Where are my writers at?

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I'm working on my third novel in a series: I consider it historical sci-fi, but it's actually fantasy, as so little "sci-fi" is actually sci-fi... "Star Wars" is not sci-fi, it's fantasy, "Blade Runner" is sci-fi.

Someone was saying that writing sci-fi requires no research. Sorry, but this is anything but true! Yes, if you just make things up off the top of your head and base nothing on reality/physics, then you can dazzle people with BS, but that is an art in itself and still requires research. But, if you want to have people actually believe that your "world building" is plausible then you need to research the heck out of things. To keep my ideas fresh I never read modern authors and instead draw my ideas from long since dead authors who wrote outside of my genera. I find that too many people are just aping what is currently popular.

When I get my forth book done I will have my first one edited: why am I doing this? I have a very complex story-arc and to keep an organic flow I need to go back and change things in previous books, "Oh, wait... if I change this part it will build suspense and make much more sense!"

I also write historical fiction, always about California: one of my novellas takes place in the pre-Columbian/Neolithic Central Coast: it took me five years to write 55-pages because I wanted/needed to make sure the ethno-botany was correct, or at least as much as I could get it

I use Wikipedia and:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/site/about_us.html

Just reading these old news papers makes for superior story fodder, "Wait, someone did what in 1906? That is so freakin' cool, I'm totally gunna put that in my book..."

My wife's best friend is a professional editor, and when ever we tell her what I'm doing she needs to know more because it's nothing she's ever heard of

Keep it fresh, by keeping it original

DIVAIR

EDIT: I am also dyslexic so it takes me a long time to do things

Currently I'm working on new short horror stories that I hope to organize into another anthology, and publish on Amazon toward the end of the year.

Wolf, seeing as you're interested in the American Civil War, have you read Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage"?

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73

Here is an audio version with a really good reader:

https://librivox.org/the-red-badge-of-c ... civil-war/

This book is a huge influence on my writing as is "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque.

As a dyslexic I hated English in school, it wasn't until I was in my 40's that my writing blossomed into something very real. The book I owe so much to is Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn": reading that is where I realized that I should write the way people speak. In real life no one really enunciates: instead they slur their words and use lots of contractions.

I get ideas in my head and can have them stuck in there for decades until it suddenly coalesces and I just have to write it down.

DIVAIR

Kraichgauer, who are your influences? Do you know about this book?

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10966

It's called "The Ghost Pirates" by William Hope Hodgson. HP Lovecraft took a lot from him!

Here's an audio book with a good reader:

https://librivox.org/the-ghost-pirates- ... e-hodgson/

It's very creepy and disturbing, especially the way he describes the ghosts

DIVAIR

Give it a listen/read, since you like Lovecraft as much as you do, you'll more than likely enjoy The Ghost Pirates.

So, with your horror, do the protagonists always win? If you kill off an antagonist, is it always satisfying to the protagonist, and therefor, the reader?

In my stories, if I get rid of a bad guy, I always try never to have the good guy do it: instead, they die in a very mundane way, like a car crash, etc., off scene. My thought is that life is rarely if ever truly satisfying and dumb things happen all the time.

Anyway, just trying to have a creative conversation

DIVAIR

I am an avid writer!!

I'm trying to journal every morning during coffee, and I also write poetry and fiction as time allows.....

I've found journaling is the best therapy in the absence of a paid professional

Also, NaNoWriMo!! !!

Ps.... has anyone seen the movie Stranger Than Fiction? As a writer, I found it hilarious.....

I've always been good with reading/writing since I was a kid. But the process of writing a novel is exhausting and I never get through it. I do like the act of worldbuilding my own fantasy world for its own sake. I think I might write some short stories for it instead of a full novel. Oh, and I'm starting to write screenplays now. I don't think they'll ever be optioned and I don't really want to work with the studio system, but it's fun to just plan it all out.

My fantasy world is at a sort of pre-industrial tech level, but with a very ancient style of social organization based around the extended family or clan. Their new technologies are powering the engines of war as the old social order collapses while supernatural threats encroach on fragmented human society.

I'm working on a sci-fi screenplay about a bunch of criminals who clone the daughter of a wealthy financier and raise her to steal her identity as part of a heist.

And another screenplay based on The Unwomanly Face of War, a book that tells a bunch of first hand accounts of the second world war from women in the Red Army and Soviet partisans. The book is a bunch of short accounts from different people and I'm trying to create a story based on one character that would be a composite of several from the book.

Anyone in need of some sci-fi ideas?

In the near-future the President of the United States creates a set of weapons that makes foreign enemies disappear. He accidentally uses on himself one day and the UN investigates. The UN covers it up by using old video clips and using CG.

A young man named Charlie receives messages from a group of scientists looking for people to conduct experiments on. Charlie dismisses the messages as fake because he believes his path of self-destruction will continue. Charlie agrees one day to undergo an experiment in which he is bitten by a radioactive mouse. Charlie develops the ability to bite through metal.

Acknowledging the fact that humanity will end, thousands of humans travel into Earth’s distant future to avoid the destruction of Earth. They arrive in a time where to their surprise; a new version of Earth awaits their arrival. New forms of humanity have been created and many animal species have evolved being recognition. In this new Earth, the newcomers attempt to build a home. As more people become desperate to go to the new Earth and literally fight for the limited number of places available. As more people go to the new Earth, they experience different versions of history along the way with increasingly interesting results. When the population gets to well above capacity levels allowed, it becomes an indication that the future colony will reach a point where the population will suffer.

The crew of a spaceship named The Aquarius are forced to take weapons that can save cities in need. The crew refuse to be given the weapons citing morals and against breaking the laws of the force that they are members of. The crew soon discover that the weapons have good usage after all; the ability to plant food on the entire planet. The crew is soon forced to consider what to do after; get rid of the weapons or be paid even more to continue their valiant works of feeding every single citizen of Earth.