Writing Science Fiction: Plotting & Endings
Plotting, Rewriting, and Redrafting
Discover how to plot a story, from its beginnings through to redrafting and its end, with tutor Ian Nettleton. The focus is on science fiction storytelling: how to craft a scene and use dialogue and subtext to bring your ideas to life, packed full of examples from sci-fi film and literature.
You'll find out:
- The relationship between plot and character
- What forms a classic story structure
- How to write an impactful opening
- How to ratchet up the drama
- The Ten Commandments of Writing
- How point of view affects your plot
- How dialogue and subtext can add depth to your plot
- The importance of rewriting
- How to end your story
Course contents
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StartWays of beginning
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StartRead: The Power
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StartExercise #2: Picking your beginning
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StartScenes and how to make them add to your story
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StartHow would you make the scene more dramatic?
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StartThe key to great scenes
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StartWrite, don't think
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StartExercise #3: Write a scene
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StartExercise #4: Examine a scene
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StartHalftime Quiz
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StartDon't leave the house in your underwear (1:06)
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StartThe Ten Commandments of Writing
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StartExercise #5: What makes a good novel?
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StartMr Ten Per Cent
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StartInterlude: Point of View Revisited
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StartBeing in control of your material – point of view continued
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StartDialogue - What are you talking about?
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StartMore on subtext and dialogue
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StartExercise #6: Rewrite
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StartEndings
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StartExamples of endings
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StartFrequent Out of this World Questions
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StartAnd in the end (0:42)
Your Instructor
Ian Nettleton is from the north of England but he has lived in Norwich for two decades. His novelette, Falling Star, was published in a science fiction anthology, Angles, in 2008 and his novel, The Last Migration, was runner-up in the inaugural Bath Novel Award 2014 and runner-up in the inaugural Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award 2014. He is represented by Sue Armstrong of the Conville and Walsh literary agency. He has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia and teaches creative writing at the Open University (undergraduate and MA) and the University of East Anglia. He is currently editing a literary thriller set in Queensland, Australia, called Out of Nowhere.