I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Orson Scott Card– with a few from myself…
Like everyone else, I first “met” Orson Scott Card in a world inhabited by a kid named Ender Wiggins. This kid “played” a Game – a game of war against a nearly implacable aliens who had invaded Earth called the Formics…because they were like ants…
But I didn’t meet Ender in the novels -- he appeared in August of 1977, when the first ever Ender Wiggins story appeared in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact. I read it and reread it. I’m sure I tried to imitate it, but actually? I never really got into the Ender books. I don’t recall reading the novel, either. I just read the short story. Saw the movie, too, and I read one of the Alvin Maker books. But that was about it.
However…it is an undeniable truth (though many, many “non-religious” people have tried to knock Card down), that his work is popular. His work changed science fiction. And he continues to influence the field even today, almost half a century after the publication of a little, tiny novelette in a pulp SF magazine.
How does he influence it? Probably the first thing that comes to mind is his thirty-three-year-old book, HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY. It’s short. Succinct. And I’ve read it at LEAST a dozen times. Every time I read it, I try to apply something I’ve learned from it. Probably the MOST memorable lesson is his discussion of something called the MICE Quotient.
In an article, Carlos Luis Delgado writes: “[The MICE Quotient is]…an organizational theory — coined by Orson Scott Card and popularized by Mary Robinette Kowal, among other fantastic writers — proposing that every story consists of one, or a combination of, these four elements: Milieu, Inquiry, Character, and Event.”
Briefly, the Milieu is the PLACE the story happens. NOT, “In Minnesota…” place; rather it’s the world that I create as a writer.
Others design a world for a story and then throw it away. They build that world so that whatever it is the writer is trying to say will HAPPEN there in precisely the way that will make the end of the story both obvious and clearly say whatever message the writer’s trying to communicate.
As I’ve always loathed what I call “disposable worlds” or worlds that a writer creates for a single story, I have four worlds I place all of my science fiction stories into.
Card, Brin, Czerneda, Cherryh, and hundreds of other writers – (even non-genre writers like Stieg Larssen have taken the idea of Milieu seriously. He wrote the international best-seller: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Then he wrote two more books in the series and NONE of them were published until after he died! The first became a runaway hit. The two that followed also were best-sellers. Because he had passed away before publication, it was left to the publisher to continue the series. The first book sparked two MORE writers to write two MORE trilogies in the series…
At any rate. Milieu is a place that can be reused over and over.
I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t throw away a world. As far as I can recall, ALL of my stories take place in one of these four worlds:
Empire and Confluence: There’s no one but US. The Empire of Man insists a person must be 65% congruent with the first completed Genome (Human Genome Project completed: March 30, 2022 [ https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project ]); the Confluence of Humanity allows ALL genetic engineering on the Human genome in order to design Humans to fit ANY environment.
WheetAh-Human: There is one other sapient species in the known universe. The WheetAh are intelligent, space-travelling plantimals (aspects of both animal and plant).
Unity of Sapients: Thirty-four Sapient species make up a (roughly!) unified civilization in the Orion Spur of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. We are the newest and least advanced (sent out our first interstellar probe; how we discovered our “watchers”.) To get other stuff, we have to trade. But there's really only one thing they want...
Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: An aggressive civilization of "saurians" evolved on Venus. Expanding rapidly, they left our Solar System to conquer the rest of space. Eventually, they were beaten back by Others. During the final battles, a micro-singularity engine broke free and blew uncontrolled through the Solar System. Uranus was tipped on its side; Mars' atmosphere was torn away; the singularity destroyed other ships, scattering debris through the Solar System. It rained destruction down on Earth about 65 mya and blasted Venus and its large moon, reversing Venus' rotation; and liberating its moon to fall into a new orbit around the Sun...
All of my stories can be placed in one of these Milieus. There are stories that take place EARLIER than First Contact, but the end result is the same.
Idea: “Idea stories are about the process of finding information. They begin with a question and end when that question is answered. Books in the mystery genre are often in this category.” These are OK for me, but I prefer a deeper story.
Character: I’ve finally started to learn that my main character has to CHANGE from what they were like at the beginning to someone (or some part of them) that is new – and that change is catalyzed by the PLOT (the things that happen). NO character can just randomly change. I am who I am today because certain things happened to me. Lots of time travel stories talk about “what if this hadn’t happened to…” Maybe the most profound one I’ve seen (which also inspired all kinds of arguments!) was “What if Adolph Hitler had gotten into the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna?” (The arguments stem from the idea that Hitler WAS what he WAS. History would be no different if he’d gotten into the school…)
Event/Catastrophe: “Event stories begin with a catastrophic event that threatens to totally destroy or alter the world and end either when the characters stop or when they overcome the catastrophe, or when everyone perishes.” I’m not fond of this one, but it HAS been used to impressive effect. Adrian Tchaikovsky uses this Quotient in his first novel CHILDREN OF TIME, in which a mission to seed a world to make it habitable by Humans goes…quite creepily…wrong. (I have a friend who could NOT read the book because of the creep-factor!)
This is a useful tool – and I need to go back to using it.
Lastly, this quote from Card is one I’ve taken to heart:
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”
I’ve learned to see one or two a day!
References: https://www.ericjamesstone.com/biography/about-writing/my-notes-from-orson-scott-cards-literary-boot-camp-2003/ ; https://writelabel.medium.com/using-mice-in-your-copywriting-c1a8ee6f2bf2 ; https://www.azquotes.com/author/2450-Orson_Scott_Card/tag/writing ; http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320
Empire and Confluence: There’s no one but US. The Empire of Man insists a person must be 65% congruent with the first completed Genome (Human Genome Project completed: March 30, 2022 [ https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project ]); the Confluence of Humanity allows ALL genetic engineering on the Human genome in order to design Humans to fit ANY environment.
WheetAh-Human: There is one other sapient species in the known universe. The WheetAh are intelligent, space-travelling plantimals (aspects of both animal and plant).
Unity of Sapients: Thirty-four Sapient species make up a (roughly!) unified civilization in the Orion Spur of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. We are the newest and least advanced (sent out our first interstellar probe; how we discovered our “watchers”.) To get other stuff, we have to trade. But there's really only one thing they want...
Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: An aggressive civilization of "saurians" evolved on Venus. Expanding rapidly, they left our Solar System to conquer the rest of space. Eventually, they were beaten back by Others. During the final battles, a micro-singularity engine broke free and blew uncontrolled through the Solar System. Uranus was tipped on its side; Mars' atmosphere was torn away; the singularity destroyed other ships, scattering debris through the Solar System. It rained destruction down on Earth about 65 mya and blasted Venus and its large moon, reversing Venus' rotation; and liberating its moon to fall into a new orbit around the Sun...
All of my stories can be placed in one of these Milieus. There are stories that take place EARLIER than First Contact, but the end result is the same.
Idea: “Idea stories are about the process of finding information. They begin with a question and end when that question is answered. Books in the mystery genre are often in this category.” These are OK for me, but I prefer a deeper story.
Character: I’ve finally started to learn that my main character has to CHANGE from what they were like at the beginning to someone (or some part of them) that is new – and that change is catalyzed by the PLOT (the things that happen). NO character can just randomly change. I am who I am today because certain things happened to me. Lots of time travel stories talk about “what if this hadn’t happened to…” Maybe the most profound one I’ve seen (which also inspired all kinds of arguments!) was “What if Adolph Hitler had gotten into the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna?” (The arguments stem from the idea that Hitler WAS what he WAS. History would be no different if he’d gotten into the school…)
Event/Catastrophe: “Event stories begin with a catastrophic event that threatens to totally destroy or alter the world and end either when the characters stop or when they overcome the catastrophe, or when everyone perishes.” I’m not fond of this one, but it HAS been used to impressive effect. Adrian Tchaikovsky uses this Quotient in his first novel CHILDREN OF TIME, in which a mission to seed a world to make it habitable by Humans goes…quite creepily…wrong. (I have a friend who could NOT read the book because of the creep-factor!)
This is a useful tool – and I need to go back to using it.
Lastly, this quote from Card is one I’ve taken to heart:
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”
I’ve learned to see one or two a day!
References: https://www.ericjamesstone.com/biography/about-writing/my-notes-from-orson-scott-cards-literary-boot-camp-2003/ ; https://writelabel.medium.com/using-mice-in-your-copywriting-c1a8ee6f2bf2 ; https://www.azquotes.com/author/2450-Orson_Scott_Card/tag/writing ; http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320
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