And therein lies the difficulty: I have trouble coming up with characters or plots, beyond a few ultra-generic "kinds" of people who might live or things that might happen in such a world. Without these, the whole idea is wasted, because there's nothing I can do with it.

1) Characters. I sat down and just started tapping away at the keyboard, taking notes. I examined what I liked or disliked about characters that I had recently read or seen. I looked at some of my favorite characters (on TV for example) and actually examined why they were my favorite character. What made them so appealing, so riveting. I didn't stop to analyze what I was writing or how, it was very free form. As I did this, I started seeing character types (pre-characters if you will) that I knew I wanted to have in this story I was going to create. BUT your characters don't live in isolation. Who we are is largely based on the world around us, as much as it is by the people around us. So, once I knew what KIND of people I wanted, I had to create my world.

2) So I created my world, and used the enormously helpful but exceptionally time consuming guide I found on the SFWA (sp?) website. There are dozens, maybe even a hundred, questions that you go through to really create your world. I did about 80% of them. As I did this, it showed me the current conflict that my world was facing.

3) Plot. After creating my world, it was easier to now really create my characters. I knew the history of my world, it's current conflict, and I knew the type of people I wanted to focus on. I created my characters from the ground up... And then threw them into the conflict. Who they are, the baggage they brought with them, their roles in their respective lives-- all of this shaped how they would approach, react, suceed or fail in light of the conflict (and of course created more conflict) AND THAT was the basis for my plot.

Finally, once I got all of that down on paper, I started drafting scenes... then writing chapters... then resketched new scenes/conflicts... etc. The plot grew (and hopefully became richer) because of all the legwork I did on the backend that probably no one but me will ever know about.

Hope that helps some. Good luck to you!

quote:

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enormously helpful but exceptionally time consuming guide I found on the SFWA (sp?) website.

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Do you mean:

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm

An excellent and exhaustive list, yes; but, strictly for fantasy.

As I often have in the past, I suggest SF writers get Gillett's World Building for their stories.

Some sources---one Building Believable Characters---from Writers Digest Books. It has all sorts of forms and lists to help you do this. It’s a great thesaurus if you want to look up another word for that hair do, or for what that skirt is called. The current issue of Writers Digest has a mini of this book.

Two--Creating Character Emotion also Writers Digest Books. Wonderful book on showing emotion verses telling.

Three---Aliens and Alien Societies also Writers Digest Books. This is an in depth book that explains a lot of what you should do. It’s a tech book, but a good one

Four---Your Writer’s Snoop Book. Pick a local restaurant, or the food court in the mall. Sit with a note book and snoop. Describe the people around you, jot down their conversations, their mannerisms—do they had talk? Nod a lot ect. Believe me this is a great source. Also, even when you are without a note book—listen, learn and observe.

Societies have similar infrastructure or they don't work, and any question list that helps you make sure you haven't left out any of the basics is worth using. Isn't culture an expression of the many different ways people take care of the basics?

As for the character question Maccabeus asks,
I would like to offer something OSC used when he did his "1000 ideas in an hour" workshop and which I believe comes from James Blish:

Ask yourself who suffers the most from the setting/culture/world you have created?

The generic characters you come up with will not be the ones your story should be about. They, most likely, will be comfortable in the world you've created.

Consider writing a story about either someone who doesn't fit and is suffering because of that, or someone who is kicked out of their comfort zone by something that happens to make things go wrong in your world and has to struggle to get back to comfort.

Also, if you look at OSC's MICE categories, it may help.

If you were to tell a Milieu story in your created world, it might be about someone who has entered this world against their will and who needs to understand and survive in this world in order to get back home.

If you were to tell an Idea story about this world, you might have someone who has to figure out some kind of puzzle or mystery about your world--a life-threatening puzzle, of course.

If you were to tell a Character story set in your creation, you could have someone who is not happy in his/her role and wants to achieve some other station, or someone who has been happy but is suddenly forced to fill some other role, one he/she never wanted.

If you were to write an Event story in your world, it would be about how something has gone terribly wrong in the world--the status quo has been destroyed--and your character is someone who desperately needs to help restore the status quo or create a new one.

Your character is the one who is striving for something, is struggling, is suffering because of the situation in the world you have created. Your character is the one whose very life, or way of life, or sense of self, or pursuit of happiness is threatened and who needs to respond to this threat.