Science fiction offers some of the most compelling stories readers can pick up, stories that immerse them in other worlds, other lives, sometimes even other dimensions. In putting together our anthology, The Reinvented Detective, my co-editor Jennifer Brozek and I found plenty of examples of how rich and multi-layered science fiction stories can be.
Here’s some rules about writing science fiction stories that I’ve noted in the course of editing multiple anthologies and writing 300+ stories myself, as well as examples drawn from the anthology.
Something must happen. Like any genre, stories need to have a definite plot arc, where something changes. Usually a problem or crisis is solved, but the change can happen in plenty of different ways. If writing at any length (flash is always full of exceptions to any writing rule), there must be a definite shape to the story, feeling as though it flows from beginning through middle to the end. For example, in Lisa Morton’s “The Gardener’s Journal: Notes from a Mystery,” the detective’s attitude towards a main fact of their existence changes radically as they try to figure out the incident they’re investigating, while in C.C. Finlay’s “The Best Justice Money Can Buy,” a crime has occurred — but the change that must occur involves who will end up punished for it.
