Sci (Fi) of Relief Forum What Do you usually include in..

My sci-fi stories tend to have elaborate government structures--when I get to build a world from scratch I love to think about how the social hierarchies and economic systems affect different forms of governments and how that ends up part of the main characters' lives.

Some element of whatever topic of research has my interest at the moment, usually a historical or mythological element, and very often something scientific. There is always an element of the fantastic and the bizarre. I can't stand writing about day-to-day life.

I usually include technology and a hero.  Also I try to weave a love story in with my story even if it is science fiction.  The way I write has improved and I am hoping to keep on improving with every step I take.

Asking me to apply my talent for pattern recognition to my own fiction?  Unfair!  Nevertheless, you did ask for it...    My characters tend to be people who come from small families or (in the case of Raven) whose families aren't alive anymore.  See me NOT going the route of "I'm an only-ish child, so I wonder what it would be like to have lots and lots of siblings (whether they're trying to kill me or not)."   Geoffrey's cousin Mitchell is someone he looked up to and tried to emulate while growing up, but Mitch isn't in any of my stories.  Marleah hardly talks to her parents, but she's close to her grandmother.  Jason was close to his little brother before he left home.  I'm assuming that both Alandra and Stephan are only children (they're NOT related, btw - Alandra wants me to point that out) simply because neither has informed me otherwise.  Raven was the youngest of several children, some of them half-siblings.  Elena's brothers both died in WWIII.  Darren spends a lot of time with his cousins (sons and daughter of his dad's younger brother).  Frost's siblings were all adults when he was born.    And yes, I have noticed that I seldom discuss my characters' parents.  Could be because I'm not, and have not been for some time, on speaking terms with mine.   My male characters range from five-foot-ten to six-foot-four.  This is probably due to my own height:  I'm a bit more than half a foot taller than average, and I sometimes have trouble putting myself in the viewpoint of someone a lot shorter than myself.  I think the shortest character I've ever written is Marleah, who, at five-foot-two, isn't actually short.  There is not, no matter what may be said, an overabundance of redheads in my fiction; it's just that they tend to stand out more.  Ditto for the green-eyed ones.  Male characters, especially protagonists, tend to be of my own basic body type.  (None of them are nearsighted or half-crippled, though - I'd never inflict that on someone.)  All my major characters are similar to me in intelligence, because if I can't understand a person with an IQ of 125, I certainly can't write about them.    Other tendencies in my writing:  I like multiple/alternate universes.  I like complex plots that twist through each other and bridge stories that aren't part of the same novel (or series, sometimes).  A major character in one novel is supporting cast - or antagonist! - in another novel or short story.  I like characters who are different from the people around them (Raven's friends humor him and pretend they believe he's human), although this does not mean I write characters who are brooding loners.  And oh, yeah - I write about weird things like psionics and retroviruses and why people who live a really long time don't necessarily get bored or depressed after a couple of centuries...   I hope that answered the question. :)