writing advice

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

so im writing a sci-fi with magic and I've come across a problem. i feel I'm starting a bit to fast. throwing a lot in your face while excluding a lot. any and all advice would be helpful

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Rowan

I approached the essence vent and bent down in the space suit to get a better look at it. I watched as the atoms in the suit rearranged themselves to allow for essence absorption. I looked at the tear in reality in front of me. No one realy understood what essence was or where it came from. All we know is that for certain people like dragonborn it can power your body and soul to incredible lengths. I grabbed a ring of gold from my belt and threw it to the essence vent. The ring absorbed the essence closing the tear and began to glow a deep orange. I stood back up. This was the second time I had done this. Unlike the first time where i got a faint blueish white i got a strong dark orange glow. Dusk! How had i managed to find a tear directly into a deep ring of dusk. I tried to ignore it as i tuned around to get a look at the damage the rest of the planet had sustained during the explosion that opened the vents. I saw hundreds of rocks drifting of to space as the gravity of the planet dissolved. I looked towards the transport pod that brought me, and a few outhers to the surface of the planet. I started to up the ramp of the transport pod, and as i did a familiar voice rang in my ears. “Rowan. Did you find it?” commander grayson asked through the coms from the main ship in low orbit. 

“Yep. it looks to be 7th dusk essence. Then again i am just a essence collector so how am i ment to know?”

“I thought you where the lead researcher on the star forge project. And that this was only your second collection”

“I am. I need to run a few tests to confirm the find. Worst case it is 1000 sparks worth of raw demonic essence. Best case it is double that of refind demonic essence. No chance of it being angelic. Wrong colour. I do hope you have a way to store it properly. I dont want to risk contamination of dawn and dusk essence on the ship. Expeshely not in the star forge. Let the outhers know i found it. And that we will be back soon.” 

“Understood. You dont suppose you can tell me what the starforge project is?”

“Sorry sir. it is top secret. You will need to get clearance from my superiers back on Verdantia. When we get back i can tell you the core idea that it is focused on. Its more of a philosophy really.” i replied while sitting down and fastening myself to the chair. I sat while the rest of my team got ready for the return trip to the ship. I got out my datapad and started to enter the data of the essence into the star forge. I smiled as i got the first set of data back. I had the first confirmation of the existence of an 4th subatomic particle. A particle that was both neutral and positive at the same time. It was in the test chamber in the star forge. I had to take a moment to check the datapad. I didnt want to enter the star forge before all the data was in so as to not have to restart the process. I sat back in the chair and waited for the rest of the team to arrive. 

 

 

4 weeks later - alexander

I sat back in the chair and smiled. I smiled as I looked over the data. The bioessence tests where successful. Me and the rest of the botany team would be hard at work growing the nutral essence. I stood up and walked over to the observation window, gazing out at the small contained green tererium where most of our longturm experiments where stored. i turned around and walked towards my bio station. inside it was currently a small bonsai tree whos leaves glowed with raw neutral essence. i was anoyed at how little essence i had in me. i was nearly to my first awakening. i only had 43 sparks of essence. most of the essence collected on this trip would go to the oh so misterius project starforge. I sat down at the bio station and put the datapad into the holding slot. I placed my hand on the bio sensor and waited for it to start. The essence from the plant was absorbed into my bloodstream. The sensors did a quick analysis and then i was flooded with the essense. The sensors scanned my body for any defects caused from conflicting essence types. They found nothing. I was safe. I took a deep breath as i looked at my essenc reader. I now had 61 sparks of essence. I looked around myself at the aura of essence i now generated and sighed. I could not hide this from my fellow crew members. Someone was bound to realise soon that i now have more essence and start to question where i got it from. I looked around the room and saw no one. There was nothing to be done about the essence until i got to the 3rd awakening but that wasnt for another 550 sparks of essence. I sighed and walked to the door. I opened it and left the room. Outside i saw the chief botanist standing outside the room and looked at him with a nervous look on my face. “Good morning.” i said calmly. He looked at me and cocked his head. I knew what was coming. I could practically feel it. He came up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. 

 

 

 

[Edema Rue she/her]

Oo...I think it's interesting, but I agree it is a lot right at once. If that's happening towards the middle of your book, once people already understand the magic, then it probably works. If not, I would definitely do a little more exposition (course, I'm not an expert, so take my advice with a grain of salt).

[Shardwatcher01 he/him]

Yea i totally agree it’s interesting but it is just a lot thrown in your face without a lot of like background context of like who people are or what’s going on.

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

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Log 00 - 04 - 021 - 0152 - Alexander

Hello this is the first log during my time on the Starforge. I am embarrassed that this is my first log as we’ve been exploring for several months now.  We have come to a dead end. We found the ruins of a large mining operation, and I think it was part of the Thoracic Empire. And like most parts of the empire, everything is completely destroyed. We still have yet to find the cause of the damage howether there is or at least there was a great deal of essence in and around the ruins. We are collecting as much minerals and essence as we can before we carry on travelling. I'm sitting at my desk right now recording this log and I'm looking at the dating system for the log. This log looks to be 00 - 04 - 021 - 0152. The best I can guess is that the 00 is the number of completed years we have done. 04 the completed months. 021 completed weeks. 0152 completed days. Looking at my watch the time is now 10:87 daylight. You people back on earth probably have no idea what that means. The space people who designed and planned this trip decided that Earth time made no sense as in space there was no sun to dictate the time. So this is the new time system. There are 20 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour. 100 seconds in a minute and 100 milliseconds in a second. 10 hours of our day is called daylight where we work and eat and stuff while the other 10 hours are called nightlight where we sleep and relax. I have to say that this new system has been an improvement. It was hard to adjust to but after a while, it seems normal. It is a much more efficient system. I digress, let's come back to the topic at hand. We have been exploring the ruins of the Thoracic Empire for some time now and have had no success as to why they were destroyed. Tomorrow we will be going to the ruins of the Kryptes and if we are lucky maybe we will find something there. In a few weeks, I also have my first lecture on essence, how it works and how to use it. I am excited to attend as it will mean I can access and power the Starforge engine. The faster-than-light powerhouse of the entire ship. Hopefully tomorrow i will receive some samples of thoracic plant fossils for analysis. Even though I am one of the youngest on the Starforge at only 19 the rest of the botanists look up to me as their leader. I am hoping that in a few months during the elections, I get elected to the head of botany. Then again I am only 19. 4 years younger than the next youngest. 

how about this? slightly different style. came up with the idea to base it on logs from the Martian. 

[Ookla she/her]

Take what I say with a big handful of salt, because I don't actually know precisely what your story needs. This is just stuff that's worked for me in the past. Also, sorry for the long post. I started writing out ideas, and apparently I lost track of when to stop. 

In both instances, it feels like you're trying to dump a lot of exposition in right at the beginning. There's a lot of information there, and it's making my head spin. Now, I don't think it's a problem to have a couple of exposition-heavy scenes--the exposition has to come in somehow, and a scene that has a tad bit more explaining in it than the rest do isn't an issue. However, with your log-entry method, the first problem I'm running into is that you're jumping from one place to another in your exposition without a lot of rhyme or reason. Let the prose flow from one idea to another naturally; don't try and force in exposition that doesn't fit. A person making a log entry is probably going to have one or two primary things on their mind and go on at length about those, and then maybe mention the other stuff in passing, but it doesn't feel natural to jump from Thing X to Thing Z and back to Thing A without any kind of transition.

For the other narrative style, it might be good if you add in some scenes relating to other things. A story isn't just about the main plot; there's a lot more going on all at once. So they've gotten their essence-stuff, but now they've got those four weeks of study-time in between. The characters aren't going to be studying 24/7 for four weeks; they need to take breaks and go do fun stuff while their brains process what they've learned. So, you can throw in a couple of those scenes, and perhaps start setting up some of the politics on the ship through conversations with other characters, without having to say that the MC is hoping to get elected outright.

For example, if the MC is sitting down to dinner with a friend, and the friend asks, "So, you still planning to run for botany head?" And then, if there's someone nearby who doesn't know the MC as well, they could pop in with, "Aren't you a little young for that?" Right there, you've set up the MC's goals and the fact that they're younger than any botany head before, but it feels a little more natural. Where right now you're covering four weeks of time in 2-3 pages' worth of text, if you go into a little more detail about what sorts of interactions they're having, both with other crewmembers and with alien species, those four weeks could make up a much more significant portion of the novel. (I speak from experience; I too tend to gloss over those sorts of everyday, 'mundane' interactions in favor of the more interesting and fun stuff, but I always hit a point where I wonder why my book is so short, and then go back and realize I've left a ton of stuff out. )

And, finally, as an example of great exposition: In the Stormlight Archive, at what point do we actually know for a fact what highstorms and spren are? We hear about them a lot as we're getting into the story, but as I recall, I couldn't properly visualize a highstorm and what it could do until Kaladin got strung up and pretended to be a banner in one, and Sanderson doesn't explain what spren are until somewhere around the second book. We get a sense for what they are from watching how the spren react to people's emotions and natural phenomena, but the actual technical explanation of 'It's a Splinter of a Shard' doesn't come in for a long time, well after we've been introduced to them. So, don't just tell me what the essence does, show me the characters trying to use it and accidentally blowing their faces off. You can tell me a little bit about it as they're setting up an experiment, sure, but if it's a super mysterious substance, we probably ought to learn more about it by watching what happens in the scientists' experiments than by listening to the scientists' hypotheses.

[Edema Rue she/her]

3 hours ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

how about this? slightly different style. came up with the idea to base it on logs from the Martian. 

That was definitely easier to follow! I agree that it's usually better to show rather than tell, and if you write the entire story as a log then that might be more of a problem, but maybe if you wrote some scenes more in third person (or first person, but as things are happening) and then scattered these logs through it? As it is, though, it's still a little bit of an exposition dump, but it's much easier to understand and funner to read!

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

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I was sitting in the canteen enjoying a simple beef burger when grayson sat down opposite me. “So xan tell me. Are you still going to run for the head of botany.”

Before i can reply an older man who was walking past interrupts. “Arnt you a little young for the head of botany?”

“There is no application age. All i need is the support of 51% of the botanists. Which i have. Infact all 12 of the botanists not including myself want me to win. That is 100% of the votes. not including myself of course.” i said simply. 

“Of course.” the older man replied sarcastically before walking away.

“Well i guess i have to apply now.” i said with a smile. Grayson looked at me and smiled. 

“Wait is today 0151?” grayson asked.

“Yes why? Gray what did you remember?”

“Tomorow i get to lead my first expedition. I want to do it but then again there is a lot of paperwork to do with it.” grayson groned. I smiled.

“You could always exaggerate what it was like to a few certain people. Tell the truth in your report but not all the ladies will have access to the report will they now.” i added to improve graysons mood. 

“Your first birthday out here in space is in a few months right?” he asked.

“Yes 06 - 27 - 191. Why?” i asked slightly suspicious of the reason. 

“Uhh no reason. Umm froget i even asked. Now where can you get a cake on a space ship?” that last part i guessed was not ment for my hearing. I looked at my watch. 9:89. I quickly eat my burger and stand up. 

“I have to run to the captains area to apply for the head of botany. You can come if you want but i will understand if you would rather go back to your room.” i say. I start to walk away when i see grayson stand up. 

“Nah im coming with you. Think of me more as your campaign manager.” grayson said. I turn around and start walking towards the door. We step out into the long bright sterile corridor and see several people walking to and from several rooms along the corridor. It was the main passage that ran down the center of the 14 separate rings.We walked from the nutrition and relaxation ring to the command center ring. We entered it through a door and saw a corridor leading of the main corridor. We walked into it till we made it to the main part of the ring. We step down and let the new gravitational orbit effect us. Dont you just love essence. Once we adjusted we start walking to the room set up for the election registration. It was a small room with a woman with long blond hair sitting behind a small desk. There was a small line so i waited at the back.

 

“Name and department?” the board looking legislation manager asked when my turn in line came.

“Xander, botanist.” i reply.

“Your not in the books.” she said acusingly. 

“Try alexander.” i sugested

“Yep there is an alexander who is also a botanist. Care to explain?”

“Yep. i was named alexander at birth. Instead of alex like most parents call there son my parents chose xander. Would there be a problem if i had started by saying alex.”

“No i suppose not. I assume that you are running for head of botany.”

“Yep thats right. Anything else need to be done for the sign up?” i asked.

“Nope. your good to go.” she replied. I thanked her before turning around and walked out of the room. Just outside the door was the list of everyone who had registered and how much support they currently had. I scrolled on the datapad till i got to the botany section. Already 1 person had put voted for me. I was the only name currently in the section. I continued scrolling and i saw that in the section for the commander of the starforge the same person who had voted for me was there. I smiled and put my vote in for him. I could easily change it to another person if i wanted to. I looked at the time and realized that it was only 2 minutes to lights out. “Hay gray sorry for taking so long. I hope that i didn't make you late for anything.” i apoligized and headed out the door. As i walked out of the room i could see a blinding light coming from behind a nearby door. i walked over to the door and knocked. The door opened and there was a tall man with a hood on. He walked past me as if he didnt know i was there. I shrugged and carried on walking towards the exit of the ring. I let gravity adjust as i walk from the ring to the main corridor. I walk towards the botany ring. I step into it and wait for the doors to close behind me. I wait for the second part of the airlock unique to this ring to open and i step out. Immediately in my face is what can only be described as a jungle. Me and the rest of the botanist have filled every square inch of the ring with plants. Not all of them from earth or tests. Most are alien plants for “study”. There are no rooms on the entire ring except for the bedrooms. The rest is just one big greenhouse basically. As i start walking towards the bedrooms all the lights switch to a dimber purple setting. I sigh and continue walking to my bedroom. In the bedroom i put my stuff away and head to the bathroom to take a shower. After the shower i put my clothes on and then head to the living room. There i see all the other more older botanists cheer saying congratulations on winning head of botany. It turns out that i was the only botanist who put my name down. I also had the full support from all the other botanist aswell. 

 

I was woken up in the morning to the sound of alarms. I jumped out of bed and grabbed a datapad. Someone had been entering the ring and was not a botanist. I knew the outhers would all be getting the same allert. I ran out of the rooms and started to surch the ring. The datapad told me that there was some interference in segment 12 so thats where i went. When i got there i saw a man with a cloak. His face was hidden in a glowing blueish white light. I took a step back as the other botanists arrived.

compleatly removed the log idea. kept the same time system. its based on how long it has been since they left earth. also given the next few parts

[Ookla she/her]

On 1/8/2024 at 10:07 PM, RoyalBeeMage said:

compleatly removed the log idea. kept the same time system. its based on how long it has been since they left earth. also given the next few parts

Yeah! That's the idea. Way easier to understand what's going on, in my opinion. I now know that Mr. Xander wants to be the botany head, and you've gone and dumped me on a cliffhanger at the end, too. Who's breaking into the botany lab?! I must know!

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

your just going to have to keep guessing. the next part is grayson's trip down to the surface.

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grayson 00 - 04 - 021 - 0152

At 2:05 me and the rest of the ground team entered the pod that would bring us to the surface of the Kryptes home world. I was the last to enter. I grabbed my gear and took my seat. I was nervous about leading the team for the first time. The ship detached with a sudden lurgh and started the decent to the surface. I waited for a few minutes after we landed before exiting the pod. The sound of my boots hitting the ground was a strange mixture of squlching and crunching. I looked down and saw the ground was made up of large crystals and mud. It was as if someone had burned the planet to the ground and then it rained. The crystals could have been made from the planet being moved towards the sun and then back. I tilt my head to the side before reaching down to scope a small amount into a sample bag. The crystals had a white and black color. I looked around and noticed that the crystals were growing on the ground. I grab out my datapad and take some reading of the environment. Low oxigen, high carbon dioxide, high chlorine? High ammonia, high prity much everything that will kill a human and nothing that will keep it alive. I looked at the very last reading and was shocked. The planet was covered in insanely high quantities of essence. I pick up a fairly large crystal shard and take a more specific essence reading of it. There was more essence in this one crystal than in the entity of earth added up. This crystal alone could prolong the travel time of the starforge for 200 years. There was thousands of crystals on the surface of the planet. I walked over to the essence specialist to show her my findings. “Hello are you the essence specialist?” i ask her. She nodds her head so i continue. “I found that this planet’s essence level is off the charts. This crystal in my hand alone has more essence than the starforge’s storage. I think i know what happened to this planet. If a small amount of essence is enough to kill a human being what would 3 suns of it do to a planet?” i ask. She looks at me and shakes her head.

“I dont know. Nothing good. We should grab as much plant samples as we can and make a run for it. If we only return with a few fossils and that one crystal this mission would be a success. We need to leave this place before it becomes a living nightmare for us all. Sorry for giving you commands.” she quickly adds before running of to tell the outhers. I head back to the ship and on the way i stubble across a small indent in the ground. I pick up a small piece of rock and see a small amount of moss on it. I immediately put it into a sample bag and run into the pod. I saw everyone else do the same thing so i sat down and started to buckle in.  before i can finish a pile of crystals rise up and part showing a purple creature below. It shacks the crystals of showing slim slimy skin and moves toward me. It places its head just in the door and seems to sit on its hind legs looking at me. I look around at the others and they all seem to be stunned. I unbuckle and move to the comms. “Comander we are requesting a large sample pod. One designs for large animals. We have a purple lion like creature with slimy skin and no hair. It is able to survive in an atmosphere containing 3 suns of essence. It is currently staring right at me.”

“Premission granted. How large do you want?”

“Doubble the pod we came in i think.” i replied. 

“On its way.” the commander said over the comms. 

10 minutes later the pod arrived. I got out of the pod and walked over to the sample pod. The purple creature followed me in and sat down in the middle of the room. The doors behind it closed and i watched as the creature did a quick sipin before lying down. I opened a small man sised door and got out before closing it. I ran back to the main pod and looked around to see if everyone was back. They were so i went up to the comms are requested for both pods to be brought back. 

 

A half hour later we docked back up with the starforge and unloaded all of the samples we collected except the purple creature. I turned my space suit off and set the nanobots to fabricate a thin yet essence proof set of cloths and a small ventilation around my mouth and nose. I saw a few of the members of the ground team do the same but most of them left to go back to the main part of the ship. We waited to open the doors and move the creature until a few members of the biology team, physics team and one or two chemists arrived. I knew that there where some Xenobiologists, astrobioligists and Exobiologists hidden within the team around me but i never saw any difference between the 3 subtypes of biologists. I personally was an Astrogeologist a subtype of geologist. But like all geoligists i knew a little bit of mineralogy, metallurgy and varius other earth sciences. I saw the commander waiting behind a viewing platform near the top of the docking bay. When he nodded i opened the doors and the purple creature walked out.

don't worry i will be writing the next xander section next.

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

sorry for the double post. so i have completely restarted. sorry for those who liked xander and grayson. this new one is set in a fantasy universe filled with more magic than in harry potter. (best example i could think of.)

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Roy sat down at the table facing opposite the spirit. “If i had to do it all again i probably would do it all differently. I am not proud of what i have done. I just can't change it. Thouse of you who know of me will believe me to be no more than a destroyer. A concarer. I am not. I am sorry i sarted all thouse wars though i am not sorry for why they where started. I did what had to be done. I did what i could do. I am not here to justify myself. I am not here to excuse my actions. I am here to tell you what truly happened and why. You have probably heard accounts of what you think i have done. Most are true but heavily exaggerated. Nothing was ever under exaggerated. I will tell you the truth. Where do i start? Now that is the question. One would tell me to start at the beginning and i could. 

 

 

It started almost 3 and a half thousand years ago. When the first sol rex went out to conquer the world. He was not the first. But he was the first to be successful. He started up in the north in his homeland… i can see you stearing at me. Fine. fine if you dont think you need the pre knowledge that this is all based upon be my gest. Just dont complain when things get confusing.”

 

 

My story starts on a day i will never forget. I was 17. Chosen by the king of arcus to be one of the 4 students sent to sol rex to represent the country. The day this all starts is the day i first met a sol rex. They arent all that impressive realy. They are just the same as all high nobility. They all look the same. Sure some are taller and have more muscles. Sure some have blond hair as opposed to brown or black. But they all look the same. The sol rex was no different. Sure he was the emperor of the entire world but he was no different from all the other spoiled nobility. His name was khamus. He was a tall black haired man who was so proud of his looks he wore nothing but a loincloth made from cloth of gold and a crown. Im fairly sure he was just showing off his chissled abs and rippled biceps to all the women in the crowed. We were the 48 men and woman chosen as the brightest in our country to go to sol rex to be trained by the sol rex in magic. If we passed here we would be added to the pool of posible candidate for the next sol rex. We where waiting in the main hall of the palace for the sol rex to finish his long and boring speech so that we could go and find our rooms. This whoud be our home for the next few years. 

 

When the speech finished we where all given our room numbers. I was assigned to room 432 with a boy named Akkir who was from the kingdom of Ishkan. When i stepped into my room one of the first things i saw was the biggest bed i have ever seen in my life. The second thing i saw was all my belongings had already been put into the room by the servants. I opened the wardrobe and saw several sets of the most expensive clothes i have ever seen. In a box ontop of the desk where several carved pieces of random assorted materials. Some of the carvings where marble or jade or silver or gold. All of them where one material each. Shrugging i sat down on my bed and looked over the class list. Most of the higher level classes required an invitation by its teacher so all new students had to basic learning. Like for instance tomorrow i have history, geography and mathematics.