s enough to start with, and as Abrim mines water from the asteroid and has a tense run in with his brother, we’ll find out more about the orbital platforms that ring the Earth, the level of technology, and the nature of the Artificial Intelligence that operates the ship: Miriam. If I tried to squeeze all that into the first paragraph, the action would vanish in a sea of information! Decide what your reader must know, and that’s all you need to include in the opening paragraphs. Here, we need to know that we’re far enough in the future to be skipping around in the asteroid belt, that Abrim is our main character, and he mines asteroids for water. That’s enough to start with. The thousand other details can slip in as the story unfolds.

This type of ‘creating the world’ applies to ‘realistic’ fiction as well. If you open your story in San Francisco, or Vienna, or Drain, Oregon, you want to drop your reader into a realistic world. And while things like cars and buildings are familiar concepts, by creating unique and individual cars and buildings, you’ll give your street a feel of reality. [Take a look at: Getting it Real: http://www.longridgewritersgroup.com/rx/wc05/getting_it_real.shtml ]

Learn by Doing

But how do we explain the magic or the tech gizmo so that the reader understands what it is? This is a place to use your imagination. How can you show the function to the reader so that he or she ‘gets it’. That’s so much effective than telling us! We get to figure it out for ourselves, just like in real life! For example, our POV might own a magic ring that allows him to change his shape, but every time he uses it, a bit more of his life energy drains away. Can we show this to the reader? Gerwyn gasped and clutched the ring, twisting it frantically. The familiar nausea seized him and he doubled over, writhing as the spasm of change gripped him, feeling life energy trickling from him like blood as his bones warped and shrank. With a wild shriek, he leapt skyward, his hawk-wings pounding the cool dusk, thrusting him upward, out of reach of Sharid’s blade. Well, we now know what the ring does, and the fact that he bleeds life energy as he transforms. We don’t know what that means to him right now, but later we can find out that he shortens his life every time he uses that ring. He hadn’t meant to use the ring. Not ever again. He buried his head in his arms, remembering Serith’s warning…For every use a year. The way things were going, he’d die before he was thirty, he thought bitterly. But he won’t be thinking about it while he’s escaping that blade. Remorse comes later, after you’ve survived and caught your breath!

You do the same thing with cool new science gadgets, be they thinking space ships or a new way to use computers. Your character puts on that VR mask and the meadow comes to life around him. He could hear bees buzzing and imagined that he could smell the flowers, even though he was standing in the middle of the Taipei Grand Mall. We are introduced to a virtual reality system that makes it seem as if you’re standing in a new location, including sound, but not smell. Or course this means you have to plan ahead, to give a character reason to use your technology or your magic. But that’s were creativity comes to our aid. It’s a challenge. How can I show the reader how my widget works? There are always ways and sometimes you discover a cool new plot twist as you figure out how to demonstrate your magic for the reader!

We Don’t Need to Know It All!

Remember that our readers don’t need to know everything. Fiction is an interactive art form. We invite our readers to play, too, and as they participate, our world becomes their world, too. Which means that they carry it with them when they close the cover of that book or magazine, they remember it, they tell their friends about it. Remember that what we, the authors, know about a story is like an iceberg. But only the tip of that iceberg of knowledge should show up in your story. Yes, all those details about who rules the kingdom and who is the real power behind that throne, how long the Hill People have harassed the village, how many wives the Merchants can have…they’re all interesting. And yes, our readers might enjoy knowing them, too. But if they lose track of your story while gorging on interesting details…the story derails. And your readers wander off to read something with fewer details and more story!

Show Don’t Tell…Again!

So the bottom line is…once again…show your readers the world, don’t tell them about it! Give us strong visual hints about your world in your action-packed opening, then let us gather more hints as we overhear characters talking, are privy to our POV’s thoughts, or see them in action. We’ll put your world together like a jigsaw puzzle and by the time we reach that compelling climax, we’ll know just where we are and what is going on! And your story will have carried us the whole way , our very own magic carpet!

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LongRidge Writers Group
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