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I’m sure some of you like sci-fi even if you don’t plan to write it. So what about aliens? They can play important characters so it is important to make sure they seem real and relatable. In reality however, they are neither. Even if they were real, you wouldn’t know what they were like. So how does one resolve this problem? How does one write real aliens when they aren’t real?
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I’m just as curious as you are.
Where’s Ezra? He’s got to have some sort of wisdom on this.
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@ezra-wilkinson
We’re waiting.You have summoned me.
The question, as I see it, is somewhat simple in concept. Because really, what is writing but creating stories where the reader is forced to relate to things that they have never experienced? I don’t know what it’s like to murder someone. When I read Edgar Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart” I feel connected to it. I relate to what I don’t understand, and what I know isn’t real, because I know those events didn’t happen.
Aliens (or really any other race, such as orcs, elves, naga, and maybe the odd zombie vampire werewolf or two, not to mention Canadians), are…aliens. Strange. Foreign to us. However, like any other aspect of a story, they should be forcing us into their world.
The basic concept behind making the reader understand something they’ve never experienced (as I’ve understood it), is to use things they /do/ understand. I want solid, concrete ideas and concepts that I can relate to, even if they reside in things that I don’t.
I’ll break off into examples: In the movie Prometheus (terrible movie by the way, plot wise, character wise, content wise…all around…horrible…I left part way through…the sheer idiocy of the scripting made me sad) we are given an alien society. It’s a pretty stupid alien society, not because it’s not all sci-fi and alien-y, but because that’s where it ends. Plot material, concepts and stuff are presented in the mindset of the viewer already relating to alien society (undoubtedly because we’re so steeped in aliens already in our media.) The creators are trying to make us see the plot as one thing, the aliens as another, and are really just trying to mesh all these different things together…theme, character development, setting, etc…are all separate components you see. BAD NO DON’T DO THAT! If you do that, Greedo will shoot you dead.
In contrast, Blizzard’s Starcraft series of video game presents an /incredible/ story centering around aliens. (I have not actually played Starcraft, but with my great faith in Bizzard’s story telling I have looked up and read the plot online. It’s actually in my top ten all around best stories. In terms of plot, character dev., setting, everything. It’s amazing. I highly recommend reading it.) The big thing of importance to note here, is that aliens are treated…as real things.
If the author him/herself is writing and trying to be like in their writing, “OK, this is about aliens, but they aren’t real OK?” that’s a fail. You can do all your testimonies and stuff in your book flap or forward or whatever. A reader /cannot/ connect to something that he doesn’t think is plausible. (And I don’t mean they have to believe in the existence of aliens. I mean they have to believe that /in this story universe/ aliens are a thing.)
By existing in a universe, an alien society should be like a human one: It has it’s histories, it’s wars, it’s good, it’s bad, it’s gods, it’s demons, it’s stone age, it’s emotions…
In other words, if you’re using something like a whole other race in your writing, don’t really treat them as such. Treat them as a method by which to bring out your thoughts, the emotions of the book, the development of the plot and characters…all these things interweaving about the concepts the reader can’t relate to, because there are universal ideas that should always be present.Yep. Boomy boom.
Hmm, I think I get what you’re saying. It is not so much how you portray your alien that makes them real, it is how you think of the alien. If you think of the alien like it (excuse me – HE) is real, you will sound convincing. I like that. I should have thought of that. I didn’t. Thanks.
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Well if that wasn’t the simplest answer. Sheesh— how come I didn’t think of that? It’s good we have you here to tell us these things, Ezra…
I also just wanted to say that no matter how weird we make any mythical creature, they will always have something human about them, because we don’t know anything else.
Even if we were going to write a story from the perspective of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (yuck) we would have to give that sandwich a personality to do anything with it.And that’s a good thing.
Well if that wasn’t the simplest answer. Sheesh— how come I didn’t think of that? It’s good we have you here to tell us these things, Ezra…Well if that wasn’t the simplest answer. Sheesh— how come I didn’t think of that? It’s good we have you here to tell us these things, Ezra…
I don’t know why I was needed to give wisdom…I mean…I don’t understand half of what I’m saying…
Good answers. *applauds* Bravo, Ezra. We will always trust you to have opinions on strange things not a lot of us have thought of before. 😛
No Ezra—- shshshshsh! You’re not supposed to tell people that!
Good answers. *applauds* Bravo, Ezra. We will always trust you to have opinions on strange things not a lot of us have thought of before. ?
Strange? OK
Aliens are strange. C’mon, that’s like the whole draw.
He doesn’t want you to call Canadians strange
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Here’s my two cents. You could say the same thing about fantasy creatures, and other worlds, like Narnia, that you just said about aliens. How could one write about unicorns if they aren’t real? How could one write about gnomes, if they aren’t real? ‘Cause they are characters, because they are people. And that is what we are writing about, isn’t it? We are writing a story about a person, who may happen to be an alien, or a gnome, or a robot.
BTW, nice work Ezra! I wish I could articulate my opinions that clearly.
The Scattered Writer
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