Content

• To step
• Part 1 of 3: Getting inspiration
• Part 2 of 3: Shaping your own world
• Part 3 of 3: Developing your story
• Tips
• Warnings

Science Fiction has changed a lot since the days of Jules Verne. It has become more complex and popular at a rapid pace than ever before. Writing in that genre can be quite a challenge, but if you keep a few things in mind, you'll be better prepared to write a great SF story.

To step

Part 1 of 3: Getting inspiration

1. Start researching scientific developments. Science fiction regularly elaborates on recent scientific developments that have captured our collective imagination. If you're struggling to come up with a really good story, a good place to start is to turn your attention to current scientific developments. By using the latest scientific developments as a basis, you can avoid many of the old clichés and write something that people really want to read.
   • For example, you can start following the Reddit thread r / Futurology. This is an online forum that closely follows recent scientific developments. The content on this site should be able to give you a lot of ideas about what a future world will look like.
2. Read good science fiction examples. Seeking inspiration from the SF classics can also help you write your own stories. Do not put it aside because you are afraid that you will no longer be original: reading the work of others can teach you a lot about what works and what does not work in a book. You can also learn a lot about what SF usually looks or sounds like, so you can make an informed choice as to whether to stick with that style or to break away from it completely.
   • Good books to read include Duin, Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep ?, The Transgalactic Hitchhiker's Handbook, and The Handmaid's Tale.
   • Try other SF genres too. SF is a very complex genre and includes many sub-genres. You can also try reading hard science fiction, soft science fiction, steampunk, space opera, cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic SF.
3. Look at the events in the world. Science fiction is in its element when the story teaches us something about the world we now live in. When things that happen are too close, people sometimes get too involved emotionally and find it difficult to keep looking at them rationally. When you package recent events in the form of aliens and other planets, the ideas become easier to process and understand. Draw inspiration from current events that are important to you and that you find interesting and tell the story in such a way that people can lose some of their prejudices.
   • For example, the SF classic Duin is really about conflicts in the Middle East after World War II and told in a way that makes it easier for the modern reader to understand the point of view of the desert peoples.
4. Wonder what message you want to convey. You can also build your story around a message that you want other people to understand. This can be a great way to build a book because it provides you with a path and purpose. When your story actually leads to something and has an ultimate meaning, something for the readers to take with them, it is much more likely to have an impact on them.
   • For example, you may want readers to realize that grief is a contagious emotion. Then you could write a story about how an admiral risked his career to save the reputation of his wife, who died betraying the empire, and in turn loses her life.

Part 2 of 3: Shaping your own world

1. Let your world sprout from material that people can relate to. Science fiction can often be completely different from the world we know. For many people it is difficult to understand a world so different from ours. If you want to create a story that resonates with many other people, write something with roots in the world we know.
   • For example, the main character may be from an alien race of tree humans. The character may struggle with his feelings because he cannot find a partner.
2. Keep track of what's going on in the real scientific world. Science fiction obviously contains a lot of fiction. There's nothing wrong with that. But if the science of your science fiction is too far removed from what people understand when it comes to how things work, then they don't find it credible. It may even appear as if it was not well written, because sometimes overly imaginative technology in science fiction is used to cover up gaps in the plot. Do not give readers an excuse to find errors in what you have written: do not completely ignore real science.
   • The best example of this is the radioactive spider bite. At the time when Spider Man was created, humans knew very little about radiation. Scientists all seemed to be taking big steps and who knew what they could do with this substance. But people now know that a huge dose of radiation will mainly kill you at different rates. No super powers or accelerated evolution. Don't write about a radioactive spider bite.
3. Draw up a number of basic rules for your own language. If you are making up an alien language or other fake language for your story, it can be helpful to make some ground rules for the sound and use of the language. This does not mean that you have to create a fully elaborated Elvish for your book on his Tolkiens, but in such a way that it helps the reader to make it more credible by preventing irregularities in the text.
   • For example: Do not use a sentence such as "br’ack drack kagash met eerk" and a sentence such as "lae kalai O’oro siita ai" for the same language. Even though they are fake, it is clear that they are too different to belong to the same language (one has many consonants, the other many vowels). This can also destroy the characteristic sound of your language. Just think about mixing Klingon and Elfs.
4. Build the culture. If your story takes place on an alien world or even on an Earth very different from ours, then you will have to think carefully about the culture of the people in that world. When your story is very similar to contemporary life, it is easy to make the reader assume that the culture is much the same. However, if you make aliens joke Seinfeld, the reader will have a lot more trouble getting into your world.
   • Things to consider are the obvious ones: music, art, what people do for pleasure, and religions. You can also think about politics and history, and how the changes in those areas may have affected race, gender equality, and other social factors affecting everyday life.
5. Create your environment. One of the most appealing aspects of science fiction is the sense that the reader gets, as if he / she can escape from the known world for a moment to another that is more interesting. This means that you will have to create an attractive world with enough depth to draw the reader into the story.
   • Think about things like geology, ecology, biomes, cities, landscapes and of course non-earthy environments besides ships and harbors. Whatever works best for the story. Think about what makes those places go and the kinds of problems that people may encounter when they exist in such an environment.
   • For example, Frank Herbert’s Dune is incredibly strong at captivating the reader through the images he creates of a desert planet. The vast expanses of sand, rocky mountains, giant worms and underground oceans create a magical feeling that makes the plot even more attractive.
   • Being consistent in describing the environment where your story takes place will also make your story more tangible and credible. You don't place Alice's Wonderland right next to the jungle of Apocalypse Now and if you did, make sure it has a very clear purpose within the story.

Part 3 of 3: Developing your story

1. Choose the conflict. Conflict is one of the most important drivers in a story and there are several types of conflict to choose from depending on the type of story you want to tell. The type of conflict is a clear indication to the reader of what you see as an important message of the text and what kinds of themes they should address.
   • An example of a conflict is Man versus Nature. This type of story that can be about a woman stranded on an unknown planet is usually about dealing with the normal challenges in our lives.
   • You can find more information about different types of conflict in this article, in Step 2
2. Try to portray the sound of the story as well as possible. Writing a book is about more than just typing sentences that are technically correct and telling a story. The words you choose are important.
   • Choose a narrative perspective. Who tells the story. You can choose from a first person, second person and third person perspective. This makes the most striking distinction between how the story reads. It also plays a big role in what you do and don't share with the reader. For example, a first person narrator, the me perspective will not know what another character is thinking. You can use this to hide information from the reader so that you can reveal it when necessary.
   • Pick a time. This is about whether the story takes place in the past, present or future. You can even alternate this within the same story, with some chapters set in one time and other chapters in the other (however, it is not recommended to do this much). Each has its own challenges or can support the story in its own way.
   • Choose a vocalization (narrative voice). Vocalization is the way the story is told. Is it told while the narrator is thinking about it? Via e-mail (because letters probably don't really fit in science fiction)? Is the narrator reliable or unreliable?
3. Stick to a certain style. A writing style is about the words you choose to tell your story. Now most people will do this naturally, but pay attention to whether there are passages in your story where the styles don't match. This usually happens when it takes a long time to write it, as you will experience different emotions and influences during that time. However you tell the story, it should be the same all the time or only undergo subtle changes that make sense within the context of the story itself.
   • Read your story and compare the different sections. Do you tell it in a funny way, like The Transgalactic Hitchhiker's Handbook? Or more seriously, like Duin? Do they talk like characters from a Shakespearean play or like teenagers from an 80s movie?
4. Choose a structure. The structure of a story is about how it is told in a broader sense. The most common way to think about this is like the acts in a play, as many writers still use this format for their own stories. You have the first section (where the story is introduced), the second section (where the story develops) and the third section where the story is completed. There are of course more possibilities than this structure, but it is the most used.
   • The structure as described in this step is also called the "three-act structure". There is also something like a two-act structure or a four-act structure, a cyclic structure (monomyth), or a non-linear story.
   • So, suppose you want to try the four act structure. This one is very similar to the three-act act, but between the beginning and the final act you have another act stating what is at stake and then the act detailing the conflict.
5. Try to maintain an appropriate pace. Tempo is the speed at which important events in the story take place. Tempo is crucial to any form of fiction and certainly important to SF books (tradition has it that these are usually longer than most other books, averaging about 100,000 words). If the pace is not right, the reader may find it difficult to stay in the story because it is too slow or too fast to actually empathize with the characters.
   • If you have trouble with the pace, diagram the plot for yourself. Divide your story into three acts and then break those three acts back into three arcs. Each arc is then divided into three significant actions or plot points. For example, in Star Wars, an arc might look like "The droids have been captured by the Jawa, Luke finds Leia's message, Luke meets Obi Wan" or "Luke sneaks into the Death Star unseen, Luke saves Leia, Obi Wan is killed. ".
6. Use the Hero's Journey. One last tool you can put in your chest is the Hero's Journey (sometimes referred to as the Monomyth). This is the theory, as coined by the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell, that all stories are essentially the same.Many good stories fit into a standard format that you can use as a basis when your plot lacks purpose.
   • The basis of the monomyth should sound familiar to you. The Hero's Journey is about living a normal life when something suddenly changes and the main character (or persons) are forced to take a journey into the unknown. The Hero encounters a whole variety of characters, will have to overcome trials, but eventually learns something that can be used to overcome some major challenge. Now that the task is completed, they can return to normal life with this new wealth of experience.

Tips

• You can combine different ideas to base your book on; you don't have to stick to just one.
• Don't be afraid to write about something that will probably never happen. Science is the foundation, but it's also fiction, so you can do some violence to the facts with confidence. It is much more important to make your characters credible.
• Your readership will usually accept one major violation of real science. Choose it carefully and use it to explain all those other fantastic events and technologies that appear in your book. You may even be able to get away with tweaking the known laws of physics; the trick is to create a significant difference, but in a way that is imperceptible to current technology.
• You don't have to feel like you have to use the physical world as we know it. Much successful SF consists of worlds that are completely made up.
• When describing a world, make sure your worlds are clearly described and try to make it easy for the reader to imagine the world.
• Read a lot of SF before you start, just to get a feel for it. Some great examples for beginners include Madeline L'Engle, Michael Crichton, Garth Nix, Robin Cook, Philip Pullman, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and James Patterson. (Note: Some of these authors also write for genres other than SF). For the more experienced reader, try Frank Herbert, Eoin Colfer, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Steven Baxter and Robert A. Heinlein.
• Don't be afraid to write a parody of the genre. A book considered by many to be the best SF book of all time, The Transgalactic Hitchhiker's Handbook, is in fact a parody.
• Learn about what you want to write. Examples:
  • Never let an Earthling go outside the spaceship without a spacesuit, especially in space, but also not on planets or moons with a strange atmosphere (you should always avoid living things in space without a space suit, except for a character like Superman). An Earthling can only step out of his spaceship on Earth or other celestial bodies with an Earth-like atmosphere without a space suit.
  • Only stars shine. Planets, asteroids and other objects in space only reflect the starlight.

Warnings

• Many science fiction writers feel that the main character must be some sort of super scientist. That is not true. Normal people are good too.
• If your protagonist (or even support character) is a scientist, make sure that they are not knowledgeable about science. Science is multidisciplinary. This means that a biologist probably knows nothing about robotics and vice versa. Indicate the field in which the character specializes and limit his expertise to that field. He may know something about other topics, but a quantum physicist is not going to give advice about poisonous plants. If the scientist in the story is a "jack of all trades", make sure that he is really a "master" in no more than one.
• If you get a writer's block, don't give up on the story. Give it some time. If you give up, you will regret it later.
• A scientist is not the same as an engineer. A scientist can come up with new theories. An engineer decides whether it can be built. Do not let the physicist in the story build a device from scratch based on a newly devised particle theory. Electrical engineering knowledge generally does not fall within the training of ordinary physicists.
• Real science is usually not that exciting. It takes a lot of paperwork, networking and bureaucracy. And most scientists go to their families or private lives at the end of the day that include hobbies, loved ones, friends, bills, a mortgage, and everything else everyone has to deal with. Most scientists aren't flamboyant adventurers like Reed Richards or Bernard Quatermass. Also avoid the clichéd portrayal of a scientist as the withdrawn creep or extreme nerd. Scientists have a passion for the topics they work on.
• Do not deviate too much from the scientific facts. There is a limit to what you can make the reader believe in.
• Get inspired by other writers, but don't steal their ideas. Technically, that may not be called plagiarism, but after a while a certain idea will become a cliché. Avoid that.