Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Doing any kind of long-form writing is hard. Writing science-fiction is particularly difficult, because both are restricted by the rules the author puts in place for the world to exist.

Both genres need to exist in believable worlds to be successful. Readers need to believe that even though the world this story is taking place in doesn't exist, it certainly could because of the way the author is describing it.

Science-fiction is confined by the rules of science. Whether the story is about time travel or is set in the distant future, there needs to be science behind what the author is writing about. Sure, there is still a lot of room for the author to be creative, but they need to work within the confines of the world they create.

Fantasy works the same way, except the rules in a fantasy world need to come almost wholly from the authors imagination (or taken from established fantastical sources, i.e. vampires are killed by driving a stake through their heart).

This issue is not only coming up with the rules, but the expectation from the reader for those rules to exist. They need to know how the world functions. They need to know what is allowed or plausible, and what is outside the realm of possibility.

On top of all that is the challenge of incorporating these rules into the plot of the story, and not just simply laying them out in a long monologue. Readers don't want to have to sit through a long amount of exposition about what can and cannot happen in the world they are reading about. They want to understand the rules by experiencing them through the actions of the characters as they interact with the world the reader is reading about.

Time travel is particularly difficult in science fiction. If a character is traveling to the past, the author needs to do a heavy amount of research to get all the details right to make the world authentic. If the character travels to the future, the author needs to create a world that can trace its progression back to the character's present in a plausible way.

My issue with time travel stories that focus on going to the past is that they are simply rehashing problems that have already been dealt with. It takes a certain amount of skill to draw the connection to the importance of that story in the present. That is why I like fantasy. It allows for a story to be told in a way where the fantastical elements can be seen as parallels to issues people are dealing with in our world.

Sorry if this piece was a little ramble-y.