What would you write about?

[holy king]

If you just want to make money...

if i could live off writing i would live off writing.

why the hell wouldnt i live off writing while still writing something i can not live off?

that makes no goddamn sense.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

I suck at writing fiction even more than I suck at writing nonfiction.

I suck at writing.

 

[Kyriakos]

All people suck at writing when they first attempt it. It takes time to develop a style (and other things needed) so as to steadily like your work

 

[Leonel]

I'd write about a man who made his way from New York to Portland to see if his family is okay after a devastating war that collapses many nations only to find his destiny as King of Cascadia and his fight against the west coast superpower consisting of former prison gangs.

 

[Winner]

It looks like science fiction is really the popular choice up to now. I always thought that it was something very few people could write. Does it fall into more than one categories of scientific accuracy/detail?

Usually it's being divided into two broad categories:

- Hard science fiction is supposed to live up to high standards of scientific accuracy, so it's usually written by physicists, engineers, astronomers or other highly educated people. In hard sci-fi, everything should be plausible, at least according to contemporary scientific theories and concepts. If you need to use something you can't explain, don't even try doing it (see Clarke's work ).

- Soft science fiction, which is pretty much everything else. Plot is usually inspired by some sort of scientific problem, technological advance, or even outright pseudoscience, but is limited in terms of how big a role science plays in the story and how plausible and well-founded it has to be. This genre gradually blends into fantasy.

---

Hard sci-fi is definitely VERY hard to write for someone without extensive knowledge in the field. Soft sci-fi is a different matter and it is definitely possible to write a very good story without having two PhDs in quantum physics

I often say that the main difference between sci-fi and fantasy is that in fantasy, you don't have to explain the unbelievable elements of your story

 

[Kyriakos]

Is hard science fiction possible? Wouldnt it need to be presenting some novel concept, not already covered in Physics? And if so wouldnt it be in effect a physics document?
Or does it only need a few details, and is vague with everything else, particularly the parts where the invention/concept/whatever is something not covered by real physics?

I once tried to write a story that relied heavily in some innovative (at least to my knowledge) idea about prime numbers, but found it extremely hard to do so, both due to the mathematics themselves, and because it was difficult to make an interesting plot centered around them.

 

[holy king]

your tried to center a plot around prime numbers?

 

[rhawn]

Usually it's being divided into two broad categories:

- Hard science fiction is supposed to live up to high standards of scientific accuracy, so it's usually written by physicists, engineers, astronomers or other highly educated people. In hard sci-fi, everything should be plausible, at least according to contemporary scientific theories and concepts. If you need to use something you can't explain, don't even try doing it (see Clarke's work ).

- Soft science fiction, which is pretty much everything else. Plot is usually inspired by some sort of scientific problem, technological advance, or even outright pseudoscience, but is limited in terms of how big a role science plays in the story and how plausible and well-founded it has to be. This genre gradually blends into fantasy.

To expand on this:
Hard Sci-Fi: Jurassic Park, Tom Clancy Novels(to some extent), Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clark
Also alternate reality books like Guns of the South and The Man in the High Castle

Soft Sci-Fi:
Sci-Fantasy: Plot drive or epic in nature. Ex: Star Wars, Marvel Comics, Pulp

Social Commentary: Character driven, usually either social satire or dystopian. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Brave New World

 

[Kyriakos]

your tried to center a plot around prime numbers?

Yes. Well the plot was that the narrator was trying to examine if what he wrote at a math exam was correct or not. Here (im sure in all Europe this is true) there are annual math competitions, and that was supposed to be one of them. So he remembers what he wrote and describes in detail the steps of his reasoning.

However it ended up being too boring, even if the math were correct- not sure if they were, i have forgotten all about it by now

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

To expand on this:
Hard Sci-Fi: Jules Verne

One of his books concerns a cannon to send people to the moon that would most likely kill the occupants due to extremely high acceleration. I don't think that classification is justified.

 

[rhawn]

One of his books concerns a cannon to send people to the moon that would most likely kill the occupants due to extremely high acceleration. I don't think that classification is justified.

He very cutting edge at the time. He predicted airplanes, automobiles, submarines, and television among other things. Mind you, this was in the mid-1800's, I don't think he did that bad in understanding the limits of the technology of his day.

 

[Winner]

Is hard science fiction possible? Wouldnt it need to be presenting some novel concept, not already covered in Physics? And if so wouldnt it be in effect a physics document?

Oh it is very possible. It's not merely about explaining science (though doing this is a common lapse among hard SF writers ), it's about using it to construct an intriguing plot. It doesn't even have to use some new things, it just needs to put the old things to good work.

Take A.C. Clarke for instance - he surely came up with pretty revolutionary ideas, some which ceased being sci-fi during his lifetime (who can say that?), but in many stories he simply took a principle and showed the readers to what kind of situations it can lead. Stephen Baxter in Voyage uses nothing new at all, he simply depicts a fictional manned mission to Mars in mid 1980s. Often it's about extrapolating the future in terms of what will be possible decades or even centuries from now.

The most hardcore and at the same time one of the most readable hard SF novels I've ever read is Dragon's Egg by R. Forward. It's about humans visiting a neutron star passing our Solar System and the intelligent lifeforms which evolved on the surface of this star (and who live much faster than humans, so they evolve from stone age creatures to space-faring civilization in just few days after the humans arrive). It's incredibly detailed and based on very hard science (it even has an appendix explaining some of the concepts ), yet the way it focuses on characters and storytelling is intriguing and entertaining.

Or does it only need a few details, and is vague with everything else, particularly the parts where the invention/concept/whatever is something not covered by real physics?

Of course it has to be vague sometimes, otherwise you'd read a tech manual

I once tried to write a story that relied heavily in some innovative (at least to my knowledge) idea about prime numbers, but found it extremely hard to do so, both due to the mathematics themselves, and because it was difficult to make an interesting plot centered around them.

Huh

Sci-fi is like historical fiction - in it the historical setting is usually just a background against which the main plot unfolds so that you're not reading a history book; in sci-fi, it's science/technology what makes the background.

One of his books concerns a cannon to send people to the moon that would most likely kill the occupants due to extremely high acceleration. I don't think that classification is justified.

It depends whether what he wrote was deemed plausible at the time he wrote it. I'd say Verne doesn't fall into any category, since he practically founded the whole genre.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well certainly i am happy that i don't write science fiction, since im sure i would suck at it At least in horror you dont have to really imagine much abnormal stuff, if you are writing psychological horror that is. Hallucinations, psychological problems, issues with upbringing and violence, nightmares, the subconscious and its vast world, are pretty much enough for my horror stories

Btw Winner, did you end up writing anything you kept?

 

[Winner]

Not yet At least I am jotting down some of the more interesting ideas for short stories I had.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

It depends whether what he wrote was deemed plausible at the time he wrote it.

Newtonian physics (forces, acceleration) was well-established by that time, wasn't it?

 

[Winner]

Newtonian physics (forces, acceleration) was well-established by that time, wasn't it?

I have never read the novel, so I don't know how exactly did he explain everything. It might be one of the moments when you need to stretch things a little to move the plot forward

 

[SchoolzSoKewl]

When I watched "In the Land of Women" I decided I wanted to write soft porn just like Adam Brody did in that movie, and I still sort of do.
But I'd also be interested in writing general fiction, probably about a manic depressive girl and her sociopath sister. And Lifetime would buy the rights and make another really terrible drama and then my life would be complete.

 

[Zkribbler]

teen romance novels infused with supernatural elements

Dude!! You are going to be so friggin' rich!

I'm currently working on (1) a historical/action novel, (2) my second murder mystery set in a fantasy world; and (3) science fiction short stories.

 

[Traitorfish]

"Comics", or, more properly, "sequnetial art", is a medium, not a genre.

 

[jUmpSt0p]

I write fantasy novels.. got 3 in the works.. One with about 30k words, the other about 23k. and the other I will be getting back to eventually..

also poetry and some sci-fi short stories