Following the 6 Tips For Writing a Sci Fi Story

Listed below my narrative, are 6 tips on writing a Sci Fi story. I thought I would try my hand at writing a synopsis for a short 10 minute Sci Fi movie that encompasses all the points, to see how easy or hard it was to be a Sci Fi writer. So here’s your assignment. As you read my tale of the adolescent young man who sits at his computer ignoring his mother’s ministrations, ask yourself have all 6 points written in the story below been incorporated, and if not, which ones did I leave out? Have fun reading, I had fun writing this.

A young man, Dorian, in his early twenties, highly intelligent, is a master gamer. He has dropped out of college because he could not deal with the pressure of school and is very uninterested in the lives of other young people his age.

He lives with his mother who allows him to follow his passion of playing, so he sits in his room all day on the computer tuning everything out except the characters before him. His mother caters to his every need and he in turn treats her with contempt. He wishes he were a warrior combating the enemy where no other life exists.

In fact, the only person he is interested in is a female warrior character, Shila, in his game. She seems to be smarter and more daring in her moves than all the other male figures. He finds himself loosing concentration more and more because he is wondering what she is going to do next. Her skill and cunning maneuvers really excite Dorian as he finally has found someone as intelligent as he.

One night Dorian begins to anticipate Shila’s strategy for the upcoming battle and finds himself in the midst of the battlefield, with her by his side shooting at the enemy. Bullets are flying everywhere and Dorian can smell death surrounding him. He has never felt more alive and begins to fire at the enemy. Shila yells at him to stop because he is wasting bullets and the enemy has backtracked coming up from behind them.

They run for cover. Shila tells Dorian behind a large rock that she can anticipate the enemies’ moves easily because she has been on her own all her life and survived because her instincts were sharpened by this experience. Dorian is surprised that her intelligence and talent to fight arises from a deprived background and not superior intellect.

He brags about his prolific victories with these games and how he outshines all of the other gamers all over the world. Shila saves his life as two enemy soldiers come from behind them with rifles and shoots them in the face . Dorian is shaking with fear inside but will not let Shila see how afraid he is.

The battle wages on around them and Dorian wants more and more to live this life of glory. His brain is now able to calculate the enemies’ moves and Shila is encouraging him to use his instincts. Dorain says to Shila that he wishes he could live her life of battle everyday and Shila smiles and says that could be arranged.

She proposes a trade that Dorian takes on her role as a warrior in the field and she becomes an ordinary person living at home with his mother. Dorian readily agrees and suddenly finds himself alone on the battlefield. Instantly he begins fighting with a passion and intensity he has never felt before, but after some time passes he finds himself getting tired. He wants to stop to eat and have his mother bring him lunch.

He looks up at the screen and can see into his bedroom. Shila is smiling at his mother as she hands her new daughter lunch. The two embrace and the screen goes to black.

Below are your 6 Points to form the checklist. How did I do?

“You can combine several different ideas to base your book around; you don’t have to stick to just one

Don’t feel like you absolutely have to put it in the physical world we know. A lot of sci-fi has been successful within made-up worlds.

Don’t be afraid to write about something that would probably never happen. Science is the basis, but it is also fiction, so you can stray from the facts a bit. The bigger deal is to make your characters believable.

Don’t be afraid to write a parody of the genre. What many people consider the best sci-fi book of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is actually a parody.

Read a lot of sci-fi before you begin, just to get a feel for it. Some good role models for beginners are Madeline L’Engle, Michael Crichton, Garth Nix, Robin Cook, Philip Pullman, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and James Patterson. (Note: Some of these authors write in other genres as well as science fiction). For more experienced readers, Frank Herbert, Eoin Colfer, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Steven Baxter and Robert A. Heinlein are suggested

Your audience will usually accept one major violation of real-life science. Choose it carefully, and use it to explain all the other fantastic events and technologies in your book. You might even get away with tweaking the laws of physics a bit; the trick there is to create a significant difference, but to do so in a way that current technology wouldn’t spot.”

So now it’s your turn to take up the pen and become a Sci Fi writer. Honestly, I am retiring now. I am going back to writing dramas, fantasies, comedies, and let all you “heading to the stars and beyond” handle this genre.