I'm not enjoying my attempt at a science-fiction novella; should I continue?

Longform storytelling (which is what a novel or novella is) is very very difficult. It is also only tangentially related to writing. You can be good at writing and know nothing about longform storytelling. It is rather like the difference between painting a house and painting a mural. You need all the same understanding and skill with paints and brushes to paint a house as to paint a mural, but the mural is much more difficult because it requires an artist's eye for design, color, and story.

A very few people are natural storytellers and just seem to be able to tell stories, even longform stories, effortlessly. But they are very rare. Most of us have to work at it and study it for a long time.

So, it is a lot of work and it will take a lot of time and dedication to get there, which is pretty much like anything else worth doing in your life. But, like all the arts, there is the added problem that merely doing the work and the study and putting in the time is no guarantee that you will ever make any money doing it. In fact, odds are that you won't.

So, like anything else, it comes down to how much you want it. If you thought it was going to be easy, it's not. If you are still up for it knowing how hard it is going to be, if it is so important to you that no amount of discouragement and rejection is going to stop you, then plow on.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

4371 reputation 12 1104 744 58

When new at something difficult (let's use playing an instrument, painting and prose as examples)

1. Any creative tool takes years of daily practice before it becomes "fun"
2. For me; percussion performance still sucks but it's on my bucket list to change that
3. Prose is not my strong suit; editing is.

Regardless of natural talent, in the case of music performance and editing/proofreading....same for painting and creative writing; it's all about practice. Creating & jamming on a trumpet, trombone, drums, midi, euphonium, baritone bugle and mellophone bugle...it comes easy. Editing the work of my peers as well--easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

Put a pair of sticks in my hand though? Or task me to paint a line of "happy trees"? -- I STINK. I'm a mediocre drummer at best (this will change over time) and my skills with acryllics are laughable (less likely to change 'cuz I prefer to draw using pencil/pen media; nor do I picture a future that features "plants - a study; acryllic on easel by cwelke" Though I'd love to paint "happy trees" I have little inclination and even less drive to put the work in. I write, I edit, I draw [using pencils & ink], I do maths; I write code, solve MIS problems, tutor, date once or twice a year and get a laugh about half that rate.

Since you are just a youngster; your mind & body need time to figure what they like to do; what they DO do; what they dislike...and what they simply WILL NOT do. Resist the tempation to box youself in or out of any creative skill until at least your mid-20s. I'm pushing 40; as you can see I have a clear picture of my capabilities.

--> Only give up if sci-fi novella-composition brings you no reason to smile whatsoever. Is it the subject matter? Or is it the 70ish page length that gets ya? Test this by writing a crime novella; or sci-fi short story

posted almost 8 years ago

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Tapper7‭

25 reputation 1 1 5 0

The secret to writing is rewriting. If you aspire to math and computer science, try thinking like a scientist. (I am a research scientist using both math and computer science).

A story is much like a program; you are trying to evoke certain emotions from the reader with each scene. If your program doesn't work after you write it, you must debug it, and change it, until it does work. But you can't change it at random and hope it will work, you need to understand what went wrong and fix THAT.

Do the same thing with your story. If you know there are plot holes: I assure they were not on the blank page you began with. Which means you made your characters do something that resulted in the plot hole. Go find that bug, and fix it, and if you have to, start changing what follows so the effects of that bug are gone. No more plot hole!

Now you can fix the part after the bug in several ways; one is with slight modifications of what they do or know. If the plot hole bug was in CH3, then in CH4 and after, change their decisions, so they aren't based on something that isn't in CH3 anymore.

Another is by introducing a transition scene. If your plot hole bug was in CH3, and now CH4 is messed up, you can write CH3.5 to get your characters into the same place as CH4 but by a different route; now that the bug is fixed.

Or you can scrap it, and write from the bug forward. Put CH4 and after in another file, so you can scavenge writing from it, but after fixing CH3 start again with a new CH4 that flows from CH3.

I am a discovery writer, meaning I do NOT plan out a plot, mostly when I write I have a description of an ending in mind (which can change). It is a written description, usually half a page that will turn into 30 or 40 pages. So I can write myself into dead ends, and this is what I do: Find the bug, scrap stuff and start over.

Every day when I write, I begin by reading at least what I wrote yesterday, usually from the beginning of the scene I am working on, or if I am starting a scene, I read the entire previous scene I wrote. After a night of sleep and other work, I can read that with more objectivity and see what needs to be fixed, and I will fix it if I don't like it. That might mean I write very little that day, or nothing at all, but what I am doing is part of writing, getting it right, and I am making progress by doing it.

Imagine you want to lay a deck of cards, perfectly aligned end-to-end, down the hallway. The fastest way to do that is not to scatter all the cards in the hallway about where you think they will go, and then start aligning #2 to #1, and then #3 to #2, and so on. If you did it that way, by the time you get to aligning #12 to #11, nothing is in the right place, it is too far or too close, and it is all out of kilter. You wasted all that time up front trying to make a rough placement.

The fastest way to get done is to put #1 down, then #2, then #3, until you are done, each perfectly aligned. Now think of those cards as your scenes.

Write the first scene, and rewrite until you get it right. Then write the second scene, and rewrite that until you get it right, and reading scene 1 then scene 2 feels right. Don't worry about how long they are; a scene lasts until something irrevocable happens (good, bad, or minor; for example a scene may end when somebody decides they are going home for the night).

That is when the next scene begins, perhaps just after a passage of time (they arrive at work again the next day), or perhaps as they decide how to deal with the irrevocable event (for example they accidentally killed somebody with their car).

That is how you progress, through a short story, a novella, a full novel, a series. Every scene has a conflict. Keep in mind the (provisional) ending, keep making it difficult for your protagonists, all the other writing advice holds. But the main thing is: Always keep it coherent and sensible as you write, you should never have to discard a huge amount of work, just two or three scenes at most (and you can keep them in your junk pile in case you want to cut and paste something from them).

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37

Many successful genre-bending stories are essentially one type of story in the setting of another. For instance, the original Star Wars is a fairy tale in space, and the early Harry Potter books are detective stories with a fantasy setting.

So if you enjoy writing thrillers, but want to try sci-fi, why not write a thriller set in space? Many thrillers are borderline sci-fi (or fantasy) anyway. If you're still getting hung up on the details, try a near-future sci-fi (essentially the present, with some new, not-yet-existing technology thrown in).

posted almost 8 years ago

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Chris Sunami‭

1355 reputation 13 171 261 0

Be a planner and gardener. Get raw ideas and put them in a note-taking program, I used to do it on 3x5 cards. But sooner or later you have to organize them, and shuffle them around to get an idea of a structural flow and find what is missing in the plot. You will find that you move stuff around a lot. That is ok. Just keep the ideas flowing, and put them on paper so you don't lose them. Also, it is important to set aside a specific time every day to do this. I do most of my raw writing now drinking my morning coffee, while doing my daily walk talking into my cell phone or waking up in the middle of the night. Good Luck

posted almost 8 years ago

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tony lester‭

5 reputation 0 1 1 0