: Re: My story portrays a process, not a conflict - how do I make the process my focus? My current WiP is a science-fiction piece which is less about characters coping with a particular problem,

@Samaraweera193

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I would have to agree with Lauren Ipsum's answer. Why? Because it is more character based.

We experience a story through its characters. Or put another way, we connect emotionally to a story through it's characters. The only way to have a visceral experience is through the human characters that we can relate to, root for, put ourselves in their shoes, etc. No matter how much you try to make an atomic bomb, for example, a character, it is still an inanimate object.

If you show us the result of detonating the atomic bomb, say over the course of three generations of a family who lived near ground zero, then you have a story. But the event, the object, the process, the technology, are all set pieces and nothing more.

Show me a character, or group of characters dealing with the process and how it changes over time, and I'll be emotionally invested. Show me the process with cardboard characters, or worse, vignettes of characters, then I'll soon get bored and be done with it.

Consider this: M. Night Shyamalan's story The Happening failed because the main antagonist was good 'ol mother nature. The premise of nature rebeling against people because of our abuse may be well intended, but who can relate to or feel any emotional connection to overcoming nature. The story's protagonist is a human in this case but the second most important character is the antagonist. The same would hold true if the roles were reversed.

Science Fiction works best when it's grounded in a human character or setting we can relate to. This is especially crucial when you create a fantasical futuristic world with strange bizzare characters. We need something to ground the story in order to connect to it. In the Hunger Games, we have such a futuristic world but are grounded in the District 12 characters and the setting of a rural mining town. we can all relate to this. So many science fiction stories fail because they fail to ground the story with a character or setting we can relate to.

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