Tag Archives: Star Trek

5 Things Star Trek has Taught Me about Writing

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While I could write about this subject at most any time, I thought it would be appropriate now, while we’re still celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Star Trek. I’ve posted many times about the writing tips and techniques that I’ve learned from the sci-fi show Babylon 5, but since Star Trek was my first science fiction love, I thought it was high time I give it its due.

So here are five things, in no particular order, that Star Trek (mostly TNG, but really, all the series) has taught me about writing and storytelling:

The importance of supporting characters

Everybody loves the heroes of the story, but supporting and minor characters help round out the world. Whether your story has an ensemble main cast (like Star Trek) or just one main protagonist, you need other characters to serve specific roles and to provide more opportunities for interaction and character growth for your main characters. With a longer work (like a novel, a series of novels, or a TV show), you have the opportunity to expand on the minor characters that come and go, and turn some of them into recurring characters. Continue reading →

The Women Who Made Star Trek Possible

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Since this month marks the 50th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise, I couldn’t let it pass without doing a tribute post of some sort. As much as I’ve blogged about Babylon 5 and Stargate as my favorite sci-fi shows, Star Trek was my first love. I grew up watching re-runs of the original series with my dad (no, I’m not quite old enough to have watched it when it first aired). Then when The Next Generation came along in the late 80s, I didn’t start watching it right away, but I soon jumped on board and quickly made sure I watched every single episode; and the same with Deep Space Nine and Voyager. (We won’t talk about the Enterprise series).

Star Trek has a long legacy, and has shaped modern science fiction storytelling (and has shaped real science, as well, but that’s a topic for another post). I could have done a post (or several) about the storytelling aspects of Star Trek – and I might still do that. But for this post, in keeping with the posts I did recently about women in sci-fi, I’m going to highlight the real-life women who made this show a reality.

Of course there are plenty of women both in front of the camera and behind the scenes in TNG, DS9, the movies, and beyond who I could highlight. But I’m going to go back in history a bit and celebrate the women who made Star Trek possible. Without them, this science fiction giant would not exist, at least not the way we know it today. Continue reading →

How to Write Technobabble

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I’m not sure who originally came up with the term “technobabble,” but I first encountered it in reference to Star Trek. Technobabble is a staple of a lot of science fiction: the “babbling” on about fictional science and fictional technology to get characters into and out of their fictional scrapes.

So what makes for good technobabble? It needs to be believable and convincing within the fictional world you’ve created, so here are some ideas:

Use real science

A standard sci-fi technique to fixing a problem. Picard knows what's up.

A standard sci-fi technique to fixing a problem. Picard knows what’s up.

One key element that makes science fiction different from fantasy is the science. Not that every sci-fi story has to be as full of real chemistry and mathematics as, say, The Martian. But science, and along with it, logic and a degree of realism, is part of what makes sci-fi different from magic-based fantasy stories.

Even if your story is set in the far future or in a different universe entirely, learn some basic scientific concepts that will feature in your story. If you’re writing a space adventure with lots of ships traveling around the galaxy, then familiarize yourself with the difference between a red giant star and a quasar. Even if the plot doesn’t hinge on that detail, you’ll likely have readers who do know the difference and might be upset that you have a colony of people living on a planet orbiting a quasar (hint – quasars aren’t stars, to begin with). Continue reading →

5 Fictional Characters I’d Invite to a Summer Picnic

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This week’s post is sort of silly, and inspired by Chronically Vintage’s post featuring some helpful blog post ideas. Since I was stuck for an idea this week, I’ll roll with this idea. This list could potentially go on waaaaaay past five, so for my readers’ sanity, I’ll keep it just to five.

Thorn – from the Bone graphic novel series by Jeff Smith. She’s the fun-loving country girl who discovers that she’s the crown princess, and saves her land from the Rat Creatures and the evil Hooded One. Of course, if I invited Thorn, I’d have to invite her guardian Gran’ma Ben, and her best friend Fone Bone, so now I’m up to three people invited to this picnic already… Continue reading →

Four Things

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This week I’m stealing my blog topic from my friend Jessica over at Chronically Vintage. She’s a lovely person and blogs about vintage fashion, which is something I knew little about until I started writing historical fiction.

Anyway, the idea of this post is to not talk about writerly stuff per se, but rather to reveal some slightly more personal things about me. So here we go – four things about me: Continue reading →