{"id":6123,"date":"2009-06-02T12:40:50","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T17:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/06\/02\/orson_scott_card_s_how_to_write_science_\/"},"modified":"2009-06-02T12:40:50","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T17:40:50","slug":"orson_scott_card_s_how_to_write_science_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/06\/02\/orson_scott_card_s_how_to_write_science_\/","title":{"rendered":"Orson Scott Card’s “How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy” — A Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just finished Orson Scott Card’s “How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/a>“, and learned a lot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most helpful bits of advice was “Make sure you end the story that you begin”. Before I can explain this, you have to understand the four different types of stories:<\/p>\n

\"Orson<\/a><\/div>\n

Milieu<\/strong> – The story is the world, and it begins with someone entering the world, and ends when they leave it.<\/p>\n

Idea<\/strong> – The story begins with a question and ends when the question is answered.<\/p>\n

Character<\/strong> – The story is about the transformation of a character. Begins with their inner issues, and ends with them resolved in some way.<\/p>\n

Event<\/strong> – Some event happens at the beginning that throws everything off, and the story ends when “normalcy” is restored.<\/p>\n

So, if you begin a “character based story”, then don’t end the novel when an “event” is finished … you need to finish that emotional arc until the character based story will satisfy the reader.<\/p>\n

For my own novel, Merlin’s Blade<\/strong>, I realized that I have mixed a character story with an event story. So did I end at the right place? In analyzing it, I have concluded that yes, I did. Since I begin with both stories, the ending must satisfy both, and it does.<\/p>\n

Whew!<\/em> I don’t have to rewrite! \":D\"<\/p>\n

So with the first novel in safe territory, what about my second novel (which I have written two scenes for)?
\n

\"The<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Orson’s writing advice really helped me here<\/strong> because I realized that even though I know a LOT about this story’s plot, I didn’t have a clue what kind of story it was. But now I do … it will be an intertwined character story: Merlin’s and Morgana’s, and how each must face themselves and come to a decision by the end of the book.<\/p>\n

This is not to say<\/strong> that this will be some literary-self-angst-nothing-going-on book. It will have LOTS of action, suspense, and tension. Oh, and did I say ACTION? <\/p>\n

But now I know the key that will signal the end of the book<\/strong>, the transformation that must take place to satisfy the reader and set up the next four books in the series.<\/p>\n

I had recently decided<\/strong> to call this book “Merlin The Fool”, but with my new understanding of the journey that Merlin and Morgana must each take, I will call it “Merlin’s Shadow<\/strong>“.<\/p>\n

Make sure to add Orson Scott Card’s “How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/a>” to your reading list!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Views: 67<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nI just finished Orson Scott Card’s “How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy“, and learned a lot. One of the…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Orson Scott Card’s “How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy” — A Review”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,15,6,51,28,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-2-merlins-shadow","category-books-authors","category-editing-fiction","category-on-writing-fiction","category-orson-scott-card","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/71K09BSB5TL._SX1506.gif?fit=150%2C231","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1AL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}