Ben Bova - The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells

THE CRAFT OF WRITING SCIENCE FICTION THAT SELLS

by

BEN BOVA

Published by ReAnimus Press

1994 by Ben Bova. All rights reserved.

http://ReAnimus.com/authors/benbova

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If youre reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~

To Barbara and Bill, two of the most persistent people I know.

I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble, which trying to write common English could cost one.

Charles Darwin

~~~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Bova, author of more than eighty futuristic novels and nonfiction books, has been involved in science and high technology since the beginning of the space program. Formerly president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and President Emeritus of the National Space Society, Bova is a frequent commentator on radio and television, and a popular lecturer. He has also been an editor and an executive in the aerospace industry.

His novels, such as Mars and The Trikon Deception, combine romance, adventure, and scientific accuracy to explore the impact of technological developments on individuals and on society as a whole. His nonfiction books, such as Welcome to Moonbase and Assured Survival, show how modern technology can be used to solve economic, social and political problems.

Bova has taught science fiction writing at Harvard University and at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He lectures regularly on topics dealing with the space program, energy, the craft of writing, and the art of predicting the future. His audiences have included the National Geographic Society, government and corporate executive groups, writers workshops and university students. He has worked with film makers and television producers, such as Woody Allen, George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

Bova has appeared on hundreds of radio and television broadcasts. He was a regular guest on CBS Morning News, and has appeared frequently on Good Morning America and the Today show.

He was editorial director of Omni magazine and editor of Analog magazine. He received the Science Fiction Achievement Award (the Hugo) for Best Professional Editor six times.

CONTENTS

Chapter One - How to Get Out of the Slushpile

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

Ernest Hemingway

All my life I have been a writer.

Well, almost. As far back as I can remember I was writing stories or telling them to friends and family. When I was in junior high school I created a comic strip-strictly for myself; I had no thought of trying to publish it. And I enjoyed reading, enjoyed it immensely. Back in those days, when I was borrowing all the books I was allowed to from the South Philadelphia branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, I had no way of knowing that every career in writing begins with a love of reading.

It was in South Philadelphia High School for Boys (back in those sexually segregated days) that I encountered Mr. George Paravicini, the tenth-grade English teacher and faculty advisor for the school newspaper, The Southron. Under his patient guidance, I worked on the paper and began to write fiction, as well.

Upon graduation from high school in 1949, the group of us who had produced the school paper for three years and published a spiffy yearbook for our graduating class decided that we would go into the magazine business. We created the nations first magazine for teenagers, Campus Town. It was a huge success and a total failure. We published three issues, they were all immediate sellouts, yet somehow we went broke. That convinced us that we probably needed to know more than we did, and we went our separate ways to college.

While I was a staff editor of Campus Town I had my first fiction published. I wrote a short story for each of those three issues. I also had a story accepted by another Philadelphia magazine, for the princely payment of five dollars, but the magazine went bankrupt before they could publish it.

I worked my way through Temple University, getting a degree in journalism in 1954, then took a reporters job on a suburban Philadelphia weekly newspaper, The Upper Darby News.

I was still writing fiction, but without much success. Like most fledgling writers, I had to work at a nine-to-five job to buy groceries and pay the rent. I moved from newspapers to aerospace and actually worked on the first U.S. space project, Vanguard, two years before the creation of NASA. Eventually, I became manager of marketing for a high-powered research lab in Massachusetts, the Avco Everett Research Laboratory. In that role I set up the first top-secret meeting in the Pentagon to inform the Department of Defense that we had invented high-power lasers. That was in 1966, and it was the beginning of what is now called the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars.

My first novel was published in 1959, and I began to have some success as a writer, although still not enough success to leave Avco and become a full-time writer. By then I had a wife and two children.

I became an editor by accident. John W. Campbell, the most powerful and influential editor in the science fiction field, died unexpectedly. I was asked to take his place as editor of Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact magazine, at that time (1971) the top magazine in the SF field. I spent the next eleven years in New York City, as editor of Analog and, later, Omni magazine.

In 1982 I left magazine editing. I have been a full-time writer and occasional lecturer ever since. I have written more than eighty fiction and nonfiction books, a hatful of short stories, and hundreds of articles, reviews and opinion pieces.

THE SLUSHPILE

When I was an editor of fiction, every week I received some fifty to a hundred story manuscripts from men and women who had never submitted a piece of fiction before. The manuscripts stacked up on my desk daily and formed what is known in the publishing business as the slushpile. Every new writer starts in the slushpile. Most writers never get out of it. They simply get tired of receiving rejections and eventually quit writing.

At both Analog and Omni I personally read all the incoming manuscripts. There were no first readers, no assistant readers. The editor read everything. It made for some very long days. And nights. Longand frustrating. Because in story after story I saw the same basic mistakes being made, the same fundamentals of storytelling being ignored. Stories that began with good ideas or that had stretches of good writing in them would fall apart and become unpublishable simply because the writer had overlookedor never knewthe basic principles of storytelling.

There are good ways and poor ways to build a story, just as there are good ways and poor ways to build a house. If the writer does not use good techniques, the story will collapse, just as when a builder uses poor techniques his building collapses.

Every writer must bring three major factors to each story that he writes. They are ideas, artistry and craftsmanship.

Ideas will be discussed later in this book; suffice it to say for now that they are nowhere as difficult to find and develop as most new writers fear.