Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Making a sci-fi element imperative to the story.

This is topic Making a sci-fi element imperative to the story. in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by cklabyrinth (Member # 2454) on :

In most of my speculative stories it seems I could remove the speculative element and tell the story in the present without changing much of the meaning of the story. Does anyone know of a good way to make those elements absolutely necessary for the story to be the same?

I write mostly soft science fiction and fantasy but to me they all seem to be essentially literary stories in the future or past.

Posted by Wolfe_boy (Member # 5456) on :

How about a couple concrete examples. It's a little hard to give specific comments without knowing what speculative elements you've used.

Jayson Merryfield

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Well the quick and dirty way is to have the story be about the speculative element. That way, if you remove it, the story won't make sense.

A slower, and perhaps cleaner, way would be to have the story be about how the speculative element affects the characters. That also tends to make the speculative element indispensible.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

There is a difference between speculative fiction and science fiction, though...

Posted by Gardener (Member # 7948) on :

Well, I have to ask - why is the speculative element in there if it isn't essential to the story?

Posted by Jo1day (Member # 7800) on :

I second what Kathleen said. The thing to do is either make the story about the speculative element or how that element effects the characters. Just remember that good stories usually have two or three really good ideas going for them.

Example:

1)What if disease got so rampant and uncontrollable on earth that almost everyone left? Ho hum, the earth would be depopulated. Big deal. Better fortune in space colonies (unless we hadn't actually found any yet. Oo. Cool.)

2)What would happen to somebody that made a living by doing things exclusively tied to Earth, if disease got so rampant and uncontrollable that almost everyone left?

3)What if someone wanted to leave earth with everyone else when disease got so rampant that it couldn't be controlled, but that person couldn't leave because he/she owed money to someone, and couldn't legally get off planet until they paid up?

Or you might try stripping away all the speculative fiction elements and see what you're left with, and try to see how you could insert them back in . . .

By the way, I'm claiming all the ideas in this post.

Posted by TaleSpinner (Member # 5638) on :

To distill what Kathleen and Jo1day said, you answer the question, "What if <speculative element>?"

So, what if we could make robots that could think and converse--and not have Frankenstein complexes? Answer--Asimov's robot stories.

What if you could live for centuries? Answer--Time Enough for Love, Heinlein.

What if we trained kids to fight in space ships using war games? Answer--Ender's Game, OSC.

By answering the question with a story, the speculative element is central to the story. If the story answers the question honestly, the speculative element cannot be removed from it, so it's definitely SF according to Campbell's definition.

On the other hand, if the story is a who-dunnit, a romance or a horror story, and the speculative element just adds spice, then it can be removed, so it's weaker as SF. Whether that makes it literary or not is another matter.

Cheers,
Pat

Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :

It could be that you're drawn to tell stories of a certain type, but don't necessarily care about the fantastic (or speculative) element. You want to tell epic hero tales or quest stories or mystery/whodunnits. There's some great examples of those styles from speculative fiction. I think previous poster said it best - the spec fiction stuff that seems to stick best is the "what ifs" - What if we had war on a galactic scale complete with rebels and hideouts? (star wars.) What if there was an alternate history of earth complete with dwarves and elves and true love and true evil? (Lord of the Rings) - etc.

If you'd rather tell a story about a man's struggle against evil, you could set that on Wall Street or ancient Egypt or the suburbs of Dublin. But if you think it would be most interesting to play that struggle out in a different environment, well you might have Harry Potter.

I guess what I'm saying is - write what's in your heart. If the spec stuff isn't all that interesting to you, don't stress yourself by writing that far out into the genre. A good story will shine no matter how much of a speculative element is there. Just be warned of the spec fiction reader - they expect something strange about what they read. If you don't deliver, they'll put you down or get angry.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I'm inclined to think the speculative element in the examples TaleSpinner cites are less important than the people (and robots) in the stories. Time Enough For Love is more about Lazarus Long and Company than any "what if?" question---if you distill it down to the "what if?" element there's nothing left of the characters.

That's why there's a certain amount of recycling of the "what if?" parts in SF---every writer can put his own spin on the question. As I said in another thread, more or less, Asimov certainly didn't invent robots, he just imparted his own spin on them.

And a certain amount of "what if?" is present in nearly every story. Say you're writing a Civil War story. It's "what if" the politicians did this? "What if" these soldiers got into a battle? "What if" Lee surrendered? They're not affected because such events happened---the characters in the story, and maybe even the reader, won't necessarily know that something really happened.

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

Perhaps, Robert Norwall, But I also think the set up is crucial. Lazarus Long could not exist if not for the speculative element. Ender and crew would not be military tools if not for the speculative element.

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Many stories just need a speculative setting to make the action possible. The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome both have just one speculative fiction element: a post-apocalyptic setting. The stories could not take place if you had policemen running around arresting people.

Posted by cklabyrinth (Member # 2454) on :

Thanks all for the replies.

The story I'm thinking about right now is a character story per OSC's MICE quotient. It just seems the change in character could be told in any genre; that's what I'm getting hung up on. I'll have to devise a few more ways to show how the speculative element affects the character so that he's not the same character as if that element weren't in the story.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I saw a defense of the "Bat Durston" story in a recent George Railroad Martin collection. Most, maybe all, of Martin's SF falls into that, I think. And after all these years of work, I think nearly all of my stuff is, too. I'm inclined to think more and more SF could be some other genre if you change this and that...

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

In someways, any character change can be told in any genre, because character changes are universal--that's the nature of the human condition, and that's why we read, I think.

You could argue that the MCs in my fantasy WIP could fall in love in any genre--historical fiction, literary fiction, etc. And to a certain extent they could--the world that I created is an allegory for our own, but tweaked. The thing is, though, the set up, the things that make them change, the way they respond to them--none of those would be possible without the world I created.

This problem is worth considering and analyzing, but it's possible to think yourself into paralysis.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I suppose this theory of SF practice could be boldly stated as: "Just because your story is set on a planet not Earth doesn't mean it's science fiction." (I do not subscribe to this theory.)

(As I recall, "speculative fiction" was a term promoted as an alternate to "science fiction" while preserving the "SF" initials. Never caught on...I hadn't seen it much lately till this thread...certainly I never cared for it much.)

((Just how speculative is Harry Potter? Regrets, but I still haven't read past Volume One...which struck me (and strikes me) as a Boy-at-British-Public-School story played out with fantastic elements used for color. If you stripped them away there wouldn't be a story, so I guess the fantastic element is vital...but is that speculative?))