The Mechanics of Setting

(Posted for P.I. Barrington)

I've learned a lot since I seriously started to write science fiction. Things like some readers love minimal setting description while others believe if the setting isn't detailed enough the book isn't satisfactorily complete. Yes, I've been told both by everyone from non-writing readers to reviewers and even my own co-author.

"The story is massive," she's said to me more than once. "You're trying to condense an epic!"  Readers have told me, "I love it that there's not too much detail, it's not overly written!"

So, where to draw the line? Some authors will tell you half and half; some will insist you must describe the fumes from an alien aircraft. Me? I mix it up. I'll put in what needs to be there and keep out what doesn't—sounds simple huh? It isn't. There are thousand comments on this discussion out there and many new and even seasoned authors get confused from time to time. Yet there is help and it's in the form of worksheets and generators!

And no, it's not cheating I don't care what you've heard or believe. Sometimes you'll have story with many characters, races, subplots, planets, ships, pretty much any and everything you can think up. In fact you're so deep into the story that you haven't taken the time to delve deeply into developing those items mentioned above or spent enough time creating names for places, characters, planets etc. Worksheets and generators help you out in these areas; they don't write the book for you. In fact, they'll probably kick start your own imagination!

I've culled what I think are the best worksheet and generator links and I think you should take a quick look at them. The worksheets cover everything from civilizations in detail to quick character lists to (my fave!) names of races, planets, religions…you name it. I hope these links will help you out and I hope you think they're as much fun as I do!

1.           Seventh Sanctum: This is one of the best for science fiction and magic and if you have some development skills you can even contribute your generator for others to use! Highly recommended! http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php

2.           ChaoticShiny: This is the other best generator, especially for fantasy based on RPG and is for "people who write game or live in fantasy worlds of their own creation". Highly recommended for fantasy & alternate history writing. http://chaoticshiny.com/

3.           ScaldCrow: Interesting but limited and limited to actual RPG rather than directed at writers. http://www.scaldcrow.com/GENERATORS.html

4.           Squid: Intense generator with real and imagined world generators (Afghanistan, Egypt, France, Japan and Congo to name just a few!). Definitely worth checking out! http://www.squid.org/tools/random/index.php

5.           Serendipity: Revamped and based a lot on Les Mis but specifically for fantasy authors! Serendipity has name generators from French to Japanese and bonus villain names. Recommended.  http://nine.frenchboys.net/

**The next four links are excellent for

character/civilization/food chain/planetary worksheets: Highly recommended***

http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/liljenbergworlds/index.html

http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/liljenbergworlds/planetworksheet.pdf

http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/liljenbergworlds/foodchain.pdf

http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/liljenbergworlds/civilizationworksheet.pdf

Recommended**

http://northbynotwest.com/Sherry_Ramsey/Script_Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/World-Builder.pdf

http://www.the-writers-craft.com/support-files/character.pdf

One of my favorites is a classic world building worksheet that is astounding in the details it covers. It is the World Building form from Patricia Wrede—each link within this link opens up a whole world of information you create yourself—but as Patricia will tell you—if a section doesn't work for you, don't use it! Not only that but this link is the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America site which you should probably investigate anyway.

http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/  ****Highly recommended

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BzylBQC3SyqoM2JjMDkwZDEtNDI2NS00ZDMxLTg5MzctMThjODBkYmZkNTRh&hl=en&pli=1   ****Highly recommended

http://www.fantasymaps.com/101/  ***Recommended

And below this is a link FULL OF LINKS on fantasy mapping, creating, guidelines for the genre'! It's almost got it all!

http://www.oneofus.co.uk/index.php/how_to/how_to_create_fantasy_worlds/

If you're a purist, you can always spend time inventing your world in detail with copious notes or creating your own character or world building worksheets, there's nothing at all wrong with that and believe me, just filling out worksheets can be a blast on their own but if you're stuck for the name of a certain weapon or town and don't have a lot of time to research it or think it up, try out a generator or two. You may just get an idea for the next world you build!

More Sci to the Fi

How much science should there be in science fiction? The purists claim it should permeate every scene if not every sentence. Others say the genre' is changing and that just attaining the atmosphere of science fiction is enough.

Me? I'm stuck in the middle with you—unless of course you're a purist and/or a rocket scientist. Now I've read the classic masters and popular masters of sci-fi like Bradbury, who was my first ever introduction to the genre' with the short "There Will Come Soft Rains" which, if you grew up in the "duck and cover" generation with the unholy terror of nuclear war and annihilation, was something you could relate to entirely (run on sentence).

I've also read sci-fi in which the main character is so cyborg-ish that he plugs himself into the dashboard of his ship. For me, that's a little off-putting. Oh, I don't mind a little man/machine interaction, in fact I have a WIP that has a little of it too. It's just that when people stop becoming people there really isn't any story (excepting the above Bradbury masterpiece in which an automated house is the main character), at least not for me. I mean, it's hard to give a medical droid an ethics conflict, R2 and C3PO notwithstanding.

Now, as much as I love Blade Runner—and I do—I usually don't put pleasure androids such as Pris in my work. Why? There has to be a human to have the conflict with or because of a Pris type android, and that droid usually doesn't have the wherewithal to have a conflict themselves. (And oh, shut the heck up about Hal in 2001 A Space Odyssey, and "The Robot" in Lost In Space, etc., and etc.) In the case of Blade Runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) has the main moral conflict both physical in destroying the Replicants but also one because of his attraction to Rachel who believes she is human. Once again, there's that human interaction and not by plugging oneself into a dashboard, per se.

I think that book length is also a factor in science fiction. Thinking up credible engaging thorough worlds with plagues and problems takes a lot of time if you really love the genre' and therein lies a major quandary. With all the subgenre' and mashups of genre' being the trend of the times, sometimes you have to make a distinction however small, between science fiction proper and science fiction action/thriller/adventure/dark/dystopian, on and on. Dystopian is the one genre' or subgenre' that comes to mind as close to real, pure science fiction. Why? Because it's usually a setting/story of people attempting to survive in a ravaged, destroyed world/society due to advances in science whether war, plague, mutation, alien invasion/contact and what have you. One book that truly is a great work of this type is The Plague Tales by Ann Benson. Surprisingly, I love the futuristic storyline better than the historical, which I normally prefer. I think it's because that story line is so realistic I can totally see it logically happening one day.

However for writers like me who devote a lot of work to the inner conflicts of characters much of it has to do with how the characters relate to each other and how they deal with their conflicts resulting in growth of their personalities. I believe that that characterization drives the plot lines in my stories.

Yet I still have the obligation to stick to the genre' major. I do research of a sort to give credence to my books unless I'm completely making it up and I try to create a setting/world/technology that readers can picture and relate to but that isn't rocket science either. So there I am still stuck in the middle with or without you, riding the galactic fence. That's when I fall back on those subgenre' mashups. I've called my books futuristic crime thrillers, near-future thrillers, sci-fi adventure, dark science fiction and spec fiction and I think I need to do that even though it might narrow the reader audience. I don't think it does—I hope it doesn't—I'm hoping it will cross-genre' much like a virus can mutate (ooh, science talk) into various strains and perhaps reach readers who might otherwise pass it by.

Take that rocket scientists!