Space, Technology, Post Apocalyptic, Drama, Time Travel, too much?

[Brian Rogers]

I've been nurturing a self published work for some time now. I began the writing process as fired up and excited as any new writer and only a hundred pages in discovered my work was shaping up to have the make of a trilogy. I also discovered my genres were all over the place due to the epic nature of the setting and plot.

In the first book I introduce a futuristic empire in space setting, along with technological and post-apocalyptic themes. The setting and POV of different characters takes readers from devastated planets to the center of the empire with all the grandeur one would expect. My question arises as I continue into the second and third novels of this series/trilogy (we'll see if I'm inspired to continue the story).

I add in a lot of political drama and crime/underworld drama to my futuristic setting. For a time it remains focused but I'm finding the plot is taking me back to a theme of apocalyptic chaos while adding in a time travel theme, deeper romantic theme, then a stronger military drama and loses some of the futuristic space empire ideas I based the entire story on.

Would changing the settings and themes so often, even if it seems the plot warrants it, confuse a reader more than attract them? Do you have any examples where this multiple themed approach failed or succeeded?

I am prepared to re-write the entire thing now that I'm a far more experienced writer, but I want to determine what sort of limits an Epic Sci-Fi story should hold to in order to keep the interest of the reader who picked it up for that type of genre in the first place. Thanks for any tips or advice!

 

[tinkerdan]

I'm not sure how much I can help because I'm Mr. character driven guy. So far you have a setting or several types of settings and some political drama crime drama possible distopia or apocalypse with military drama leanings and some deep romance and time travel.

Not much mention of characters. Once you flesh out this world it will make for a great guide to the real story so it's good that you are so ready to rewrite because I wrote mine long ago and then rewrote it recently about ten times over before I got it close to where I liked it.

But let's get back to the characters. After you roll out all the scene footage and such you need to put that aside and find someone whose story you will tell because that's likely to change the whole landscape of what you flesh out in the beginning. And as I said right now you haven't touched that here. For me that would mean that even with all of that and making it epic it would all be too little.

Don't get me wrong. It's great to have all the backdrop and the world building out of the way and having the added levels of conflict that might enter into the picture with all the different dramas and the science and technologies that are tagged along with them but those really don't make the story for me. They are the place and frame in which someone lives their life and I look for an up close and personal view of how that person navigates through and interacts with the awesomeness of the vast universe around them.

So even though in this vast universe one person might be a tiny speck that can hardly make an impact in the whole and the outcome I still would feel empty if there was no one to relate to or to try to understand or to get to know. So no your epic doesn't sound like too much at this point, it sounds like too little.

 

[Mourning Star]

I do find it takes a little more effort as a reader to follow shifts from POV to POV when those characters are in very different places (or times). There is always frustration at leaving behind the character and story I was just reading and trying to remember where this other character is and what is going on from three chapters ago that I read yesterday. It certainly can work but it is one of those dangerous speed bumps where a reader can give up.

I'd be interested in hearing more details about what you've got going on.

Orson Scott Card claims that most stories are dominated by one of four elements: Milieu (Setting), Idea (Mystery), Character, or Event (Plot). Does your story lean toward one of these in focus or importance to you?

 

[Brian Rogers]

Mourning Star, I haven't heard that before - Orson Scott Card claims that most stories are dominated by one of four elements: Milieu (Setting), Idea (Mystery), Character, or Event (Plot) - I would say my story is dominated by setting and character mostly, although the plot events unfold in an epic style so eventually readers will be caught up in the action/events/plot. If you were to ask me what I'm most excited about though it would be my setting/technology set up and that excitement does come across for readers. I do also love my characters as they start off as seemingly cliche but develop depth and realism the more you learn about them and the more they experience. I want readers to be very emotionally tied to them by the time the larger plot starts to pick up (end of first book going into second).

I completely understand the frustration of switching POV to POV as well and I actually wanted some amount of that for readers to urge them to continue reading. I do it purposely with that frustration in mind. I want you to feel like "dang it, I wanted to know more!" but I don't make it too painful where you feel all your emotions are at a high then the next chapter totally interrupts you. I've been through that and want to give readers the ride they will enjoy but be pulled along at the same time.

My concern is that the plot eventually leads to an unexpected time traveling theme that only lasts a few chapters and some people, including myself to a certain degree, may see adding a time travel theme as a cheesy way to solve a major plot development. The issue arises for the third book which then does not use any more time travel but also loses much of the technology the first two books are based around (went back in past). It's still space and futuristic but the focus at that point is completely on character and plot.

I simply don't know if I should rework the entire over-arcing plot line so I won't need to use any time travel at all (this will totally change the third book). Doing so won't really affect my characters initially or any of their development or even the setting until the second book, but I really like the mysterious over-arcing plot and don't want to kill it if people believe all the theme changes aren't cheesy, that they can work if my characters and plot are convincing enough to need the theme/setting changes. I know I'm rambling, I appreciate your input!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I would hazard a guess that popping a time travel element in for a few chapters in the middle of things and then not using it again would annoy the heck out of me. It sounds a bit lazy, and if you can indeed rework the plot line so that the gratuitous time travel isn't needed, I would suggest that you do so. I have nothing against time travel -- in fact, one of my WIPs is all about time travel -- but if it's not featured in the entire series and just pops in for a cameo, it would be irritating.

 

[Brian Rogers]

I would hazard a guess that popping a time travel element in for a few chapters in the middle of things and then not using it again would annoy the heck out of me. It sounds a bit lazy, and if you can indeed rework the plot line so that the gratuitous time travel isn't needed, I would suggest that you do so. I have nothing against time travel -- in fact, one of my WIPs is all about time travel -- but if it's not featured in the entire series and just pops in for a cameo, it would be irritating.

Thought so as well. The technology in the books does drive towards all sorts of new inventions so the idea that time travel could be invented in the way I describe would make sense to readers and I could weave it in as new tech characters throughout the book mention would be a good to have (people in this story expect new inventions and technology from their government), it just gets iffy using this new invention, invented at just the perfect time as the only way to solve a major crisis. Although coincidences can be used as a twist or hinted at for perceptive readers throughout I just need to get more perspective on if it would feel too contrived and hurt things overall. Thanks for your input!

 

[Brian Rogers]

Don't get me wrong. It's great to have all the backdrop and the world building out of the way and having the added levels of conflict that might enter into the picture with all the different dramas and the science and technologies that are tagged along with them but those really don't make the story for me. They are the place and frame in which someone lives their life and I look for an up close and personal view of how that person navigates through and interacts with the awesomeness of the vast universe around them.

So even though in this vast universe one person might be a tiny speck that can hardly make an impact in the whole and the outcome I still would feel empty if there was no one to relate to or to try to understand or to get to know. So no your epic doesn't sound like too much at this point, it sounds like too little.

Allow me to clarify: I do have a great core group of characters already built and fleshed out. I was strictly asking a setting/genre question.

In regards to my characters, they begin for the reader cliche almost encouraging a reader to focus at first more on the setting which is very interesting. Eventually though I develop them significantly and as a reader, you are now familiar with my world/setting/technology so I want you focusing more on my characters and their interactions and experiences. "Get to know them", as you say. As soon as you are familiar with my characters and how they would react I ramp up the plot development so the first book ends with readers excited to know more. They already love one character or two, possibly more, and also hate maybe one or two as well. The setting and technology is fleshed out even more in the second book as well as character development and once again as readers understand the setting I ramp up the plot along with the character development to drive towards a meaningful third book.

My problem arises when I get there because while the characters you've come to know and love don't suddenly change on you, the setting/theme of the book does. The over-arcing plot changes and the third book seems more geared as a romantic military space drama than the conclusion to a scifi epic. I'm almost tempted to either kill the third book entirely or make this into a longer series which develops on its own making the first two books more introductions and background rather than the main story. By the end of the series as it is today, it's my characters driving everything more than a plot or setting. I'm just like you "Mr. character driven guy"!

 

[Toby Frost]

Time travel is a tricky one as it is such a momentous thing, which such huge ramifications, that I would feel that something had gone wrong if it wasn’t central to the concept of a novel. Either characters discover it, and it dominates their thoughts for the rest of the story, or else it’s part of life, in which case it would be as central to daily life as, say, the car to a modern person or the concept of nuclear war to a person in the 1950s. It would totally shake the world up (and from a science point of view, is probably in a different league to space travel, etc). Also, when people go back in time, I always feel that they should be going to somewhere very different. I remember a fantasy novel I once read where some characters went back in time, and it was very much like the generic fantasy land from which they’d come. It felt a bit pointless then. So I think this could be a problem.

In terms of changing style from book to book, I think it would work provided that the change wasn’t too drastic. A novel that starts out as a brutal drama in a prison and then becomes a romantic comedy when the characters are released probably won’t feel right owing to the shift in tone. An entirely separate book that centres on a different aspect of the same setting, though, could work fine. It’s hard to tell without seeing it, though.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Well in some sense all the elements that you mention could be said to be involved in many books - Dune is 'Space Empires' with future tech, not post-Apocalyptic but there's a bit of 'survivor fiction' when Paul and his mother is left to die on Arrakis, boy meets girl of course a bit later, politics abounds with all the jostling between the different factions, there is a bit of military action and although not time travel, Paul has his superhuman prescience which is just as far fetched...

So in short, epics have a lot of scope for a lot of things. That's why they are epics. It needs to have a coherent plot and make sense overall, but that's the writers job to ensure this. Other epic space opera flits quite happily between different settings that exist on different parts of their universe, so don't feel like you can't write it that way.

As for switching PoV between characters, I actually quite like it - sometimes a book written from the viewpoint of one person can be a bit turgid. You have a massive universe to explore, it is only natural you want to put a few PoV's in place in different places and settings to shine a few spotlights on it. Some people don't like this, others do - it's one of these things that you will never be able to satisfy 'hardcore' supporters of both camps , so I would advise just write the story the way you prefer and not worry about it.



However to voice some concerns - I'd go with the others that time travel could be highly problematic. If for example you were to introduce it to merely solve a plot point then go on without mentioning it again - no, that would stretch the credulity of many readers to breaking point. You seem to imply that is the case, therefore just on what you've written above I'd drop it. However it's difficult to tell what you really intend to do with it, so possibly it may work. Best to write it the way you want, then test it with Beta readers - if the time travel bit gets universally panned then, I'm afraid, be ready to wrench it out and re-write without it.

In regards to my characters, they begin for the reader cliche almost encouraging a reader to focus at first more on the setting which is very interesting.

Right this sentence of yours rang alarm bells at me, this is a terrible idea and I would suggest you rethink this. You are making assumptions about the readers that are very dangerous - there are plenty of readers that will just ditch your book unfinished after a dozen chapters if they meet cliché after cliché at the start with the characters that will easily outweigh your hopes that the setting with drag them through. This is a bit like selling someone a Lamborghini chassis with a lawnmower engine inside it. You are in effect telling them - "Don't worry, wait a bit longer and pay a bit more and we'll get a proper engine in that."

You also can't make the assumption that everyone will find your setting interesting - some may, some may have come across it before in some manner, some may not care.

What's so difficult with having good, vibrant characters being fleshed out from the start as they go about your universe? Especially the fact that you are writing a trilogy. You need to start with a bang with a book that is strong as possible on all fronts. Why should I a reader even pick up the second book if you are deliberately giving me clichés? It's shoddy! You need to sell me something that is meaningful on all three books.

Later on you say:

The setting and technology is fleshed out even more in the second book as well as character development and once again as readers understand the setting I ramp up the plot along with the character development to drive towards a meaningful third book.

There is a big danger you will end up trying to sell two lemons before we get to the punnet of strawberries and cream. Can you not give us strawberries and cream all three times?

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

For me the thing that screams loudest is that you need a clear and consistent world build right from the start. It's fine to have all these different features in it, but they have to gel and they have to always be there. If you have time travel in there in some manner, it has to be in the rest of the book as some part of the world build even if it isn't used. You can't just invent it and forget it. It's simply too fundamental for that.

So here I'm thinking of something like Fringe where time travel was there from the start in the form of the mysterious observers, but didn't become a major thematic element until much later. If it hadn't been there already in whatever form, it would not have worked for the audience.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Brian Rogers]

You are making assumptions about the readers that are very dangerous - there are plenty of readers that will just ditch your book unfinished after a dozen chapters if they meet cliché after cliché at the start with the characters that will easily outweigh your hopes that the setting with drag them through. This is a bit like selling someone a Lamborghini chassis with a lawnmower engine inside it. You are in effect telling them - "Don't worry, wait a bit longer and pay a bit more and we'll get a proper engine in that."

Wow GREAT analogy and thank you for the input! When I refer to my characters being cliche I don't think I'm being descriptive enough. One of my biggest pet peeves when reading is a character who is so one dimensional its unbelievable. Cliche really is the WRONG word to use, I was just typing really late at night and didn't take the time to think that through properly.

My characters have natural personalities with both good and bad, daring and timid, but there's a foundation a reader can relate to immediately as my characters both begin at childhood. So rather than cliche I should say anyone reading would relate at some level immediately to their child-like personalities (they are children) and understand why they are the way they are based on how they are raised/genes. The cliche idea is really more of a stereotype idea. I want to play off of that to allow a reader to fit my characters into people they know in their own lives (Later I make a point of showing how we can break out of our stereotypes and how stereotypes are in fact a juvenile idea that have no bearing in reality, but in beginning I don't bring that underlying theme into play, I focus more on setting and world building around young relatable characters). Their parents on the other hand are fully fleshed out 100% real human beings who you could meet walking down the street today. The setting is realistic for what I describe happened and how it all ended up getting that way, at least realistic enough to eventually become a non-factor within the story, you just know why characters do certain things or what characters are talking about when they use phrases that would have no meaning in our world. I simply don't want to introduce the plot themes which will span the entire series before a reader has a stable understanding of the universe the characters live in.

Also, I'm struggling trying to describe all this without getting too detailed about my book. I love everyone's advice, but if I explain why time travel would make sense to a reader to be a minor invention (rather than an world altering event, which I also do have) I'd need to explain how it's not really physical time travel. The laws of physics in my series DO apply, but I change one interpretation of String Theory (for you hard sci-fi fans!) and with that change theoretically technology no longer needs to be bound by time. If I'm supposed to reveal all in these posts I certainly will as I'd love your interpretations of what I've created but frankly I've not been a part of a forum such as this and don't know if getting into all the details is appropriate or just giving you surface level as I have been is enough. Seems that you'd all be more than willing to critique my core ideas so if that's appropriate I will lay it all out for you guys. The trouble is without knowing how my tech works, your perception when I mention time travel is much different than what actually is taking in place in my setting. It still may be a lazy plot trick and it still may need to go though, so again I really appreciate all your input so far!

 

[tinkerdan]

What I would suggest or advise is that if you haven't already started writing, you should. Also put in more posts to participate in other threads perhaps check out the critique section and participate in that so that after you have some pages started you can submit the beginning of novel one which would be more helpful than all the explanation about the world and science.

The problem with the really great or awesome worlds and science we come up with is that they are mostly great and awesome in our minds and often it's too easy for people to poke holes in everything and sometimes it's better to explain less and just work on the worlds rules and making sure the story and characters adhere to the rules. So in a way what is more awesome than the science and world building is how your characters respect the laws of physics in that universe. Which is what brings us back to the characters.

The reason it might be helpful for you to get this all started is that often where we think the story will start is more natural order rather than organic to the story and it's not until you get some pages down that you discover that although it makes sense to start the story when they are children the truth is the most interesting part of the story might start when they are teens or for those that lead the more boring life it starts at adulthood. But this might also be contingent on what your target is because if you are targeting children or really young adults then it might work to start out at childhood. If you are targeting the more mature end of young adult and higher you will likely need an interesting character who is that age so either the first book focuses on someone else or you start the story where the story really starts which is when the characters are closer to your target audience.

Honestly speaking if you could put all your science and world building down on paper and set it aside as a reference with the understanding that some things the reader wont need to know, but you need to know to keep your facts straight then you could get started on the real story.

Unfortunately the real story will contain characters and they will determine how you need to tell the story and their story will help determine how much science and setting you will need to start portioning out for the reader. If you chose to make the science and setting your characters then you have a challenge ahead of you, but it's not impossible. You just have to decide what is exciting and interesting about that character's story that your reader will want to continue reading.

Lets take for instance Cordwainer Smith's Norstrillia. There's a novel that has a prologue and the story really doesn't start until page 5. There four and a half pages of world building. But this is Cordwainer and so his world building is done in a tongue and cheek manner that makes it entertaining though for me not enough because the book sat on my shelf for a long time before I finally decided to go to chapter one where the story starts.

You need to find the place the story starts and hopefully that won't be in the middle of book two because that's too late. More than that is you need to find where the story starts for the reader, because that's the one who will keep putting the book down while wondering when it is going to start. That's a harder spot to locate because we wear writer blinders that keep drawing us to the beginning of our world building as the start of everything.

Consider Genesis one
In the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. (And so forth...)

The story doesn't begin until Genesis three.

Now the serpent proved to be the most cautious of all the wild beasts of the field...

Ahead of that is a whole lot of world building to get you to the story and I suppose it worked for the book because there was already a full mailing list for the readers.

A writer of fiction needs to get to beginning of the story not the beginning of the world building. The world can sort itself out amidst the actions that takes-moves the story forward. Sometimes the best spot is where the main character has to hit the ground running.

 

[Piousflea84]

Brian,

There is nothing wrong for a multi-book series to have totally different settings and themes despite being in the same universe. Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness In The Sky, and The Children of the Sky are all really good stories even though one is a galaxy-spanning super-high-tech epic, one is a claustrophobic slower-than-light space pirate story, and one is a super-low-tech political conspiracy drama. Or to use the Orson Scott Card example, you could compare Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind.

IMO, the key to the "setting-swapping" epic series is that each setting has to be equally compelling. For example, Ender's Human-Formic War is completely different from Speaker's Novinha/Pequenino mystery but they are both completely readable stories by themselves. If you want to write three books with one grandiose imperial political drama, one post-apocalyptic criminal underworld tale, and one gritty military campaign with a romantic twist... each story has to be able to stand on its own feet. You can't expect readers to have the patience to deal with a major plot or character element in Book 1 that doesn't make any sense until it is explained in Book 3.

Your comments on time travel are very worrisome. Time travel is a profoundly world-changing and world-distorting plot element, and using time travel as a one-off event is almost always a mistake. From the moment the reader first encounters time travel, she will question every single plot point that she reads (as well as going back to previous plot points) asking, "Why didn't someone travel back in time to prevent that?" Now if time travel is central to your entire universe then people are willing to suspend quite a bit of disbelief. After all, nothing in Terminator or Back to the Future was intended to be plausible to begin with, and the entire New Star Trek universe only exists because Spock Prime went back in time.

However, if the reader believes that time travel was written in just to make a plot problem go away, they will rightfully condemn it as a deus ex machina. For example, Movie Superman Time Travel was incredibly cheesy even for an old superhero movie, and if you tried to write that kind of ending in a novel no one would ever take it seriously.

 

[Brian G Turner]

only a hundred pages in discovered my work was shaping up to have the make of a trilogy

There's nothing wrong with that. However, it's so important to simply get a first draft completed, so that you can even begin to get an idea of how everything may or may not fit together. At this early stage it's ordinary to have many ideas, and recognise many possibilities - but as the nature of your story develops and grows in the writing of it, you'll find those possibilities narrow into a smaller range of probabilities, IMO.

I also discovered my genres were all over the place due to the epic nature of the setting and plot.

I remember going through a similar phase, but that was because I wasn't reading enough to understand what defines a genre. No matter your story, and volume of characters, it will have a central theme of some sort. That will in effect decide your main genre. That doesn't preclude the inclusion of elements from other genres.

 

[Gawian]

I know it's a TV series, rather than a book series, so imo it would've been easier for them, but take a look at the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

That had a lot themes.

Typical Sci-Fi humans v robots.
Post-apocalyptic. (12 colonies get nuked)
Political Intrigue/Thriller. (2-3 Presidential Debates through the series)
Religious debate. (Underlying theme of the whole show)
Crime/Underworld (Terrorism and Black Markets)
Moral Drama (Episodes on Abortion and such.)
At some points, it even seemed like an InterStellar Soap Opera, lol.

That had so many different themes in it, some people don't like it because there's so much going on, but I think it really worked.

 

[Brian Rogers]

Wow thank you for all the ideas, advice and just well thought out answers. I really appreciate you guys taking so much time out of your day!

What I would suggest or advise is that if you haven't already started writing, you should. Also put in more posts to participate in other threads perhaps check out the critique section and participate in that

I have started posting elsewhere (last night found the challenge posts) so hopefully you'll start to see some actual writing and I will definitely submit some writing in the critique section. I actually already completed the first book and self published it on Amazon and I'm 158 pages into the second book but I started the whole writing process over 4 years ago, ran into this quandary and put everything aside. I continued writing for fun and reading and reading and reading haha, and now my writing has a style, it is far more mature and powerful. I've probably written over 1,000,000 words at this point so I'd hope its getting better.

The book on Amazon is horrid. I got bit by the writing bug a few weeks ago and am taking it more seriously now and re-reading my work makes it painfully clear how immature a writer I was when I first wrote it. I fully plan to re-write the entire first book and second, and I'm sure it will transform the story simply because my mind is far more experienced, but all your advice makes it far easier to vet my own ideas against normality. I don't want to be strange but like Brian Turner said

At this early stage it's ordinary to have many ideas, and recognise many possibilities - but as the nature of your story develops and grows in the writing of it, you'll find those possibilities narrow into a smaller range of probabilities, IMO.

I've found this to be accurate as well. Even so, at this stage getting well thought out advice from many of you is TREMENDOUS help. I truly appreciate it.

Oh on a side note:

Honestly speaking if you could put all your science and world building down on paper and set it aside as a reference with the understanding that some things the reader wont need to know, but you need to know to keep your facts straight then you could get started on the real story.

I actually wrote the entire history of my universe, the nitty gritty science, the many political scandals and even natural disasters, etc. and that alone is nearly 80 pages. NONE of that will make it into my books but it absolutely allows me to create far more believable characters and scenarios. I did this naturally as I recognized I needed to know my world better than my reader but it's an invaluable tool, thanks for reminding me once again.

Also

No matter your story, and volume of characters, it will have a central theme of some sort. That will in effect decide your main genre. That doesn't preclude the inclusion of elements from other genres.

That right there solves my mental block! Keeping that in mind will help in many other ways as well, thanks!

 

[psychotick]

Hi Gawain,

I liked the BSG reworking for the most part, and all those themes fit perfectly within the world - or the remains of the dozen colonies. It was a very consistent world. Where it fell down for me was in the ending - which let's face it, didn't make a lot of sense, and of course our mad doctor and his mad cylon girl, where at some point you began to wonder if there was any sanity in their paths.

Cheers, Greg.