30 Days: Writing a Novel - Day 02

I try not to start to rant about how tough this day was but believe me it was a very tough one. Nevertheless I managed to stock the 300 Words from yesterday up to 1670. So I managed to finish day 1 and I’m now one day behind.

Today writing was a bit easier. I tried to get some inspiration through listening to music while writing and it helps me to focus. I haven’t read anything I wrote and just kept writing. A lot of exposition about the background of my story was established and I finished the opening chapter which only had some side characters in it. Now I will introducing my main protagonist and his „sidekick“. My novel is a science fiction novel and I have to say that this is probably not the easiest of choices. I like the genre but I quess it would be a lot easier to write let's say a thriller or something like that.

The problem with science fiction is that you have the plot and you have a background to the story. In a story set in reality I only have to name some places and dates and the reader can imagine what it is like. If I tell you that my story takes place in London at the turn of the 20th century I don’t have to explain much. You can either imagine what it was like there and then or you can look it up. But if I tell you my story takes place 500 years into the future on a foreign planet then I have to do a lot of explaining. I have to tell you what technology is existant, what the people are like, how their society is structured and so on and so forth. There are several ways to handle this problem but most of them lead to a very boring reading experience.

For example I could spend 50 pages to tell you every aspect of the society and history of my imagined world but then this would be as exciting as reading the manual of your blu-ray-player. I could also pack this whole exposition into an annex or leave the reader in the dark for most of the actual plot. But all of these solutions lead to an exhausting reading experience. What I think works best is to tell you a bit of background and then a bit of story. Most often you have a protagonist or a side character to the protagonist who is not part of the world in which the story takes place and therefore gives a good excuse to explain the background to this character and therefore also to the reader. I think I will go with this method if I don’t fail and lose myself in page long expositions about my fabulously constructed future world.