It may not seem that important a question at first glance, and the answer may well be something simple like, “do what you will enjoy most”. But, with time being our most restrictive resource (they aren’t putting any more hours in the day. yet), the question of how best to spend that time weighs on my mind.

In our discussion, the titular phrase actually took the form of two other questions, so I’ll examine these in turn.

I should probably mention (as I did to craig) that I don’t have the answers here. I’m just not experienced enough to make these calls yet, and I’m aware that part of the answer will always be, “it depends”.

Still, discussion is fun and a great way to learn! So let’s get to it!

Will you learn as much from working on an old piece as you would from writing a new one?

I mentioned in my last post a couple of weeks ago that I learn a great deal by writing a new story. Every story is different and so presents its own unique challenges. I would say that even in a short story, I get one big lesson from it.

That might represent a big mistake I won’t make again; it could mean saving time on the next story I write, our it could just mean my next piece of work is of greater quality (one hopes).

Image courtesy of Sharon Drummond.

Contrast this with rewriting an older piece. Say you have a piece of work that’s two or three years old. You examine it (as Craig did recently) and realise that it’s just not up to the standard of your current writing. it’s not even as good as you thought it was.

Given infinite time you may well wish to rewrite it if you still like the idea. But given limited time, would you learn as much as you would writing a new story? Would you grow as much as a writer?

I really want to encourage comments on this post, because I think this is an interesting topic, and like I said, I don’t know the answer. But my initial reaction is no, you would not learn as much from rewriting an old piece.

Sure, editing and even rewriting are skills worth developing as a writer – they are essential – but I think for the most part you have already learnt the major lessons from this story. Think about it, you know what’s wrong with the story – that’s how you recognise it’s bad. In many cases, that’s enough to say that you’ve learnt that lesson, and it’s a mistake you probably wouldn’t make in your writing today. Better to start something new and make shiny new mistakes!

Can an old, reworked story ever be as good as one a wiser, more experienced you could write?

Take that same story. With all the reshuffling, rewriting, new chapters, deleted chapters; with all the wrenching, hammering, hemming and hawing; with all that hard graft will an old work ever be as good as something you’ve written from fresh? After you’ve knocked all the dents out, will the surface look as polished as that of your smooth, new story?

And I guess it depends (surprise surprise). It depends how good you are at reworking, and it depends upon the story itself. After all, the very concept of the story might be fundamentally broken. It might be ‘unfixable’. Is there even such a thing?

Of course the ‘reworking’ might be so radical that you are effectively writing something new anyway, in which case, the question becomes moot.

Rework? Start afresh? Rework? Start afresh?

I’d love to know people’s experiences and feelings. Again, my gut is telling me (for what it’s worth – my gut’s not renowned for it’s thinking) that a new piece would turn out better than something that’s been bashed into shape.

There, you see? Even as I wrote that it felt wrong (stupid gut)! I just don’t know!

But should you decide that this old story would not reach the quality a new story would, then it comes down to what your goals are. There are other reasons for reworking a story. You might be in love with the idea; it might be quicker to fix something old than write something new; it is a different kind of challenge (a change is as good as a rest?); you might find it fun; you might simply hate the idea of something feeling ‘unfinished’.

These are all valid reasons. I just wonder, as developing writers, would our time be better spent elsewhere?

Please pour your minds into the comment trough below!
Oh! There was also a brief discussion on Google+ about this, so you can head over there to read other people’s opinions and leave your own if you’re a plustule, like me.

Ok, so that last part might not be entirely accurate. It does however provide me with the topic of this weeks post:  Feedback.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

That is the sound that feedback makes.

This is of course an essential part of the editorial process. It’s all well and good endlessly redrafting a piece of work, but there will always be that degree of uncertainty until someone else actually reads it. That is, after all, the ultimate goal, right?  To have others read your work. 

Writing feedback for this would make me... nervous

Actually finding people who you can trust to read it and provide you with said feedback can be a little more tricky. If you’re a student, particularly of writing, then this should be easy. I think I was at my most prolific and productive when I was at university, and I was surrounded by other writerly people. For those not in a university environment though, what can you do? 

Well, the first port of call is to check your local library. Many of them have reading and perhaps writing groups, and I don’t think many of them are too exclusionary. Also on that note, check your local bookshop. If they’re worth any salt, they will have a notice board, and you may find information about writing groups on them. If not, then why not start your own? 

A Risky Proposition

 
Of course, you do also need to be cautious. I was part of a writing group once, and I was initially very enthusiastic about it. That enthusiasm waned somewhat when I discovered that there was very little constructive feedback on offer. I should clarify – though it may be obvious – there is a difference between receiving feedback saying ‘it’s good’ – which isn’t good feedback, and receiving feedback stating why a piece might be good. Just like writing itself, feedback is all about the detail. 

And it works both ways of course. Even if you find just one or two people who you trust (and feel comfortable with) to get feedback from, it’s a good start. It also allows you the opportunity to give feedback on their writing. It’s a two way process. 

Altruism Sucks

 
But let’s be honest here, it’s not all about sharing and being supportive. Yes, that’s an element of it, but what you should also focus on is the fact that feeding back makes you a better writer. Yes it does. Because reading someone else’s work, and giving constructive feedback (without re-writing it for them) is a valuable skill, it makes you better at editing, which of course will make you better at redrafting your own work. Being able to analyse work by another person, and to pick out what works, and what doesn’t, will boost your skills in being able to identify what works and what doesn’t it your own writing. 

Back to the Drafting Board. Again.

 
Inspired by Matt’s piece, and some extra information he gave me, I decided to go back to my long dormant project that I have (technically) finished. I’ve been thinking about it on and off for a while, and have realised that I’m more than likely going to have to scrap the entire last quarter of the book. And that isn’t quite as painful as I had thought it would be. 

But I started reading through it from the beginning again, and well, I’m going to have to make some changes. The last time I did a redraft on it, I opted to tone a lot of it down. But even re-reading it recently, I find the tone very inconsistent. The main character for a start is very cocky and full of himself. That worked in my original draft, but as I’ve expanded the back story and fleshed out the character motivations, I’ve realised that this is inappropriate for the situation he is in. This is a little more painful, because as opposed to chopping of the last part of the book like amputating a limb, I’m going to have to perform micro-surgery on small sections without damaging the surrounding text. 

There I go torturing metaphors again. 

Anyway folks, do you have people you can feedback to/from?  As ever, leave any thoughts and musings about the feedback process in the comments below.

I have already gone through the first couple of scenes and made some edits, but they were more or less where I wanted them anyway. The next scene and beyond is where the rewetting begins. I’ve changed the order of some scenes (to prevent a huge lag in the action part way through the story); changed the gender of one of my characters (because it’s far more interesting that way); gone though my backstory and made it follow through naturally into my story proper, and reworked the ending (all in planning currently).

That’s a lot to do, especially as half of it wasn’t written yet. In the end this will be a kind of draft 1.5.

That's the Corkboard feature right there. Very handy.

So yeah, I’m looking forward to reworking some scenes. What I’m most excited about though, is writing the new stuff afterwards. That’s going to be a treat. I can set up the daily targets in Scrivener and see how well that works.

It’s good to get enthusiasm back for a project. I was starting to get quite disgruntled with it. I let that go on for far too long – knowing that there was something wrong with the whole thing, that it was drastically losing momentum (both in the story, and in my efforts to get it done), but letting it grind to a halt anyway.

Scrivener did act as a motivator to sort the thing out, but it’s a shame I needed something like that. Next time, when I recognise that something isn’t working (and there’s normally at least one time in a project where that happens for me) I should get on top of that problem straight away.

Basically, I need to get on to the next project. Even with these shorter stories I’m writing now there is one big lesson to be learned, and many little ones. This is all building up great experience – every new story is different and throws up new challenges, even if they aren’t apparent in the inspiration or planning stages (so far they haven’t been).

The quicker I can get to the next story, the quicker I can reach the next set of challenges and learn something that feels completely new. It just goes to show that nothing teaches better than practical experience, and failing. These big learnings come because something bad happens to your story – you fail. Then you examine that failure and fix it. I realise I am working my way to that old success adage, “fail quickly”. And it’s true, and it’s what I have to do – fail quicker, and so learn quicker.

I’m sure I’m not the only one – do you find big lessons in each story? Maybe you’re a lot more experienced than me. Still getting those big challenges? Still failing and learning throughout the process? I’d be interested to know, so please take a couple of minutes to write a comment.

I'm so happy!

It’s fair to say that I’m not as far along as I might have thought I would be last year. Not that I set any concrete targets for around my birthday, but my vague imaginings hinted at greater success. 2012 has so far been a bit of a disappointment writing wise. Of course I only have myself to blame, and I’m pretty much out of that slump now and back into a routine.

I didn’t asked for anything this year, because I don’t want anything. Except that’s not true. Everyone wants something, it’s just not necessarily the latest gadget or whatever (actually, I do want an iPad, but I know they’re too expensive so I’ve ruled that out).

So what do I want? I want one of my stories published – I want to see it listed on Amazon, resplendent in its professional-looking cover, and I want to see the reviews coming in (good or bad) and look at my stats and see that someone (anyone) has bought it.

That would be a pretty awesome birthday, but it’s not the sort of thing you can put on your present list. After all, who can get me that?

Well, I can.

There’s a lot of talk in writing about setting goals and deadlines. I think a birthday would be a decent place to hang goals from. So that’s what I’m going to do. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, but who knows, next year my favourite present might be from me!

The villain is villainous, but you’re not sure why they’re being so mean; you’ve invented a fun piece of technology, but it doesn’t serve the story in any way; another piece of tech gives you a great ‘get out of jail free card’ at the end, but you’ve no idea why someone would invent it in the first place; you’ve got at least two characters you don’t know what to do with…

In short, it’s all sort of there, but nothing quite fits together properly. Well, shizzle my dizzle, you may well say to yourself, I’ve got myself in a right pizzle here and no mistake.

Myself and Craig were discussing just such a thing the other day. He was having trouble with his antagonists motivation, and I was having trouble with basically everything in my fragmented story. I reached into my Big Box O’ Metaphors and suggested our stories needed a “spine”.

Is there a spine there already?

Do googly eyes make a skeleton more or less scary? And is googly even a word? You decide! Image courtesy of Shaun Dunmall.

What do I mean by a spine? It’s a central idea that all of your other story elements hang off. My problem was that I had lots of bits of a skeleton, but they felt separate from each other. I needed something to join them all up.

Now, your “central idea” could be pretty much anything I guess. It could be a character, a single event, a concept, the list goes on. But it’s important to identify it and be conscious of it as you write or edit in order to make the story feel like a cohesive whole.

In my case the spine was already there. I just hadn’t seen it. Since realising that my story’s nefarious company/government agency is at the centre of everything (and now I know, it’s obvious), I’ve been able to develop the backstory, bring it into the story proper, and tie up my ending. Not a bad revelation!

How you might build a spine

But let’s take the example we opened with. Here we have a fragmented story where motivations aren’t clear and objects and technology exist without purpose. Here we’ve got a truly spineless story, where elements exist seemingly independently of the world they inhabit. How do you go about building a spine into this story?

It’s a difficult one because the answer probably means a substantial rewrite. But hey, swallowing hard and knuckling down is what we do, right?

My suggestion would be this – start with your backstory for the world (I’m talking very much from a sic-fi and fantasy point of view here, so if you have any tips for other genres, please leave them in the comments for us). Your world history is where all your characters, all the technology, religions, locations come from. So start by defining the history of your world. You’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what your world looks like “now”, so what made it that way?

Once you’ve got that, use it as your spine. Hang your characters from the world history. Where were they when this disaster happened; how were their family affected when this planet was taken over; how did this technology change their lives?

I’m not saying every character should be related to every historical event, far from it – you only need one or two elements to have had an influence on your character. It should be enough to drive their backstory, and to give them motivations and desires. You may find your villain had a reason for blowing up the Sun after all.

You can do the same with technology, and some locations. Let them grow from your backstory.

So, after a great many notes you have a convincing world and story elements that fit in it. You may also have some bits left over that simply don’t fit. Get rid.

You might also have something that looks very different from your original story. If that’s the case you might be thinking you’ve swapped one set of problems for another. You’d be right. But, judging by the mess you were in before, you already had some rewriting ahead anyway. This way you have a solid base to begin from, and hopefully the sense that the story you’re about to create is a better one than you had before. Consider it a lesson learned I guess.

What do you think? Can you identify the spine in your story? Do you think one is needed, or am I talking rubbish? Sound off in the comments!

Ah, communication - a favourite coaching topic. No badly drawn pictures though. Image from Deb Nystrom

In this metaphor, the wittle doggies are the business team, and the driver is the project manager/CEO/business owner (depending on who the coach is talking to at the time). Got it?

Here’s a popular expression, “lead from the front!” A stalwart battle cry to future The Apprentice rejects everywhere (did you see that 80′s inspired fitness video this week? The other team woz wobbed)! Except there’s a problem with that. Yes, you can see where you’re going, but you’ve no idea what your team is doing, because they’re behind you. They are behind you, aren’t they? You don’t even know because you can’t see them! See?

No, a real leader (says the coach, eyes widening as he taps a finger against the scribbled stick man attached to a row of boxes), is like a husky driver. He is sat high, so that he can see ahead, but also so that he can watch over his team. He can guide them in the right direction, see if some are not towing the line, and check that none are struggling with the task. A real leader, leads from the back.

And so to writing…

I’m going to wrench this metaphor from its comfortable conference room, with biscuits and carbonated water, and plop it straight in the stuffy office/shed/cupboard-under-the-stairs of the writer.

Often a writer is deep in the story, and can let matters take their own course. Characters take on a life of their own and lead the way. Scenes you had not anticipated crop up, people go places you hadn’t expected and get into fixes all by themselves.

It sounds cheesy, but in these moments the writer kind of becomes his/her characters, and the characters are leading, from the front.

Sometimes this is all well and good, and a lot of books get written this way from beginning to end. I would wager that it takes a great deal of experience to create a truly successful novel in this way.

Aren't huskies beautiful? Mush doggies! This image is from EveryDamnNameIsInUse (ha!) on Flickr

Mush!

For us others, it can get you in a lot of trouble. Suddenly you don’t now how to get to the ending you had envisaged. This would be fine, if another one presented itself, but it doesn’t. What you have is a tangled mess without structure. Oh dear.

For this reason it is helpful for a writers to behave like a husky driver. Take some time occasionally to review the story, see where all the characters are, and where everything is going. Maybe don’t even write for an hour – just spend time thinking about it.

This is the writer stepping out of the story, and looking at it from above and behind, where he/she can guide events. This is the writer leading from the back.

Do you lead from the back? How do you make sure that you are guiding your story, and it isn’t guiding you? Wring your brain dry of those thoughts by putting them in the comments!

Inevitably… Game of Thrones

Since I never watch TV, it wasn’t until this was released on Blu-Ray that I got a chance to watch it.  Now I read the first book about 12 years ago, so I only barely remembered the events that occurred.  Matt did his own post about Game of Thrones a while back, so you may wish to read that. 

Well, I recently started re-watching it, and was very interested to see how the characters started in the series, knowing where things all end up.  George R.R. Martin is very very good at building the back story into the narrative.  Very little of the background of the world of Westeros I actually gleaned from external sources, it’s all revealed through the narrative.  And this is something that I really wanted to try and achieve with my project.

My Secret Shame

 
I will be honest.  One thing that I have noticed I’m guilty of is dropping huge chunks of exposition into my work which breaks the flow, and gives the reader back story.  I know, it’s very bad practice.  I might as well just stop the story and draw a flow chart.  Matt has called me out on this several times.  His suggestion was to keep a separate document open when you’re writing to throw this back story into.  And this is a very good suggestion.  It is a good tool to have during editing. That way, you can cut and paste large blocks of exposition out of the narrative flow, and still have it as a resource.  Then, the fun part is trying to figure out how to weave that information back into the narrative without it breaking flow, or seeming out of place. 

Here and There

 
There is a very fine line of course.  And the biggest difference it makes is whether the world is just there, sort of drifting as a separate entity to the story, or whether it’s ‘here’, around the characters.  This is ideally what you want.  You want a world that the characters exist in, as it takes place around them.  I know it’s somewhat clichéd to say this, but the world needs to be a character of its own, it needs to live, it needs to be this huge engulfing thing that the characters can barely keep afloat in. 

It is absolutely no good if the characters kind of drift through this ‘thing’ that exists sort of in the background, but it is rigid and separate from the characters.  That isn’t good world building.  And I’ll admit, I’m finding it difficult to get the characters to exist in this world.  I have a grasp on what the world is like, but it’s all disparate (because I have lots and lots of characters, and they all exist separately from each other, but they are all heading towards something that will tie it all together.) 

I can kid myself and say that partly it’s because this project is science fiction, and it has a whole galaxy to mess about in, but the parameters of that still need to be drawn in the sand, right?

So what do you think folks?  How do you build your worlds?

I recently gave in and downloaded the Scrivener demo (a generous demo of thirty days – that’s thirty days of actual use, not thirty days from when you first turn it on). It’s a great program you should definitely try and I plan to rework my WIP using it.

One thing I’m noticing when fiddling with Scrivener is not how useful it is (although it is), but how fun it is. Using a well-designed application can be fun, something that is oft overlooked. And I think a lot of us could do with having the writing process made more fun for us.

That's the Corkboard feature right there. Very handy.

It’s similar to the feeling I got when learning about Inform 7. It can be a joy – almost a game – using a tool that’s specifically designed for a task. Maybe it is simply the gamer in me, seeing the mechanics of a thing, and how its different elements interlock and complement each other.

Who knows, but what I do know is that the interface with which we, the writers, interact with our work can be important. No, it’s not the be all and end all, but it can still make all the difference. The difference between having a poor structure, or one that flows easily, thanks to the planning the corkboard offers; the difference between a focussed scene or a rambling one, thanks to the scene synopsis flash card being on screen all the time (if you want it to); or just the difference between writing one day and not, because it’s fun!

So over the next few writing sessions I will be finishing off the tutorial (I thought I was being a bit anal by going through the tutorial so thoroughly, but there are a few nice little features in there I would otherwise have missed), and then putting my current WIP into Scrivener. It needs reworking, and Scrivener’s corkboard is the thing to do it I think.

But here’s what I really want to know. Do you have a writing tool that makes it more fun to write? What’s your favourite? Even if it’s just a pen (“just” – those things are mightier than swords, you know!) let us know.

Useful Links

• Scrivener
• Scrivener 30 day trial
• Inform 7 – interactive fition authoring tool

I’ll be honest, and say that the idea for this post has been partly inspired by the huge controversy surrounding the ending of Mass Effect 3. Now, I’m not going to go into a huge thing about it, regurgitating opinions about gamer entitlement, artistic integrity, or complaints setting a ‘dangerous precedent’ in regards to the whole ‘creator/audience’ relationship. What I will say is that I didn’t have such a big problem with how the game ended; in fact, I can’t really see how it could have ended any other way. 

But I digress. 

The Unknowable

 
As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that the reason that endings are so difficult is that I don’t think – as a species – we are really designed to accept them.

Remember this? I was all set for The Rapture, then I realised I had to wash my hair. This billboard was found by Mike Fisher

Ultimately, there is only one ending we will all face, isn’t there, and the exact details of that are impossible for us to comprehend. So how then, can we create a satisfying conclusion to a narrative?

Well, looking at the classic three act structure, the ‘conclusion’ of a piece isn’t so much an end, as a return to an equilibrium. Act one sets out the equilibrium, at the end of which an obstacle is introduced that upsets it, act two deals with the consequences of that, and as I say, act three reaches the point where hopefully, equilibrium is (more or less) restored. 

Of course ‘restoring equilibrium’ doesn’t sound very satisfying does it? Which is why perhaps, a lot of ‘endings’ can feel hollow, or leave us wanting more. Sometimes this is deliberate, especially when talking about a series of books with the same characters, on-going storylines and what have you, but to me, that can feel like a bit of a cop out. 

On Its Own Two Feet

 
Ultimately, I think a story should be able to stand up on its own, and be self contained. This is hypocritical of me I know, since I don’t think I’ve ever written any longer piece of fiction that hasn’t resulted is some sort of sequel or follow up.

I know this is tough. On the one hand, you can follow the rule ‘get in as late as possible, get out as soon as possible’ to give a definitive end to a piece. This may leave some unanswered questions however, which may hint at a follow up or ongoing story. On the other hand, you could make an effort to tie up all loose ends, but this can result in ‘too much ending’, of which a good example would be Lord of the Rings. 

How do you get that middle ground though? An ending that ties things up succinctly, without screaming out ‘Come back for the sequel!’, and have it satisfying? I’ll be honest, I haven’t quite figured it out yet. 

Part of me wants to say ‘it isn’t the destination, it’s the journey’, but that feels like an excuse for a weak ending. I think about the one project that I feel like I have given a definitive finish to, which doesn’t scream so much as whispers ‘Come back for the sequel’, and about how it ends. And how does it end? Well, it leads us nicely onto…

Deus Ex Machina

 
And if you’re resorting to this (I’m looking at you, Battlestar Galactica – Matt), then you’re not doing it right, are you? I’ll be honest, the ending that I have – as it stands right now – is quite weak, and has elements of Deus Ex Machina, which has never sat quite right with me. However, it’s because I kind of painted myself into a corner with the direction the story took, and while I’m not someone who strictly abides by the ‘good guys win, bad guys lose’ dynamic (which anyone knows considering how slash happy I am with my characters), if I’d left out any element of Deus Ex Machina, the story wouldn’t have any resolution at all, which is probably worse. 

I’m not offering any solutions here, am I? Maybe because I don’t really have any. I try to avoid or ignore the ending to a lot of my projects, not so much because I fear completion, but because I don’t know how to write satisfying conclusions. So I throw the floor open to you. What are your experiences and opinions on endings, and how to write them?

But first off, let’s bring it on back a bit. I’m not going to pretend that you have to put as much work into the backstory of a shorter piece as you do for a novel. For example, when you’re creating the background to your characters, there’s a lot less to do. You have less characters in a short story. Do the math, as they say in the United States of America (or “calculate, via the medium of mathematics,” in the United Kingdoms of Elizabeth II).

No, it’s the longer view – the world building, that takes up your time. I’m writing (veeery slooooowly writing) a series of sci-fi short stories at the moment, and time and again I realise the thin layer of backstory I have when I start simply isn’t enough.

What's this guy's story?

Having enough to provide the situation for the story proper is not won’t cut it. I think it’s enough, but as I write, and I add more detail to the present, I find it growing flimsy under my fingers. I become dissatisfied, nay grumpy, as my story begins to feel like it’s written on toilet paper, ready to shred apart at the next line of ink.

So how much backstory do you need? That’s hard to quantify, and it may be different for every case. But the only answer I have is that there has to be enough for it to feel real. I’ll try to break this down a bit.

The Whoppers

Let’s start with the grand aspects of your world that feature heavily in the story. Say your story involves an alien species living alongside humans. That is a big deal and it will likely take some time to figure out their backstory. What do they look like? What is their culture like? Are there any particular reasons for this? What about their technology? How do all of the above relate?

Such questions will likely lead to more, or at least to some further useful details such as their home planet, which may well have had a huge effect on all of the above.

Enough? No!

Perhaps more important to your story is the race’s relationship to humankind. When was first contact established? In what manner? How does the alien culture affect the way they see humankind and visa-versa? Maybe your current story requires some distrust of one species or another, or some fascination – why is this?

It’s worth mentioning that your story might hinge entirely on a piece of backstory that is revealed during the climax. Of course it goes without saying that this needs to be pretty well fleshed out. Crucially for this set up, the reveal should feel like the discovery of a puzzle piece – it must fit in with what we have been told about the world throughout the course of the story. Otherwise it may feel like a cheap trick.

The Details

The rest I guess is about the details. That’s not to say that this has to be an easy ride. You can go as deep as you want here.

You want to give enough details so that places, people, objects feel real, but you don’t want to bury the reader in trivia that does not move the story forward.

The details can come from the history of a building, characters, the tools they use, the phrases they say. A spaceship may have been used to transport fuel, but has since been refitted as a makeshift hospital during a recent disaster. You might mention a piece of technology, and give it a name that implies some history – a detection system named the Groben array, after the scientist Hanz Groben, who first proved the existence of micro-gravity waves.

Knowing that elements of your world have history prevents them form appearing as if they sprang into existence. Moreover, details which you invent as incidental, tend to ripple throughout the story, changing the way the tale is told. Our hospital might have poorly used space, cavernous rooms, or bad wiring because of its history – how might that affect events in the story?

I might have mentioned I listen to a few podcasts (it would be more accurate to say I catch up with a few podcasts, given that I’m perpetually behind). This includes Clarkesworld Magazine‘s and The Escape Pod (part of the Murverse). Both narrate regular sci-fi and fantasy short-stories and I highly recommend them.

One thing that strikes me about a lot of these stories is how rich the worlds are. Just in the space of 8,000 words or so, we can see the rise and fall of empires or entire species, the terraforming of a planet, post-humanisation (then post-post-humanisation, then post-post-post…), and the list goes on. And all of this whilst still delivering a compelling narrative in the story’s present.

So yeah, don’t think you’re getting an easy ride by writing sci-fi or fantasy short works, but it can still be an enjoyable ride (and a convincing one), for you and your readers.

What’s your experience with writing backstory for shorter works? How much was enough for you, and how much actually amde it into the story proper?