i did a word count for my sci-fi epic

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this is why they have editors. Heck, even Literotica will throw your stuff out if it hasn't been edited...

Give it a shot.

They still do in some places IIRC (for US sci-fi IIRC)



There is internet & self editing



As a Star Wars Fan-keep your universe intact and don't contradict it resulting in retcons. LISTEN TO THE FANS as they often know more about your universe than YOU do (at least in George Lucas' case )



was thinking of doing that as a trope to trap an enemy fleet in the inner system of a red dwarf-then blow it up and hopefully it takes the enemy fleet out in the process.



you pulled a Sernidpal you bastard
well actually a Lensman XD



Do you have thousands of spaceships beating the s**t out of each other and beamspamming and firing all missiles at the enemy

Last edited by Warsie on 13 Oct 2009, 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Pfft-My story has 4channers nuking enemy planets with kiddie porn from orbit.
And autistic people in spacceeeee commanding fleets of thousands of ships-while keeping balloons by them to comfort them while in battle.
And [] flying in space in giant penis ships fighting the 'normals' and defending civilians on planets.
And a detailed ship to ship combat system (e.g. fleshing out ship classes, names, and how people invade planets-im having land battleships aka bolos as anti-orbital weapons-as it takes time to set up dedicated ground anti-orbital weapons and the enemy fleet in space has an advantage. not with my land ironclads XD

Also the reason the 'war' (and a civil war of one of my factions) finally breaks out is because one faction can't stand the other faction's 'subtle' []-waving and other bullshitting and veiled threats, and punches the enemy side first That's what you get for being sarcastic bastards

No non-humans. Well depends on what you consider humans as i have some genetically modified humans with 'animal' parts and whatnot (e.g. Furries in Space, they did it to become the animals they identified with).

Also LOTS of political discussion, wrangling, etc. Though I'm going to put more focus on the 'small man'-one of my political factions would be made of regular people who made it to power and the first stage of the 'war' is guerilla warfare in the back-ass ends of the galaxy-lending a bias to starfighter carriers and small warships for the Resisty.

Also as my first sentence shows-LOTS of internet references, as well as trying to use cultursl and religious referenes from around the world. No limitign to western ideas and POVS-given this is the future when all peoples are in SPACE.



I'd like to make some of the Star Wars novels into movies. Though I'll rape the continuity of the EU by adding a few zeroes when the amount of ships go blasting each other. I'd like o do Gundam Seed & Seed Destiny as US-made movies and well flesh the uni out/make it make sense.

[quote="ZEGH8578
in my novel, one thing i do is to cut a bit down on visual descriptions. i am very brief, at most a sentence or two to describe an entire city, landscape or space vessel, cus i go by colors "athmospheres" the general mood. suits and equipment and guns arent described at all, at most VERY briefly "a short rifle".[/quote]

That's weird. You don't flesh out your uiniverse

This is a serious thread, you know. And don't be so foul mouthed, even if you are trying to be facetious.

warsie, trust me, i know about the universe

and your right, im not fleshing it out. its not meant for sci-fi fans, its meant for whoever wants to read it ;]

i refrain from fleshing it out cus i find it pretentious.
the characters know only what they find out, the narrator knows only a small bit more, the author couldnt care less:]

btw, the major fleet at the most, has seven million space ships

I am serious. Everything I typed earlier that I said in my uni is happening. Though yes I'll stop with the cursing




good, good



awwww



good. how big are they

it depends, without telling too much the story spans over 7000 years

so many fleets come and go, theres also an aging issue for the people involved, BUT

i operate with a "realistic" scheme of the majority of the vessels being "light fighters", meaning they have a crew of 1. the bigger the ships, the fewer.
only in the 1st book do i operate w "motherships" cus after theyre gone, all the major powers are also gone, and "motherships" become too costly/ridiculous compared to a much much larger fleet of many many more smaller aggressive vessels.

so... in short... i avoid too many visual descriptions, cus i want the reader to imagine things, but the smallest vessels would be roughly van-sized and the biggest in the story are "very very big" described as being fit with half a million personell.

the final fleet described has around hundred and fifty million personell (most are infantry), but thats... "a long story" ;]

after all, they ARE at war with entire worlds, not mere countries

No big battle fleets. My story is not so much a space opera as a futuristic espionage/conspiracy thriller with an unusual twist. At least the first book, anyway.

i got fleets, but i wouldnt call it a "space opera" cus i dont really focus that much on _space_ per se, really. im listing up the epic stuff here, cus its more... "epic"

im not really sure how to categorize my story, so i class it as a sci-fi cus it takes place in space, in space-ships for much of the time. its much more of an "epic chronicle" about one specific captain and his immediate crew (the few who survive through the whole story) and how their personalities also change, to different degrees and in different directions according to character, but yeah, i guess thats the _main_ theme, time and change, focused around 2-3 main protagonists.

space, fleets, battles come second, and are a red-thread to bind everything together. a major thread of course, but its not the main theme, like in "star wars" or "star trek"

You ever heard of or watched Blake's 7? That is a fairly different science-fiction series. It could be called the precursor to Firefly, because much of what Firefly did, Blake's 7 did first. I dunno whether your ship's crew are meant to be outlaws, outcasts or criminals like in these two shows, but Blake's 7 might be something you should try to look at, as it emphasised character over space battles (although there were a few of them too).

heh i dunno either one of them :] but yeah, character focus is the main thing yes. but then again i wrote _quite_ a lot, so i take my time on the sci-fi bits as well, battle scenes and so on. but the main focus is indeed on the characters.

and no, theyre not outcasts or criminals, but they are "the best thats left" after the major powers crumble, if you imagine all the powers fall away, and privates and grunts have to take over as presidents and generals. roughly so anyway. i guess its the "epic" part, "normal grunts" turning the tables, and turning the wars around, "and so on"

Sounds a little like Firefly, but I recommend that you watch, or at least read about, either Firefly or Blake's 7. It might give you some extra ideas.

Actually, here's a trailer for the second series of Blake's 7, done for the first DVD set. The premise of Blake's 7 can be pretty much summed up by the final words of the trailer...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIHPCAGMCts[/youtube]

VILA: Where are all the good guys?
BLAKE: You could be looking at them.
AVON: What a very depressing thought.

actually yeah that quote sums it up pretty well

"where are the good guys!?"

one thing tho, i am using a sortof cruel and macabre humor the whole way. its not a "silly" humor, but simply making it so that the reader can laugh at the violence.

also, for a sci-fi, im "not touching" aliens a lot.

i doa 4th wall breach every time "humanoidism" is brought up, reminding the reader to simply not worry about it (the fact that "humanoid" means descendance from primates. earthly creatures. its a scientific impossibility in space), i operate w some 10 worlds, all inhabited by human-like humanoids. i almost never describe people by their looks, but these are all assumed to look just like people, i mention a green beard _once_

non-humanoid aliens are the arch-nemesis creature in the story, and are also not explained a lot, neither their nature nor how they look, other than what the narrator/reader are to observe along the way.

i like that style too, no explanations, no flashbacks, only chronology, foreward foreward :]

500,000 words?

That is truly AMAZING!! !

Actually, you've just reminded me of a problem that I had when writing this novel. I decided that I wanted to avoid usage of the word human, as technically speaking, any sentient species has a similar word for themselves, so I decided that each species would, after first contact, have new names. Deciding on a new term for human beings was actually a mild difficulty, but I came up with something better than the usual 'Terran' or 'Earthling'. I was tempted, at one stage, to use the term 'Tellurian', which Robert Holmes used in two of his Doctor Who scripts, Carnival of Monsters and The Two Doctors. I decided against it, and made a name up, albeit not out of thin air. It's an appropriate one.

I've also made a point of not making English the universal language of the galaxy. English (or at least what the English language will become in maybe a millennium, filled with loanwords and such) still exists, and is spoken throughout human territories, but there is a universal language, one that can be spoken by all alien species in this series (I took anatomy and physiology into consideration, because, although the two main alien species are humanoid, they still have different physiologies. This particularly comes into play when thinking about languages) as well as humanity.

One thing that I try to do is give relatively plausible science to my novel. No interspecies breeding (although there are hybrids, albeit through genetic engineering, and even that can be a problem), transporters (I use the Doctor Who term 'transmat') do not actually break people up and put them back together again, but uses a mechanism which I will keep secret (to avoid plagiarism more than for fear of derision), FTL travel is possible, but restricted to within the galaxy, but time travel is not possible.

i use the word "humanoid" (which in norwegian would be a latin/foreign word) and i avoid the norwegian word for "human" instead using "peoples" and other synonyms.
since my whole works use various forms of humor, i can more easily "get away" with not explaining myself, and using humanoids would be a decision of pure "artistic license" nothing else :] its just easyer, plus it serves my story: to depica "peoples" but unbound by local cultures, since they are mostly confined to space or moving from planet to planet.



i write in norwegian, so nobody's EVER gonna speak norwegian in space, so culturally its a whole different situation. you speak a language allready taken for granted as a "leading language" i dont have that issue at all. the language i use is narrative, nothing more nothing less. a few times i use "foreign" language are during situations where the protagonists are encountering a language they cannot understand. for fun i also write a short story with all the dialogue in an invented language, where i quickly used excel to keep track of words and grammar as i went inventing it nothing too complex, and i only invented words and grammar that i actually used in dialogue
the non humanoids do not talk, except for during diplomacy, here they use recorded "humanoid" voices, and a wide range of recorded languages, and in one semi-hallucinative state that one of the characters have, he is able to recieve their "meaning" through his own voice, in his own head, in a suspiciously fluent language.
i never explain it, but i hope to hint that talking isnt something these creatures do, and whenever you hear them talk, its usually some sort of manipulation they perform. they use it honestly tho, and are also very honest.
in fact, many of my protagonists may tell lies, or may simply give ignorant statements, i like that everyone cant know everything



oh yes, same here. i actually include eroticism (for realism ) and there one of the encounters are excused by "finding out if they fit" it is stated clearly that peoples from different planets are sterile, and the refugees from a lost planet are becoming increasing inbred because of this.
i include a teleport, calling them: teleport i assume they know the concept from their own sci-fi, and they discover (almost stargate ish) a single connection of teleports between 6-7 planets. they look like boxes, you enter and close the door behind you *zap* basically, but arent really useful anymore, since theyre ancient, and their entrances/exits are buried deep under the ground/jungles and stuff. so.. my only teleports are totally useless
FTL is possible, but explained almost nothing, cus i dont wanna come off as pretentious. it is clumsily(on purpose) explained roughly as star-trek-ish "warp" (manipulation of "wormholes") but i dont touch any of this vocabulary, i simply try to avoid it. i even increase the ships top speeds, just for the hell of it at some point, once they travel faster than light allready, your pretty much free to "play the big drum" i think, as long as your careful

and time travel = impossible, indeed. also make some narrative points about time only being the reality your in (and not some geographical destination where you can go to)

No androids!

No robes!

No laser rays!! !
I include "plasma balls" in the later stories, but only on large space-ships, used only to "soften" "energy shields" (shields! a must! ) i consider "energy weapons" to be, well, energy wasteful hard projectiles also make for a lot more "raw" action.

another "theme" of my story is that high diplomacy and great and established powers fall quite early on, and so the rest of it has a grand, but sortof amateurish feel. the tremendous size of the fleet i mentioned (7 mill ships) is due precisely to the amateurishness of the leaders, who really have no clue how many ships they need, and decided to just pump it up to be safe