So You Want to Write by Marge Piercy

Author:Marge Piercy [Piercy, Marge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780979641527
Publisher: Leapfrog Press
Published: 2010-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

Exercise:

In the chapter on research, we asked you to gather information on some historical personage, preferably a minor one so that you would not be overwhelmed with data. Now take that same person and put them in a scene from their lives, recorded or imagined. Make the period real and make the person vivid. Find a good action scene to sketch out.

SCIENCE FICTION

In the chapter on Beginnings, we talked about the need to seduce the reader, to get something lively or intriguing or mysterious or fascinating or peculiar moving and moving fast. Then you can go back and insert your necessary backgrounding and context. No, there’s no law against starting with description, of a place, a time, a character, but at the risk of losing the reader, it had better be an intriguing description. Since science fiction often involves the creation of an alternate world or reality, one that is completely new and confusing to the reader, it can be especially challenging to take a lot of time in the beginning to set up a convincing description of this strange new world. You may want characters, you may want conflict and things galloping forward, so that the reader has something dramatic to draw her into the confusing new world. It takes skill to do exposition subtly without stopping the forward pace of the story, but it’s absolutely essential. You have to create a convincing world or a future with enough connection to the present to persuade us it is a possible outcome of where we are.

The following excerpt is from He, She and It, and takes place in the year 2059. It describes the clothing styles of the time, in particular those favored by Yakimura-Steichen, the multi-national corporation that employs Shira, the novel’s protagonist:Y-S had fierce injunctions concerning what parts of the human body should be displayed in what circumstances. It went with rigid sex roles—not at work, of course, for no one could afford such nonsense, but in every other sector of living. Women dressing for dinner often bared their breasts at Y-S functions, but the legs were always modestly covered to midcalf. The back was usually bare; the standard business suit, with its deeply cut back, was designed to show both men’s and women’s musculature and fitness. However, it was the custom to keep ears and nape covered for women, who were required to wear their hair at least shoulder length, often artificially straightened. Malkah, Shira’s grandmother, had cut Shira’s to a sleek cap just last week. At Uni-Par, her friend Gadi’s multi, nudity was a sign of status. The higher you were on the pyramid, the less you wore, the better to show off the results of the newest cosmetic surgery performed on your body. At Aramco-Ford, women wore yards of material and short transparent symbolic veils.

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