: Re: What are the pros and cons of building the setting before the characters and story I have a science-fiction setting I have been kicking around for sometime, but I am not sure how to go about

@Merenda569

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In science fiction, setting typically is more vital to the story than in other genres. By definition, the location in a science fiction story must be a place in which some scientific discovery or concept alters the world so that it looks different than the one in which we live. Because of this, many science fiction authors start writing their stories by creating the setting.

Given this, a lot of science fiction works around the “edges of ideas”; that is, technology and the background setting come onstage. People generally lead different kinds of lives in science fiction stories than they do in our world because the technology and background affects their day-to-day decisions, from the most trivial of our habits to the most profound of cultural shifts.

An example of this in regards to new technology might be a civilization capable of producing a light, flexible and strong type of carbon nanotube on an industrial scale. How would this world be different than ours? On a mundane level, you might never have to buy more than one toothbrush in your life as the bristles are made from this material. Perhaps rather than being disposable, a toothbrush that stays with you throughout your life becomes as significant to people as other objects that follow us through our lives, such as cuff links or a necklace. More profoundly, such a material would allow us to build space elevators, opening us to becoming a spacefaring civilization.

An example of edges of ideas in regards to the background would be if living in a tidally locked planet around an M-class star. On such a world, people only reside in the open air along a narrow strip between the side facing the star and the side facing away. So how does this affect them? Well, there’s no night, just perpetual twilight. How does that affect their biorhythms and their sense of romance (There are no sunsets to watch, after all.). In addition, ground transportation systems mostly run in two directions (north and south), greatly affecting the flow of resources.

From either of these settings, you easily could build characters and a plot. Ask yourself how the science fiction setting you’ve created might symbolize an idea that your characters would differ over. For example, on our tidally locked planet, the civilization may be used to living in its confined strip but one character wants to venture into the cold dark side and explore…something that his colleagues and family find expensive, dangerous and even silly. Going to the planet’s dark side could be a metaphor for some people’s ambitions in our world to explore outer space.

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