Sci-Fi writing

I’ve started on my first science fiction novel, and it is a wedding gift to two friends of mine. It also kicks off my larger universe that I’ve been crafting since my teenage years and will, ultimately, consist of (at least) 17 books!

The story behind this novel wedding gift (haha) is this: two of my dear friends, Tim & Tiffany, were getting married. At their engagement party I noticed Tiffany sitting a little quietly subdued to the side. I asked her what was up, and she told me that her family (Chinese) really expected her to take Tim’s last name, but as a modern woman she was feeling on the fence about that. I told her I would try and find a solution for her, and I walked over to Tim, put my hand on his shoulder and said “Tim, you’re a strong feminist man. You can’t have your wife take your last name and have that be it.” Tim very much agreed, but “what can I do? It’s her family’s expectation, we don’t want to upset them either.”

So I said, “You can take Tiffany’s last name as your new middle name. That way, you both carry each other’s last names forward in your own.”

Tim thought that was a great idea and agreed to it. I returned to Tiffany with the good news, and she felt immediately happier. We continue to enjoy the engagement party and everyone gets very happily drunk.

Fast-forward a few months, and I’m having a picnic with Tim and Tiffany. Tim excitedly tells me how they went to City Hall and got all the legal paperwork taken care of.  “We’re officially married now!”

“That’s awesome,” I say, “Congratulations! Did you do the name change?”

And Tiffany goes “Yep, I did!” And Tim goes “……fuck!”

He’d forgotten to do it. “Aw shit, and now it’s going to be a lot more hassle, paperwork, and extra costs to do it.”

So, I propose a solution: “How about you hold up your end of our verbal contract, and I will write the two of you a short story inspired by this whole thing?”

“Deal!” Tim says. “That sounds amazing, I’m in, I’ll do it!”

“Great! What genre do you both want the story to be in?”

And they answer simultaneously, without hesitation: “SCI-FI!”

So I start writing this short story, it’s now sometime October 2016, and I am about 3,000 words in when I realize that, at this rate, I can only make it a very open-ended short story. An Act 1, so to speak, but I think that’s fine because it’s a wedding gift. It’s for the beginning of their journey, so it doesn’t need to necessarily end very conclusively.

Then the election happens. Then Thanksgiving, then my girlfriend and I travel back to Europe for two weeks for Christmas, then New Years, and then she and I break up. So now it’s the start of Trump’s presidency, and I realize: the world is on fire, my life is on fire. I really better get started on my life-long dream of writing novels, because who knows how long I’ll have before nuclear war annoyingly ruins my much more important plans.

I get two books to help me get started: one, a book on creating the structure and outline of a book, so you can write it easily. And two, a little ebook from the same author, Libbie Hawker, on writing a great synopsis. After all, a synopsis is needed to sell your book to an agent to take you on, a publisher to accept your book, AND a reader, via the cover blurb. So I want to get this synopsis writing down, and I decide to practice writing one using my short story for Tim and Tiffany.

I write the first paragraph, and it covers the entire planned arc of the short story. And I then write two more paragraphs, and I realize this world just blew open, with a much greater adventure and far more characters. And, I can’t put the genie back in the bottle. So I go back to Tim and Tiffany, and I tell them: “Look, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is, your wedding gift is going to be SUPER late.”

“The good news is, it’s now a whole novel.”

And that’s the story of how my universe of novels is currently kicking off.