The best way to write is to read and read a lot of the material written in the vein you wish to write. To that end I have been relentlessly hammering shut the holes in my sci-fi reading history. I’m currently reading Ernest Cline’s Ready, Player One which strikes me as a YA effort to recreate some of the fantastic writing generated by the cyberpunk movement and marry that to ideas about the decay of the world brought about by social media. I think Cline delivers his argument well, though he does drift off into introspection and description ad naseum. This is something I’ve found less troubling over the years. Don’t get me wrong, if one of my writers starts to wax philosophical straight into an infodump we are going to have words, but here I find it somewhat more acceptable. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of the 80’s that encourages me to just kick back and enjoy it.
That being said, I must admit that there are a lot of untapped ideas out there when it comes to sci fi. I’m a common culprit of the ‘every story has been written’ saying, but that is only partially true. The specific combination of ideas, characters, and dramatic situations leads to uncommon and often completely original stories all the time. Sure, it has elements of X,Y, Z, but that isn’t a problem—heck, that is the very definition of trope. The trick—the good writing, in fact—is to turn trope into terribly good writing and to keep your audience engaged throughout.
I fear grad school made me worry about producing the next great American novel when all I really ought to be doing is telling good stories. The rest will come, or it won’t.
Some Thoughts:
- Obviously the blog is back up, but I am still pissed that it went down and my host provider has yet to do more than just apologize. Get it right, people. That was several days without publishing. Had this been a paid writing situation I’d be broke. And Jobless. And thus homeless. Which sucks even worse in the AZ summer…
- I’m glad I have a job and a home and the bestie.
- … and the kids. Talis love the kids.