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    Having Relationships With Characters on the Road to Great Fiction
    Having Relationships With Characters on the Road to Great Fiction
    Having Relationships With Characters on the Road to Great Fiction
    Ebook73 pages21 minutes

    Having Relationships With Characters on the Road to Great Fiction

    By Andrew Burt

    ()

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    About this ebook

    (Shhh! A Secret of Great Writing)

    An article originally published in the SFWA Bulletin on fascinating statistical correlations found between the amount of interpersonal relationships in "well regarded" vs. "ordinary" SF/F stories. In addition to the article are supplemental materials, including much that wasn't published because of space limitations.

    This has huge implications for your writing (at least in terms of what sells better) and also offers a possibly useful tool for you to find books you want to read while browsing in the bookstore. Vital information for both writers and readers!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrew Burt
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9781370410910
    Having Relationships With Characters on the Road to Great Fiction
    Author

    Andrew Burt

    Dr. Andrew Burt (www.aburt.com) has lots of published science fiction and is a former Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. He's been a computer science professor (specializing in AI, networking, security, privacy, and social issues); founder of Nyx.net, the world's first free internet service provider; CEO of custom software developer TechSoft, and a technology consultant/author/speaker. For a hobby, he constructs solutions to the world's problems. Fortunately, nobody listens.

    Read more from Andrew Burt

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      Book preview

      Having Relationships With Characters on the Road to Great Fiction - Andrew Burt

      HAVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH CHARACTERS ON THE ROAD TO GREAT FICTION

      (Shhh! A Secret of Great Writing)

      by

      ANDREW BURT

      Produced by ReAnimus Press

      More books by Andrew Burt available at:

      www.aburt.com/writing

      © 2014 by Andrew Burt. All rights reserved.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ~~~

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Why should Relationships matter in SF?

      Getting a handle on Relationships

      Scoring a Book

      The Results Get Personal

      How you can use this in your SF writing

      Conclusion

      Common Objections

      More quotes - SF & Other, Relationshippy & Not - and a Quiz

      IP Book Scores

      Statistical Data

      About the Author

      Introduction

      While of course there’s no (shhh!) Secret to writing, we know there’s some je ne sais quoi that separates Great fiction from the ordinary—and sometimes an Aha! happens and your eyes lock onto one of those indescribables that lurk in the peripheral vision, just long enough to drive a pencil through it and pin it to the dissection plate. Darned if I didn’t catch one of the critters: which you know you’ve done when some people say No duh! while others scream Heresy!

      This won’t singlehandedly win you awards or cure the common cold, but it is a significant factor I’ve discovered—and to an extent mathematically proven—that’s more present in enduring SF and lacking in the more forgettable. Carefully employing it can help your writing regardless of your skill. (Well, okay, multi Hugo or Nebula winners can skip to the next article.)

      What I’ll demonstrate is this: Better SF stories pay more attention to characters’ inter-personal relationships.

      Now wait— Before you shout, Ugh! He wants to turn SF into Oprah books! let me make very clear that I dearly love SF. I most definitely do not want to suggest anything here but a technique to help you nudge your stories one step better, without changing their nature.

      What I noticed is that certain kinds of relationships are so lacking that SF is like the Sahara

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