Once again, we were lucky to convince some of our favorite authors to answer our dorky question. So how do you bridge the space between two utterly cool moments in your novel? Here's what the experts say...

David J. Williams, author of The Mirrored Heavens and The Burning Sky:

Writing with an ensemble cast of main characters has its disadvantages, but one of the big pluses is that it makes it easier to maneuver past this kind of problem. The entirety of the Autumn Rain trilogy is cutting back and forth between (widely separated) points of view, focusing on the highlights of each "plot vector", whether that's in a maglev tunnel beneath the Atlantic or in a bio-dome in the middle of a lunar fortress. This was a deliberate decision, in that I often find myself skimming pages of various books to get to the Next Cool Moment, so when it came to writing MIRRORED HEAVENS, I wanted to leave anything skimmable on the cutting room floor. That being said. . . sometimes "downtime" affords hidden opportunities. . . . are there implications or clues to the situation that two characters can talk about? Is there an opportunity here for more exposition or a newsfeed, or some kind of world-building? If the answer's no, then just fast-forward as much as you need to; readers will forgive almost anything save being bored. Screenwriters are taught to get into scenes late and get out of them early, and there are times I wish more novelists did the same!

Rebecca K. Rowe, author of Forbidden Cargo:

All it takes is two pet mice-more intelligent than we are and willing to explain a few things over a meal. That's in-between the destruction of planets and some possible brain-dicing if you're hitchhiking across the galaxy à la Adams. Barring that, there're always the gravediggers. Sure, their banter makes us laugh, a relief between the darker scenes, but they also give Hamlet and us vital information....

Of course, we're in it for the murder, the sex, the quest and the chase (and for us SF geeks the surprising widgets it takes for each), but we'll stay for the meals, the muddy treks and the quiet smoke. That's when we reveal our Character: how she holds herself (does she skip or walk with her toes crushed in shoes too tight), what she says or doesn't say, and what others say about her before and after the deed. A conversation, a moment of reflection or just looking (what she sees, what we see her miss) may suffice. In our fiction, as in life, we find it's those in-between times that matter most.

Ken Scholes, author of Lamentation, Canticle and Long Walks, Last Flights, and Other Strange Journeys:

Moving from Cool Thing A to Cool Thing B in a novel.... I think this is a hard question for me to answer because I don't think in terms of Cool Things in books. I'm thinking about the characters and what they're struggling with, what they're learning, where they need to go, and I let things unfold a bit organically. My Cool Things inevitably grow out of the interactions of my characters with the conflicts they're facing. Still, one thing I've recently read (compliments of Stephen J. Cannell, the TV writer) is that when you're stuck in the middle muddle of the second act, it is often helpful to figure out what to do next by imagining the POV of the antagonist and plotting the story from there, letting that character introduce the complications that my protagonist(s) must face. I can't vouch for it as I've not used it as a method, but it piqued my curiosity and I'm going to try it the next time I'm stuck.

This is the Europa Platform, the largest space station in existence - and like the Phoenix Space Elevator, it's a target of Autumn Rain, a group that poses a threat to the very fabric of Williams' future society. (Click that link to see an amazing painting of the chaos that ensues when the space elevator crashes, burning, to Earth, after the Autumn Rain attack.)

Here's what Williams says about the space station image:

I'm particularly pleased with Randall MacDonald's Europa Platform artwork: most of the stuff that's out there featuring O'Neill cylinders dates all the way back to the 1970s, and Randall has cranked out some gorgeous stuff that feels oh-so-modern.

In The Burning Skies, the second book in Williams' future thriller series:

Life as U.S. counterintelligence agent Claire Haskell once knew it is in tatters-her mission betrayed, her lover dead, and her memories of the past suspect. Worse, the defeat of the mysterious insurgent group known as Autumn Rain was not as complete as many believed. It is quickly becoming clear that the group's ultimate goal is not simply to destroy the tenuous global alliances of the 22nd century-but to rule all of humanity. And they're starting with the violent destruction of the Net and the assassination of the U.S. president. Now it's up to Claire, with her ability to jack her brain into the systems of the enemy, to win this impossible war.

Battling ferociously across the Earth-Moon system, and navigating a complex world filled with both steadfast loyalists and ruthless traitors, Claire must be ready for the Rain's next move. But the true enemy may already be one step ahead of her.

It comes out on May 19, and we'll be reviewing it around then. Also on Williams' site: a terrific set of pictures of military hardware from the Second Cold War.

Get to know them as individuals, rather than types. If your characters are cut off from all the present-day cultural references, like "lawyer who went to Harvard," then it's even more important to think of them as individuals, says Elizabeth Bear, Campbell- and Hugo-winning author of Carnival and Undertow. "Try very hard to know them as people," she urges. "That goes for any setting, past or present or future — or alternate reality."

In particular, you should think, "'This is a person who happens to have the following traits, and all that they imply,' rather than 'this is a nuclear physicist who grew up in Iowa.'"

Try making your characters scientists. Or at least, have them be obsessed with stuff that's relavant to your storyline, advises Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo- and Nebula-winning author of the Mars trilogy and the Science In The Capital series. Having scientists as your characters lets you "explore the setting and the character at once." And it helps if your characters obsess about the mysteries and explanations in your story. They can also be obsessed with a planet, spaceship, new procedure or alien.

Base them on people you know. The most realistic characters are often based closely on your friends or people you've met, says Rudy Rucker, Philip K. Dick-winning author of the -Ware novels and Postsingular. That goes double for your aliens, A.I.s and robots, he adds. It's always better to copy your friends than to lift from "received ideas about how SF characters might behave. Who wants to see yet another a humorless talking head with a BBC accent? The absolute worst thing in Matrix III was when Keanu gets to the virtual office of the Big Computer Mind, and he meets, like, a tweedy professor with a white beard. Ugh! At the very least it should have been a fat hacker in a T-shirt, preferably high on pineal extract." Also: to make your characters stand out, try having them say quirky, unexpected things. "Forget your Star Trek memories, and remember your wild and crazy friends — the ones who say things that Make No Sense," Rucker advises.

Give them a thought-out world. The more carefully thought out the world you're placing your characters into, the more we'll be able to believe that they live there, says Tobias Buckell, author of Sly Mongoose. And that also makes it easier to "contrast them against this imaginary place."

Figure out what they love, and what they fear. Try to find what drives your characters, including what they want and need, Bear urges. And understand what traumatizes them. "I tell people I like to know what they'd want on their tombstone: that seems to give me a really good handle on who they are."

She adds:

Characters we can relate to have fears and damage, but moreover, for me they have to be devoted to something — an ideal, a person, whatever. Even villains become much more sympathetic when we're introduced to whatever it is that they love.

Kage Baker, author of the Company novels, agrees: "It isn't the way a person relates to his hovercar that makes him memorable; it's what's going on in his heart." No matter what planet or time you're living in, there will be "certain constants in human existence: struggle against poverty, rebellion against authority, love and desire, loneliness, curiosity. Any reader can relate to those." Make sure your character has loves and hatreds that readers can see themselves in, and the rest will take care of itself.

Don't aim for larger-than-life — and overshoot. One pitfall with science fiction characters is that authors sometimes make their characters "bigger than life, or archetypal" to let them compete with the big, brash colorful worlds they live in. A common mistake is veering past archetypal, all the way into "over the top, or maybe somewhat cliche." If you do try for archetypal characters, think of the classics from all genres, like Sherlock Holmes' quirky genius or Captain Ahab's drive.

Don't obsess too much about setting and toys. If you spend pages and pages on dense descriptions of your settings and how exactly your hovercar works, you're distracting the reader from your characters, says Baker.

It's enough to say "He climbed into his hovercar" and your reader will get the idea. You don't need to give a geography lesson: "They were sitting in the courtyard drinking fire-palm wine" or "She trudged back from the well, balancing her water jar" or "They looked out across the desert and saw the yellow mountains of Califia before them" all give brief, intense impressions of a place, without stopping the narrative in its tracks or drawing focus from the main character.

Find out who's hurting. If your story involves a new situation or technological breakthrough, figure out who suffers as a result — maybe that should be your main character, says Robinson, quoting from Damon Knight (who was quoting James Blish in turn.)

Keep your characters grounded. The stranger the setting, the more ordinary your characters should be, says Terry Bisson, Hugo- and Nebula-winning author of Bears Discover Fire. "For example, in my most recent story, the narrator 'had a job and an apartment, but that was all.' The story wasn't about the setting but about the character."

Your characters should be "totally convinced they live in the present, rather than the future. Because, of course, it IS the present to them," says David J. Williams, author of The Mirrored Heavens. Make sure your world, and your characters, both have a believable past, that anchors their present. "As Gibson said, the future's already here, it's just unevenly distributed. Same is true for the past: it's always with us, but sometimes beneath the surface. How one handles that is the key to character."

Talking to the website Rescued By Nerds, Williams explained how worthwhile it was to write the book and create a whole new future for his characters to spy in:

It was exhilarating and terrifying and I thought I'd never pull it off. There was endless toggling back and forth among plot, characters, and the world itself. This went on for years. And years. And years... With videogames, you're a participant. I wanted to try to recreate that experience in narrative. Part of this involved my resolution to make the book deliver combat scenes crazier than any you've ever seen. And part of it was more subtle: it became a play around what we know vs. what we don't. Specifically, the characters in the different plot-threads have different information. Sometimes they lack information. Sometimes their information conflicts. Meaning the reader isn't given easy answers—and they have to get involved if they want to keep up.

(The reader may not be given any easy answers, but they do have access to a lot of information about Williams' world: His own site is full of essays explaining the geopolitics and technological background behind the book.)

Despite the terrorism, politics and science underpinning his novel, however, Williams clearly is a geek at heart:

RBN: One of the most sexy tech items in Mirrored Heavens is the power armor both Marlowe and the Operative wear throughout. Where did that come from?

DW: From the realization that science fiction without powered armor is like beef stew without the beef.

Mmmmm. Power armor.

David J. Williams interview [Rescued by Nerds]