| Tips On Writing CyberPunk |
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Originally Posted By: Ken "Wirehead" Wronkiewicz and Marshall Motley (wh3947a@tso.cin.ix.net)
Well, you have gone through the bookstore and seen all of the books. You want to go there and see a book with your name on it. Or maybe you have just finished reading a pitiful novel and you know that you can do a better job. You've come to the right place. Welcome. Writing CyberPunk is similar to writing any other form of speculative fiction. Once you have the rudiments of writing down, any form of writing will be easy to try writing. Similarly, once you have the rudiments of speculative fiction down, CyberPunk will be easy for you. The first question that you should ask yourself is "Do I have anything to say?" This is not necessarily if you have a plot and an idea for a story down, nor if you know exactly what you are doing. No, it is a matter of if you have a desire to say something. Knowing what you want to write will come out once you start. Most writers find that they do not consciously think of the writing, but instead the story spills out. After writing, you may very well feel drained, like you spent a week in a forced labor camp. Don't let this discourage you; it is a completely natural effect of the therapy of writing. If you don't have a desire for this form of self-expression, this will stop you. Otherwise, read on. Chapters: |
| How To Begin | Goto Top |
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To start writing a story, you need to start out simple. Don't try anything brilliantly fantastic or long; just start writing a short story. Don't get down on yourself if it sucks; my first one was truly bad. Try writing a basic walking around story describing your home town as it will be in 10-15 years. This is to let you consider everything you should know when you think about the future. Plan on writing about five pages or so, which will take a good 5 hours. Don't sweat about speed, because it will improve. Once you have about five pages of basic dialogue and setting done, you can make
a better decision if you like this form of expression or not. Most natural
talents have no trouble going from the first 5 pages onto the rest of the story,
even a novel. Most writers will have minimal trouble making it to the next step.
If you are having problems, don't get frustrated, it just means that you have to
work. You do want to be a writer, right?
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| Themes And Symbols | Goto Top |
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The key item to remember when writing a story is that it does have a point, somewhere. Your work will be judged by both what that point is and how you go about explaining it. This is called a theme. A theme is usually something very personal and strongly felt by an individual writer to the point that he usually doesn't see it if he looks over the book when he edits it. The same goes for symbols. You can unconsciously make many different forms of symbolism in your story, and nobody will notice them, even you. When I started writing, my social life was nothing but stress. As a result, many of the people in it were symbolic of happenings in my social life. Consciously, you can change the story. You can think up a theme and use
symbols to express this theme. Be careful when making an extremely symbolic story
that is built upon the symbols, however. If the reader can't figure out what you
are saying, he is not going to think highly of your writing.
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| Organization | Goto Top |
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I find that my brain is too splatter-brained to create a unified story that holds together without rigorous organization. Other writers are of the opinion that a story should spring fully formed out of the frontal lobes of your mind and jump out onto paper. Some of the latter suck at writing, but many people are capable of this. It is your choice. Don't let ego or pride stand over common sense in using an outline. I have a form on my computer that enables me to generate a story outline with assorted fields for the different characters, setting notes, and whatnot. I strongly suggest you use this as an approach. The outline is not supposed to be like the outlines you know and loathe from grade school, but instead should be sketchy and freeform. Of course, if you are of the type who likes to outline in a strict formal manner, it's your funeral. For some people, the idea of writing out the notes kills the drive for you to actually do it, especially if you are beginning. For others, who write in a zen- like state, it disrupts their internal pattern of writing to the point that their writing sucks. The trick is to fill the blanks in between the "cool scenes" in your mind. Many people have problems because they have many cool scenes written out in the story, but there's more to a story than a few scenes. Use your creativity to work a way to link things together. You might consider keeping a notebook of ideas, diagrams, sketches, etc. Any idea that comes to you should be recorded. If you don't use it immediately, save it for later. You can also write all of your good ideas onto notecards. Spread them out in
front of you and form them into a story. Write the outline down from that and
save the rest of the cards for your next story.
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| Characterization | Goto Top |
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Character drives the story, making it what it is. In space opera, you can get away with lousy characterization, but cardboard characters are less tolerable these days, even in space opera. If characters don't come naturally to you, write out a character sketch. Play a game of twenty questions with the character that you are creating. If you feel schizophrenic, have a conversation with your character. You can find characters all around you. Look at people on the street for a character. Take what you see of them already and form a character sketch. Stick people who resemble people from your past in. Take somebody whom you hated a long time ago and try to write them in a light that you would actually want to associate with them. In SF, you need to know the occupation, clothing, transport, weapons/tools, where the character lives, and the current relationships to the characters at the beginning of the story. If you are so inclined, keep a file of character sketches in your computer and pull them out when you need one. The characters must change through the course of the story. Characters are critical to the story. If they are nothing but plot operatives, you end up loosing realism. You need to consider why a character reacts the way he does in a story, because this character is not you. For minor characters, all you need is an archetype. Minor characters generally don't develop or grow, but are only a tiny step higher than the scenery. Just describe them as an archetype -- a few words that say what the person is and what they act like. If your situation and the character's reaction don't work for your story, you
have two choices. First, you can change the story. Second, you can change the
situation. To do the second, you set up the character with the proper stimulus to
get what you want. If you have to gimmick things, do it, because a truly bad
character reaction will stick out like a sore thumb.
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| Editing And Unity | Goto Top |
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To fix drastic errors, you have to accept the fact that as good as you felt writing the story down; you are not perfect. God does not expect perfection, or else we would be angels to begin with. The process of repairing missed words, improperly sentences, etc. is also called editing. It also allows the writer to critically examine story problems. Most of these can be fixed quite easily. Usually a renaming of a character or item will solve a problem. Sometimes it's necessary to provide a secondary character viewpoint so that a scene's importance to the story can be understood. Make sure that you are writing a unified work. Don't start out writing something depressing and then change to a funny scene unless you know exactly what you are doing. Swords are cool, but almost totally useless for any encounter in science fiction. The other guy probably has a gun, and the guy with the gun always wins in such a contest. However, when wrestling for control of a sword, the person with the handle always wins. Tactical errors will turn off a reader fast. Try to foreshadow what will happen, but don't be too obvious. One book I read, I realized exactly what needed to happen in the story out of the first fourth of it, and the rest of the story followed almost exactly what happened. Surprise the reader; give them a shock. Make sure that characters don't change names and rooms don't change layout suddenly. Either draw a bunch of pictures and diagrams or be prepared to look back in your manuscript. Never go back and edit until you are done writing. Write notes to yourself about any changes that need to be made and then do all of your editing at once. With the miracle of Word Processing, you can forget about individual drafts and just write the story and edit it as much as you like. Remember that there is a principle of diminishing returns with editing; eventually you will not be able to improve a story any. Sometimes, you need to go back and rewrite a story entirely. Print out the story and open a new file in your word processor. You can either scribble notes over the printed copy and just write based on that, or you can start over. If you start over, you will remember the major details and how the story fits together. You should probably have the notes handy. I think that the second idea is a mistake, but many writers use this method. The second method is regarded as a strategy of "pulp" novelists. It is always helpful to have people who aren't your best friends read over your
writing. If you show it to a friend, you will always be told your writing is
wonderful. Find somebody who doesn't mind leaving the manuscript looking like
somebody sneezed blood all over it.
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| Point Of View | Goto Top |
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Point of view is an easy way to make or break a novel. Try to switch the point of view that you use. I recommend against writing omnisciently, because you will quickly ruin the story for the reader, because you need to surprise him. Usually, try writing from mainly one point of view, a set group of them, or an incidental character whom placement is only valuable as a means of showing a different part of a plot. You can always try second-person; even though your grade school teacher refused to teach it to you, try it anyway. Remember that the character only knows some things. Insert background
throughout the story; don't just dump it on the reader at the end. The easiest
way to start off is to start the story off at the first major incident and then
throw a flashback in. However, you can fall into the trap of loosing realism.
Remember, you don't wake up in the morning and examine every minute detail on the
face unless you live with a sadistic plastic surgeon. Or you can bore the reader
by starting at the beginning of the story and make them weed through the boring
details. And then, of course, there is the CyberPunk method of starting the
character walking around his daily life, throwing in little bits of exposition
mixed into the establishment of character. Take your choice.
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| Getting The Images Right | Goto Top |
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Many writers have problems with imagery. The key to this is to have an image available. Some people can create them in their heads without aids. There are many tools for creating images. VR software is often helpful, if you have the ability to work with it. 3D art packages are also helpful. Home CAD programs can be a great help. Vista Pro enables you to create fractal landscapes that look extremely realistic. If you have a good Internet link, find a VRML browser and search through virtual worlds on the Internet. Many VR designers are at least closet CyberPunk fans. Look through magazines to find pictures that apply. Watch movies and modify a picture in your head. Draw pictures if you have artistic talent. Draw diagrams and maps to visualize spatial relationships. Create blueprints
for important buildings and equipment. When you need to describe them, the images
come easily from the blueprints.
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| Style | Goto Top |
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Style is a personal issue that is difficult to define. Style is the use of words, the method of starting a scene, the description, the vocabulary, and such. If you are in tune with the style, you can easily tell how many voices there are in a novel. Some CyberPunk writings are written in a different style than most readers are accustomed to. Neuromancer is a good example. In many parts, it is almost poetic. However, style does not make a story; a confused reader just stops reading. Other writers choose to skip heavy stylistic elements and write like people talk. This is also a valid option, and many successful writers take this option. Feel free to throw dirt in the face of all of your grammar teachers. Style allows for run-on sentences, fragmentary sentences, split infinitives, and whatever other fun you feel like. Grammarians will scream, but it's well established in fiction. But be sure that you are reasonably grammatically correct. Never repeat words, especially nouns, adjectives, adverbs, or verbs in a sentence. Try to keep repetition in a paragraph down. Use the thesaurus. Even better, use the thesaurus function in your word processor. People love to read in the English language because they like the good feeling of hearing new and different words. Spellchecking is a must. Every misspelled word makes many readers wince. A few errors will be forgiven; nobody's perfect. However, a blatant lack of spelling will turn the reader off. Grammar checking can be helpful. Be sure to disable the annoying options of your grammar checker. I mostly use it to catch little errors, and I have lots of options turned off. Feel free to invent words. If you are writing a short story, be sure that the reader can interpret them rapidly from context. Never string the reader on with pages of meaningless technobabble. For a book, you can make the language less obvious. If you like, you can include a glossary at the end. If you can't invent any language, check out hacker jargon files. Don't be afraid to experiment. Nobody remembers a copycat.
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| Pacing | Goto Top |
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Pacing is tricky to master. When you write the story, you can't have a story that doesn't let up on the fighting. There are supposed to be little breaks in the action where the reader can catch his breath. My big mistake when I started writing was forcing the reader to jump into my brain. I had nothing but action, no breaks, not even room for imagery. It read like the synopsis of a book. Pacing is not just the action, but also dialogue, scene placement, and the use of point of view changes. You need to examine each scene and its placement. Do the characters fight to easily? Is the dialogue believable? Is the story one long fight? Most people have little trouble with the pacing. Check out Count Zero, by William Gibson, or Snow Crash, by Neil Stephenson. Both of these have different ways to keep the reader reading and not sleeping or pissed off. Don't pace too much. Keep the action scenes moving.
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| Mood And Writer's Block | Goto Top |
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If you are not in the right mood, with your head in gear, and want to write, you will not be able to write. This is what is called Writer's Block. Almost every writer suffers from this debilitating affliction. If you are careful, you can avoid it. The mood you are in can play a part in how you write. CyberPunk requires a punkish mood. There are all sorts of ways to change your mood. Check out some odd music. Heavy Metal sometimes works, but so does Techno and Industrial. I can recommend God Lives Underwater, Front Line Assembly, Metallica, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, and Front 242. If you have to, make up a tape and listen to it on the walkman. Dress up like your character. Draw pictures. Read CyberPunk (my copy of Neuromancer is well worn). Play some computer games. Meditate. If you come to an involuntary stoppage in your writing, puke the contents of your brain out somewhere. I use the Annotation function of my word processor. Or surround the note with {} brackets. In fact, if you need to write a note to yourself at any point, do so. If you stop writing, you need to start again. You will probably have a problem with not being distracted. Resist the temptation to get on the net, check e-mail, or play games forever. Delete Windows Solitaire. Sit down and resolve to write for an hour. Tell everybody to leave you alone. If you need to, set a stop watch. Setting a regular time for writing will keep you straight. If you find yourself getting burned out, take a break. I usually go downstairs and make a nice hot cup of tea. If you have a musical instrument, noodle on it for a little. Call somebody on the phone. Check your mail. But if you take too long, you will have more trouble getting back to work. All I can manage is getting a cup of tea. If you have ADD, don't forget to take your reytalin.
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| Moving Onwards | Goto Top |
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Keep a few extra files in your computer. Whenever a story flops, rescue any good scenes and use them over again. Keep a massive file of ideas that you add to regularly. Then, when you need more ideas, you have them ready. You might consider keeping a log. Log how much you write. Note any major successes in writing. It often will motivate you. Journals and diaries can help your writing. However, you must write in them every day. If you spend time creating detailed technical information for each story,
consider re-using it. Make up a huge reference file of your technologies.
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| Afterword | Goto Top |
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This should be enough to get you off writing. Some of the advice is good for beginners, and some of it is oriented towards people who have been writing. If you are having a problem with something not addressed here, either buy a book on writing from the bookstore or mail me. I am cheaper. Writing is not supposed to be easy. But it should be satisfying. Just as the mountain climber can look down with satisfaction when he reaches the top, you should be able to pull out your premiere novel and say, "I wrote this." It may not be particularly fun; the incidence of psychological disorders in writers is ten times what it is in "normal" people. Writers often have a beast inside, struggling to get out. Feel free to ignore my advice. Every writer has an individual style. As long
as the reader reacts how you want him to, everything is okay; you have
accomplished your goal as a writer.
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