Like a lot of it is prose style which doesn’t have a lot to do with plotting (although the preference is for a first person or third person limited narrator; the Locked Tomb books would follow the rules even tho they play tricks with this, bc they stay consistent)
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Like Card argues for the following for boilerplate sff: - write naturalistically like a character in world, use words they would use unless you have no other option to describe the unfamiliar - avoid omniscience - all power should have a cost, physical or otherwise - no prologues
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @Fat_DTEA
Well that last rule gets broken. Lol, the first Stormlight book has maybe 3 prologues iirc.
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Replying to @jamari_oneal @Fat_DTEA
Like, by prologue I mean specifically “it is the year 35387. The Earth has been conquered by sentient anteaters. 5000 years prior to this, President Anne Faulhaven of the Earth Conglomerate contacted the Slime Confederation and agreed to make Earth a protectorate, which led to th
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Ha ha, yeah All of this is just pushing against the stuff that was initially considered cliche for the genre Like old-school science fiction was almost *defined* by feeling the need to explain the basics of the wacky world we're in as the first paragraph Hence Star Wars
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl and
Although ironically once Star Wars got past the opening crawl it was considered "groundbreaking" for big-budget sci-fi movies because it was so confident about following OSC's rules Star Wars has no almost technobabble exposition at all, e.g.
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl and
How does a hyperdrive actually work? What are the rules governing its function? How fast is it in real-life terms? None of the characters would ever have any reason to have a conversation about this so we never find out
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl and
I mean it still has some moments of exposition you could call corny but they're pretty artful compared to "As you know, Bob" sci-fi Like a wealth of exposition about "Star Wars cloaking tech" comes from just the one incredulous line "No ship that small has a cloaking device!"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl and
I'm surprised people don't use the Dr. Horrible conceit to justify "As you know, Bob" exposition more often
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @BootlegGirl and
Which Dr Horrible conceit, you mean him being an arrogant blowhard with a blog?
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I mean in Dr Horrible's world he legitimately knows about a lot of stuff most people don't, he's not like explaining how an airplane works
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