How do you start writing science fiction?

I can't find anything on your blog about how to write sci-fi, so could you please write something? I love the genre and I have a few ideas, but I don't know where to start.

We do have some posts about writing sci-fi, but it’s always worth going back to the basics. Science fiction is one of the most diverse genres out there, which is why it can be so hard to find tidy answers that really delve into how to get started.

Which kind of science fiction do you want to write?

There is no singular “science fiction,” so before you start writing, it’s really important to really drill down and focus on what kind of story you want to write. We covered this in our genre deep dive, but I think it’s worth summing up again here.

There are many different sub-genres of science fiction, but these are the main ones:

Hard sci-fi

Hard sci-fi focuses on scientific accuracy and technical detail. It is grounded in real-world science and mathematics, with a focus on plausibility within our current knowledge of physics, biology, mathematics, technology, and other scientific disciplines. 

It will often cover themes around advanced technology, space exploration, and the future of humanity. Notable authors in this subgenre include Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, Andy Weir, Nancy Kress, and Cixin Liu.

Soft sci-fi

Soft sci-fi focuses on social sciences. It looks at social and individual psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history rather than exploring more technical aspects. 

It analyses human relationships rather than relying on strict adherence to scientific accuracy, so it will cover the more character-driven themes of human nature, societal structures, politics, philosophy, and emotions. Notable authors in this subgenre include Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Octavia Butler, Aldous Huxley, and Samuel R. Delany.

Military science fiction

Just as the title suggests, military science fiction centres on warfare, military strategy, and the role of armed forces. It often explores advanced weaponry, tactics, and the human cost of conflict. 

Writers in this subgenre will often use features of past or current Earth conflicts, transposing them into an alternate setting, exploring themes of the ethics of war, leadership, military technology, and the impact of war on society and individuals. Notable authors in this subgenre include H. G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, Yoon Ha Lee, Elizabeth Moon, James S. A. Corey, and John Scalzi.

Space opera

Space operas are epic, large-scale adventures set in space, often involving interstellar travel, interstellar war, political conflicts, alien species, and space battles. 

It tends to be more fantastical, with less concern for scientific accuracy, covering themes of heroic adventures, romance, the rise and fall of empires, and good versus evil. It lends itself very well to multi-genre writing. Notable authors in this subgenre include Frank Herbert, Lois McMaster Bujold, Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, Ann Leckie, James S. A. Corey, and Dan Simmons.

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a sub-genre that explores high-tech and “low-life” scenarios, typically set in dystopian near-futures where advanced technology coexists with social decay, exploring the science of cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and the politics of corporate control. 

Themes of class struggle, cybernetics, the human-machine interface, corporate power, and virtual reality are staples of cyberpunk, often told with a noir feel. Notable authors in this subgenre include William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Philip K. Dick, and Richard K. Morgan.

Post-apocalyptic

Post-apocalyptic science fiction works lend themselves well to the Utopia/Dystopia tropes. It is set in worlds that have been devastated by global catastrophes (e.g., nuclear war, pandemic, climate disaster) and explores ideas around the survival of humanity and how societies are rebuilt (or fail to rebuild) after complete collapse.

Post-apocalyptic sci-fi focuses on themes like survival, the collapse of civilisation, resilience, environmental disaster, and the fragility of society. Notable authors in this subgenre include Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Richard Matheson, George R. Stewart, John Wyndham, and Emily St. John Mandel.

Alternate history

Alternate history is a subgenre that explores “what if” scenarios. It often re-imagines historical events with different outcomes. The three fundamental elements required for this subgenre are:

1. a point of divergence from the historical record
2. a change that alters known history
3. an examination of how that altered history plays out. 

Alternate history explores themes of historical speculation, cause and effect, societal development, and divergent timelines. Notable authors in this subgenre include Philip K. Dick, Harry Turtledove, Michael Chabon, C. J. Sansom, and Robert Harris.

While subgenres can be a good guide, they’re not presets. While it’s good to choose a primary subgenre for marketing, you can absolutely borrow from others as you write. Lots of writers combine elements to create unique and interesting worlds.

Start with a "what if"

Once you have an idea of the subgenre you want to be working in, then the next step is to get started with theme and plot. Every science fiction story starts by changing something about the world as we know it. Something exists that doesn't, or something we take for granted has gone. That's your "what if."

The “what if” is the setup (your premise) and can inform your theme, but is not the theme on its own. The theme is what your story has to say about that premise. Mary Shelley's what if was "what if man could create life?" But Frankenstein isn't about how Victor creates life, but about the consequences and responsibilities of doing so.

You'll see that pattern right across the genre. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go asks “what if children were raised to become organ donors?”, and uses it to explore the themes of identity, memory, and nostalgia. Robert Harris' Fatherland asks “what if Germany had won the Second World War?”, and uses it to explore the theme of collective willful ignorance. In both cases, the “what if” is the hook, and the theme is the reason those stories have staying power.

And then what?

The writer Frederik Pohl is often quoted as saying that “a good science fiction story should predict not the automobile, but the traffic jam.” I think it's the most useful piece of advice you can take when writing sci-fi. 

The invention is easy. Working out what the consequences of that invention might be is much more difficult. Think about how much society has changed since the invention of the car. It has changed the landscapes of our cities, affected jobs, families, and the way our day-to-day lives look. In the real world, inventors of new technologies rarely think about the future that their inventions might create (even if they should), but as writers, we need to be able to play those things out to inform our story worlds in interesting and believable ways.

Let’s look at an example: a device that lets people replay any memory perfectly. The first consequence is obvious; nobody forgets anything. But what happens to our legal system when every witness has a perfect recording of a crime? What happens to a marriage when neither person can misremember an argument but both interpret the facts differently? Who can afford the device, and who can't? Is it legal to sell your memories? To steal someone else's?

Every thing you invent for your story will have a consequence, and in those consequences is where interesting stories hide. They're also what make a world feel lived in and believable.

Your premise isn’t your plot

You can have a brilliant premise and a fully realised world and still have no story, because a premise isn't something that happens, it’s simply an idea. A plot needs a driver, usually in the form of a character with goals, motivations, and conflicts.

Sometimes, the “what if” can tie into your story in a fundamental way if you’re thinking about goals, motivations, and conflicts. A “what if” can even be one of them.  

In Andy Weir's The Martian, he asks "what if an astronaut was left behind on Mars?" The plot is simply Mark Watney trying to get home, using science to overcome the hostile Martian world. The “what if” doubles as both the premise, and the conflict. 

But in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, the “what if” plays a different role. She asks, “what if a pandemic ended civilisation? What would remain?” The plot follows the Travelling Symphony, a company of actors and musicians performing Shakespeare for scattered settlements, trying to keep going in a hostile world. Instead of providing the conflict, the premise instead feeds into the motivations of its characters. Because after the end of the world, maybe it’s our art and culture that keeps us human.

Who is the best person to tell this story?

It's tempting to default to making your protagonist a scientist, inventor, or starship captain: the person at the centre of the big idea. Sometimes, that's the right call, but often, the most interesting point of view belongs to someone at the edges.

Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a great example of a close story told about a small group of people, rather focusing on the bigger, intergalactic events. It follows the crew of the Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that punches tunnels through space for a living. Wars, politics, and tensions between alien species all happen around them, but none of it is the focus of their lives. What matters is the crew, and who they are to each other. The big events press in at the edges, but the book’s warmth comes from the small group at the centre. 

So ask yourself, who in your world is living alongside your “what if”? Whose story would be the most compelling vehicle to explore it?

Start small, even if your world is huge

Even in the biggest space opera, readers attach to people, not concepts. A war between galactic civilisations means very little to reader until they can experience it through the eyes of one soldier, one family, or one ship. 

If your world is vast, find a story inside it that can still carry your theme. Let the scale of the world show around the edges via worldbuilding. 

Build your world from the "what if" outwards

Every genre needs worldbuilding, but science fiction worldbuilding has a particular job. It has to make your “what if” feel inevitable. 

Consistency matters more than anything else. Readers will happily accept even the most outlandish concepts as long as they feel consistent. Decide what your technology can do, what it can't, what it costs, and then hold yourself to it. The same principles we've covered for creating laws and rules in your world apply whether those rules are magical or scientific.

Give your future a past

Look around your own surroundings. You probably own a smartphone, live in a building with its own history, use a piece of technology you’ve had for years, or own things that hint at your future plans. 

Over the years, William Gibson has shared some version of the following wisdom: “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” In essence, what this means is that the uptake of new technology doesn’t always come at the same pace for everyone. Some people and places will change quickly, while others will barely change at all. Old laws will hang around long after they make sense, and slang will grow up around new things.

What this means for your story is that it’s important to know what your world was like before its current status quo. Because every present is the sum of what came before. Knowing how your world got to where it is, is what makes it feel like real and lived-in.

Trust your readers

Info dumping is the biggest danger in science fiction, and the temptation is strongest when you've done a lot of work on world building. You'll know far more about your world than any reader needs, and that's exactly how it should be.

Readers only really need to know a) what's different about this world, and b) why it matters to your character right now. Nobody in real life stops mid-thought to explain what a smartphone is, and your characters shouldn't need to explain it either, unless there’s a plot-related reason to do so. Let readers work it out from how people use it, complain about it, and work around it. Science fiction readers like putting the pieces together. It's part of the pleasure of the genre.

How much science do you actually need?

This is the question that puts a lot of people off writing science fiction altogether, and the unfortunately vague answer is that it depends.

If you're writing hard sci-fi, you need to do proper research because your readers will notice if you get it wrong. Magazines like New Scientist in the UK and Scientific American in the US are good for keeping up with current research in plain language, and both NASA and the European Space Agency publish a lot of accessible material for the public. Our post on getting the science right in your fiction also has some resources worth looking at.

For most other subgenres, you need plausibility rather than accuracy. Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” works in your favour. A good rule of thumb I like to use is to explain the consequences, not the mechanism. Readers don't need to know exactly how something works to believe it. They simply need to believe that the people in the story understand it. 

Don't worry about predicting the future

Science fiction isn’t about predicting the future. It’s speculative for a reason. It imagines possible future scenarios, and plays them out with a degree of logic. Sometimes these stories can be fascinatingly prescient, but it’s not a requirement of the genre. 

Ursula K. Le Guin put it best: "Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive." The best science fiction uses a vision of the future to say something about the present. The theme of your story is the most important part.

Read widely, inside and outside the genre

Whichever subgenre you choose, read it! You will never write will in a genre if you don’t immerse yourself in it. By reading, you'll learn what readers expect, which tropes they enjoy, and where there's room to surprise them.

But science fiction ideas don't only come from science fiction. News stories, history, science podcasts, and the things you find yourself worrying about at 2am are all sources of “what ifs”. A lot of the best science fiction starts with a shower thought and asking the question, then seeing where it leads.

There's no one right

There is no singular science fiction, and there's no singular way to write it either. Some writers start with the science, some with a character, and some with a question. So choose your subgenre, find your what if, and start writing! There’s no textbook path, so don’t be afraid to explore, and question to find the story you want to tell.