I am somewhat interested in pursuing a career of a science fiction writer. Suppose I have the talent and the skills (not that I do, but it's an assumption we have to make ), how would I go about entering the scene? Perhaps writing short stories for magazines? If so, which ones? Or writing a large novel and trying to publish it? If so what publisher would be interested in reading a few hundreds of pages by an author noone ever heard of? Who takes care of the marketing? Another words, I am interested in learning more about the practical side. If someone can provide some insight or resources, it'd be great. [edited by - CoffeeMug on August 27, 2003 2:45:00 AM]

First of all, write several books, copywrite them, then get an agent (preferably Agent Smith) to get you a publisher. Then you''ll be in business.

quote: Original post by Kuladus
Btw what authors are you influenced by?

From something I recently read I very much enjoyed The Demon Princes by Jack Vance and Hyperion by Dan Simmons (advocated here by bishop_pass). I absolutely love Frank Herbert''s Dune . I''m also a huge fan of Alexander Dumas and Mikhail Bulgakov''s Master and Margarita (although these aren''t science fiction). I very much like Strugatsky Brothers, they wrote a lot of good science fiction back in the 60s and 70s. Their books are classics of russian science fiction. I''m a big fan of King Arthur''s stories and other old epics. One of my favorites is The Nibelunglied and The Song of Roland . I''m also a big fan of philosophy books, mainly McTaggart, Plato and Nietzsche. What about you?

P.S. I absolutely hated Asimov''s Foundation due to complete lack of character development.

quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
I am somewhat interested in pursuing a career of a science fiction writer. Suppose I have the talent and the skills (not that I do, but it''s an assumption we have to make ), how would I go about entering the scene?

Well, I look at a career in a long term view. Most people don''t know this about creativity, but you success in your science fiction career (speaking as somebody who''s been doing this since 1983) depends on your success as a creative person.

Developing creative skills that are uniquely yours follows some general guidelines known about creativity itself. The first one everybody knows, is to practice, practice, practice. It''s the way to Carnegie Hall, the old saying goes. Even after writing for almost four decades, I practice a lot. Almost to the point where in interferes with my professional production schedule.

Now, I''m only going to speak from my experience advising you. I started out with one idea. I wrote a short science fiction story, entered it into the Science Fiction Writer''s of America short story contest, and some weeks later recieved an announcement in the mail that I had won a prize in the contest and could I come to the convention to accept the award. I got a nice bronzed Oscar Wilde novel with a quill pen sticking out of it, and placed it on my mantle and beamed over myself for a few weeks. I was really lucky actually, because the story was more the product of a good imagination than any massive writing skill, but I had tried to rewrite the story as best as I could with the noob writer skillsets I had at the time.

Emboldened, I decided I was going to write a massive epic science fiction novel and hit it big, because frankly, I was a young, inspired writer, and I had been influenced by Star Wars more than I''d thought, but that''s how subconscious influences work, and of course, when you are young you feel you can conquer the world.

So I wrote my first novel outline and three chapters, and took it to my creative writing teacher at a small community college in Florida where I was matriculating with the hopes of getting into NASA''s university, FIT, because I''d always wanted to be a part of the space program.

My teacher read them, pointed to the bottom of a bookshelf across his office, and said, "You see all those books on the right? I wrote them all. I am the second most published black author next to Alex Haley. But because I didn''t write ''Roots'', nobody knows who I am and I still have to teach college after being published over a dozen times to make a living."

Then he looked at me and said, "That''s part of the reality you may have to deal with, so not to take the stars out of your eyes or anything, but do this because you love to write, otherwise, you might have to live with a lot of disappointment because you didn''t hit the big time."

Then he handed me back my story, and said, "It''s good. Now finish it."

So the first piece of advice I give you before I get into how you can work as a writer with professional aspiration is:

1. Do it because you love it, because it''s a very challenging art form and artistic discipline and professional career most of the way up the ladder.

So, I thought about it for several days after that meeting, and realized eventually this was what I was meant to be. So, I took a hard turn in my life. I wrote the Writer''s Guild of American, East, and asked them where did writer''s thrive in California?

The Vice President at that time wrote me back and told me there were two places in California where writer''s thrived. Santa Barbara and Mill Valley. I pulled out of school, sold everything I had, and was on my way west less than three weeks later with my poetry collection, my novel and it''s research folder, and a backpack full of clothes and a ten day Greyhound Ameripass.

I got to Santa Barbara and ended up staying there for eleven years. I read every book on writing in the Public Library there, bought every book on writing and screenwriting I could afford in the tons of bookshops that community has, networked with stars and wannabees that litter that town, and eventually and hung out in coffee shops and wrote another longer short story, a near future science ficion piece.

There are two types of sci fi, (ppl will object to even the use of the shortened words ''sci fi'', but you will find that a lot of writers use details as a mask for analism. Don''t become one of those kinds of writers, because those kind are not very good at what they do.) near future would be like Red Planet, and of course, the classic example of far future would be Star Wars.

I''m not going to get into hair splitting as to whether fantasy is a co genre or the real genre of star wars because of the force, let the academics hash that one out. Your job is to be a storyteller in a particular genre or even blends of genre if you want, the point is, create the thing and to hell with the people who bandy about the word genre because it makes them sound like they have an instant PhD in critique, and as long as people enjoy your work and you get paid for it, who really cares?

My mother is a cubist/surrealist in the feminist vein for over 50 years, and she tells me that even though she is a master artist, what she is creating is always told to her by the people who look at the work; not what she thinks she has done. It pays to not judge your work too harshly or too soon, as I will explain.

Now, the second thing career wise I am going to talk about is something that I hear about over and over in the pre and post mortems on game development project on the various industry sites I visit. I''m talking about tools. Building the right tools to do the right job in game development is so critical I will not presume to say how critical it is because I am not a coder, just a designer and writer, but I venture to say the dozens of professional caliber and talented programmers who are all over this community will step forward and attest as to how critical tools can be.

Besides the skillsets you develop as tools, one of the best tools a writer can have is their library. Rather than try to describe the ideal library, I will describe the basic library you ought to consider having, and my library.

The very first book you should have and learn believe it or not is Strunk & White''s elements of style. This is the Jedi Master ally that will for the foundation of your manuscript manufacturing skills. A lot of people give it short shrift, and that is too bad, because it is the quient, patient, reliable ace in the hole of the hand you''ve been dealt in the writing for profit game of poker.

I would say that somewhere in my head, I have the book practially memorized, but it is in easy reach on my desk.

The second book I am going to recommend is called "The Elements of Copyediting." It''s about how to edit copy, not proofread, or editing, or proofer''s marking, though the markup is somewhat similar. I always count it as a litmus test frankly when I am talking to a writer (or somebody who perports themselves to be a writer) who cannot make the distinction (and it is an important one) between copy editing skills and proof reading skills. When I look over someone''s edits, and I see proofreader''s markup and not copyediting markups, I instantly know I am dealing with somebody who really doesn''t know one of the key writing skills, so how good can their work be, and why didn''t this writer take the time to develop a key skill.

I used to see it all the time before I learned that looking at other people''s manuscripts was a waste of time with only a few exceptions, and those exceptions are things like professional favors, assisting somebody who is preparing a manuscript that has already been contracted for publication, and once in awhile, a screenplay from someone who shows merit, or as the old saying goes, rarer than talent is the ability to spot it.

Also, you need a giant dictionary and a giant thesaurus, even if you have Word software. If you use Word, and I do, you can configure it a myriad of ways to fit the style, technique and approaches you artistically and productively develop. Your choice of software is yours, and I am not selling Word, it just works for me, and I can do just about any kind of document I want with it.

Some people will use The Chicago manual of Style, and cite that as the bible in many instances, and others will advocate other sytle guides, but frankly, style is overrated, and I''ll give you my opinion why.

Style, approach and technique are all the things you will develop both professionally as skillsets and as artistic creativity tools. But in the ultimate objective sense, the purpose of communication is to create understanding, no matter what you are trying to convey, so if you create understanding of you message with your skills and approaches and techniques, that is pretty much the ultimate style. That''s jus what works for me. I can tell you also if I read something of yours and I don''t understand it, you have failed in your job of communicating.


Another thing that really pisses people off is that a perfectly constructed communication that clearly and efficiently creates understanding requires no response with perhaps the recognition or acknowledgement that the understanding is created and they go it. In a world where people listen patiently only because their opportunity to speak is coming, and in a culture of argument where arbiting back and forth is the practiced norm of relation, creating understanding thought good communication is often resented, even though that is my opinion of what the objectives of communication are.

Having said that, I will use it as a seguey to the another important skill tool, brevity. The word "that" is almost always removeable from a sentence. Sentence restructuring through copyediting can remove twenty percent of the words in a sentence and not necessarily improve the chances of the type of interpretation of what you''re communicating, but will certainly dramatically lower your chances of being misinterpreted. This is great because you don''t have to repeat yourself all the time to be understood, people won''t have to reread your sentences and paragraphs, and generally both you and the reader or listener will understand faster and more clearly.

This is a hard thing to do in a world where people love to hear themselves talk, and will nod their head and go ''uhuhm'' repeatedly to ensure you realize they get what you are saying just to shorten the time to the point in the conversation where they get to speak (or pontificate moreover) again. Vain culture, Baaaad culture.

So, tools, brevity and now to the actual fun stuff, the development process of writing science fiction, or anything else for my money.

I have hard and fast rules, some of them I''ve inherited from the great line of writers who have advised me through books and in person, to ones that I have learned processively personally.

1. Write every day. This is too demanding a career not to be constantly honing your skills, and to also develop the articulation mechanisms that will be needed to capture that brilliant idea that wakes you up in the middle of the night, and it will. Read: your mind works faster and more conceptually than your ability to construct in progressive linear processive means through typing unless you are very, very competent and composition skills that permit you to type up two pages accurately and in important detail a concept your incredible machine called ''the mind'' just dumped whole into your visual and conceptual cortex, ready to be born.

If you think this is not how it sould be, I will tell you from experience my third short film was produced from an idea that woke me up at 2 a.m, I wrote outright for two hours by hand to twenty pages, collapsed back thinking I was a great artist who had honored my creative self through discipline and consistency, only to wake up five minutes later with the entire second draft popping into my head.

I dragged myself out of slumber again, grabbed another legal pad and wrote for almost three hours more and got to 27 pages of the second draft, and dropped back on my pillow even more satisfied that I had been before. I realized immediately that it was sunrise, and that I was too jazzed to go back to sleep. I got up and went to the local coffee hangout. I got my first cup and sat down at my favorite writing table with a view of the ocean and the foothills of Santa Barbara.

I was sitting there amazed at myself at how fantastic the creative process was and worked in my life, and how good the story was I had written practically all night, when all of a sudden, the third draft plopped into my head.

Guess what? I had to honor the process and the profession, and I wrote for three more hours at that table and the third draft manifested itself. Just as I finished it, two friends of mine who had graduated from the Brooks Institute of Photography in the Film cirriculum came for coffee. As graduates, they were looking for short films to make to fill up their reel to show around the entertainment industry to get work.

They walked over and said hi and how was I doing, and I told them the short version of what had just happened that night.
They looked at me and said, "This I gotta hear, but let me go get coffee." They came right back and listened as I told them how amazing the creative process was because of the night I had just experienced, and then they listened quietly and attentively as I read them the script verbatim.

After the reading, they sat there for a few minutes, looked at each other, and the woman said to the man, "If you don''t make this I will." And that is how it got made.

If you don''t think this is how the creative process can work, in spite of those long days when getting just a few paragraphs seems like pushing a boulder up a hill, and if you don''t think this is how fast you can sell a story, you have no clue about creativity or the writing business, and you should.

I never would have been able to produce that story, or be able to sell it on the spot, had I not a, had the discipline to keep my ass awake and focused on the job at hand and not let myself get destracted, as a lateral processing machine like the mind will, and b, had I not be able to clearly and succintly convey the amazing feeling I had writing and the quality of the content of the story I''d rewritten to the people whom were on the other side of the table listening, who concurrently had the ability to take that work and put it into production.

So, the important two lessons in writing life here are, a, have the discipline and the skill to do it now, fast and as good as you can when the light bulb goes on to the exclusion of all else, and that only comes from practice, practice, practice, and b, network into the business you intend to be in via it''s practitioners and professionals, and remember always that in other than in the most general terms nobody but those whom you intend to sell your work to, and those individuals do not constitute a very large number of people, need to know about what you are writing. Not to mention talking about your story deflates your motivation to write it, unless you are troubleshooting something in sectional detail with a peer or editor.

Which brings me to the next logical progression, building a body of work. Building a body of work consists of several types of ideas you explored developed into one of many available types of formats of expression (short story, executive summary, novella, novel, screenplay, teleplay or theatrical play) available to you.

Either by using the writer''s market (published every year) to sell those stories to, or contacting the publication of interest directly because you went to the magazine rack and liked what you saw in that publication and decided your work may fit in there well, or you contacted an agent who was willing to see samples of you work because you wrote a compelling letter that compelled them or intrigued them to read you work to consider you for representation to the various publishing markets, somehow you must find a way to get your work recognized, read, liked or constructively critiqued and eventuall sold or used as a calling card to get an income producing contract to write what somebody else thought up.

It''s a little easier selling somebody on your writing and story development skills on an idea of theirs than it is on something you originated, simply because everyone who has a typewriter and knows the alphabet thinks they can compose well crafted studio or publishing level content. However, if that is something you can do, and like, go for it.

I like developing and selling my own ideas, because developing other people''s ideas involves sometimes evolving and idea that was not sufficiently proofed for logic or rational of fictional adaptation capabilities prior to the owner of the idea declaring it as brilliant. What ends up happening is that you have to work extra hard to develop somebody''s flawed thinking or creativity into something that is without flaw, homogenistic and really, really good, and that is hard to do with a defective premise. Most people really don''t know, in fact, most writers don''t even know, imho, what a good premise is, or what a good premise proofing process is.

It''s the idea that you bang against the wall for flaws so many times you cannot find a hole to deflate it with or that is does not come apart under scrutiny that merits the effort of further development, and even then, you may not have thought about it enough to find out after weeks or months of development there is something flawed deep down you did not discover at first that makes the whole premise faulty should that flaw be exposed, even if the purchaser does not see it, the critics or the editors or the public will eventually, and in the writing business you never get any more reputations than one, so put your best foot forward, and put your best foot down and be honest with the client on whose idea you are working on to tell them the thinking or premise is flawed and why, so even if you do not get paid because they pull the plug on the dev, you still get relationship points because you saved them from industry embarrassment by preventing something from getting published or produced that shouldn''t have. You have to be willing to let a project die even after investing a lot of intellectual capital in it. Usually, some aspects of it are useful later on in another project, which leads me to my next point.

Create a good directory structure, and maintain it.

You will have dozens of ideas over your lifetime. They will be: partial, whole, detailed or general. Create the file system that handle the ideas by type and by level of development. Use the wise principles that programmers taught us and have a good file naming convention and a good current versioning system. (BTW, I understand that CVS is free under GNU license, but I cannot seem to find the download on gnu.org, so could someone help me by splainin'' to me what I am doing wrong or not understanding?)

Once you have got a directory structure designed that will handle your ''array of ideas'' bank and versioning, use it and keep it current. Practice good information handling and back up religiously.

Now, my personal philosophy is to only develop ideas that you are passionate enough about to develop as completely as you can and will finish. This is my personal insurance policy against the biggest cause of failure to writing and the writer: not finishing what you start. The finished first draft is just the beginning, even though you have gotten down the bones, you still have to form the muscle, tendons, surface of skin, heartbeat and neural impulses. Writing is rewriting, and it can be a joy compared to a hassle if your not invested in the project from an excited, engaged and highly curiousity driven levels.

Other people who can write about a subject not of their own devisment merit my admiration; I gave up on that a long time ago, except in the instances where I find someting good (like Fig''s game concept) where I can enjoy making a contribution to the story (provided those contributions are accepted) which I believe has fantastic potential for drama and gameplay aspects. I only hope that Fig understand what I understand about the writing process, it takes a lot of time to fully mature the concept. Intrinsically I know on a personal and artistic level it takes that kind of time for the way I work on a project for the goods I can deliver to be deliverable to my standards. This often takes more time that other people are prepared to wait, wo that may simply mean my way of doing things to my satisfaction and professional/artistic standards takes longer than other people are perpared to wait. But, over the last several months, every once in awhile something clicks, and I add a few more pages to that story.

Which leads me to my next point, which is a mythbuster. There is no such thing as writer''s block. What actually occurs is that a greater amount of time may lapse while our creative faculties work on a particular aspect of a development that is more complex than another, and so a large enough period of time passes that our conscious mind, in it''s convenience enslaved right now results mentality percieves this as, "Nothing''s there. I can''t get anything. I must have writer''s block." Horse hocky. You just haven''t given your creative subconscious faculties, that is still hard at work on delivering your solution, no chance to do the work in it''s own time and manner, which it is goinc to do no matter what sort of rationale you formulate consciously.

This is one of the great errors in perception itself that drastically effects creative output: the subconscious mind, that part of us that is nine or ten times smarter than we could ever hope to be in any waking moment, has it''s own method and time frame for arriving at a solution of various variety or comlexity totally independent of the demands our conscious waking self has, or that society has.

So, learn to work with it and trust your undiscovered subconscious mind that masterfully sits behind practical perceptions of the here and now, and it will be your ally and mentor even if you are tuned in enough. It was good enough for einstein, it''s good enough for you and me.

quote:
Perhaps writing short stories for magazines?

What you have to determine for yourself is that you are striving for a form of expression you can''t specify, format or quantify yet. Just let her rip, and what you do best will probably either come clear as a result of the process, or you will stumble upon it in discovery, and know what format and approach and techniques you like best and do your best work with.


This leads me to my last rule. Never judge the first draft. It''s just a beginning. Don''t hold it up to the criteria of the end. Who needs to erroneously pressure themselves in such a demanding field anyway. The best programmers know they have to debug as part of the iternation process, learn from their wisdom. You''ll know when you can''t make it any better, and when it''s time to dress up that envelope and put it out into the market.

Also, some addenda. Take editor''s advise objectively and soberly and with a grain of salt. The editor for a particular publication may know his audience, but you are thinking of your audience the entire time you write (hopefully), just as a game designer thinks of his player while designing (hopefully).

Also, be prepared to accept the notion your first few stories you may not want to show around, because they can suck. I am experienced enough as a writer to know that nobody can produce hit after hit, and innovation after innovation. But you can maintain a high quality standard with a fresh approach that marvelously looks like one hit after another. It''s a process, not a instant bowl of oatmeal like, "Hey look, I''m a great writer now." I''ve been writing a long, long time, and only once in awhile (like yesterday for the first time in a long time) did I write something that on the first draft I knew was great, and could barely be changed in rewrites, but I''m still going to make sure because I''m a professional.

quote:
If so, which ones? Or writing a large novel and trying to publish it? If so what publisher would be interested in reading a few hundreds of pages by an author noone ever heard of? Who takes care of the marketing?

You can find all this stuff out by googling on writing and agents and authors and literary markets; there are more than enough resources that if you educate yourself, you will not have to ask questions you should be self-learning the answers to before hand. Save the questions for the really important stuff, like ''This character is not behaving believably'' or, ''why isn''t this scene working?'' Those are the times you want to cash in your chips to get the cards you really need to get the job done.

quote:
Another words, I am interested in learning more about the practical side. If someone can provide some insight or resources, it''d be great.

Almost all of those things can be self taught, and you should.

HTH,

Adventuredesign
[edited by - CoffeeMug on August 27, 2003 2:45:00 AM]

quote: Original post by adventuredesign
(BTW, I understand that CVS is free under GNU license, but I cannot seem to find the download on gnu.org, so could someone help me by splainin'' to me what I am doing wrong or not understanding?)

You can download CVS here (a simple google search, btw ). If you have the time, I suggest you to install gentoo. Installing practically any free software package will be as easy as doing "emerge PackageName" or in your case "emerge cvs". I also suggest you to use a more user friendly versioning software. FreeVCS, for instance, is an excellent piece of software.

quote: Original post by adventuredesign
You can find all this stuff out by googling on writing and agents and authors and literary markets; there are more than enough resources that if you educate yourself, you will not have to ask questions you should be self-learning the answers to before hand.

Unfortunately googling for this is very similar to googling for, say, flowers. Instead of information about various sorts of flowers you get hundreds of links to stores that will sell you the best, freshest flowers at the cheapest price. 99% of the information I found on google can''t be trusted as it reduces to wrapped up advertisement. Actually, it''s similar to googling for game publishing. Everything you find is well and good, but not as good as a first hand experience you can get from an actual live person (even if you''re limited to a message board).

Thanks for a lenthy response. I''ll bookmark it and read it over when I''m less sleepy.

BTW, you might want to try Info Select by MicroLogic. It''s not cheap, but IMO well worth the money. Download the demo version, use it for a few weeks and I bet you won''t be able to live without it once the trial is over. Oh, and no, I am not affiliated with the company in any way

Heh, finally got around to reading AdventureDesign''s massive post, so now I can reply myself.

Becoming a science fiction writer - well, that''s essentially what I''m trying to do, although I may end up shifting slightly to writing and drawing sfnal manga. Still the same basic idea though.

What has helped me so far? Taking english courses; reading the rec.arts.sci-fi.written and .composition usenet archives; reading as many literary theory books as I could get my hands on when I lived near a college library; reading and writing fanfic; and deep-editing other people''s fiction.

What writing things have I actually gotten paid for doing? Ghostwriting, editing non-fiction, and creating advertising copy.

Short stories vs. novels - I personally don''t read or want to write short stories, so that pretty much made my decision for me against trying to get an in to being published that way; i also happen to believe that writing a short story and writing a novel are fundamentally different, and writing a short story won''t prepare you well to write a novel. But it might work for some people. I would recommend going to science fiction conventions and making friends with editors. And there''s a science fiction and fantasy sourcebook that can tell you which publishing houses usually publish the type of thing you write, and whether they take unsolicited manuscripts.

Well, writing a manga and a science fiction novel are essentially two very different things. A comic is very different from a novel...

Can someone suggest a board where members help each other critique and edit short stories? Sending it to friends is very different because IMO you'll never get an honest answer and developing a professional relationship with an editor takes a while. Perhaps posting it here?

[edited by - CoffeeMug on August 31, 2003 2:19:51 PM]