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Science fiction has some unique staples, but there are a million structures and styles. Certainly there's no single structure that encompasses everything from the taste of genius in "Flowers for Al...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T20:06:06Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39464 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:58:09Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39464 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Science fiction has some unique staples, but there are a million structures and styles. Certainly there's no single structure that encompasses everything from the taste of genius in "Flowers for Algernon" to the mind-bending dual view of causality in "Story of Your Life"; no single structure that captures both the dark paranoia of Philip K. Dick and the majestic anthropological explorations of Ursula Le Guin. Don't try to conform to a formula. Instead, figure out what you see as the crux of your story, and figure out your structure according to that. Is your story about a fascinating species of aliens, or is it about the experience of living among people alien to you? The joy of exploration, or the hubris of mankind? Figure out what your story is _about_, and the structure will follow. And in the meantime: **read short fiction.** There's a bottomless treasury online; at _Forever_ and _Uncanny_ and _Escape Pod_ and a dozen others. That way you'll get a sense of the many story structures, unique or commonplace, that SF is capable of.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-10-16T17:27:16Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 2