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more about #worldbuilding more comments → bookwench: By Gelfling hand or else by none! Whit - we're not looking at concept art for the Dark Crystal 2? Didn't Jen and Kira get a ride on those giant fleas... more » CoffinDodger (If the typos crap. Blame my keyboard): So if thats the Flea!! How big was the friggin dog!? Remind me not to go travelling to flea infested planets. Theres an old saying among Space Trucke... more » Roklimber: A bit of free advice for ecological worlbuilders: learn a little basic physics. Creatures such as that giant flea (and giant spiders, giant ants, and... more » FrankenPC: I love bestiaries. I still covet my copy of Barlow's guide to extraterrestrials. #moraeriver more » crashedpc - Haifisch: #6 could possibly be the most fucked kangaroo I've ever seen. #moraeriver more » EugeniaBSG: Nomination for a 9th method: Read Terry Pratchett and Brian Daley books. Both are/were geniuses in writing character dialogue. For vocal cadences, wo... more » firstanointed: "Those of us who write in English are lucky — it's actually two languages in one." I've always thought of English as a true frankenlanguage. Most E... more » dsmeek36: no one has mentioned profanity. as a former US Navy sailor type, there have been occasions in which i have literally "cussed like a Sailor". "fuck" ... more » Peter Sorensen: One of the few tricks I've learned over the years (can't remember where I picked it up - some workshop somewhere) to create convincing character voice... more » UltraRob: You want to understand English well? Go volunteer as an English as a Second Language tutor/helper at your local community centre. It will do wonders f... more » AngriestGeek: I was going to make a Joss Whedon joke, but I see you anticipated it. Then might I suggest Bendis? more » collex: You mention Joss Whedon, and one of the thing I like with Whedon is how he uses name to add a uniqueness to certain characters or relationship. The us... more » drclaytonforrester: Whedon may have a few basic voices that he reuses over and over again, but he finds other ways to make his characters unique and distinct from each ot... more » SkippyTheMarine: Something that has helped for me when I'm writing is to outright steal the voice of a character from a movie. I needed the voice for a crime boss, so... more » drclaytonforrester: How do you keep your characters from all having the same voice? By being completely schizophrenic. By being an actor, having played different charac... more » -
#conceptart
Gigantic Fleas and Killer Fish Wait on an Alien World
Brynn Metheny's The Morae River is a fascinating exercise in ecological worldbuilding. She populates her alien world with strange and unusual creatures, from man-sized rodents to towering, tentacled arthopods. More » -
#freeadvice
All Your Characters Talk The Same — And They're Not A Hivemind!
It's one of the biggest problems plaguing fiction — and it seems to hit genre fiction especially hard sometimes: the characters who all sound exactly alike. How do you keep your characters from all having the same voice?
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#avatar
James Cameron Is The Tyrannical God of Pandora
The New Yorker followed James Cameron's alien opus Avatar throughout its production and has delivered a fascinating article, detailing Cameron's tyrannical behavior on-set, Peter Jackson's opinion of the effects, and how much more went into Pandora than naked cat people. More » -
#freeadvice
What's The Difference Between Denouement And Picking At A Scab?
So your space-wizard novel has resolved its epic storyline: Your hero has defeated your villain, or your central mystery's been solved. But unlike your hero, your work isn't done: there's still the denouement, where we find out what happens afterwards.
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#freeadvice
The One Sentence That Can Ruin Your Whole Day
Your space-warping, mind-bending science fiction/fantasy novel isn't just action set pieces and breathtaking ideas — it's got character and atmosphere. And when you're developing those things, it's tempting to reach for that great tool, the Topic Sentence. But beware.
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#guestblogger
The Questions You Shouldn't Answer, And The Answers You Can't Let Go Of
I was lucky enough to be talking with one of my favorite scifi novelists the other day, and I asked him a question he didn't know the answer to.
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#freeadvice
Make Your Epic Space Novel Live Up To Your "Elevator Pitch"
The best science-fiction novels boast panoramic world-building and complex ideas. But eventually, you must explain your grand design in a few sentences. This is what's called the "elevator pitch," and it's actually a helpful way of thinking about your novel.
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#writing
How To Start A Novel So It'll Grow Into A Compelling Series
Fantasy author Gwenda Bond points us to a fascinating discussion among novelists: How much planning do you put in before you start a novel? And raises a related question: what makes a great book series? More » -
#madcartography
The Curious Art of Science Fiction Road Maps
Adrian Leskiw is one of the rarest kinds of science fiction creators: He does his world-building entirely through the medium of road maps. A self-professed road geek, Leskiw creates extremely realistic road systems for fictional countries or alternate versions of existing ones. Here you can see a map he's created of an imaginary island called Breda in the south Pacific, in the year 2040. More » -
#worldbuilding
The Rules of Quick and Dirty Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the art of creating an alternate universe where the rules of present-day Earth life don't apply, and you have been appreciating that art for as long as you've been reading or watching science fiction. Some worldbuilding is epic in scale, and requires thousands of people: the Star Wars universe is like that, if you think of all the people who have helped create the movies, books, art, TV and games from that world. But other worldbuilders work alone. Ursula Le Guin wrote several novels set in her "shared worlds" universe without any help and without spawning any spinoff tales by other people. But worldbuilding doesn't have to be something that just the pros do. You can get in on the cool create-your-own universe action any time you want, and fast. Just follow our five simple rules for whipping up a universe in your spare time. More »
