Writing a short story that takes place in our world is tricky enough, but when you’re trying to build a brand new world within 1,000 words for our Science Fiction Competition, you have an extra challenge on your hands! Luckily, our Guest Judge Amie Kaufman, the New York Times bestselling author of YA Science Fiction, has great advice for worldbuilding with brevity: “Resist the urge to explain everything to the reader. You can trust them to make some leaps, and it’s okay if they don’t know all the details about your world.”
Learn more about Amie’s journey as a sci-fi author and get more great tips for your competition entry below!
Did you always want to be a sci-fi author? What did your career path look like?
For a long time I had no idea that being an author was a real job—I’d always told stories, but I didn’t know you could do it for a living. All through primary school and high school I told stories to my friends, and when I finished school I kept on writing for fun. I didn’t start trying to get published until I was in my 30s, though—I got in so much practice beforehand, that once I did start trying, I was lucky enough to be published quite quickly. I’d already done so much of my learning. I’m now fifteen novels in, and I’m still looking for ways to improve every time.
Tell us a bit about your writing process—how do you go from flash of inspiration to a final draft?
Sometimes that journey from inspiration to final draft takes years—right now I’m working on a novel that I first began in 2013! Some writers like to see where their stories take them, and others like to outline in advance—I’m definitely one of the outliners. So I spend a lot of time getting to know my characters, thinking about what makes them tick, what they want, what they love and what they hate, and how to give them an adventure that will change and shape and challenge them. Once I’ve done that, and sketched out my plot, it’s a case of many, many drafts, and many, many revisions. It certainly doesn’t show up perfectly the first time—no matter how experienced you are, you’re always trying to do better.
You’ve co-written many of your books and series. How does the process of co-authoring a book compare with your process when you write “solo”?
I absolutely love co-authoring—whenever you’re stuck, you’ve got someone right there to solve your latest plot problem with. Together you come up with ideas you never could have alone, and my co-authors and I always learn so much from each other. In terms of process, the main difference is that when I’m writing with a co-author, we’re passing the manuscript back and forth as we each add our sections. We critique and edit as we go, and we talk every day.
Sci-Fi is all about worldbuilding. How can young writers be sure to include enough worldbuilding in a 600-1000 word short story without getting bogged down in the details?
It’s tricky, but it’s definitely not impossible—the key is to resist the urge to explain everything to the reader. You can trust them to make some leaps, and it’s okay if they don’t know all the details about your world. You can get a lot of mileage out of what the characters notice, what they think is normal, and what they think is strange. I have a couple of episodes of my podcast, Amie Kaufman on Writing about this—they’re both only ten minutes long, and they talk about how to do your worldbuilding, and then how to show it. The episodes themselves are called Worldbuilding is for Everyone and How To Show Your Worldbuilding. You can think of them as my best advice on how to handle this problem!
WtW writer Ava Marie asks: What is the best way to end a sci-fi short story?
Oh, good question! You could ask a hundred different writers that question, and get a hundred different answers, but I’ll give you mine—I think a good ending leaves me thinking about the story after I’m finished, but doesn’t leave me hanging. When you ask a reader to invest time in reading a story, you should always make sure there’s a pay-off for them—but it’s also a lot of fun to leave just a few threads peeking out the end of the tapestry, inviting them to think about what might come next.
What are you looking for in a sci-fi short story?
First of all, it needs to really be sci-fi—that means there needs to be some element of science, futurism or technology in there that you can’t remove without the whole story falling apart. That’s the difference between science fiction and fantasy dressed up with rocket ships and lasers. (And that type of fantasy can be very fun—it’s just not sci-fi.) Secondly, one of the great strengths of science fiction is that it asks big questions about who we are, and who we want to be—and who we might end up being, if we continue on a particular course of action. I love sci-fi stories that ask a question, and invite the reader to figure out their answer.
