Betrayal seems like it would be a more powerful meme if it’s coming from a character you care about. Even if the character is not completely endeared to the reader, the character should at least one that you’re somewhat familiar with.

So I’m going to introduce the traitor earlier in the story. He will remain a secondary character, but I will plunk him down much earlier in the timeline than I had previously conceived, to give him time to develop at least a minimum of a relationship with some of the other characters.

Thus is the nature of writing in layers. You get to a part of the story and as you dig in you realize there is a better opportunity to do a particular thing different than you had originally imagined. When I have these realizations, it makes me glad I didn’t waste too much time on fancy prose (yet) — because it’d be just that; A waste.

Writing in layers is the nature of the beast.

Why has there been a recent surge?

According to Wil Wheaton over on Suicide Girls:

“…a lot of the same fears and geopolitical conflicts that dominated the post-WWII era when apocalyptic fiction really got started are alive and well today. We don’t have the Cold War, but we have terrorism, global warming, and a government that does everything it can to keep us in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. When we feel like this, one way we cope is by creating worlds where the worst of our fear have been realized, worlds where we can walk away if it gets too scary, and maybe it prepares us to deal with that world, should we create it for real.”

Smart guy. I think he’s right. The themes of my post-apoc universe are synthesized out of many of my personal fears, and looking at issues of the day and thinking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” More importantly, “How would we deal with it?”

It’s the essential what-if of all good sci-fi, post-apoc, and dystopian stories.

Thanks to our buddies over at SF Signal for the heads up on that one.

“Incluing is a technique of world building, in which the reader is gradually exposed to background information about the world in which a story is set.”

OR:

“The process of scattering information seamlessly through the text, as opposed to stopping the story to impart the information.”

As a gamer, I’ve always had a natural appreciation for incluing. There are a multitude of examples in my favorite games, such as Half-Life, Fallout, and Oblivion. Because games are an interactive medium, they naturally inclue information to the player by distributing it throughout the world.

Fiction writers don’t have it so easy. The world is not revealed in an interactive manner, and so it is harder to inclue items about the world in a subtle fashion.

I have an odd solution to this, given I’m creating a metaseries media franchise.

For example, a murder occurs in Story A, and a news item about that murder occurs in Story B. Cross-referencing is a great way to inclue while also creating a sense of depth to your franchise as a whole. Long-running TV series such as Stargate SG-1 often reference past events in the form of inclues, although SG-1 does its share of infodumping as well.

How do you inclue? Well I’m not certain what will work for you, but I’ll tell you what works for me. Occasionally in thinking about my sci-fi world details, I’ll think of references I can plant from one story to another. It could be a major event. It could be as simple as a press release by a corporation. No, of course you don’t batter the reader with the entire press release — that would be infodumping. Instead you have it on the TV in the background while the character is moving past an electronics shop. The character catches the snippet in media res.

Better yet, use it in your bar scene. There are always TVs in bars, showing sports, news, or what have you. That is the perfect time to give the reader an inclue. What should it be? Preferably something related to the story at hand, but if not then a quick flash about something from one of your other stories makes a nice cross-reference, and at least an easter-egg.

An easy way to bring inclues into your fiction is to use other media within your fiction. You can use news or radio broadcasts, advertisements, billboards, magazines — any form of media that exists in the real world surely has to exist within yours. These are perfect frames to give the reader more information about your world as a brief inclue nugget.

They might hear it on the radio station, or read it in a book via a Frame Story or even a fictional fictional character.

When you think of a cross-reference or inclue, write it down. You won’t remember it later. Keep a wishlist of possible inclues for your story, and incorporate them into your story once you find the appropriate scene for them.

Incluing is a powerful device, especially for sci-fi, fantasy writers, or anyone who has done a significant amount of world-building. Enjoy!

Each time back is both a refreshing and disturbing experience rolled into one. Refreshing for that feeling of safety and familiarity. It is disturbing because so much has changed in my hometown of Woodbury, that in many ways the place is alien to me.

The essence of the place truly resides in the mind alone, and thus we get to heart of the cliché, “You can never go home again.”

The place you grew up and the experiences you had significantly shaped your identity as an individual. As writers, many of those places, people, and sentiments will find their way into your stories.

It is well known that many of the locations in Stephen King novels are inspired by his childhood stomping grounds, such as the barrens in It. Many other places from his childhood have literally crept into his stories time and again, and I’m sure his memories of the places he had fascinations with as a child continue to inspire him in one form or another.

His town of Derry is fictional, not unlike Dashiell Hammett’s Poisonville, although we know that both places are inspired by real places; Bangor, Maine and Butte, Montana respectively.

My setting is a sci-fi post-apocalyptic future, so very few places from my childhood creep in. However, I probably make up for this fact in elements of theme and conflict, themes and conflicts whose seeds were probably planted in Woodbury and continue to influence my adult life. It is no coincidence that the landscape of my fiction also bares a similar juxtaposition to my real life; Glimpses of familiar monuments and landmarks are stationary boulders in a river of change.

• Do places from your childhood make appearances in your fiction?
• If not places, then themes… certain types of characters, or character conflicts grace your pages as representatives of your childhood?
• Do you ‘go home’ in your stories, in some form or another?

P.S. To me this is the deeper meaning behind “Write what you know.” It does not necessarily mean your area of expertise, but your understanding of certain themes based on your lifelong experiences with them. Inner truths as you know them.

“That’s what Atlantis did well in that we created a universe wherein multiple storylines could be born and take place and spread and grow. Those are the lessons we learned building SG-1 in the first place. While it started with mythology at its root, very early on, by mid-way through Season Three and [the] beginning of Season Four, we had created enough of our own mythology that wasn’t rooted in the culture of “X.”"

One of the strengths of the series is its ability to remain fresh after so many seasons, and the best I can determine is that their ability to do this relies heavily upon those open threads. You can resolve a thread with a villain being killed… or so it appears. But maybe they are revived, cloned, take a new body, or found a way to escape at the last second that the hero didn’t know about. While this is standard fare, the more interesting type of open thread is when an episode features a new discovery: New technology, ancient artifact, riddles constructed out of alien languages. The characters never truly know the full story. A pillar inscribed with text may lead to certain discoveries in one episode, but the interpretation of that finding may change or evolve in drastic new ways in a later episode.

It is safe to say that the SG-1 writers did not have entire story arcs across multiple seasons planned out in advance. So then how did they make it seem like they did plan it? They left themselves enough open threads, and had confidence in their own abilities to deliver on those open threads when the time came. Making yourself seem like a master story arc planner is just a matter of leaving yourself enough opportunities to create that illusion through future stories.