How to write Science fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

Author:Orson Scott Card
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Fantasy literature, Reference, Writing Skills, Composition & Creative Writing, Science Fiction, Creative writing, Authorship
ISBN: 9780898794168
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Writer's Digest Books, c1990.
Published: 1990-07-15T06:00:00+00:00

Novice writers continue to make this same mistake, choosing as the main character people who don’t-or shouldn’t-have enough freedom to be interesting. If the story is about a great war, they assume their hero must be the commanding general or the king, when in fact the story might be most powerfully told if the main character is a sergeant or a common soldier-someone who is making choices and then carrying out those choices himself. Or the main character might even be a civilian, whose life is transformed as the great events flow over and around him. Think of the movie Shenandoah, and then imagine what the story might have been if Jimmy Stewart had played the commander of an army corps. A character who is a loner or who leads a small group -a squad of soldiers, a single family-has so much more freedom to act than people in high office that it’s far easier to tell stories about them.

Sometimes the main character must be the commander, of course. But don’t just assume that to be the case. In fact, a good rule of thumb is to start with the assumption that your story is not about the king or president, the admiral or general, the CEO or the hospital administrator. Only move to the characters in the positions of highest authority when you arc forced to because the story can’t be told any other way. And then be very sure that you understand how people in such positions make their decisions, how power actually works.

Think of the movie Dirty Harry. Whatever you may think of the moral message of the film, the author was aware of the fact that real policemen don’t go around blowing people’s brains out week after week. Yet that was precisely the cliche on television and in the movies in those days-cops who were, in essence, quick-draw gunfighters transposed from the dusty streets of Dodge City to the asphalt of New York or L.A. So the writer played with that cliche-he created a character who, precisely because he acted like a western sheriff, was always in trouble with his superiors.

Furthermore, just like the cliche cops on TV, his partners were constantly getting shot-but in Dirty Harry people actually noticed this and considered an assignment as Harry’s partner to be a virtual death sentence. They blamed him and he actually had to live with the consequences of his decisions. Whatever else the filmmakers might have done wrong, they certainly did that one thing right: They knew something about how a police department works and took that into account in developing their

main character. Or at least they did it better than most other cop stories of that time.

Who is your story about? A person who has a strong reason to want the situation to change-and has both the power and freedom to set about trying to change it.

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