worldbuilding is the fun part, making words go all in a row is the hard part.
but also, I know my main character is a Lieutenant a lot older than usual cause he didn't start as an officer, and I know his background is full of knowing exactly where the line was and where various parties assumed he'd grow up to be, so I need to know it to understand him. Else I have a completely different character. I started out thinking it's like being a mature student and getting credits for experience, when all his experience is in big spaceship missiles and guns and laser beams. There's a power/privilege/responsibility line in there I don't quite grasp. And I don't know the words for what he was before and after and when that can happen. But I think I have a character who had spent a career blowing things up when told, and then wanted to know what it was all about, really, when you get down to it, and was under the impression officers knew.
Plus it interacts with the science fiction setting - it's like the Enterprise to a point, but there was a war in living memory where they decided what is human and kicked out all the genetically engineered or cybernetically modified posthumans so the humans could have a chance. But in the pre-war era, who would get to be officers? Maybe the ones with an advantage, the modified ones. So it wasn't just civil war, on some ships it was mutiny. So it's all of a tangle.
And bits of my plot are like that chart that goes (1) bright idea (2) ??? (3) Profit! I know where I'm going but the how to get there. So I keep trying to figure out the ship and crew, so they can tell me what goes in the gaps.
Story in a sentence: Malcolm loves Beatrice. ... I thought it was a short story, then I threw my worldbuilding at an Enterprise plot seed and it grew something new.
Story in another sentence: CSS Incorrupt hits a mine field, and the mine field wants to negotiate. Standing orders on both sides say they should blow themselves up, but neither really wants to. So things get tricky.
If I'm going to put a shuttle pod in that situation then I only need to know how a couple of people feel about it, but if I put a whole ship under pressure then I need to know where the fault lines are. On Rodenberry's Enterprise there are none, everyone is shiny happy perfect team, but I am not writing that ship.
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branchandroot
Re: helpful :-)
Date: 2011-07-04 07:14 pm (UTC)but also, I know my main character is a Lieutenant a lot older than usual cause he didn't start as an officer, and I know his background is full of knowing exactly where the line was and where various parties assumed he'd grow up to be, so I need to know it to understand him. Else I have a completely different character. I started out thinking it's like being a mature student and getting credits for experience, when all his experience is in big spaceship missiles and guns and laser beams. There's a power/privilege/responsibility line in there I don't quite grasp. And I don't know the words for what he was before and after and when that can happen. But I think I have a character who had spent a career blowing things up when told, and then wanted to know what it was all about, really, when you get down to it, and was under the impression officers knew.
Plus it interacts with the science fiction setting - it's like the Enterprise to a point, but there was a war in living memory where they decided what is human and kicked out all the genetically engineered or cybernetically modified posthumans so the humans could have a chance. But in the pre-war era, who would get to be officers? Maybe the ones with an advantage, the modified ones. So it wasn't just civil war, on some ships it was mutiny. So it's all of a tangle.
And bits of my plot are like that chart that goes (1) bright idea (2) ??? (3) Profit!
I know where I'm going but the how to get there. So I keep trying to figure out the ship and crew, so they can tell me what goes in the gaps.
Story in a sentence: Malcolm loves Beatrice.
... I thought it was a short story, then I threw my worldbuilding at an Enterprise plot seed and it grew something new.
Story in another sentence: CSS Incorrupt hits a mine field, and the mine field wants to negotiate.
Standing orders on both sides say they should blow themselves up, but neither really wants to. So things get tricky.
If I'm going to put a shuttle pod in that situation then I only need to know how a couple of people feel about it, but if I put a whole ship under pressure then I need to know where the fault lines are. On Rodenberry's Enterprise there are none, everyone is shiny happy perfect team, but I am not writing that ship.