Fancy Fresh Ideas for Upcoming Episodes, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 228

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Fancy Fresh Ideas for Upcoming Episodes How To Write the Future podcast, episode 225

“When I’m working on sci-fi, I’m really thinking about this a lot, and I’m thinking about it from my main character’s perspective. What is it like to be looking at the Earth from space and from various distances? That just blows me away.” – Beth Barany

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Fancy Fresh Ideas for Your Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels” host, Beth Barany shares insight into upcoming podcast episode topic ideas, including discussing what is a circular economy, viewing the world from a non human mind, and tone versus voice.

Beth also invites listeners to get in touch about topics they’d like to hear discussed on the podcast. Weigh in!

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About the How To Write the Future podcast

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 228 Fancy Fresh Ideas for Your Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels 

Curiosity Check-In 

BETH BARANY: As a writer, as a human being, I’m infinitely curious about so many things, and I wanna know: what are you curious about? Here at How to Write the Future, I care about helping you, science fiction and fantasy writer, expand your writing skill set and also expand into what is possible for you as an author.

I’m a bit of a futurist. I’m always looking into the future. I feel like sometimes I’m a few steps ahead of everyone else. So I want to just pause here and see what you’re interested in and also tell you some of the topics that I am interested in doing some podcast episodes about.

[00:41] Circular Economy Ideas 

One of them is circular economies.

I have heard about this term for a good 5, 10 years, and I wanna dig into it. What does that mean? What does that mean for our storytelling? How can we use the ideas of circular economy in our storytelling, and what is it? 

The quickest way I can define circular economy is it’s about recycling, but it’s also much more than that. What if we built circular economy better into our infrastructure, into our factories, into how everything was created? That’s what I think it means. So that’s on sort of like the research world-building side.

[01:18] Writing Nonhuman Minds 

Here’s another topic that I have thought about and actually have a little bit of experience about having written like 17 novels and published 12 so far is on the craft side, how do you inhabit a character that isn’t human and do it in a convincing way?

I’m 100% sure that everything we write is gonna be imbued with who we are as human beings. And what if we wanted to write about, I’ve long thought about writing a story about bees and bee culture and what is that really like and what would a bee creature really be going through?

One of my favorite writers, Judith Carr, writes about the world through the perspective of a horse sometimes, and I just adore that.

[02:02] Cat Interruption Demo 

Uh, and I have cats. One of them’s trying to interrupt me right now. You wanna come here? My cat Rocket, what is life like for him and his brother Cinnamon, who you, you don’t see interrupting my calls at all, who has a totally different personality and seems very smart.

Whereas Rocket… Rocket, come up. Jump. There we go. You know, what does, what does Rocket think and feel, and how his whole life seems to be about being pet and cuddled and loved and in the middle of things, right?

Yeah.

[02:36] Tone Versus Voice 

Another topic, this is very craft nerdy. A lot of people over the years have written about this topic, and I have thought about it myself, which is tone versus voice. Agents and editors will talk about tone and voice. What are they? I realize I might have a simplistic answer, but I believe voice is attitude and comes from the choices you make about your point of view character.

You have a voice. Each individual has a voice, a way of being in the world, talking, the actual sound of your voice, and how do we translate that onto the page?

And tone can vary from all kinds of things, and the first thing that comes to mind is, tongue in cheek or serious or earnest.

These things can actually vary within a book by the same voice. Now, this is my off-the-cuff answer. I am not an academic. What I care about the most is how can this help you as a writer?

How can I help you be a better writer? So that’s how I, I would angle that kind of topic.

[03:41] The Overview Effect 

Another topic that I have wanting to talk about for a long time is the overview effect, which is something that really started in, I don’t know, 1969. I can’t remember who first coined it, and I can do the research on this, and I started doing the research on this.

What is it like to look at the Earth from space, and how that changes your perspective? I love to look at images of the Earth from space taken by our satellites and our astronauts, and this is a very recent human phenomena. It’s only happened since, what, the ’60s, since 19… I wanna say 1969. 

I know they were coming back from their first moon landing in 1969. And those pictures that were taken from the other side of the Moon that showed Earthrise- just amazing.

So what happens to the human psychology when we start to all see the Earth from space? And we all have access to these images now.

And how that can change your perspective. When I’m working on sci-fi, I’m really thinking about this a lot, and I’m thinking about it from my main character’s perspective. What is it like to be looking at the Earth from space and from various distances? That is also just blows me away.

Like the famous image, the Pale Blue Dot, that was taken, I believe, beyond Saturn, that they pinpointed was it Carl Sagan, I think, who coined that phrase. And what is it like to imagine that we’re this pale blue dot? If we’re sitting outside of Saturn’s orbit looking back toward the Sun, and the Earth is just a dot in the frame out of many dots. 

Incredible.

[05:18] Wrap Up And Requests

So those are just some of the topics that I have in my ideas file here. If any of these strike your fancy, let me know. If you have another topic you wish for me to talk about, let me know. I will dig into it if it also catches my fancy. It has to catch both of our fancies, if that’s a phrase.

All right, that’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

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ABOUT BETH BARANY 

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Beth Barany is an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. They help novelists write, revise, and publish stories that matter—blending practical craft guidance with a big-picture commitment to imagination, meaning, and possibility. 

 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

 

Connect with Beth Barany 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

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Email: Beth@BethBarany.com

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