Writing Science Fiction Scripts

The website screenplayscripts.com has published an interesting article on Writing SF Scripts by Nic Ransome.

Among many interesting points that it raises:

1. Film Genre vs Story Genre. Film theorists refer to the SF genre as portraying future or parallel worlds with a particular set of themes and tropes. Story theorists refer to genre as a setting, and not a genre per se. I think what Ransome is getting at is the difference between speculative SF, in which the SF is necessary for the story, and that part of SF in which a story told in a SF setting despite the fact that it could have been told in any other setting.
   
   As examples of the former, he cites Gattaca and Solaris, while of the latter he cites Star Wars (Hero's Journey in space) and Lost in Space (The Swiss Family Robinson in space). He describes Galaxy Quest as a "a fish-out-of-water ensemble comedy with a classic redemption arc for the lead protagonist ... set it in space" and also "one of the cleverest, funniest and most elegantly-structured Sci-Fi scripts of the past twenty years."
   
2. Utopia, Dystopia and Fantasy. According to Ransome, SF and Westerns are the only genre's to resist post modernism, which he attributes to the fact that:
   

   Sci-Fi so completely resists the post-modern relativity of time and meaning is because that is what it was always about in the first place. There are no realities or meanings more relative than those revealed by Science Fiction.
   
   In its purest form, the Sci-Fi narrative presents a polarity of moral choices and asks the most difficult of existential questions. This polarity is encapsulated by the utopian (ordered, no conflict, boring) and the dystopian (messy, intriguing, human).

   Here he gives the examples of Logan's Run, in which an apparently utopian world is revealed as dystopic, as well as Brazil and The Matrix as apparently normal worlds that turn out to be versions of hell.
   
   Fantasy arises when mythic stories are played out in a SF setting, such as Dune and Star Wars. He cites Chris Vogler as saying that Willow "is a perfect example of what happens when you try systematically to hit every beat of the Hero’s Journey without spin, skew or innovation."
3. Science Fact and Science Fiction. SF is naturally shaped by scientific advances. As examples, he cites:
   
1. state control through technology (1984, The Matrix)
2. cryogenics (Sleeper, Demolition Man)
3. cloning (Multiplicity, The 6th Day)
4. state control of fertility (The Handmaid's Tale, Supernova)
5. memory recording and exchange (Total Recall, Strange Days, Unforgettable)
6. cybernetics (Terminator, Bicentennial Man, A.I.).

He concludes with the following:

Sci-Fi is the arena in which we confront possible futures (and, indeed, alternate pasts) and explore how we could live in them.

Sci-Fi films continue to reflect advancements in science and our thinking about the consequences of ‘progress’, from films about computers developing consciousness and will (2001), to films about artificial intelligences developing souls (A.I.) and from a film in which a replicant thinks he is human (Blade Runner) to a film in which a human discovers he is a clone (The 6th Day).  

All in all, a fascinating perspective that I encourage you to go read in full. And some excellent suggestions for movies to check out. I need to go rewatch Galaxy Quest and The 6th Day. I don't recall ever having seen Sleeper.

The Writing Process: Lee Child

I am quite a big fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series of novels. They have got nothing to do with SFF (they are more action adventure crossed with police procedural). But as they are genre fiction of a different sort, and as Child is a wildly successful author, a recent article in the New York Times entitled The Professor on Lee Child’s Shoulder that describes Child's writing process should be of interest to fans of any genre.

The genesis for the article is that Andy Martin, a fan and academic critic of Child, approached Child about following him as he wrote his 20th novel in the series, Make Me. Martin then wrote about the experience in Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me. The Times article reports on a conversation between Martin and Child.

According to the interview, Child approached this as a form of real time literary criticism. As Child says:

Here is the fundamental reality about the writing business. It’s lonely. You spend all your time writing and then wondering whether what you just wrote is any good. You gave me instant feedback. If I write a nicely balanced four-word sentence with good rhythm and cadence, most critics will skip right over it. You not only notice it, you go and write a couple of chapters about it. I liked the chance to discuss stuff that most people never think about. It’s weird and picayune, but obviously of burning interest to me.

Martin says he was struck by how much of Child's surroundings made it into the book:

I tried to be a kind of white-coated detached observer. But every observer impinges on the thing he is observing. Which would be you in this case. And I noticed that everything around you gets into your texts. You are an opportunistic writer. For example, one day the maid was bumping around in the kitchen and in the next line you used the word “bucket.” Another time there was some construction work going on nearby and the next verb you used was “nail.” We go to a bookstore and suddenly there is Reacher, in a bookstore.

Child appears to be a "seat of the pants" writer. As Martin says:

That was the thing that drew me in: You never knew in advance what you were going to be writing about. It was a real tabula rasa. You really were making it up as you went along. I can certify that. I remember what you said when we started off down this road. “I have no plot and no title.” No plan, no notes, no synopsis.

while Child describes the change in his process, necessitated by having an observer, as being his primary interest:

Normally I operate in a fog of instinct. I wondered if being required to explain as I went along might actually be more illuminating for me than you.

Indeed, Child seems to have gotten used to bouncing ideas off Martin. The reported conversation begins with Child telling Martin the first sentence of his next novel, apparently titled Night School:

“In the morning they gave Reacher a medal, in the afternoon they sent him back to school.” The first sentence of “Night School.”

In response:

MARTIN Eleven syllables, each side of the caesura. Diminished alexandrine. Nicely symmetrical. And that rhythm. Like a limerick. Did you know you were doing that? 

CHILD See, I’ll miss all that.

Overall, a fascinating insight into the mind and process of a very successful writer.