Stories of the future - science fiction, foresight and the future

Busy day today. We finished the crit sessions at 12:30pm. A quick lunch with the gang, then to the library.

Somewhere between then and now I’ve read 20,000 words of stories (4 short stories) and written for about six hours. I was working on my story, ‘The Man Who Laughs’, hoping to hand it in this week. But I decided I didn’t like the voice, wanted to let it sit a bit and then revisit it. I reached the decision over an hour and some ups and downs (should I keep going, should I not).

I’ve decided to go with ‘The Workers’. Hence, lots of writing today. I banged it into shape. It has a plot - beginning, middle and end. The characters are a little fluid, but that’s ok. I think part of Clarion is learning to let go of something as a first draft, realise it’s not going to be perfection and being prepared to take some on the chin. Not that you don’t aim for something good. Something great, even. The tutors, after all, are editors. You want to impress. But your limits are quickly tested.

3:35am now and I’m heading off to sleep. A tough day. Rewarding. Inspiring. People are working hard. We’ve four weeks to go and anything possible from here. I guess we’re starting to find our groove. At least, that’s how it feels.

Well, what a day. I woke itching to get out of uni campus. Weekends stuck in a room to work, the same place you sleep, are usually not ideal for me. I’m pleased to say today was a total turn around. We spend so long here each week it can be nice to get away. Today though I wrote for most of the day and spoke with my fellow students in the living room of our apartment. We talked of stories, the challenges we’re facing in plot, our pressures of writing for this week, our excitement about the weeks ahead. What a great working environment!

I spent most of the day developing my story ‘Forget’. It’s about 4000 words now and quite complex. It’s about a man who has a computer brain. Since he was six he’s held every memory he’s observed. Can you imagine what life would be like if you could never forget? Sounds like a dream, maybe, but think of how good it is to discover things again and again that you once knew. It would take the fun out of it, don’t you think, if you learnt everything only once.

I’m not sure whether the story works, exactly, but it’s different and ambitious and I’m pleased about that.

We played ‘Mafia’ tonight. About 13 of us, with this week’s tutor. This is a seriously fun game. If you haven’t played it and have a group large enough, it’s definitely worth checking out. Click here to take a look at the rules.

I think I’ve overloaded on coffee and coke and, with all the excitement of mafia, there’s just no way I was getting to sleep. So I decided to start writing at 1am (it’s 1:40am now). I’ve started a new story. I wanted to do something really short and contained, something a little bit cute. So I’m writing ‘The Man Who Laughed Out Loud’. It’s in the classic traditions and I wanted a change of style (something a bit more focused) than ‘Forget’.

The same applies as I wrote in the Clarion South: Week 1 Learnings:

Ok, so these are some of the general learnings I took away from all of our sessions with this week. Though this doesn’t include the handouts, these are the observations I made during the crit sessions which resulted from some of the general discussions. I wrote these in my notebook as things I would try to reference in my own writing:

• Trust: the greatest trust you can have as a writer is to trust that your reader will keep up with you. In other words, leave gaps in the story for the reader to fill in, make the plot move at a pace that assumes everyone will keep up.
• Authoritative Mouthpiece: be weary of using the ‘authoritative mouthpiece’ in stories (eg. the old man in the park that suddenly appears to give your main character the information they need to solve the puzzle). Such things can be way too convenient. Unless other characters have a logical reason to be in the story, don’t use them.
• The ‘Rule of Threes’: say you’re writing a story where a storm has a role to play. See if you can work it in three times. First at the start of the story, in a small way. Second, near the middle of the story, in a larger way. And finally, where it has most dramatic impact at the end, in the most significant way. For some reason, ‘three’ is the magic number. For a better explanation, take a look at the WikiPedia Reference
• Similes: similes are always weaker than direct statements. For example, instead of saying “if a Ferrari was built in a Volkswagen body, it would act like me” (passive), try “I am a Ferrari in a Volkswagen body” (active).
• Keeping the reader: if the reader is pulled out of the story, then you lose. They’ve flicked to another story or are making a coffee. If there’s something in your story that will pull them out, get rid of it.
• Turkey City Lexicon: this reference on the SFWA website will give you some great new language to help critique SF stories. Visit Turkey City Lexicon page.
• Info Dumps: where you have ‘info dumps’ in your story (ie. where a character suddenly thinks about all the history relating to that piece of action…which can seem flat and lifeless), consider writing it into a separate and active scene.
• Senses: in every scene aim to use at least three senses (eg. sight, sound, smell, taste, touch)

It’s been an interesting week. Hectic. Lots of ups and downs. There are moments when writing when I breakthrough, glimpse something that excites me. The moment hangs, I enjoy it while it lasts, and inevitably it wanes. Then you go back to the keyboard and the answers aren’t forthcoming…you struggle, find it tough, look for something that will push you through, and it’s not there. The only way to find it is to keep pushing.

A few personal revelations for me this week. There’s a pressure to write here, to get something in for the next week’s tutorial. It’s easy to be dissuaded. You find yourself in panic - what the heck am I going to write?! You scour some books, read lots of stories, try to let an idea percolate. It’s such a pressure cooker and you’re learning so many things it’s easy to be overloaded by information. Suddenly you’re doubting your ability. You forget how to structure a sentence. Is this too much info-dumping? Am I using dialogue for backstory? Have I given my character enough agency? You find yourself paralysed so you look at how other authors have done it, trying to remember, get some guidance. That’s where it happens. You’re seeking confidence in someone else’s style, but not your own. Bang! You’re out.

I’ve tried a few things this week. Had a few false starts with stories. And I realised, about two days ago, that I was trying to write like how someone else might do it. Not me. I was trying to live in the traditions of the greats, forgetting to bring that uniqueness of my voice to it. It didn’t work. I wrote, sure, I wrote lots in fact. But when I look at the words after a few days grace they don’t ring true to me.

I’ve started two new stories this week. One, called ‘Forget’ and the other, unnamed. Both are science fiction. There’s about 3000 words to ‘Forget’ and it has a plot thicker than strong black coffee. I’ve written it thinking about each paragraph, without trying to pull together sentences that I think follow the conventions. It’s a subtle difference, but a big one.

In some ways I came to Clarion to write so much in a short timeframe that I’d refine my voice (cliché, sure, but true). And it’s easy to lose. Stop writing for a few months and you’ll get rusty by the time you sit back down to the page (not you, I mean ‘me’, I just like writing ‘you’…it’s easier to write to yourself when you say ‘you’). It’s taken me a week to get going.

The other thing I’ve noticed is I love writing in the first person. Gives me a real sense of setting, of the character, of where things are headed. I don’t think I’ll write another third person perspective story while I’m here. First person is underrated.

So, as Frasier Crane say - ‘thanks for listening’.

Today I was working on ‘The Workers’. About mid-afternoon I hit a huge impasse. I just couldn’t get passed a plot point. I was trying to type and the words just weren’t coming. I doubted the conflict in the story, the tension, I couldn’t find something that was really appealing for the reader. So I stopped, a little disillusioned.

Then I swapped to something else. To another story, ‘Network’, that I’ve been tinkering with this week. It’s dialogue rich and as I started to look at it the keyboard came alive again. I had characters talking, arguing, trying to lead each other one way and the other. I must have written between 500 and 1000 words within two hours. My fingers were running hot. Tonight I cracked on and wrote another two scenes. Out of nowhere this story’s now almost finished!

Wow, I thought! That felt great.

That’s the fun of short stories. If you get stuck, you can just shift to another, and find yourself totally energised again. All the while in the back of your mind ideas are fermenting. So when you go back to the one that blocked you, you may have found that thing that got you stuck the last time. The mind’s funny like that, it just keeps on clicking away even when you think your attention is on something completely different. So, I’m finishing the day feeling good, inspired, a contender.

Ok, so these are some of the general learnings I took away from all of our sessions with this week. Though this doesn’t include the handouts, these are the observations I made during the crit sessions which resulted from some of the general discussions. I wrote these in my notebook as things I would try to reference in my own writing:

• Rhythm in Sentences: if the rhythms of all the sentences are all the same, the reader will start to feel flat, even when they don’t realise it. Read your sentences out loud and see if they sound too much like a ’shopping list’.
• Titles: Titles that directly refer to the story in an obvious way are always suspect. Try to build titles for your story that relate to the theme which it explores, but that work when connected with the content. Don’t make them too obvious or too removed from the story. Some authors have had stories that were not published for years and then, when they changed the title, they sold instantly.
• Phrasing: phrasing like “Perilously beautiful” sound awkward. You can hear the writing become suddenly self-conscious. Watch out for these things and axe them on sight.
• Commas: if they help the meaning of the sentence and/or there is supposed to be a pause where the comma exists, use them. Otherwise, in most cases you can take them out.
• Dialogue: The basic rule of dialogue is that it must never do one thing. If it does, chances are it will be lifeless.
• Public Lending Rights (PLR): to make up from the loss of income from libraries lending books, the Labour Government introduced a PLR scheme. Each year a random count of books is conducted in libraries. Authors are then paid from a pool of funds according to the number of their books that are held in Australian libraries. This also includes ‘Educational Libraries’ (I gather this is schools, unis, etc). The amount for well-known authors can often be larger than the royalties received from book sales and it is paid every single year. Now there’s something I had no idea about!
• Story Resolutions: resolutions at the end of novice short stories often come from a conversation. They need to come from both action and conversation and the resolution must be well connected to all of the preceding action that has taken place between the characters. (This is really a note to guard against those neat endings where Character 1 chats with Character 2 and they walk away happily….it’s way too convenient)
• Virtual Reality as a Device: if you’re going to use Virtual Reality (VR), make sure you explain to the reader what the characters outside the game have at stake. Otherwise, your reader will disbelieve or pay no heed to the action of the VR. It’s like having three pages and then having the character wake up and say ‘Oh, well, that was just a dream’ (in other words the reader thinks - ‘well, if that was a dream, why are you making me read it!)
• Internal Dialogue: internal dialogue can be useful to giving us a sense of character. In those instances where it is connected with the action, and has a logical link with what the character might be thinking about, use it. But where it is used for exposition, to simply tell the reader something important to the plot, that doesn’t relate to the previous action, get rid of it. For example, if you have two characters talking about going to the shops, don’t have one character suddenly start thinking about how they embarrassed themselves on a date ten years ago. You could though, have them think about a shopping list. Simple example, I know, but hey, it works.
• Metaphor: If you know the metaphor of the story (the most powerful stories deal with myth and metaphor), don’t bring it to the explicit attention of the reader. Have it work subtly, if you can, through abstract images. For example, in Thelma & Louise they apparently have water in some shape in the background during every scene where Thelma & Louise are facing adversity. But at the end of the film, they’re driving on a hot day in the desert, with the words blaring ‘I can see clearly now the rain is gone’. What they don’t have is them say ‘oh no, we’re facing adversity again, what shall we do’. I know, I know, I’m still figuring this one out, but there’s some sense in it. Metaphor/myth is also something a lot of writers never think about consciously, they just let it come, because if you think about it too hard, it will show too prominently in the story and its effect is lost.
  Detail: Originality often lies in the detail of the story. Especially with Science Fiction, as so many ideas have been done before. But if you can tell a story that’s similar to something else, but make it unique and alive through its detail, you’ll have a good shot at a good story. For example, ‘The Unforgiven’ with Clint Eastwood used things common to other Westerns, but the way that film dealt with unique detail (ie. the character coming back from years of a ’straight life’) were unique. Actually, I might be wrong, I’m no huge western fan, but you get my drift.

Well, it’s Saturday. Perhaps I should have spent today in the city of Brisbane, relaxing. That’s tomorrow. I went for a cycle this morning at about 7:30am. I lasted thirty minutes, it’s so humid up here. Pleased though I did something physical.

I’ve been writing most of the day. Thankfully, given I need to get through a story. I’ve hit a couple of plot point issues with the one I’m working on, ‘The Workers’. I know where to start at point ‘A’, I know where I want to end up at point ‘C’ - just that I’ve no idea how to build the connections together. So, I punched on through today and feel that I’ve made some headway with it.

For sheer number of words, I’ve been going strong. I’ve written at least 1500 hundred today. The trick is that after the learnings of this week the critic in me has gained confidence. I know what I should be doing in the writing. So, more than ever, I’m finding myself writing a few paragraphs, then picking them to pieces when I finish. It’s ironic that part of skill development is discovering your limitations and knowing where the gaps lie. So, what I would’ve been pleased with before, just doesn’t cut it. Great to get better, but doesn’t do wonders for your confidence. At any rate, I feel like I had a good crack today and have made some progress and now I need to take a break from it and let it settle over night.

It’s always dangerous terrain to look at the different forms of story. Someone said (I’ve no idea who) that there are six basic story ideas. I put them in the same basket as those that think computers can test songs for the likelihood whether they’ll be hits (and there are machines that claim to do this now!).

I don’t think there’s any basic story idea, no universal premise that can’t be twisted into something else. There are themes though which permeate some science fiction stories, which might be generalised to help us understand possible directions for science fiction writers.

I’ve been thinking about such themes for some time. And, have even seen some writings on the subject. Most of what follows is a synthesis of some of the things I’ve read and personal observations. I hope they’re helpful for writers looking for creative outlooks that will help them approach their work:

Distant Future
A story of a distant future (eg. a man caught inside a ship on the edge of the galaxy that has to cope with a rogue robot).

Extrapolation
Where a current trend is extrapolated to such an extreme that it gives a dramatic base for a story (eg. Philip K Dick’s short story ‘Sales Pitch’, about a robot that is it’s own salesman).

World Ending
A story about the end of the world, usually through some scientific or unexplained means. Usually such a story involves the presentation of something previously perceived as valuable (eg. money, cash) to have no more value to the character who knows the world is coming to and end.

The Dimensional Portal
Where a portal has been opened to another dimension and the characters have to contend with cross-dimensional circumstances (Greg Egan’s story in Axiomatic about an S-junkie).

The Time Portal
Through some narrative device the characters can travel through time (eg. Orson Scott Card’s ‘Time Lid’ or Margo Lanagan’s ‘White Time’).

Glimpse of The Future
Where a character glimpses the future through some means which causes them to react differently to present circumstances (like the ‘Time Portal’ method above, but the means of finding out about the future might not be a device, but a dream or something else).

The New Invention / Special Power
Where a character has unique capabilities that cause a struggle for power / source of conflict for the story, which have been introduced by: i) a novel invention, ii) a new character (eg. a group of aliens arrive that are psychic and are exploited for this purpose), or iii) an event (a character falls and hits his head and suddenly can solve any problem ever created).

Extremes
Where a theme of the story is taken to such an extreme that it becomes different than what has been done before. Often, these become humorous. For example, a woman who has the power to turn everything to gold by touch (even a pizza).

Two Themes Clashing
When two themes common to a genre are clashed together to produce something new. (eg. Zombies and Aliens = Zombie Alien Story)

Of course, any of the above can be used together as the ingredients to make a ripping story.

Two interesting stories presented at the critique today and some very interesting discussion. One of the stories explored ‘future-tech’ in a war situation. Really, the possibilities it presented are quite plausible (can’t mention details as it’s not my story) and it made me think about Science Fiction writing in general.

There are lots of types of science fiction stories. I could clump them though into the distant-future stories, some of which a fantastical. Then, there are near-future stories, which explore possibilities that aren’t that far removed from what we know, and present questions that prompt contemplation. I like the latter. I think there’s certainly a role in some types of science fiction stories to help us all think about what the future may hold, what type of dilemmas we could all be forced into (as characters of our own stories) and how we may be able to solve them.

I hit a road block with the middle section of my new story, ‘Workers’. I needed the villain to create a device with destructive potential. So, this afternoon I’ve been researching anti-matter weapons. The best source was WikiPedia and CERN. Hard to believe there’s so much info at your finger tips. I wonder how Philip K Dick would have found ‘idea generation’ in this day and age. So what was that about not exploring fantastical plots?

We’re all out tonight to Robert Hood’s reading. Should be fun. Hopefully we’ll fit in a curry afterwards, before I come back and finish my last crit.

I seemed to have a headache most of the day. Not sure whether it’s the intensity of the critique sessions and writing, the heat or maybe I’ve just had a good run and it was due. At any rate, I found myself a bit paralysed to do much. Struggled through ok, but whoa, tough going.

By now we’ve settled into a rhythm. We’re open with our crits (not as open as we will be by week five - previous Clarion South groups call that ‘ferrel week’, as the story goes) and have got to know each other. There are three apartments of us on consecutive floors and we’re all at home enough to stop by and say ‘hi’, ask people if they want to go for a walk or generally see how they’re doing. This is the fun of it, having that network of people around to help you out. And, in my apartment, I’ve already found it comforting to be able to get up from the keyboard, wander down to the kitchen and, chances are, there’ll be someone there to ask ‘how’s your story going?’ or ‘have you finished your crits?’.

We’re hosting Robert Hood for dinner tonight. All floors that is. He has drinks at one, dinner at another and desert at the third. A great idea to have everyone get to know the authors.

A harmonica’s humming down the corridor. I think it’s the downstairs floor. Laughter’s filtering in all the way here. Good to see people are having fun.

So, what did I learn today? Off the top of my head: the value of naming your stories something that’s related, but doesn’t tell the reader, the subject matter of the content; how to shorten paragraphs by getting rid of unnecessary exposition (especially with dialogue); why it’s important to have every line work for the story (to move it forward); how some people work in humour (I’m no good at this, but I’ll work on it); that the ‘basic rule of dialogue is that it must never do only one thing’ (Robert Hood). The idea of the latter, I guess, is that if it’s doing one thing, there’s no conflict, no spontaneity…it’s just flat, dead.

I’ve started working on another story with the working title ‘The Workers’ (no idea why! I’ll change it). It’s about man that can project peoples’ consciousness even when they’re dead. I’ve had the idea a while, but have returned to it. Which means I’m working on about four stories at the moment. I don’t mention it to say that’s good. I mention it because I find it slightly confusing. There are problems I’m facing with each of them, parts where I’m trying to move the plot forward but am getting stuck. All the while I’m thinking I need to hand one of them in next week. The fun of it is I’m thinking about lots of ideas and I have these four separate worlds in cloud-bubbles whizzing round my head when I’m walking round campus. What better place to be then to have several stories on the go and all of them shouting at you - “hey, work me out!”.