Long, scifi
« Another thing which makes this worse is that our science changes over time. If I did the best possible research on what we right now think would be the best shape for a superfast flying thing (based on the Blackbird perhaps?), nonetheless ten years from now we might do other research and discover a new shape is better, and using that shape would come across as wrong and super dated. To give a real example though I forget what story it was, there’s an SF story set in the future where an explorer entering a derelict spaceship pulls out her cell phone and turns the screen white so she can see by its light–instantly dates it to the brief phase when phones didn’t have flashlights, and feels distracting. If it just said “She shone a light” it wouldn’t be distracting at all, it would always feel correct no matter how much tech changes.» from https://www.exurbe.com/terra-ignota-ama-questions-craft-of-writing-performer-casting/
I find it really interesting that the author thinks this is bad instead of one of my favorite things about reading older scifi. Everyone’s taste is different I guess??
re: Long, scifi
I don’t think these two essays are intentionally responding to each-other, but I do think SuperDoomedPlanet’s critique of what they call the “novelization style” (transparent prose, consistently close 3rd person narrator, short time-frames & high stakes, narrative structures you’d expect from a tv show or a movie) reflects a lot of the reasons why I found Ex Urbe’s argument that specific worldbuilding is bad because someone might disagree with it so baffling
this is my long writing meta quotes thread now
« You can’t really go wrong if you’re going feelings-first. That’s a very fic thing, and obviously coming from fanfic, I’m a very feelings-driven writer, so feelings and character are the things that are gonna get you through a story, and if you’ve got the feelings and the character right, nobody’s really going to mind that much if they’ve seen a plot similar to this before, there’s no original plots really under the sun…but if you get the feelings and the characters right, people are gonna come along for the ride.»
Long, scifi
@Satsuma I love old sci-fi books where everything’s nuclear powered! Or when they use punch cards in their spaceship computers. It’s neat to see what people in the past thought the future would be like
Long, scifi
@tozka yeah same! It’s always way more interesting to me than generic worldbuilding
Long, scifi
Two fun favorites:
There’s a scene in the original #Foundation Trilogy where our spacefaring heroes need to convince the planetary locals some kid is a god, so Issac Asimov puts him in a hover chair “bathed in a corona of nuclear light”.
In one of the William Gibson’s #Sprawl stories, “the sky was the color of TV static, tuned to a broken channel”, only more poetic; I need to look up the original line.
Long, scifi
@darkmirror i hope they’d developed some effective methods of shielding / treating radiation for that first one 😆
And that sounds like an evocative metaphor!
re: Long, scifi
@Satsuma yeah i mean it does seem like the author is advising avoiding writing specificity (in specifical circumstances, but still, avoiding writing it) which is a good way to write more boring work imo
re: Long, scifi
@aescling oh yeah thats exactly what they’re doing — this is from a section titled ‘why i didn’t describe the flying cars’ or something like that
And some of their reasons were good (use peoples imaginations in your favor, etc) but this one just had me going ughhhh you’re taking all the fun out of it
re: Long, scifi
«Every really good novel is a little bit imperfect. The most fun, engaging books aren’t perfectly engineered; they have ambiguities, multiple interpretations, detours, and odd protuberances. They often include passages that look like side trips and diversions, straying from the plot but developing themes, ideas, and characters….They’re eccentric and weirdly shaped and packed with stuff. Some of the stuff may or may not work. Readers may disagree about which stuff worked and which didn’t. When that happens, that’s a clue that the novel is interesting.»
From: http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/2016/04/15/conclusions-and-caveats/