Writing Tips #1 - World Building, Prologues & Setting The Scene · 8:10am Feb 3rd, 2019
WRITING TIPS #1
World Building, Prologues & Setting The Scene
An examination of two opening chapters
Since I haven't had the time to sit down and really work on any of my fics for ages, I thought I'd do an occasional thing where I'd put out some tips for anyone who wants to start writing. Why? Well, in the past year I've read a few things that were, to put it bluntly, painful. And these were actual, published works. By proper authors who make real money off of writing. Not amateurs just starting out, not even established "amateur" authors like you see here on FiMfiction (seriously, all my love to the people here; you guys and gals are pretty damn good as both people and authors).
In particular, I want to touch on how to not open a story.
A good opening can make or break a story. What you write on that first page should hook the reader, draw them in, introduce them to the world and/or main character(s). It's where your world-building begins, where you set the scene/stage for everything to come. Be it a prologue or jumping right into the story, your first paragraphs are the most memorable part of your story.
So, just as example, let's look at two different opening chapters from two published works. One of which I own as an actual book, the other I got as a free ebook. Both are video game adaptations, but we'll ignore the adaptation issue for now (that's a whole other post for later) and just take them as standalone titles.
STELLARIS
Stellaris is a 4X space game. Build your giant space empire, forge alliances and federations and crush your enemy before you.
The game comes with a bunch of premade races, but you can create your own in surprising depth, from racial traits like xenophobia to the types of planets they like down to what their buildings look like.
I'd recommend it to people who are curious about 4X games, but get overwhelmed by most games in the genre. It's not nearly as complex as most of them are, but ramps up the complexity over time while still keeping pretty much everything understandable.
Just from the sound of it, you'd think it could have a huge expanded universe of fiction, rivalling Star Wars in scale and the stories to be told.
It comes with a free ebook, too! And that ebook is our first story to look at!
Here's the first chapter, our focus for today:
ONE
They called the planet Unity. Discord would have been more
honest.
It had been that way since the first ark ship had landed generations
ago. Half the people of the world argued that the stars
were no place for mankind, and the other half claimed that we
were made from the dust of them, so how could we not want to
return home?
Wars had been fought over less. Humanity could be endlessly
inventive when it came to killing—and why? Fear. That was always
the answer, even when we weren’t sure how to parse the
question.
The question was asked: after the pain and hardship of the
first ark ship, why would humanity want to put itself through
that all again? The original flight of their first fathers was so distant
now that it had become the stuff of legend, and a tale that
grew taller with every telling. But in every grand story there was
a grain of truth. It took a special kind of desperation to subject
yourself to the curse of a generational ship’s endless voyage.
Street-corner prophets stood in the main square of Unity
Prime, the capital, decrying this challenge of the gods. Why risk
their wrath? Why go beyond what they have given us? Why want to
be more? The prophets preached their gospels, and all the while
their words dripped with fear. But it was hard to argue with
the truth: the world’s resources were all but bled dry. There was
nothing more Unity could give. Harvests diminished year on year
as the land soured. Synthetic foods demanded ingredients as rare
and precious as gold dust.And people couldn’t help but wonder why. What had they done
wrong? The truth was that they had done very little. The worst
crimes against Unity lay at the door of generations long dead.
Their truth was a selfish one—they hadn’t cared because it wasn’t
their problem. They wouldn’t be alive to reap the true rewards of
the devastation they sowed, so why should they care? For their
children’s children’s children? Who thinks like that? That kind of
truth is ugly, but no less honest than the ones whispered at night,
lover to loved, lips to ears, barely a breath behind them.
The prophets weren’t the only ones babbling fear. The media
outlets were alive with the constant threats and the promises
that the end was nigh, that we had killed the world and were
living through its death throes. That made it more real for some
people because they still inherently believed what they were told.
Why would the media lie? What did they stand to gain from a
populace living in fear? The answer to that was power. It had
ever been thus: a collusion of influence, opinion shaping and
disinformation done right could rule the world, and done wrong
could break it.
So the Council had invested in escape, reaching for the stars.
So much of what had been common knowledge generations ago
had been lost through complacency, meaning they were forced
to discover it all over again. It had taken thirty years for the first
manned space flight to occur in the wake of tests, vapour trails
ending in explosions and a rain of debris, then satellite launches,
telemetry and technological advances, all of which eventually led
them to finally reach Unity’s first moon.
It wasn’t until then, as the distorted image of humanity’s first
steps on that barren, godless landscape was broadcast, that someone
thought to listen to the stars. And so the role of Listener
Prime was created. Intelligent life was out there. It had to be.
We couldn’t be alone in this universe. The sheer randomness of
life couldn’t be a one-off.
So, good world-building and scene setting, or bad?
Bad. Very bad on both. I won't even mention character introduction, because there are none.
To start with, it sets only the absolute most basic of world details in place, not even giving us enough that you could say "It leaves it to the imagination". It's on another planet that humans colonised and they lost all their prior knowledge and tech. That's pretty much it.
Most stories want you to suspend your disbelief, but this opening wants you to suspend your disbelief with a noose. Kick your common sense out of the door, too.
The largest issue is with consistency of ideas. On the one hand, you have an entirely new planet that's been colonised by humans using an ark ship (it might be a Generation Ship, with entire generations of people born, raised and dying on the journey, it could be a Cryogenic Ship, with the original settlers frozen for the journey, it could even be a Clone Ship, with embryos etc to populate the planet; we're not given enough info to know one way or the other)(scratch that, it's a Generation Ship; I missed that the first couple of times I went over the chapter). That implies a high level of tech, and a certain level of capability and education.
On the other hand, we're expected to believe that the colonists have, after landing, regressed technologically to a state roughly equal to the end of WW2. This is based on the description of the few lines describing the space program; unlike the Generation Ship, there really isn't enough information here to go on. Only that it took them 30 years to reach space again.
On top of that, street-corner prophets preaching their gods' disapproval of space travel is apparently a major thing. Y'know, on this planet that was colonised through space travel.
They don't even have observatories, satellites, or apparently effective farming techniques. Apparently, most of the tech that had once been "common knowledge" was lost through "complacency".
On an entire planet, colonised by a generation ship, presumably crewed by the best and brightest who could go on the journey when it launched, we're expected to believe the following:
1. At no point after colonisation was any kind of satellite launched, for communication, survey, orbital monitoring or just science reasons. In an entirely new solar system.
2. At no point after colonisation was any kind of space travel established. No space stations. No travel to the planet's moons. No space travel in this entirely new system.
3. A planet-wide civilisation was established, starting from a base tech level at least equal to our modern-day Earth (as the bare minimum tech-level present on the ship when it launched), without planet-wide communications such as the internet/equivalent network and/or mobile phones/other wireless long-range communication. I'm unconvinced they even had radio from what we see in the chapter.
4. The entire society regressed without any apparent apocalyptic event that could concievably cause such a regression. It literally says "complacency" when it talks about how technology was lost. If some kind of huge disaster happened, it would make the scenario plausible, or at least something that could be believed, but that's never even hinted at happening.
5. No back-ups of important or useful information, like what is needed for space travel. Surely a generation ship would have multiple back-ups of info dumps on it, storage drives (what might come after SSD?) chock-full of important stuff. Hell, it'd probably have the futuristic version of Wikipedia sitting on a server or four. We're given zero information on if something like that even exists, though; as far as the story is concerned, the generation ship and any systems or resources it may or may not have might as well not exist after the planet's colonised.
6. The planet has been reduced to a state worse than the world in, say, Fallout, in just a few generations. This one is a bit iffy, though; I'm going on the "For their children’s children’s children?" line. At any rate, from the planet's description it sounds more barren than New Vegas in summertime. Again, the planet was colonised by a colony ship. That implies hydroponics and, as is mentioned in one line, synthetic foods.
7. Synthetic foods. Food that requires incredibly rare ingredients (rare and precious as gold dust, according to one line) and presumably advanced tech to make. In a society that has lost their advanced tech. Food that requires rare and precious ingredients is not a sustainable food source and would never be considered viable on a generation ship, where resources are even more scarce.
8. (I almost didn't include this one, but after typing out 7. I figured I might as well.) The idea that the only tech that was lost was anything to do with space. Telescopes, rockets, observatories, satellites, fuels, etc. No SETI program.
9. Huge one to finish off. At no point has there been any attempt to make or maintain contact with Earth. This makes the satellite/space travel issue even more unbelievable.
The second biggest issue is the erratic, unfocused writing that feels like it's trying to be social commentary, witty and thought-provoking, but thinks a nuance is something you should see a doctor about.
It starts with a decent line, leads into an almost alright paragraph about the division between the early colonist generations, then suddenly takes a sharp turn in the next paragraph to talk about how humans are afraid and had fought wars over lesser reasons.
The next paragraph tries to be kinda profound and almost pulls it off on the final line.
We follow that up with a sudden left-turn into religious preachers crying about not challenging the gods, only to about-face and ignore that in favor of environment commentary in the same paragraph. Then it tries to be profound again and remark on caring for the planet for future generations.
After that comes a commentary on Media that's about as subtle as a flaming sledgehammer to the face.
We're almost done, and the Space Race is on... for an entire paragraph, then it's over and suddenly the Listener Prime is a thing and they're the only one listening for intelligent life because the Council Says So.
Bam. Chapter done.
So, here we see what a bad intro chapter looks like
Little to no world-building of any real substance, not logically plausible, and I'm not even sure it's really consistent with its own in-universe logic.
Now, onto the second chapter we're looking at:
Doom: Knee deep in the dead
Doom. The classic FPS game. Simple, and incredibly light on story. Where do you go from such a basic starting point? It's so barebones, almost anything you write's gonna be mostly original ideas.
I recommend the first book, Knee Deep in The Dead. Best in the series by far, it gets wierd in the second book and goes off the rails in the third, only to crash into Crazy Town station and explode in the fourth.
Pardon the formatting, the ebook I copied it out of wasn't formatted that well.
Before the Beginning.
Kefiristan is about as close as you can come to
hell on Earth.
I say that with authority: I've spent the last eighteen months doing a
tour here, trying to keep the Kefiri People's Liberation Army, who call
themselves the "Scythe of Glory," from the throats of the rightist
Khorastisti, who have the backing of Azeri transplants from the south (who
want to keep their enclaves), who are fighting a "dirty war" against
Communist Cuban and Peruvian meres . . . Jeez, you get the picture. It's a
snarled skein of a million bloody threads up here on the top of the world,
in the northern extension of the Karakoram range, between Afghanistan and
Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
We'd just punched through the craggy pass pleasantly known as the "torn
hymen" in the local tongue and come across the small, Muslim city of pik
Nizganij, perched on a mountain peak of 2200 meters.
I stared in horror. Even eighteen months of picking up after the Scythe
of Glory and their Shining Path buddies didn't prepare me for what was left
of pik Nizganij.
It was a Bosch canvas, severed limbs and hollowed- out trunks--eaten
out by animals, I prayed--planted through the fields like stalks of corn,
blood painting doors and walls like the first Passover... except it was
human blood, not lamb's blood.
Corporal Flynn Taggart, Fox Company, 15th Light Drop Infantry Regiment,
United States Marine Corps; 888-23-9912. Everyone calls me Fly, except when
they're pissed.
Fox crept through the town, hell-shocked, trying with- out much success
to count body parts and make a reasonable K1A guess. Fog or an evil cloud
rolled across the mountaintop, shrouding the sprightly red decoration and
muffling our footsteps. It was like we walked along a cotton corridor,
tripping over gruesome reminders that war, especially the virulent hatred of
one tribe for another, throws men back into pre-bronze, pre-agricul- tural
savagery. I wondered how many victims were killed by the victors' bare
hands.
Something moved in the mist.
A shadow, a shape; nothing more. Gunnery Sergeant Goforth froze us with
a slight hiss... Fox is damn-well trained, even for the Light Drop.
Gates stopped next to me; he touched my arm, silently pointing to left
and right. I saw immediately; whatever the shapes were, they surrounded us
from eight o'clock to four o'clock... we might be able to retreat, but we
couldn't flank.
I watched the gunny; Arlene Sanders was whispering something in his
ear. She was our scout, the lightest of the Light Drop. PFC Sanders could
fade into the night so not even a werewolf could sniff her out. My best
buddy.
She might have been more; once, we had--no; we were buddies. We didn't
talk about that night. Anyway, she had Dodd, and I don't separate bookends.
Arlene backed away, backed past me, throwing me a wink as she vanished.
She would swing in a wide arc, ease around behind the still-moving shades,
and report back to the lieutenant and Gunny Goforth via a secured line. I'd
find out soon enough.
I hadn't moved, and neither had the rest of us; I could barely hear
Bill breathing next to me and couldn't hear Dodd or Sheill at all. If we
were lucky, maybe the dinks wouldn't even know we were here; they'd just pad
right on by.
Then Lieutenant Beelzebub came running up, de- manding, "What the hell
is going on?" in his normal speaking voice, an irritating whine.
The lieutenant's name was Weems, actually. I just call him Beelzebub
because he's a fat, sweaty heathen always surrounded by a swarm of gnats.
They like the taste of his perspiration.
The dinks froze as suddenly as we had; no longer moving, they vanished
into the swirling gray. We had just lost whatever surprise we had, lost our
best chance to get out of this encounter without a shot fired... and all
because a buffoon who had been a first lieutenant for three years now
couldn't figure out it was a Medusa drill!
One of them moved; then another. They moved singly, here and there, and
we no longer had a clue where the mass of them was.
Weems began to panic; we'd all seen it before. "Aren't we going to take
them out?" he asked Goforth, who was frantically putting his finger to his
lips. "Somebody should take them out. "
Goforth put his hand to his ear; he was listening to Arlene's report,
trying to stifle the lieutenant with his other hand.
But Weems saw a ghost to his left, a specter to his right. We were
surrounded! In Weems's mind--I use the term loosely--they were Indians, we
were the 7th Cav, and he was Custer.
"The lieutenant isn't going to stand for this!" snapped the lieutenant.
"Goforth, take out those soldiers!"
The gunny broke his own drill. "Sir, we don't even know who they are...
Sanders says they're wearing robes and hoods--"
"Scythe of Glory!" said Weems, again raising his voice.
"No sir, just robed men--"
"Gunny, I gave you an order... now take down those men!"
Arlene flashed past me again. "What the hell's going on?" she hissed.
"Weems wants us to take 'em down. "
"Fly, they're monks! You gotta stop the crazy son of a bitch!"
I was the second-ranking noncom; Goforth would listen to me, I thought.
I hunched over and jogged to the gunnery sergeant. "Gunny, Arlene says
they're monks."
"Taggart, right?" said Weems, as if bumping into me at an
oyster-shucking party.
"Sir, they're just monks. "
"Do you know that for sure? Does anyone know that for sure?"
"Sanders said--"
"Sanders said! Sanders said! Does Sanders have to deal with Colonel
Brinkle every week?"
"Sir," began the gunny, "I think we should recon the group before we
open fire."
Weems looked him in the face, shaking in fury. "As long as I'm giving
the orders here, Marine, you'll obey them. Now take down those men!"
Monks. Freakin' monks!
I snapped. Maybe it was the bodies, or the body parts. The mountain
air, thin oxygen. A gutful of Weems, Arlene's frightened, incredulous stare,
the way Goforth's jaw set and he turned to give the order--a twenty-year
man, he wasn't going to throw it away over a bunch of lousy religious dinks.
But suddenly, it occurred to me that if Weems were lying facedown in
the deep muddy, he wouldn't be giving no orders. Then we could let the
damned monks disap- pear, and nobody would be the loser.
"Scuse me, sir," I said, tapping the looie on the shoulder.
He turned, and I Georged him. Full-body swing; came out of Orlando,
where I grew up. Picked up speed over Parris Island, hooked in at
Kefiristan, and turned off the lights of Mr. Lieutenant Weems in pik
Nizganij.
Alas, they only flickered. Power was restored. The dork didn't have a
glass jaw; have to give him that.
Weems sprawled messily in the mud, and a couple of the boys were on me
like monkeys on a tree. Weems flopped for a bit like a giant spider, then he
found his hands and knees. He glared at me for a moment, an evil smile
cracking his face. "Later," he said. Then he turned back to Goforth. "That
don't mean crap, gunnery ser- geant; now take down those men--or are you
going to frag me, instead?"
Goforth looked at me, looked at Weems, looked at the ground. Then he
clicked his M-92 to rock'n'roll and quietly said, "Fox--take down those
men."
I closed my eyes, listening to powder hiss, bullets crack, the metal
clang of receivers slamming back and home. The screams of the dying. The
shouts of the victors. I smelled the smoke from the smokeless power, the
primer, fresh blood.
I'm in hell, I remember thinking; I'm in hell.
We mopped up the enemy troops in record time. Strange thing; none of
them shot back. Fact, no weapons were found... just fifty-three men ranging
from pre- teen to seventy or eighty, wearing brown robes and hoods, shaved
heads, a couple carrying prayer sticks.
The boys wouldn't get off my back. Weems wouldn't even walk around
where I could see him, the murdering bastard, while he formally charged me
and I opted for a formal court-martial instead of Captain's Mast.
Jesus and Mary, somebody should put a bullet in his brain. I could
taste the trigger. I didn't know how I was ever going to be shriven if I
couldn't feel remorse.
Good or bad?
The world building and scene setting have very little relevance to the rest of the story, and might even be misleading as to what to expect from what is actually a sci-fi story, but it's visceral and atmospheric, setting a tone that's brutal and hellish from the very outset.
It presents a world that's close to current day, based loosely on real events/groups IIRC, without asking the reader to suspend their disbelief much, if at all. Nothing stands out as too unbelievable or outlandish.
The characterisation is where this intro chapter shines. The main character is given a very clear, defined voice and personality, while side characters are given just enough introduction that they're interesting and we see how they relate to the MC.
As much as I love this book (my physical copy has survived many years of use and abuse, and it shows), I readily admit that the first chapter doesn't represent the rest of the story, and that just the prologue will probably give you the wrong idea about the setting. It's military sci-fi, rather than the modern military drama the prologue presents it as. Disbelief will need to be suspended after the prologue, but not as much as you might expect. We're not talking Star Trek here.
So, from these two examples, we get a good example of how to open a story. Introducing the world and characters in a clear, coherent fashion and drawing the reader in, letting them get a good grasp on what's important. Keeping it consistent and flowing, rather than jumping from point to point with every paragraph. Don't give the reader a false impression of what to expect, unless it's deliberate and you're going to subvert expectations.
How you open a story is one of the most important parts. First impressions count, after all.
Well, I hope that helps someone, or at least made for an entertaining read. If it got someone interested in the Doom books, that's even better.
Just... only read the first one. Seriously, it gets wierd after that.
Fics will update as soon as I've got the time. Promise.
I think I found it entertaining, aye, thanks. :)
I agree, and this is also one of the sickest burns of the year. XD
World building, prologues, and setting the scene are crucial elements in creating a captivating story. They lay the foundation for a reader's immersion into a fictional realm. To enhance your writing skills further, I recommend checking out this article https://www.netbooknews.com/tips/effective-tips-for-college-writing-assignments/. It provides valuable insights and techniques that can be applied not only in academic writing but also in crafting engaging narratives. Happy writing!