A Word Written: January 2014

Sunday, January 5, 2014

A Bit about Quotes

So I'm planning to write a Science Fiction Novel. Yes, me. I'm going to do that. Shocking.

I've spent most of my life programming computers, and when I started it was cards and more cards. Color coded cards. Key punch work. Sorts and lists. Tedium ad nauseam.

How do I get from that to where I want to be; which is writing fiction. Science fiction.

I was reading about the "snowflake method", or should that be "Snowflake Method" which is a top down approach which was something that was all the rage for Systems Design back in the 1980's.

I never wanted to do things that way. I was always a bottom up kind of guy.

But let's talk technique. I'd been wondering about quotes and how to quote the characters in stories.

We must never call them people.

I came across web page about quotes and it's concise enough that it deserves favorable mention. It's from the Writer's Digest University and here is the LINK.

PJ

The Lion at the Foot of the Bed

I wanted to write fiction and I found myself writing a memoir about my life. It's not fiction, it's my life.

It occurred to me that my life was more interesting than any fiction I could write. To say that my life was strange is an understatement. I've experienced so many deaths, some where I knew the person and they died I and saw it while it happened.

Other deaths were people that I didn't know.

What's so special about me that I'm condemned to watch people die?

The reason I wanted to write science fiction was that I have dreams that take place in outer space. On ships, space stations, other planets one of which looks like Mars with oceans. I dream about being on exo-planets some of which have advanced civilizations on them where teleportation is employed; even teleportation to get to the other inhabited planets.