“The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.” - Claude Levi-Strauss

Questions Questions, Questions

So, you have your idea squatting on the page, its own little literary tribble supernova ready to explode in a fury (or furry if it’s a tribble) of written wonderment.

But not all ideas make good stories straight away. Some need a little tailoring; a nip here and a tuck there, and this is where the questions start and the creation of your world (or universe) begins.

So, for the sake of example, say you’ve chosen to write a Military SciFi story. Let’s do it from the point of a new recruit who’s run away from a place where he was kept as a slave.

- How did he get away?

- Where is he now?

- If he’s going to be a soldier will he be fighting planetside only?

- What / who will he be fighting?

- Will he be fighting in space and on various planets?

- How will they (who are they?) be training him for his role?

- Why has he joined up and who with? Rebels, the main military force?

All of these will help shape your universe, which you will come to know like the back of your hand. Write it all down if you like: it helps. Create profiles of your characters and their backgrounds. Think about the worlds / asteroids / spaceships they grew up on. Draw maps, sketch planetary systems, make an orrery, pile up a great mound of mashed potato and fashion it into the shape of an alien life-form, whatever helps you as a writer. Think about the history, the evolution, the scenery. Write all that down too. Pin it to your bedroom wall, arrange it around your bed, make it your wallpaper on your computer, write it in the condensation of the window on the bus to school or work. Do whatever works for you but play with things and ideas, regardless of whether or not the people on the bus think you’re a nutjob (if nothing else it might mean you get the seat to yourself; there’s always a silver lining).

What you have to be careful not to do, though, is dump all that information on your reader. While it’s tempting to try and put across the “my universe is amazing and contains so much you need to know”, they simply don’t need to know everything you do. Your delicate task is to feed in little tidbits here and there as you go, but not all at once.

But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here a little. Again.

At the moment, we’re still in creation mode, and that brings us onto the next bit…

What’s the Blooming Idea?

“Limited points of view let the writer dispense - and the reader gather - information from various corners of the story. It all becomes a kind of dance, with the writer guiding the reader through the various twists and turns. The challenge is keeping readers in step, while still managing to surprise.” - Jonathan Evison

No two stories develop in the same way, but one truism is that no story instantly appears on the page in its complete form. Sometimes a story can almost write itself (although I’ve only had that a couple of times) and this is particularly true of the very short forms, but all stories of whatever length take a bit of planning and thought.

As the idea blooms, takes shape and gathers its universe behind it, taking the time to fully appreciate your idea can pay dividends in the long run. Writing a story is easy; writing a story that makes your readers want to join you in galloping through the stars is another thing.

Many ideas gather other ideas to them as they go along. Sometimes ideas that have been sat on a mental shelf somewhere (or on an ideas document, or lurking in a notebook) suddenly spark into life with the catalyst of a new idea.

To use our Military SciFi idea from earlier, you may have had an idea for a particular weapon floating around untethered in the gravity free zone you like to call your brain for years. However, only when your new super-soldier (why is he super? never stop asking questions) comes along do you have a use for the pan-galactic shoe odour remover gun.

All writers develop their own methods for dealing with their brains and how their brains work (or don’t). Some endlessly write stuff down, re-inventing scenes and dialogue as they go, some plan meticulously down to the nth degree before even starting the story. Most, to begin with, seem to utilise a mix of the two, and that is where we will head next…