Don’t judge me just because I write Science Fiction

/Home/Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Don’t judge me just because I write Science Fiction
August 20, 2010
Bob Neilson
Essential Writers.com

Writers from outside the genres often think that selling to Science Fiction magazines is easy because the standard of writing is so much lower than in the real world. Mostly this remains the case only until they either read a few Science Fiction stories for research or try submitting something groundbreaking they wrote yesterday afternoon - after shopping for groceries and before hitting Facebook.

As with every field of endeavour there are strata within the SF field. There are magazines with low standards and webzines which claim they don’t publish everything sent to them. There are literary magazines and webzines just like that too. They just seem to be more successful at claiming the moral or artistic high ground. They are also far too refined and artistic to actually pay for their fiction.
Seek payment as well as recognition

In Science Fiction at least the writers are honest. They keep score in dollar and cents: a sale is a sale but a big fat cheque is far more prestigious than a sale to a critically acclaimed journal that pays pennies.

So you name the market you have sold to and everyone knows just how good a writer you are. Today.

The magazines that pay the most have the best writers submitting and everyone sending to them first. So it’s a tough sell to hit the top markets like Asimov’s or Analog or F&SF. Those three are pretty much the top of the tree but you’ll find plenty of other prestigious markets out there, like Weird Tales, going since 1923 though now under new management, or the up and coming on-line magazine Clarkesworld that has been in business only a few short years but is already paying well above the minimum professional rate and gaining in reputation with every passing week.
Remember that Science Fiction is a craft

Crafting SF is pretty much like all other fiction. Character is vital, quality of prose is crucial (thank you Roget) and all those story elements that go to make a mainstream story must be included.

But in Science Fiction the readers tend to like a little more plot than is necessary elsewhere and the setting (world building in Science Fiction terms is hardly ever the mundane world we inhabit daily). And in general it is those extra elements that aren’t necessary elsewhere that make SF difficult.
Avoid trying to reinvent the wheel

The first big mistake outsiders or new writers make is called re-inventing the wheel. The classic one is the fantastical idea of a spaceship crashing on an alien planet. Sometimes it’s one ship with two survivors, other times it’s two separate ships from vastly different planets, both exploring the universe, that crash on the same planet. The two alien beings are very different, not even the same sex… you with me yet? You recognise the planet? Yep, it’s good old Earth and the aliens are… give that man a kewpie doll… yes, that’s right, Adam and Eve.

Now I know you were all well ahead of me because only bright and perspicacious readers frequent this site, but believe me, as an editor of a science fiction magazine, I have seen not only this brilliant twist but almost every other idea that Rod Serling found wandering in the Twilight Zone on at least a dozen occasions over the past twenty years.
Do your research

If you’ve never written a science fiction story but would like to try, I’m not trying to put you off. All you’ve got to do is some research in the genre and the markets.

So, read some good SF - Gardiner Dozois’s Year’s Best is a good place to start - then read an issue of the magazine you are going to submit to.

This is good advice in general but really important with SF, because every editor’s view of what makes a story Science Fiction and what makes a good Science Fiction story is very different.

And remember, you’re not always looking for the best or most intelligent editor, you’re merely looking for one who likes the sort of thing you are writing.

If you read the published guidelines, at the very least, you will discover that many editors will state up front the sort of stories they do not want to see.

Check them out on ralan.com or Duotrope’s Digest. Both of these are excellent sources of market news and a good place to start when searching for a home for your latest work of genius.
Identify whether what you’re writing is really Sci Fi

Finally, a good rule of thumb for deciding on whether a story is science fiction or just something dressed up in the tropes of the genre is to isolate the Science Fiction element.

If this can be easily removed without ruining the sense of the story then what you have is a story that it not, in essence, Science Fiction, you’ve simply dressed it up like one of those tap-dancing dogs on YouTube so that people will gasp in amazement at the fact that dogs can tap dance whilst failing to notice that there’s more staggering going on than dancing.

And sticking with the dogs, sometimes you’re so proud of yourself for having written something that is genuinely Science Fiction you forget that it also needs to be a good story as well. This time I’ll compare the result to a poker playing dog. Everyone is so amazed that the dog can play poker they fail to notice that he loses every hand.
Get writing

Writing a good science fiction story is really difficult because of the many strands that need to be held together, but it is also really satisfying. If you have a good idea for a science fiction story, go ahead and write it. If you haven’t done it before and you’re not really a fan the only way you’re going to find out if it is any good is to submit it.

Go to ralan.com and choose the market that sounds like the best fit. If that one rejects you, send it to the next best and so on. Eventually that story will find its level. Then write a better one and start the process again. And when you get really good, don’t forget Albedo One.