The Process - The World Building Trap

I write science fiction and horror.

I love it, I really do. Inventing worlds, creating monsters, and portraying the fantastic. These things are pure joy.

That said, it’s a freakin trap!

What do I mean?

Well, it’s seductive. It’s much easier to write background material than to actually write a story. After all, the only audience is you so why the hell waste time on polish, presentation, or coherence when you can just type away? These documents are your personal notes so it doesn’t really matter. That’s why there’s a certain comfort in creating encyclopedic write-ups on obscure and “super cool” things that you’ve come up with.

Hours, days, months, even years can be spent down this rabbit hole of invention all before you get the first paragraph of a real story penned.

That’s when the true horror of the trap reveals itself. You can spend so much time exploring your fascinating invention that you have no more stories to tell. You wrote all this background history where crazy awesome things happened but you resolved the conflicts before your story started. Or, perhaps worse, you were so in love with exploration that you didn’t write inherent conflicts and story hooks that would create an actual narrative.

By the time you feel you’re “ready” to start your actual story there’s nothing left in the tank.

So if that’s the danger, why bother with world building at all? Why not seat of the pants the whole setting while you tell your story? Why not boldly plumb the depths of your imagination while in the grips of your daring tale?

Some people do that very thing and it CAN work for them. However that creates a couple of different potential traps that, in my experience, are a just as deadly. You can write yourself into a story ending corner or you can be paralyzed out of a flow state because you can’t think of what’s around the next bend when the characters are doing their natural thing.

The truth is that you will always need to invent stuff for your world and it will burn mental cycles. It’s part of the whole telling a story thing. Given my focus on trying to stay in a flow state I’d much rather burn those cycles when I don’t have to stay in the moment. I’d rather know how the nanites in the protagonist’s blood work before the bad guy hacks them. However that leaves me vulnerable to the trap and that cannot stand.

The solution, like for most things, is probably in following a middle of the road approach. For a specific idea I’ll do a small amount of world building or world refining along with structure work before starting the actual story. However I start writing the story when I’m only 20-50% through the building bit. That way I can work on tone, mood, and voice without falling into the endless building trap and actually generate content in the process.

I just can’t do a seat of the pants story to completion. I’ve tried. Anything more than say 500 words needs some outlining and building before I can get it into a reliably complete-able state.

Silver lining though if you have fallen into the world building trap: All that stuff you built? You can strip mine the hell out of it to make other stories so the effort isn’t totally lost.

The Process - Just Write!

Over the last year I’ve taken my writing much more seriously. First I worked on the process, drilling down into what motivates me to create, trying to narrow down the things that get me into a good flow state, and separating out the things that pull me out. I read more. I listened to more podcasts. I communicated with other writers more. I did a lot of things but the process improvements are what have really stuck.

The best piece of advice I got was “just fucking write.” That sounds ludicrously stupid I know. After all, if you’re having a hard time writing, how the hell can you just do it?

Turns out it’s the anxiety and the pressure that’s the problem for me. If you are trying to create perfect prose every time you sit down at the computer you will only type out what you think is perfect. You will lose precious time and creative energy stressing about just the right turn of phrase when you should just be getting your ideas on the page as rapidly as possible.

There are many methods to help with this kind of thing and I tried several to figure out what would work. I tried to have a more efficient computer. I tried typing on portable options like my iPad. What ended up working consistently though was about the lowest tech and cheapest approach I could find.

It turned out that handwriting IN PEN in a composition book was the best way to get stuff out of my head and onto the page at a good clip. With pen there’s no chance to edit, well no easy chance, and you are forced to move on instead of getting stuck trying to make things perfect. I ended up generating and finishing stories at a rapid pace because I was writing every day without anxiety or worry. My notebook also lacked distractions like Facebook or video games.

The trouble of course was digitizing my handwriting later. I can’t afford to do much in terms of scanning, voice recognition, or otherwise letting a computer do the work. I had to manually enter the text I’d written. That forced me to face the horror of my handwriting especially if I’d put off digitizing for a few days and what I’d written wasn’t super fresh in my mind.

This is the writing process. This is what’s let me get to the point of actually submitting work to various markets. This is, hopefully, the path that will get me finishing my novel.

Luckily editing is comparatively easy for me once it’s in the computer and I can do it without needing to be in a flow state. Now I must figure out how to push through the fatigue and keep that state going even when I want to stop and do something else.

Raven's Hope - Part 2

“Moses, can you bring me the number 3 torsion wrench?”

My primary servitor droid spun up his fans and rose into my eyeline with the gleaming wrench held in a plastic gripper.

“Thanks buddy,” I said as he gave me the tool.

I think of him as male even though the little drone is just a rough sphere surrounded with fans and manipulators. Even though I gave him a face on one side by painting lines between some of his visible sensors nothing else really screams “male” at least on the outside. However he’s a cranky little shit with a fragile ego so it’s not much of a stretch.

I turned one last connector before I closed the contact plate, disentangled my friction restraints, and pushed myself into the open space in the middle of the maintenance room. Locked onto my workbench was the segmented body of a Crab Bot, a long droid with a wide middle that holds 137 different spoke “claws” that each end with a different tool. They really look like crabs if you welded a few cluster thrusters to their shells and made them out of titanium plating.

According to my work order this particular Crab had been found floating dead in space a few kilometers away from the Crow’s Nest. The poor thing had been pretty heavily damaged and I entered “asteroid collision” in my log as the cause.

If I only knew then what I know now right?

“Okay Chuck, you don’t mind if I call you Chuck right?” I asked the Crab as I booted up its internal systems. I name all the droids that come through my shop. Don’t look at me like that, it’s perfectly healthy!

“Diagnostics are checking out...why are you sucking up so much power?” The Crab was pulling an extra 2% over specs after the repair work. “Sorry for the shit components. You be careful okay? I’m adjusting your charge schedule so you won’t run out of juice at a bad time but keep in mind that you’ll need to recharge more frequently.”

I hit a few commands on my tablet and added him to the queue, “I should have a new shipment of replacement parts in a couple weeks so I’ve scheduled you for a checkup around then. You should be able to function fine in the meantime. If you have any unexpected drains come in immediately, your supervisor program has been alerted.”

I issued a command through my tablet and released the workbench locks. Chuck started to float free. It had a pair of camera stalks on its front about the same place a normal Crab would and they spun through a standard orientation routine. I could hear the tiny ducted fans inside its body spin up as Chuck leveled off. It looked at me for a few seconds before it issued a beep and flew lazily out of my shop.

I watched it go but the look left me a bit unnerved. It felt like it was judging me. I know, I know, servitor droids can’t actually do that. Not really.

About that time I got an alert over my tablet about a malfunctioning Shaft and Sprocket pleasure bot. I read over the work order a couple of times without really believing it. The bot was refusing commands and shut down when the owner had tried a manual reboot.

I slung my standard repair kit over my shoulder as I pushed off the wall and grabbed my nose plugs as I left the shop. The sex club was one of the rankest places in the whole station when it came to human stink and I knew from experience that I’d be a wreck without my plugs.

Raven's Hope - Introduction

I’ve worked in space pretty much my whole life and the one thing I’ve never been able to get used to is the smell. Nobody ever wants to talk about it but it’s there, every station, every post, every time. Humans, even the modified ones like those creepy cat people, no offense, just stink.

All that sweat and oil that oozes from our skin. It’s in our hair, drips off our fingers, it’s everywhere and we put it on everything. We’re disgusting. It’s not so bad if you’re in the open or there’s decent gravity but that NEVER happens in space. Decent air currents can clear things a little but re-circulation systems are pretty much guaranteed to create a perfect stink storm. Add to that the vagaries of spin gravity and you get a constant soup of repugnant stench that collects in odd corners so it can ambush you when you least expect it.

I’ve been told that most people just get used to it and don’t even notice it anymore. Nose blinders or some other crap explanation. Not me though, I never “get used to it” and I probably never will. Hooray for bad wiring.

What’s this got to do with the Raven’s Hope tragedy?

Well it matters because I work with bots instead of people, they don’t stink as much. As a result I know bots really well and I’ve grown fond of em. Look, I’ll admit it, I like bots more than people. I don’t like them so much that I deserve that judgey look I get when I’m walking the station though so get your mind out of the recycler.

Look, it’s not like I actually have sex with the droids okay? I’m not sick like that! I’m not like the others that frequent the Shaft and Sprocket. Those people have serious mental problems.

They don’t understand the droids like I do. They have feelings! Emotions so that when you abuse them they can really be hurt. I’m no monster...I just get lonely. I’m only human.

What?

Look, I know that their affection is a program, that the droids aren’t even ‘sposed to be fully aware. But let me ask you something? Why do you assume that the your emotions, even your sense of self, is anything more than programming hammered into place by evolution? How is that more valid than a response algorithm and observational software? How is either one more true?

In my heart I know the droids feel things and that’s a good enough reason to not treat them like shit. Even the bots programmed to “like” that kind of thing should be treated better. Those models give me the creeps anyway.

Where was I?

Right, so I was working through my repair docket…

A Meditation on Hurt

It rains in your mind,

It makes your tears grow.

Look deep and you find,

That without it you slow.

The terror is real,

A slow seeping pain.

The horror a seal,

One hopeful refrain.

There lies the secret,

Found by the true sleuth.

A life without frets,

Is empty of truth.