Tag Archives: science fiction writing tip

Writing Technobabble: F is for Fiction and Fact

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Welcome to my guide on how to write technobabble! Every post will start with one letter of the alphabet, from A to Z, and cover tips and ideas for all you writers of sci-fi. Whether you’re writing about near-future science fiction, far-flung alien worlds, or historical steampunk adventures filled with advanced technology that never was – these posts are designed to help you write convincing and unique tech for your story! 

F is for Fiction and Fact 

If you’re writing science fiction or a related genre, then facts don’t matter, right? After all, it’s fiction! While that is very true, sometimes facts really do matter. 

Facts matter the most when you’re writing something that takes place in the here and now, or any time in history. For example, a cyber-thriller that’s set in present day needs to get some facts correct. If it’s sci-fi set in the real world, then places and things about life need to be presented accurately; and similarly, the real-world technology of today should be the baseline for any fictional tech or gadgetry in the story. That’s part of what would make a story like this believable. If it’s about fictional advanced tech in real world today, then the reader needs to recognize all of the elements of today’s world for the story world to be believable and the sci-fi element to make its impact.

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Writing Technobabble: E is for Explanation (or Not)

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Welcome to my guide on how to write technobabble! Every post will start with one letter of the alphabet, from A to Z, and cover tips and ideas for all you writers of sci-fi. Whether you’re writing about near-future science fiction, far-flung alien worlds, or historical steampunk adventures filled with advanced technology that never was – these posts are designed to help you write convincing and unique tech for your story! 

E is for Explanation

One of the fun things about designing futuristic tech or cool otherworldly gadgets is explaining how they work. To the super-nerds among us, explaining in a realistic and believable manner how every single piece of tech works is the best part of writing. And there are plenty of readers who love all those nerdy explanations.

It’s easy to explain too much, though. I’ll cover “infodumps” in a later post, and too much detailed explanation of how tech works would fall into the infodump category. Some stories, though, lend themselves to more or less explanation of the tech. 

For example, let’s compare the stories in the Star Trek universe versus the stories of the Star Wars universe. Both feature space ships, alien technology, and assorted cool gadgets that don’t exist in real life. But there’s a big difference in how the information about the tech is delivered.

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Writing Technobabble: D is for Details

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Welcome to my guide on how to write technobabble! Every post will start with one letter of the alphabet, from A to Z, and cover tips and ideas for all you writers of sci-fi. Whether you’re writing about near-future science fiction, far-flung alien worlds, or historical steampunk adventures filled with advanced technology that never was – these posts are designed to help you write convincing and unique tech for your story! 

D is for Details

Have you heard the saying “the devil is in the details”? What this means is that the little details matter, and it’s the little things that can trip you up and create big problems. So for us writers, here’s a paraphrase: “the story is in the details.” 

“Story” is a lot of things—it’s characters, it’s plot, it’s theme, it’s voice. But what gives all of those things an extra punch, and can help turn an okay story into a great one is rich details. Details are an important element of world-building, and can add a lot to the believability element. 

In the sci-fi epic TV show Babylon 5, the Earth ships used rotating sections to create gravity, whereas most of the other alien races had more advanced technology to generate artificial gravity. Every time an Earth ship appeared, they were immediately recognizable because of the bulky spinning sections in the center. The explanation of the spinning center of the ship came up briefly only once or twice during the 5-year series, but the important detail of the ship design was consistent throughout, with or without an explanation.

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Writing Technobabble: B is for Believable

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Welcome to my guide on how to write technobabble! Every post will start with one letter of the alphabet, from A to Z, and cover tips and ideas for all you writers of sci-fi. Whether you’re writing about near-future science fiction, far-flung alien worlds, or historical steampunk adventures filled with advanced technology that never was – these posts are designed to help you write convincing and unique tech for your story!

B is for Believable

“Believable” might seem like an oxymoron when it comes to something like science fiction. After all, the point is for it to be fiction, right? Yes, but even in the world of fiction, it has to be believable for the reader. It has to make sense within the rules and boundaries of the story.

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Writing Technobabble: A is for Acronym

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Welcome to my guide on how to write technobabble! Every post will start with one letter of the alphabet, from A to Z, and cover tips and ideas for all you writers of sci-fi. Whether you’re writing about near-future science fiction, far-flung alien worlds, or historical steampunk adventures filled with advanced technology that never was – these posts are designed to help you write convincing and unique tech for your story!

A is for Acronym

Coming up with cool and convincing words, tech, and advanced science for your sci-fi or steampunk story can be challenging. One of most noticeable things in a lot of sci-fi are the names given to pieces of technology: warp drive, light saber, and so on. So how do you come up with cool-sounding names for things? 

I’ll go into more details about naming stuff in a later post. For right now, here’s a quick and easy way to name tech for your stories: use an acronym. An acronym is the first letters of a series of words and is used as its own word. It’s a pretty acceptable way to not only abbreviate a highly-technical term, but the acronym itself can be used as a cool word. 

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