thanks for letting us know, good luck on all your exams 
real life does come first of course ^^
real life does come first of course ^^
Scientia Weaponizes The Future
- Thread starter TaliesinSkye
- Start date
- Sci-Fi Superhero
-
- Tags
- worm science fiction oc insert hfy
- Location
- uk
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Writing fanfiction is supposed to be fun. Part of that means that when other things get in the way and stop it from being fun, putting it down to concentrate on those things. Don't feel you have to write for us, we all enjoy it more because we know that you don't have to do it.
- Location
- Lost in the hive mind
GeekGod_of_Speed
He Who Enjoys The Big Words
How much longer do you expect the story to be?
I don't mean how long until you finish writing, I mean how many more chapter are you expecting To need?
I'm comfortable waiting as long as is needed, so long as if you ever abandon/ finish this you post your story notes
I don't mean how long until you finish writing, I mean how many more chapter are you expecting To need?
I'm comfortable waiting as long as is needed, so long as if you ever abandon/ finish this you post your story notes
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
It's really hard to tell in terms of chapters, but structurally we're headed for the climax soon. Then there will be the denouement. I'd guess we're something like 75% done, but stories have a way of ballooning in wordcount sometimes.
Endorfinator
Amaranthine Anarchist
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Good luck with your exams!
There's no need to apologise. Your writing here shouldn't be seen as an obligation, instead we'd hope you view as something to enjoy and gets you away from work or stress. Maybe trying without a schedule could work for you, so you're writing only when you want to for the fun of it, or just putting it completely to one side would mean you're better able to focus without having to worry about temptation. Just do whatever works for you.
Hopefully we'll see you again in the near future but regardless, good luck with your exams.
Hopefully we'll see you again in the near future but regardless, good luck with your exams.
Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
Good luck with your exams, @TaliesinSkye
David DeLaney
Verified & Credited Rules Wizard
- Location
- North of Knoxville, indoors, seated comfortably
Star Maker was 1937, so "many decades" is closer.
One point I haven't seen anyone else bring up: "choosing to become someone who remembers being you"? Is something every one of us does, without thinking about it much at all, each time we choose to ... go to sleep.
--Dave, "my realm is far more fearsome than yours, sister"
Last edited:
Not sure if I should be mad or glad about my timing in starting to read this story a couple days ago :S.
Anyway, great fic! I particularly like Scientia's origin as it was revealed in the last few chapters. Reminded me of Hiver's Star Trek SI where the main character learns he's an AI that grew up as a human in a simulated environment to avoid rampancy while being introduced to the "real world" through a Sci-Fi TV show.
Anyway, great fic! I particularly like Scientia's origin as it was revealed in the last few chapters. Reminded me of Hiver's Star Trek SI where the main character learns he's an AI that grew up as a human in a simulated environment to avoid rampancy while being introduced to the "real world" through a Sci-Fi TV show.
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
Thank you all for being patient. I thought I'd leave a brief update.
Studying for my exam continues (I'm hacking away at a score plateau. It's frustrating, but hopefully with enough work I'll crack through it through sheer bloody-minded persistence.) but I'm also putting words in on Scientia. Slower than my usual pace, but it's so important not to fall out of the habit of writing.
I've also reworked the outline in what I think was a much needed improvement. After some editor feedback that the transition to the climax was too abrupt, the story's been extended with an additional section that will address a number of important story points as our heroine prepares for the final confrontations.
On that note, if anyone would like to discuss/ask me about anything having to do with writing technique (story planning, character arcs, technical stuff like grammar, whatever you fancy) I'd be happy to answer questions during our intermission. I'm no expert, but I spend a lot of time studying and thinking about that stuff and enjoy discussing it.
Studying for my exam continues (I'm hacking away at a score plateau. It's frustrating, but hopefully with enough work I'll crack through it through sheer bloody-minded persistence.) but I'm also putting words in on Scientia. Slower than my usual pace, but it's so important not to fall out of the habit of writing.
I've also reworked the outline in what I think was a much needed improvement. After some editor feedback that the transition to the climax was too abrupt, the story's been extended with an additional section that will address a number of important story points as our heroine prepares for the final confrontations.
On that note, if anyone would like to discuss/ask me about anything having to do with writing technique (story planning, character arcs, technical stuff like grammar, whatever you fancy) I'd be happy to answer questions during our intermission. I'm no expert, but I spend a lot of time studying and thinking about that stuff and enjoy discussing it.
Last edited:
Where do you suggest a newbie writer look to learn about writing technique?
Writing Advice: Resources
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
Good question! There are a ton of resources out there. Here are the ones that have been the most helpful to me.
First, if you're new to fiction you're probably reasonably solid on general everyday grammar, but you haven't had to do a lot of dialogue. There's a lot of fiddly grammar around dialogue, so this reference was invaluable to me when I was learning. It's a free, no frills reference to all the special cases that arise in dialogue and how to handle them. You'll need to reference it fairly frequently when you're starting out, but you'll memorize it after a while. Errors in the punctuation around dialogue are the most common grammatical error I see in new writer fiction, and this makes it an easy fix.
Second, for bigger picture stuff like how to write a character arc or how to think about and plan a story, I strongly recommend the writing excuses podcast.
It's funny, highly informative, and done by highly successful authors who know what they're talking about. It's basically a completely free degree in creative writing packed into a podcast made out of digestible 15 minute pieces.
The only downside of the podcast is that there are a LOT of files to individually download. But don't worry, I've got your back. This archive I made isn't completely up to date, but it's got every episode up to the last six months or something. Let me know if you have any trouble downloading it. It's big, but what's relevant to you won't be all of it. There's stuff about writing mechanics, planning, characterization, the various kinds of stories and how they work (romance, adventure, horror, etc), and the business of writing and getting published, and much, much more. It's solid gold.
I spent a lot of time listening to it in the evening as I drifted off to sleep. For me the biggest change it made was taking me from a place where I felt like I was finding my way through a wilderness without a map to a place where I knew what I had to do, why I had to do it, how to do it, and when it needed to be done. That made the difference between stories that got lost midway through because they weren't really planned properly to stories that had arcs and direction and worked. (More or less. I'm still new at this. But I'm leagues better than I was.)
Third, you need some way to practice. I recommend writing flash fiction and short stories somewhere on the internet that people share and appreciate that in whatever genre you want to write in. For my part, I wrote short pieces on /r/hfy for a while. It's a great place for fiction if you want to read and write in that fun little subgenre. If you want to do something else you'll have to look around, but reddit has other writing communities and there are almost certainly other places out there as well that I'm just not aware of. Some people also swear by writing groups where people meet once a week and share their stuff. The helpfulness of that probably depends on the quality of a given group, but anything that keeps you writing consistently could be invaluable.
The reason I recommend flash fiction and short stories is that finishing stories is important when you're just starting out, and you learn a lot of really useful skills working in a shorter medium. For example, the most popular chapter in Scientia is the one where Coil gets killed something like 18 times in one quick scene after another. Writing flash fiction is what gave me the ability to sketch out a whole scene in a few hundred words and then do it over and over again. It's super useful.
Short fiction also enables you to rapidly explore ideas and experiment with technique. Every piece you finish will teach you things, so the idea is to do a whole lot of pieces in a relatively short period of time while you're developing your edge. It gives you the freedom to try things that might not work without any pressure or larger concerns like you'd have in a long form piece. (Long form pieces have all the concerns of short ones, then more things to keep track of added on top. I think it's best to build your way up there instead of trying a novel right off the bat, so you can focus on learning fewer things at a time and build your confidence with successfully finished pieces.)
One great piece of advice is to write at least one word a day. You'll probably write more than one word once you start, and it keeps you writing. Writing is a habit, like brushing your teeth or working out. You need to keep yourself doing it, and you can't afford to fall out of it or it's hard to restart. So write every day. And when you can't write, think about what you're going to write. At least half the work of writing is done in your head ahead of time. When I bang out 3k words in a couple hours it's because I did most of the work in my head already while I was in the shower or drifting off to sleep.
You can outline or not outline. Writers seem to naturally gravitate towards one or the other, and it's kind of a spectrum. I fall partway between the two; I have rough outlines in my head and work out the details as I go. Discovery writing (not outlining) tends to produce a rougher first draft that needs more editing and (I suspect) results in more failed projects as the story gets halfway and gets irresolvably stuck. An outliner mostly avoids that by seeing that the story doesn't work as they're trying to write the outline. For that reason I've tried to practice outlining more and more as I develop in my writing, but there are absolutely very successful professional discovery writers out there.
If you're not sure how to outline, a good way to start is to break things down by scene and describe what needs to happen in the scene in general terms with a sentence or three. "Scientia wakes up in the hospital, realizes she's in worm, discovers her power, thinks about what she's going to do." is a quick example for Chapter 1 here. Just something to give you some idea of what ground you need to cover and where you want to end up for the next scene. You can get more detailed, but it's really a matter of doing the amount that you think will be useful to you without getting bogged down in minutia. The point of outlining is to give yourself some signposts to help you write, not to outline instead of writing.
For long stories, a good way to start is to state the end point of the story, the beginning point, and the midpoint with sentences a bit like that. Then fill in the midpoints between the middle and the ends with sentences that describe key moments. Then fill in the new gaps with more key moments in the story with more sentences. Keep going until it feels like the story is well enough described for you to know where you're going and how you're going to get there. If you want a practice exercise, try making a quick outline like that for your favorite novel or movie or other story. Something you know well.
It is extremely helpful to know how your story is going to end, at the very least. That's the single biggest thing that reduces the chances of getting lost in a dead end somewhere along the way.
Hopefully that helps. Feel free to ask more if you'd like.
Last edited:
- Location
- Lithuania
What pseudonym did you write under?
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
I'll do you one better and toss a couple recommendations from the lot. Both first contact stories, for some reason. This is my most successful piece. This is a short funny one. ("Take your upvote and then go home and think about what you've done." is still one of my favorite comments ever.)
The other stuff I put up is mostly short stories inspired by tabletop campaigns that were fun pieces of worldbuilding. I can't find it now, maybe I took it down at some point. Hm.
Edit: I also wrote a lot of omakes for various stories here on SV, like for the fantastic Devourer of Worlds. Omakes are a fun way to practice writing in a larger story, I recommend it. They also really make an author's day.
Last edited:
- Location
- California
I love reading stories that include advanced science/pseudoscience, and I have always wondered how an author decides where to draw the line between reading up on the theory to make the science realistic and just deciding that the science is handwaveium mixed with some proper-sounding grammar.
For example, when the Civilization's scientists were explaining how they would penetrate past their universe into another, I very specifically remember that you used the word 'brane,' which sent me to a dictionary and then on a 30 minute interlude of reading articles on string theory. Personally, it made the scene real to me; I could vividly imagine how much effort these fictional physicists must have put in to try to save their civilization. It's one of the (many, many) reasons that I consider "Scientia Weaponizes the Future" to be one of my favorite pieces of literature. Even months later I remember the chapter and regularly go back to re-read it because of how much it has fascinated me. So what brought on that decision to take -what I assume to be- extra effort to make the science of Scientia theoretically realistic?
For example, when the Civilization's scientists were explaining how they would penetrate past their universe into another, I very specifically remember that you used the word 'brane,' which sent me to a dictionary and then on a 30 minute interlude of reading articles on string theory. Personally, it made the scene real to me; I could vividly imagine how much effort these fictional physicists must have put in to try to save their civilization. It's one of the (many, many) reasons that I consider "Scientia Weaponizes the Future" to be one of my favorite pieces of literature. Even months later I remember the chapter and regularly go back to re-read it because of how much it has fascinated me. So what brought on that decision to take -what I assume to be- extra effort to make the science of Scientia theoretically realistic?
Lt. Ouroumov
The PR in PRT
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'd say it depends on where you want your work to stand on Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness (⚠️ TVTropes), you can generally afford to handwave much more stuff away in soft sci-fi than hard sci-fi. And each needs different amounts of research. One thing to keep in mind is that all the time you spend researching is time you don't spend doing something else like planning or writing. Finding the right balance comes with practice I think.
When it comes to finding appropriate terms for stuff, I usually go on a wiki walk and read the articles on the general subject I'm trying to write about. Your education also plays a role I think. Having a software engineering degree, I'm probably much better at writing how an hypothetical AI or hacking would work than things that touch to other branches of science I haven't studied in-depth.
Writing Advice: Research
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
Thank you so much for taking the time to say that, it really brightens my day.
For your answer, I'm the kind of person that just likes doing research and learning things, so that helps. I love science and technology and understanding how things work. (One of the reasons I want to do patent law, incidentally. You get paid gobs of money to learn new stuff every day.)
As for applying it to stories, the story is a fun excuse to do reading, but most of all I make the effort because I value verisimilitude. I think it's important for a story to feel real in its details. Handwaves are unavoidable in science fiction unless you're writing super hard sci fi, but I want to make the fantastic technology feel as real as possible by making the unrealistic leaps as small as I can and dressing them up with stuff that is real or at least feels real. Ideally, it's stuff that isn't possible yet but might be possible, and much of the tech falls into that category. Stuff like Prometheus may very well one day be possible, and in our lifetimes. (The major handwaves are some aspects of FTL and the inter-universe travel, but compared to the handwaves in Worm those aren't even all that bad.)
With the right treatment and effort it's possible to make handwaves feel like they aren't, and that's worth the extra effort to keep the reader feeling immersed. It's an illusion, but a compelling one, and that's good storytelling.
Edit:
I encourage looking up stuff beyond just science and technology, too, like government and military procedure. It helps with the realism. I've also had great success asking experts about things when something is outside my experience and hard to look up.
Last edited:
GeekGod_of_Speed
He Who Enjoys The Big Words
I think the two biggest hand waves that have to happen in almost all sci-fi is material science and energy density/transfer
the biggest example anybody should know right now is the MCU the Iron-Man armour which utilises an Arc Reactor which generates 8 Gigajoules (it been a while since I watched the movies but that what's on the wiki) of energy per second which ignoring if something that small could generate that much, would run into issues with the materials it's made of to contain the heat,
ensure structural stability, which would be harder as he puts it unguarded on the exterior of the suit and it doesn't go boom when damaged?!
and than the crux of the issue power transfer, I don't see how he would be able to transfer that amount of power around his suit with anything less than a cable they use for power lines (I took a course a while ago to be an electrician and vaguely remember that this is more power than can be transferred through one)
even assuming perfect throughput with no resistance in the lines it's just not possible to move that amount of power around stuff that small, as you run into the issue our current computers run into, and that's the electrons themselves
I remember something about muons (basically heavy electrons) being produced and that's how his repulsors work but I don't know if the repulsors themselves make it or it's how he bypasses the power limits
I'm pretty sure some if not most of this is wrong but it's still shows my point
Most sci-fi can be broken down into either hand waving the materials, the energy, or blaming quantum mechanics by shoving "quantum" or "dimensional" or some other in front of the title
Last edited:
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
Absolutely. Although I suspect most writers just come up with a cool idea and don't do the math.
The Origin Civilization figuring out how to make matter with custom properties in particle accelerators (not to mention metamaterial tricks) was a big help for that sort of thing. Feel free to steal the idea if you ever need to for a story. There's some leeway in real physics for it with regards to whatever the heck is going on with dark matter. There's new physics out there that we don't understand yet.
Last edited:
Exactly, some use optronics to solve the electron computer issue, or dimensional/space tech to fold space and bypass the issue. "Dump the waste into hyperspace" nicely sums it up. Dump all the extra energy sideways of the local 3D slice and do whatever you want with it later, and use molecular circuitry so cableing isnt a problem, especially as the builds become larger and the detail more precise. Combined with better material science and actual quantum mechanics you can get away with pretty much anything and leave it still making (some) sense.
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
- Location
- Northeast Ohio, United States
In Scientia's case, they could use custom designed room temperature superconductors (electrical and thermal) to resolve it, I think.