Oh, science fiction.

[starfoozle]

I've had a spare universe rattling around in my brain for quite a few years now. If you follow me on Tumblr, you've heard me refer to it as the Catalyst!verse -- it's mostly been a mental sandbox, a place to file cool aliens and space pirates and exobiology and other original sci-fi stuff. I've done a lot of worldbuilding with it and have developed

Comments

[last01standing]

Oh yes, I have heard bits and pieces on this over the past few years and I love the ideas here. I am endless impressed with what you bio people manage to do about aliens when you think (I basically go 'parallel evolution, dammit' and call it a day).

And there's no reason something can't be camp and meta and really fucking thoughtful at the same time. I mean I keep thinking back to some of my favorite pulpy sci-fi things, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, The Automatic Detective and hell, even something like Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titian. They're all ridiculous and all camp and all waaaay deeper than you expect even while playing with Tropes.

If you need plotty bits, I'm here if you want to brainstorm. Plot and ideas are kind of my forte. Places, alien cultures, and world-building not so much.

[starfoozle]

The more I mull this over, the more I figure I ought to at least give it a try -- going ahead and combining the two ideas, that is. I have very little experience with writing long pieces, and I keep getting spooked by this thing, which is inevitably going to be massive no matter which direction it ends up taking. But those examples are actually really helpful -- that's one of the reasons I loved The Automatic Detective so much, after all. Campy and meta but genuinely good in its own right. Maybe I'll give this a go

[last01standing]

(I very much want to read any and all of this.) I stalk your starfoozle blog online on occasion when I'm bored so I've seen some of the doodles but these are all fascinating. (Non humanoid aliens! That actually might make proportional sense!)

Writing stories after they pass 10K is kind of daunting. There's a reason why I only ever tend to finish my shit during nano. I have an epic space opera floating around that's about 4 years in the making that I keep rewriting to change shit. At a certain point I feel like it's best to just go with it even if it just starts with writing scenes from 15 different character's POVs. The weirdest things will slot people into the right place for you.

ETA: And it's nice to hear roommate is doing a bit better even if she's still short of healthy. Scary shit, that.

[lostsailors]

Oh man, I would say just go for it. Sometimes stories just take on a life of their own. It's like when you pour weeks into an act and realize only three lines actually work and the rest goes out the window. But that isn't wasted work, it was just what was necessary to get those three perfect lines.

Follow your story where it needs to go!