Hi,

I never ever wrote science fiction. I find it too daunting - creating a whole world!

Maybe I am just lazy...

Merc.

It really isn't too hard to create a world. You really do that every time you write: you have to have a world in which your characters move and interact anyway. Usually that world is at least slightly different from your own.

When you pretend your protagonist is a baker or a policeman or a business, you are creating a new world, unless you are one of those professions, and you are really writing biography disguised as fiction.

Anyway, it's not hard. It's really quite a challenge, as there's only two reasons to write science fiction: to explore a new idea, or to give your characters an exotic backdrop and a reason to do exotic things.

But that's just me. I love science fiction, and I love to dream of new places, new situations.

And for some reason, I don't think you are lazy. :)

OK, fiction:

'Mark got into the car and left, started the engine, and left. He never looked back - not even through the rear mirror. Not even for one second.'

We all know what a car is. You know a car has an engine. You know that you can "look back" through the rear mirror.
In science fiction, I... stall.

'Valius or Emiken or Strangename got into the hovercraft or personal spaceship or whatever. He maybe started it (the automatic sensors with fingerprint recognition were defective...) and never looked back, not even through the rear... camera?'

It feels to me that you need to explain just soooo much, and if you don't, then well you make silly mistakes (like starting your hovercraft or personal spaceship in 2095...).

When I tried, I ended up writing far too much about how "things" (and laws and governments and systems and whatnot) worked, and... sometimes you just want to get into the car, start the engine, and never look back through the read mirror, you know :-D

So yes, I AM lazy!

Merc.

Here's the best advice I can give anyone wishing to write science fiction or fantasy:

Write it as though you are living in that place. Assume everyone knows as much about spaceships as they do about cars. In fact, assume they don't know anything at all about cars, but know everything about spaceships.

Write as if your reader is a contemporary of the protagonist, as if you are writing fiction in this strange universe you imagine. Inhabit that universe as fully as you do this one.

Never explain, unless it needs explained to the protagonist.

At least, that's my philosophy.

The only important thing is the same thing that's important in any story: internal consistency.

I agree. The story should explain things, not the author. I particularly cringe when I see writers, mostly young I suspect, putting explanations into the story parenthetically.

I literally laughed out loud the other day when I read someone's story who had mentioned a device, not a GPS, but something that got abbreviated in that way. The device got used in the story, its full name used the first time, and then the abbreviation after that. All well and good. In the very next paragraph the writer just had to add the full name of the device in parenthesis every time he used the abbreviation. *CRINGE*

Whether the device is perfectly understandable, like a GPS or a cell phone, or whether its some futuristic device, like a sub-space beacon, you don't have to explain it, just use it, and be consistent. The reader will build his or her own explanation without even realizing they've done it!

If you do not leave some work for the reader, how can you hope to get them invested in your story? When they have to imagine their own details, they become your writing partner, and they then have an emotional investment in the story.