Calling all Sci-fic writers I need your help!

[washingtonwriter1968]

OK I presently have my MC entering a void and I can only describe it this way.....
1. a dimension where chaos reigns.
2.It is a place outside time....
3. My antagonist has control of the elements
4. It is based on the theorists that say that the world is a simulation in God's Cosmic computer so it's basic elements are numbers or symbols
Other than that it is all very vague.

So I am sure I need to do some world building exercises and come up with everything before I go on? Anyone know of a good free site that I can get some of these
important exercises .

[meganstirler]

I found this article an the Science Fiction Writers of America website.

http://www.sfwa.org/2011/03/guest-post- ... ry-worlds/

It's more about building civilizations or cultures, so I don't know if i'll be quite what you're looking for.

[dios4vida]

Check Margo's blog (http://urbanpsychopomp.blogspot.com/). She has amazing worldbuilding skills and checklists up the yin yang. If anyone can help you with worldbuilding, she can!!

[polymath]

I can't at the moment think of a more classic example of a Dischism than a setting that's a timeless void. Not that there's, per se, anything wrong with a void for a setting if the void is a dramatic complication. Just that it's classic that a writer who doesn't have a solid concept of a setting organically settles on a void setting.

A Dischism is where a writer's setting influences a narrative's setting. Like a white, featureless room setting reflects a writer staring at a blank page, a void is the inverse of a white room, dark and ominous and all that. Oh the abyss of a blank page, woe.

The features of a setting's time, place, and situation ought best relate to causality at least; in other words, cause problems wanting resolution. And maybe build reader empathy from awe and wonder, like the young adult detachment syndrome known as teenage rebellion wishing to flee the natal family nest for exotic otherworld climes. And suspense from artfully posing dramatic questions, like the generic one What will happen? once so-and-so is offworld passing through the abyss. And what is so-and-so's purpose? Surely not just because it's there. Something must be subconsciously behind compelling the desire to leave home. Otherwise, why leave a comfortable home? And it might be a complication. Certainly, a complication or two are necessary to compel the flight and oppose the purpose of the flight into the abyss.

[washingtonwriter1968]

OK More info My antagonist has stolen my MC's Mother away and taken her into a place I now call a timeless void but may be more apt to say an in-between place. Where it seems that strong and weak forces are unstable. My Antagonist uses this place to manipulate matter and cause my dear MC to follow him on a wild goose chase hunting for her mother.
As soon as she gets to where her mother seems to be.... poof her mother disintegrates into either numbers and symbols and then into nothingness.
She finds herself in another place in another situation where her mother is in danger.

So how do I define this more what would such a place be like if no one were there. All things I need to work on!

[polymath]

Consider asking questions to find answers. One, what's the villain's motive for messing around with mother? Though the villain could as easily be a nemesis playing keep away. When a goal is only attainable by one winner a nemesis pursues the same goal as a protagonist. Villain-wise, there's no interpersonal contention for the same goal, per se. Maybe the nemesis just wants a mommy to unconditionally love him like humans enjoy. Maybe the villain wants to populate the void so it's not so lonely, but must kidnap mortals to populate the void and be subjects.

Let's see, mother becomes symbols and numbers when the protagonist gets close to rescuing her. Then the villain/nemesis easily spirits her away. She's translated into data representing her corporeal being: body, mind, and spirit. Seems to me a fundamental rule about the setting is called for. How is the villain able to translate physical matter into a lossless data set? By mainpulating dimensions outside human tardyon observation? More time space dimensions than those of width, height, depth, and time. One Unified Field theory suggests there are ten or twenty-six dimensions. Maybe the villain translates mother into a dimensional expression that's not anchored in the four observable dimensions. That suggests to me that the void, as it were, is a potential waiting for expressions to make it observable and it can easily be made unobservable by the villain. Maybe polynomial equations manifest as physical, yet ephemeral objects at the will of the villain. And, as polynomials, can be broadcast anywhere, anywhen at a whim. So setting, seems to me, would be fluid. Perhaps geometric shapes comprising individual polynomial identities like a kaleidoscope's objects.

Stakes, public and private? What's privately at stake for the protagonist? The villain? Mother? What's at stake publicly, meaning to readers so they care what will happen? Is the villain bent on consuming the entire world's life to populate the void? for instance. And perhaps life translated into data isn't lossless. The more the villain messes around, the more data is lost?

[washingtonwriter1968]

This one I already worked when I wrote the prelude and the end.
Antagonist Motive:
The idea is to convince her to exchange her mother for herself. When my antagonist gets this promise he wins the right to harass all the human being in the town and the bragging rights. His ultimate goal is to torment the captain of the armies of the opposing aliens I guess you would call them. (They consider mankind their Children or beings that could become what they are)

The protagonist:
Love and guilt She was angry and said she wanted her mother out of her life forever..... But she didn't mean it

Mother:
Is wanting to be freed but also wants to make up with Protagonist )she is just as conscious as protagonist that her daughter is trying to save her and that she is being taken a way at the last moment.

To increase tension: They have only a limited length of time to escape or they will be stuck here forever! I am thinking 6 hours.

[Watcher55]

It's usually best to start with the simple things. Your two characters are in the middle of chaos/void/hard-drive. That means that the laws of physics as we know them only exist within the realm of their immediate influence. That being the case, any metaphysical effects will have to begin with their own innate qualities. How is the antagonist able to manipulate the alternate reality? Is it possible for the protagonist to gain a rudimentary understanding of her new environment in order to develop her own bag of tricks?

To answer those questions, you, the writer, have to be able to “see” the environment, and I think this is the source of your frustration. You describe the environment as “chaos” “void” and, shall we say, “tangible programming language”. You need to pick one. Chaos implies substance without order. Void implies the absence of substance. Programming language implies substance and order that is subject, not to physical law, but to the laws created by its own internal logic. What does the realm look like when no one’s there? What holds it together?

At this point, the only other piece of advice I can offer is to remember that even if your characters aren’t necessarily “human”, they are still people, and when you think “people” (plural), you have to think politics.

[Watcher55]

I know I'm double posting, but this thread has me thinking about "world building" and why I don't think it should be called that.

World building? Building? Really? Buildings are built, planets and universes take shape, but worlds grow and evolve. If a world is part of my story then it’s right here - in the graphite of my pencil (or one of my pencils anyway). If the world is part of my story then it reveals itself on the page or it hides in the end of my fingers and short-circuits my brain. And why should my world be any different from any other character?

When I started work on my WIQ, my world consisted of an unstuck pocket of space time at the bottom of a pit (the black void where the novice writer generally begins). This pocket, this pit, had one property: if you entered it, regardless of how long you stayed, you’d exit one hour later. I put the pit in ancient Rome, so I had a pretty good idea of the local setting, if only a vague idea of where the story would take me.

I tried and I tried to map out, figure out, or otherwise see a full blown image of the pit’s inter-dimensional world. My biggest mistake was that I wasn’t starting with the pit. How - exactly - did my MC get there? Where was he before? How was he going to get out? Can he get back in? I ran my MC ragged, through one scenario then another. I worked more on manifestation (how things looked) than meta-physics (how and why things work). I did of course, have to remain conscious of the metaphysics (time travel and dimensional manipulation), in order to maintain a logical pattern for the manifestations, but most of the logic was based on cause, effect, precedent, and character development:

Cause: MC does a

Effect: Since MC did a; b happened.

Precedent: Since MC did a, and b happened; c is impossible (unless of course MC wants to blow stuff up and ruin it for everybody).

Precedent: Since MC did a, and b happened; d is either possible or inevitable (unless MC wants to win the battle and lose the war).

Character development: I can’t treat my world like a separate piece that I have to “build” into the story. I have to get to know it (more in my head than on the page), and it has to develop with the story as it interacts with the other characters.

Patience is a virtue writers often wish they didn’t have to wait for until they remember that patience is worked for. I’ll bet’cha I can put my hands on six legal pads full of false starts that were abandoned because I couldn’t “make” my world work for me.