Preserving our Christian Heritage since 2001.
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Preserving our Christian Heritage since 2001.
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| Title: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy |
| Author: Card, Orson Scott |
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Format: Paperback: 140 pages |
| Publisher: Writer's Digest Books; New Ed edition (September 2001) |
| ISBN: 158297103X |
| Review Date: June 23rd, 2007 |
| Buy this Book from Amazon.com. |
Rating: |
| Book Description: A small guide for aspiring writers by a famous author. |
Review:
This book is part of a project I am working on. I have been looking at the elements of science fiction and fantasy novels to pull out the morality and world view that underlies each story. As a result I have been looking at what could be called critical works. Lewis' Of Other Worlds, Bradley J. Birzer's Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth, Understanding Middle-earth, and this one by Card.
Card is probably most famous for his novel Ender's Game. As a writer he has several very well written books that have won prestigious honors, such as the Hugo and Nebula awards. Then he has written some, well, not so good books. Readers should be aware of that when they go to find some of his books.
I glanced through the reviews on Amazon to see what other readers had to say. Mostly because the book was hard to categorize. It is not strictly theory and criticism, about a third of the book is publishing strategies. Card says in his introduction that this section, while useful when it was published, will probably be the first section to go out of date, and will probably go out of date fairly quickly. He was correct about that, markets change, publishers and magazines come and go. Apparently most people who reviewed the book did not read the introduction because they go into lengthy diatribes pointing out that this section of the book is out of date.
There is another group of reviews on Amazon that complain all of Card's advice is simple, and very basic. One reviewer stated that his aunts rear end had better literately ideas to its credit. I would like any reader of the reviews to note that none of the critics are published authors.
The core of Card's book is what he calls MICE quotient. MICE is an acronym, milieu, idea, character, event. He states that every story has aspects of each, but depending on the author, and how the author wrote to story, one of the elements will probably dominate the others.
Milieu -- This could be classified as an adventure story. The characters encounter another world. The Wizard of Oz, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Lost World (by Arthur Conan Doyle) would be good examples. The characters are outsiders to the world in the story, and the story follows the characters reactions and surprises.
Idea -- Every mystery or detective book is an idea story. The plot follows the discovery of the information that is need. (i.e. What was the murders motive?) When the idea is explained, the story ends.
Character -- Being the typical guy that I am, I would say that most chick flicks are character driven. So-an-so learns that the mean girl in her biology class has an abusive dad, and then begins to pity her instead of hate her. Character stories follow the growth of a character, for better or worse.
Event -- Event based plots a driven by an occurrence that upsets business as usual in the story. A War, a wedding, a new discovery, etc. The event changes the world and causes the characters to respond to the changed world.
Based off of these components of the story, Card explains that you have to build a world that is believable. It must be consistent and it is good to have a back story. In this way he is similar to Lewis and Tolkien. All three authors created elaborate worlds, in which the reader only sees a small slice of in the published works. He encourages an author to think through the implications of the world he has created.
He gives an example world where magicians loose part of their body every time they cast a spell. Then he begins to elaborate about non-magic users. What if in their lust for recognition, they practiced body mortification to make others think they were truly powerful. Or what if a group of evil wizards learned how to cast a spell and redirect the damaging effects towards innocent people.
This comes back to why a lot of books are really not that interesting. The author does not take his vocation seriously. He never creates a world that is believable, or that has consequences consistent to his worlds foundational functions. If you have ever read a book that you lost interest in, or did not believe, many of the problems can probably be traced back to the story being placed in a world that was not created very well.
