In transition

Unlike NASA, I am still sending people into space.

I'm putting aside my fantasy outlining and returning to space to work on my hard scifi novel(s). This always takes some mental recalibration. Switching from English to Metric (ha!) as it were...

(Actually, that's true. My fantasy uses feet/pounds and my science fiction uses meters/...well, I generally tried to avoid specifying units. I managed to go 140k words without specifying a unit of currency, though I'm not entirely sure why. I just didn't want to get into that whole thing.)

The major adjustment is, actually, in voice. My science fiction tends to come out tight and sparse on the details -- maybe a little too sparse. My betas poke me for more. For some reason, I'm more reluctant to talk about world-building and description in science fiction. I want to get to the action, the explosions, the cool stuff.

In fantasy, I always have the feeling of OMG SHUT UP AND DO SOMETHING because my characters are less inclined to LISTEN TO ME. (Kiefan's "bad idea" from a few weeks back? Totally worked. Listen to your characters.)

But then again, I'm not getting many confusion complaints on the fantasy. Hmm.

Anyway, I was trying to hack together a post about voice and it wasn't working. I will get back to it. Maybe I will do some more world-building posts for science fiction. Your comments would be extremely influential on that, you quiet people out there. :)

On a somewhat related note, if you're writing fantasy you may be interested in the Magic Appreciation Tour proposed by Daniel Marvello. I have a long way to go on my fantasy monstrosity, but I'm interested. Maybe something similar could be done for science fiction.