So today, I had the inspiration to do a little bit of quick research to make a soft-sci-fi ship, which more or less would be similar to (and perhaps eventually be reworked into) a ship I created mentally for a webcomic I never made. In the case of this ship, I basically tackled the major issues. Gravity would be produced by a graviton generator, FTL (called 'Slipstream') would be generated by the Slingshot, with the scientific explanation being wormholes allowing for shortcuts through space, energy would primarily be passively collecting dark energy from the surroundings similar to solar energy, with shields (absorbing shields, mind you) allowing for collection of otherwise-harmful particles, basically not only protecting the crew but also giving them further energy. (I also though that there'd be some method of creating and harvesting antimatter related to the above two, and a backup nuclear reactor as a just-in-case.) Then, of course, would be the matter-energy transformer, allowing for the conversion of one into the other, which is also what allows teleportation in addition to replication.
That's about as far as I got, but I thought for only about half an hour's worth of research (aka, browsing wikipedia's articles on antimatter, dark matter, and dark energy with the idea already in mind, and fitting the explanation to the existing idea as much as possible), it was pretty good soft-sci-fi.
Mind you, I'm a fantasy writer by habit, not a sci-fi writer. In the webcomic it would be for, it'd be a mixture of both. But I still like to dabble in sci-fi from time to time. Though I'm generally a firm believer that the line between the two is often-blurred, that many phenomena in the current world are not yet explained by science and can be called magic, and how many things we know now to be science would seem like magic to our ancestors, and how any sufficiently-analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science just as any sufficiently-advanced science is indistinguishable from magic...the simple fact is that sometimes, I do like to dabble in challenging my brain and writing the most believable fiction I can set in space.
I'm a writer, I'm smart, I think in unusual ways. Heck, I basically came up with a correlation between the Greek elements and the four forces of the universe (strong, weak, gravity, electromagnetism) when I took physics in college. Which, by the way, I did quite well in if memory serves me. I remember most of my mistakes in there being stupid ones, akin to on a math test doing them and then not checking your answers and realizing you were careless, that you did your math wrong, that you misread the question, that you did this part fine but didn't make the correct mental translation for that part and swapped things. I did plenty of that in the physics class...but when it came to actually grasping the concepts, I did very well, and so much so, that I had time to play around with little theories like the above.
I'm not a scientist (though I do have an avatar representing me as one), and my mind isn't geared towards science in the conventional sense science is thought about in. But I am a writer...and I actually think that I can make some pretty dang clever insights from time to time. What I say may ultimately be nonsensical pseudoscience that I babble on about, but it's good to tell a nice narrative, connecting theories that are as far as I know unconnected.
For instance, subject for a separate ramble (in fact, I've already rambled about it once, though not in as much detail as I'd like, in what could be called this blog's predecessor idea-wise), but I actually came up with a semi-scientific definition of what we would define as being God. It basically boiled down to the multiverse theory: there are an infinite number of universes, based off of events going different ways. (As just one example, me finishing this blog post versus me not finishing it would create two different universes, as would my exact choice of words!)
There's no way to succinctly put my argument, so this won't allow for a full grasping of the concept, but basically I argue that God is the force behind which universe we do choose. In short, at any point, there are an infinite number of universes that can exist in the future. God for us is what determines which future WE have. In another multiverse, they have a different God who chose which future THEY have. Which I believe might actually have some biblical backing from what I remember of a televised version of the Bible that covered Cain/Abel with the "your brothers' blood" and a theory that it was God seeing all of the possible sons and daughters and all the possible futures resulting from them wiped out.
...Some day, I really should read the bible start to finish. I know that it's a great piece of literature even if you're not a believer. In my case, I wouldn't say I'm not a believer, though. It's just that I don't believe in God specific to any religion, more the general idea of God, somewhat-shown above: a guiding hand for the betterment of us all, loosely speaking. (I am, however, extremely spiritual. I might not belong to any specific religion, but my beliefs are essentially a religion of their own.)
...Now all that said...would you believe me if I said everything above was just one massive tangent about what I came in here to talk about? Of course you would! (Well, or should, if you've gotten to know me.) I actually didn't think I had that much to talk about for today given that my day only really started a few hours ago as I woke up to a chilly house. I mainly wanted to talk about what I stayed up to three in the morning doing: writing my novel.
I'm growing increasingly-motivated to write it and drive further and further into it. Now, the quality of my writing I fear is going to go into the gutter. I'm doing far less editing and far more reading. I also reached the point where I've run out of pre-self-critiqued material yesterday night, the end of Part One of my novel. (Which will end up having...oh, I don't know how many parts. I think three in the first half with the third being insanely long and the second rather short, and the second half of the novel I think also has three parts, the introduction, the setup, and the conclusion, so probably six total.)
By the way, Part One took me past 50 pages. (I think it was 55?) And that's with a lot of the last 12 or so pages being a far-reduced quality, since as my critique notes say, during that period of the novel, I'm not so much focusing on the technical writing as I am delivering the impact of the events in the book: it's okay for the writing to not be perfect, because it doesn't need to be. Because what needs to be perfect is showing off the characters and their emotions, in a pivotal moment.
Now, though, enters the hard part. There's a reason that my self-critique notes from a year or two ago stopped at that point: because I didn't have the drive to push through the next sections of the book. The above was already getting difficult. Keeping a good, quality-novel is hard work. I absolutely love some of the stuff I've been doing. I made my characters tell jokes that made me heartily laugh, I made them have quirks unique to each of them and banter unique to each dynamic.
...Now I'm going to have to do that on a much grander scale. There was a unification before, because the characters being focused on more or less shared a common background. I'm about to enter into the murky waters where they don't, so I need to very, very quickly get my vision set straight as to why they end up with their dynamic. This has been tweaked many, many times over the course of the years; being unable to solve the issue is one reason the second draft ground to a halt at one point.
Now, my notes have become far more clear on the subject, but aren't yet 100% memorized by me, in spite of me kinda...well, needing them. I'm sure that what I've written will need a third draft where I remove redundancies and make clear any remaining contradictions (which I think I did a good job of removing). But I'm entering into an area of the novel where there will be far, far, far more writing to do, more than even my notes say on the characters, because of the small intricacies that I have changed.
As just one example...the main character, the protagonist who is the main viewpoint for this section of the book, has had changes over my revisions these last few months that aren't in my notes at all, in part thanks to my Interpersonal Communications class giving me some actually-useful writing tips that subtly (but importantly) tweaked his characterization. (Which is one reason that a third draft may be needed to remove some contradictions that slipped through the cracks: the tweaks were made as the months and novel progressed, so some earlier thoughts might not quite match some later ones, with no reasonable cause for the change being apparent.)
Given how much of the following part will be his eyes (it's basically exclusively him), I'm anticipating that I'm going to be doing a LOT of editing. Because not only do I have to keep the new Aaron in mind, but I also have to make the tweaks I started this editing process for: removing first-person unnatural thoughts and replacing them with natural thoughts, implanting more colorful language, personalizing the language, and breaking up sentence structure so that it's not just Noun-Verb, or even Noun-verb, Alternative, then back to Noun-verb, rotating between two. (I remember there being seven types; I generally only use two or three.)
In short, while the last 12 or so pages have been nearly all reading (to the point of being detrimental), I'm anticipating the next whole Part to be nearly all writing, maybe to my detriment as I let little redundancies slip in. (One bad example is "but" and "yet". I rotate between the two, when I can easily alter sentence structure to remove them and/or use others, such as "however" and "though", which I often don't.)
It'll SO be worth it, though. Won't get to work on it today (got too many obligations, both real-life and internet-wise), but I'm making steady progress. I take inspiration where I can, and I refuse to let this writing drive die; I want to get this draft finished. So I don't care if it takes me a month or six or sixteen. I'm getting it done. Sometimes slowly, not always steadily, but I'm moving. It's gonna be hard work.
I know it's going to be a difficult journey...but it's a journey that I am willing to make. Because this is one dream I really, really want realized. Probably my second-strongest dream of all time. (The strongest, of course, being that I can be the me I really am, rather than being forced to wear a mask.)
That's about as far as I got, but I thought for only about half an hour's worth of research (aka, browsing wikipedia's articles on antimatter, dark matter, and dark energy with the idea already in mind, and fitting the explanation to the existing idea as much as possible), it was pretty good soft-sci-fi.
Mind you, I'm a fantasy writer by habit, not a sci-fi writer. In the webcomic it would be for, it'd be a mixture of both. But I still like to dabble in sci-fi from time to time. Though I'm generally a firm believer that the line between the two is often-blurred, that many phenomena in the current world are not yet explained by science and can be called magic, and how many things we know now to be science would seem like magic to our ancestors, and how any sufficiently-analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science just as any sufficiently-advanced science is indistinguishable from magic...the simple fact is that sometimes, I do like to dabble in challenging my brain and writing the most believable fiction I can set in space.
I'm a writer, I'm smart, I think in unusual ways. Heck, I basically came up with a correlation between the Greek elements and the four forces of the universe (strong, weak, gravity, electromagnetism) when I took physics in college. Which, by the way, I did quite well in if memory serves me. I remember most of my mistakes in there being stupid ones, akin to on a math test doing them and then not checking your answers and realizing you were careless, that you did your math wrong, that you misread the question, that you did this part fine but didn't make the correct mental translation for that part and swapped things. I did plenty of that in the physics class...but when it came to actually grasping the concepts, I did very well, and so much so, that I had time to play around with little theories like the above.
I'm not a scientist (though I do have an avatar representing me as one), and my mind isn't geared towards science in the conventional sense science is thought about in. But I am a writer...and I actually think that I can make some pretty dang clever insights from time to time. What I say may ultimately be nonsensical pseudoscience that I babble on about, but it's good to tell a nice narrative, connecting theories that are as far as I know unconnected.
For instance, subject for a separate ramble (in fact, I've already rambled about it once, though not in as much detail as I'd like, in what could be called this blog's predecessor idea-wise), but I actually came up with a semi-scientific definition of what we would define as being God. It basically boiled down to the multiverse theory: there are an infinite number of universes, based off of events going different ways. (As just one example, me finishing this blog post versus me not finishing it would create two different universes, as would my exact choice of words!)
There's no way to succinctly put my argument, so this won't allow for a full grasping of the concept, but basically I argue that God is the force behind which universe we do choose. In short, at any point, there are an infinite number of universes that can exist in the future. God for us is what determines which future WE have. In another multiverse, they have a different God who chose which future THEY have. Which I believe might actually have some biblical backing from what I remember of a televised version of the Bible that covered Cain/Abel with the "your brothers' blood" and a theory that it was God seeing all of the possible sons and daughters and all the possible futures resulting from them wiped out.
...Some day, I really should read the bible start to finish. I know that it's a great piece of literature even if you're not a believer. In my case, I wouldn't say I'm not a believer, though. It's just that I don't believe in God specific to any religion, more the general idea of God, somewhat-shown above: a guiding hand for the betterment of us all, loosely speaking. (I am, however, extremely spiritual. I might not belong to any specific religion, but my beliefs are essentially a religion of their own.)
...Now all that said...would you believe me if I said everything above was just one massive tangent about what I came in here to talk about? Of course you would! (Well, or should, if you've gotten to know me.) I actually didn't think I had that much to talk about for today given that my day only really started a few hours ago as I woke up to a chilly house. I mainly wanted to talk about what I stayed up to three in the morning doing: writing my novel.
I'm growing increasingly-motivated to write it and drive further and further into it. Now, the quality of my writing I fear is going to go into the gutter. I'm doing far less editing and far more reading. I also reached the point where I've run out of pre-self-critiqued material yesterday night, the end of Part One of my novel. (Which will end up having...oh, I don't know how many parts. I think three in the first half with the third being insanely long and the second rather short, and the second half of the novel I think also has three parts, the introduction, the setup, and the conclusion, so probably six total.)
By the way, Part One took me past 50 pages. (I think it was 55?) And that's with a lot of the last 12 or so pages being a far-reduced quality, since as my critique notes say, during that period of the novel, I'm not so much focusing on the technical writing as I am delivering the impact of the events in the book: it's okay for the writing to not be perfect, because it doesn't need to be. Because what needs to be perfect is showing off the characters and their emotions, in a pivotal moment.
Now, though, enters the hard part. There's a reason that my self-critique notes from a year or two ago stopped at that point: because I didn't have the drive to push through the next sections of the book. The above was already getting difficult. Keeping a good, quality-novel is hard work. I absolutely love some of the stuff I've been doing. I made my characters tell jokes that made me heartily laugh, I made them have quirks unique to each of them and banter unique to each dynamic.
...Now I'm going to have to do that on a much grander scale. There was a unification before, because the characters being focused on more or less shared a common background. I'm about to enter into the murky waters where they don't, so I need to very, very quickly get my vision set straight as to why they end up with their dynamic. This has been tweaked many, many times over the course of the years; being unable to solve the issue is one reason the second draft ground to a halt at one point.
Now, my notes have become far more clear on the subject, but aren't yet 100% memorized by me, in spite of me kinda...well, needing them. I'm sure that what I've written will need a third draft where I remove redundancies and make clear any remaining contradictions (which I think I did a good job of removing). But I'm entering into an area of the novel where there will be far, far, far more writing to do, more than even my notes say on the characters, because of the small intricacies that I have changed.
As just one example...the main character, the protagonist who is the main viewpoint for this section of the book, has had changes over my revisions these last few months that aren't in my notes at all, in part thanks to my Interpersonal Communications class giving me some actually-useful writing tips that subtly (but importantly) tweaked his characterization. (Which is one reason that a third draft may be needed to remove some contradictions that slipped through the cracks: the tweaks were made as the months and novel progressed, so some earlier thoughts might not quite match some later ones, with no reasonable cause for the change being apparent.)
Given how much of the following part will be his eyes (it's basically exclusively him), I'm anticipating that I'm going to be doing a LOT of editing. Because not only do I have to keep the new Aaron in mind, but I also have to make the tweaks I started this editing process for: removing first-person unnatural thoughts and replacing them with natural thoughts, implanting more colorful language, personalizing the language, and breaking up sentence structure so that it's not just Noun-Verb, or even Noun-verb, Alternative, then back to Noun-verb, rotating between two. (I remember there being seven types; I generally only use two or three.)
In short, while the last 12 or so pages have been nearly all reading (to the point of being detrimental), I'm anticipating the next whole Part to be nearly all writing, maybe to my detriment as I let little redundancies slip in. (One bad example is "but" and "yet". I rotate between the two, when I can easily alter sentence structure to remove them and/or use others, such as "however" and "though", which I often don't.)
It'll SO be worth it, though. Won't get to work on it today (got too many obligations, both real-life and internet-wise), but I'm making steady progress. I take inspiration where I can, and I refuse to let this writing drive die; I want to get this draft finished. So I don't care if it takes me a month or six or sixteen. I'm getting it done. Sometimes slowly, not always steadily, but I'm moving. It's gonna be hard work.
I know it's going to be a difficult journey...but it's a journey that I am willing to make. Because this is one dream I really, really want realized. Probably my second-strongest dream of all time. (The strongest, of course, being that I can be the me I really am, rather than being forced to wear a mask.)
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