Writing Excuses 8.26: Space Opera

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Writing Excuses 8.26: Space Opera

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2013/06/30/writing-excuses-8-26-space-opera/

Key points: Space Opera started as a pejorative. Like soap operas, melodramatic and overblown, but in space. Think Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Star Trek, Star Wars. Primarily about characters, with a veneer of science. Adventure fiction in a science-fiction setting. The lines are fuzzy, with some military science fiction or fantasy blending. Character drama and travelogue -- new and interesting places, unexpected aliens -- make space opera. Space opera is more likely to start with a cool thing, and add science instead of starting with science and trying to figure out what to do with it. Space opera should be fun, an adventure with lots of interesting things happening. Read science! Realistic, but adventure and story come first. The heart of good space opera is a fun adventure story. Strain at gnats such as accelerations, specific gravities, or masses, and your readers will swallow hyperdrive camels. Whole! All science opera, science fiction, or just plain fiction reaches a point where they say, "We don't know, but we think."
( Where is my earth-shattering BOOM! )

[Howard] Do we need a writing prompt?
[Brandon] We do need a writing prompt.
[Howard] Ummm.
[Brandon] You said that as if you had one.
[Howard] No, no, no. Gimme a... The first writing prompt I came up with is too hard.
[Dan] Okay. Here's a writing prompt for you. Posit a faster-than-light drive that no one else has ever thought of.
[Brandon] Good luck with that. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.