Mid-Febuary 2024 - with no discussion of Valentine's Day
Hi Everyone,
I’m deep into my first draft of the follow-on book to Hope is the Thing With Feathers. For now I’m just writing by loosely following my outline. I’ll need to do some research before the next draft—but research often becomes a deep gravity well for me and I want to get words on the page (or in this case saved on a hard drive).
Idea Generation
A few weeks ago, a local group of teenage SciFi writers invited me to talk to them. One of the concepts I discussed was ‘Idea Gardens.’ I’ve stumbled upon many forms of this over the years and my favourite is calling it a compost heap. I think this would work for any type of creative endeavour, and it has worked for me in both fiction and non-fiction. Here, I’ll be discussing this based on fiction.
Just like dumping a wide variety of inputs such as kitchen waste, garden trimmings, sea weed, frass (yep, my household generates this stuff), etc into a pile results in fertile soil, exposing ourselves to a wide swath of stories from different genres and mediums (novels, movies, video games, etc) can help you generate ideas.
Anyone who writes fiction needs a lot of ideas. There are the big ideas that become plots and themes—but there is also so many little ideas needed. These sort of questions need to answered:
what is in this world?
what do characters do for fun?
where do the characters come from?
what do they like to eat?
This list could go on. A lot of these types of world building questions have mundane, somewhat obvious answers, and maybe that’s okay for your story. But, if you’ve gathered a compost heap from a wide variety of sources, the stuff coming out of the bottom is probably delightfully quirky, or maybe unexpected—these are the kinds of details that can stick with readers.
Something Awesome
In general I’m a huge fan of notebooks and sketchbooks (especially notebooks full of sketches). I love the all the quirky details in Mattias Adolfsson’s sketchbooks. He’s building some fantastically weird worlds.
Cheers,
Jeannette
If you’re looking for a space adventure to avoid the mid-winter doldrums, check out these:
We’re a world beset by crises. Climate change, income inequality, racism, pandemics, an almost unmanageable tangle of issues. Sometimes it’s hard to look ahead and see a hopeful future. We asked sci-fi writers to send us stories about ways to fix what’s wrong with the world. From the sixty-five stories we received, we chose the twelve most amazing (and hopefully prescient) tales. Dive in and find out how we might mitigate climate change, make war obsolete, switch to alternative forms of energy, and restructure the very foundations of our society. The future’s not going to fix itself.
My Books:
Hope is the Thing With Feathers - direct or from the shops
Encoded Orbits
Fractured Orbits - direct or from the shops
The Alien Algorithm - direct or from the shops
Subject 34 - direct or from the shops
Settler Chronicles
Day 115 on an Alien World - direct or from the shops
Far Side of the Moon - direct or from the shops
Abandoned Ships, Hijacked Minds - direct or from the shops
The Alien Artifact - direct or from the shops
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