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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8853
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The podcast 'Writing Excuses' talked about this in an [episode](http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/06/21/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-3-stumping-howard-at-conduit/) (season 3, episode 3)

They got a question on how to make aliens convincingly alien in regards to personality and behavior as opposed to biology.

Their guest, Eric James Stone, answered the following:

"One of the most difficult things to do in writing science fiction is to write from an alien point of view. For that very reason. We don't relate very well to people or things that don't think like we do. The stranger they are, the harder it is to pull off the idea that this is a thinking being yet with thinking so extraordinarily different from ours. I think what you have to do is essentially try to put yourself in the mindset of the creature and figure out its logic which may be very different from our logic. What its priorities are and how it gets to its priorities."

And Brandon Sanderson had this answer:

"This is an excellent question. I say that because it's something that science fiction writers have been arguing over for about 100 years. Because it's a really fine balance. Science fiction in particular -- fantasy to a lesser extent honestly -- science fiction tries for realism in its aliens. There is an entire movement for this. As Eric said, the more realistic you get, the less identifiable. There are authors out there doing a brilliant job of this. I really like it when Vernor Vinge does it. He manages to do it well. I would say how does he manage to make aliens that feel so strange yet work so well? in one hand, he's building on the common attributes. He's saying what is universal between all sentient beings? What are these creatures... how are they going to be similar? And using those similarities to highlight the differences. So that when you run into one of those differences, you run smack into it face first. It's like The Left Hand of Darkness if you've read that. When some of the differences come in, you run into them face first because the book spends a lot of time building ground between the common beliefs between the humans and the aliens, and then... bam! No. There is something completely different. Using those two things to highlight one another would be what I would suggest."

Original score: 3