Authoring & Playwriting

Thank you Suzanne Bronson - I love your confidence. "Offense is taken, not given." - a great way to look at it, and I'll not let it dilute my creativity.

Cynna Ael what a great way to look at a character - honoring them!

I take bits and pieces from real life, which includes people, but also my own feelings in situations.

This resonates so much. I think every writer, at some point, discovers that our characters are mirrors — sometimes clearer than we expect.

In my own projects, I’ve also found myself writing someone “too close,” almost by instinct. Not because I wanted to expose them, but because certain behaviors, voices, and emotional patterns stay with us. They become part of our creative language. And when we write honestly, those echoes come through.

But what I’ve learned is this:

a character is rarely about a person — it’s about a moment, a feeling, a wound, or even a small truth we once witnessed.

When we change a character to avoid hurting someone, we aren’t betraying our story — we’re refining it. We’re shifting from imitation to transformation. The essence of what inspired the character can stay, but the form evolves into something truly ours.

And sometimes, that evolution makes the writing even stronger.

So yes — it’s happened to me. I’ve written someone recognizable, then stepped back, breathed, and reshaped the character into something more universal. More symbolic. Less like a portrait and more like a soul in fiction.

That’s the craft.

That’s the empathy in storytelling.

Debbie Seagle Hahaha Wow indeed! Guess it's good you had some other eyeballs on it. I probably have, but very few of my family have read anything I've written, so it's moot HA!

It's wonderful to hear that, best of luck to you and congratulations on all your hard work.

I see my last answer was perhaps misguided as it was more about the nature of “original thought”.

if it’s about devising an advanced culture - the first thing I think of is habitat.

advanced cultures build settlements and those settlements are typically indicative of the culture that built it. If you can build a city what does it look like? is it a collective space like a hive or is there space for individuality? what adorns the walls- writing? art? can they write? do they need to communicate in such a way? what does the foundations of the city look like? do they even require foundations or is this world not bound by our understandings of gravity ? if so how does that effect movement around a city?

discover the city discover the civilisation

thank you those are truly helpful questions to build a civilization Ian Buchanan

We are going to be limited by our human experience and world. There's no getting around that. And it's probably just as well, because our readers and viewers do need some grounding in the familiar to then expand beyond that.

Probably if we ever meet aliens and travel to alien worlds they (to some extent) will be beyond anything any human has imagined.

You just nailed the question that sits at the heart of The Phoenix.

I’ve spent years pushing past that same wall — trying to imagine alien minds, civilizations, logic systems that don’t echo Earth. And like you said, every time we reach for the unimaginable, we drag pieces of ourselves with us. Our memories, our senses, our human patterns. It’s like trying to dream outside your own skull.

That’s why, in my story, the Anunnaki and the Solari don’t just look alien — they think alien. Their logic isn’t built on our fears or our morals. The Anunnaki didn’t create humans for companionship; they made us the way a builder makes tools. The Solari didn’t free us out of sympathy; they saw potential we couldn’t see in ourselves. Their minds operate on scales we struggle to grasp.

And that’s the line I try to walk: the place where human imagination breaks, and something else begins.

But maybe that’s why we keep looping back to human logic — because we’re still human. Everything we imagine gets filtered through our own wiring. Maybe the best we can do is push so far that the edges of our imagination crack a little, and something unfamiliar slips through.

So yeah — I think we’re touching the limits. But I also think those limits bend if you lean on them hard enough.

I love your question — it’s one of those thoughts that quietly follows every creator without us even noticing.

When I read your post, I instantly thought about Dune. Frank Herbert didn’t try to imagine something completely outside the human mind. Instead, he took humanity and stretched it to its breaking point.

The Fremen, the Bene Gesserit… they feel alien, yet still understandable, because they are humanity filtered through extreme environments, belief systems, and generations of adaptation. Herbert accepted that we can’t step outside our own mind — so he expanded the mind from inside.

I felt something similar during my recent trip to Korea and China. While climbing toward Namsan Tower, I saw an old man carrying his wife on his back. It was such a simple moment, yet it opened an entire story in my head. Suddenly, the world around me became a film — characters walking next to us, a Masakatsu Takagi melody in the air.

It reminded me that imagination isn’t born from something “non-human,” but from moments we witness, feel, and transform.

Maybe we never truly imagine the unimaginable.

Maybe we imagine new shapes built from everything we already carry inside us — memories, sounds, lights, people we meet for half a second, stories we read.

Even Herbert did this.

Even alien worlds in science fiction do this.

And maybe that’s the beauty of it.

The unimaginable isn’t something outside of us.

It’s something we grow toward — step by step, image by image, experience by experience, until the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes meaningful.

That’s where creativity begins.

Thanks. This month- I've been a published author for 22 years and I realised-- I've switched mediums- even though I do still write novels and stories-- that I don't want to burn out in scriptwriting. I want to keep these ideas I've got flowing. I realised others might also get this way during this time of the year. Wanted to give some help that worked for me. Not everything works for everyone, but a lot of people have found help in the book itself-- picking and choosing items. It's what I did and it really helped at a time when I honestly thought I'd never write again.

You're welcome, Cynna Ael. Congratulations on being a published author for 22 years! I make really detailed outline for my scripts, so I don't usually have a problem keeping ideas flowing. And doing the Tuesday writing exercises that Ashley Smith posts in Stage 32's Writers' Room helps too.

Thanks Cynna for sharing. I am indebted to Julia for inspiring a new season of my creative writing journey. Best wishes!

William Henderson Right? Sometimes a book like this can get you out of those doldrums and the block that you didn't realise was building up. Rereading it recently was like opening a brand new door for me. I'm also grateful to the fact I've made the time to really fill my well creatively-- being on here, taking part of learning labs. They all help with that process.

A wonderful post, Cynna! Thank you so much for sharing.

David Taylor I get what you mean — those small daily irritations really do bring something genuine to a relationship.

For me, tension often comes from something a bit deeper: the way people are, their temperament, how they move through life.

It’s simply another way of keeping things human, I think.

Personally, I think emotional depth and worldbuilding in sci-fi are two important aspects in the said genre but the former is the engine that drives the story forward.

In all movies, your emotional depth enables your audience to relate to your onscreen characters. Blissful or sad emotions our characters experience as the movies unfolds should resonate with our audience's experiential learning.

Any writer who glorifies worldbuilding at the expense of emotional depth is definitely skating on quicksand.

WH?

Answer: Human beings are social animals that have emotions. Emotional attachment is key. Conversely, worldbuilding , as far as I'm concerned, is largely drawn from reasoning or logic but its end product is steeped in emotional depth. While creating this unique world , you're tactfully appealing to the emotions of your audiences. In a way , I subscribe to the idea that the screenwriter should build their world ( with its own rules ---- dos and don'ts) largely from the emotional depth they intend to.create.

Worldbuilding should enhance the thematic flow of the writer's storyline. Worldbuilding, if expertly handled, has an astounding capacity to shape character dialogue. Dialogue should in turn explore the flowing:

1. What's at stake

2. The fears of characters

3. Expectations

4. Themes

5. Motifs

6. Etc

In short, the better approach between the two is the EMOTIONAL DEPTH TO WORLDBUILDING APPROACH and not the other way round.

Jabulani Pongolani Thanks, Jabulani — that idea really resonates with me.

I often start from a simple question: what does the system expect from people, and how do those expectations quietly shape the way they see themselves?

That kind of soft, well-intentioned pressure can become its own form of constraint.

And when a character finally wants something the system doesn’t consider “useful,” that tension naturally creates emotion — almost like a small rebellion just to feel something real again.

For me, that’s exactly where worldbuilding and emotional depth meet: the mechanics of the world explain why the characters feel the way they do.

In a novel use thoughts, feelings & POV of protagonist & antagonist. Or jump into each of the characters minds in turn. Re scripts, obviously show, don’t tell with visual action/subtext. Add “Universal” human moments EG love, hate, coming of age. Or nuggets of life we can all identify with, eg funny, bizarre, sad, embarrassing. Protagonist has their own inner battle, aswell as the outer conflict with monsters/machines/galaxies etc. Switch camps, so we see through the eyes of aliens too. Many pages of a novel, when adapted to a script, may only be a crisp one liner. Make succinct dialogue count. The new world has its own set of rules. Familiar themes or pre sold concepts such as aliens, outer space etc work well with a unique twist, something we’ve not seen before, more than “same old.” Sci Fi can easily be tailored to a four quadrant age range, depending on the adult content, so consider your target audience.

Debbie Croysdale Thanks so much for your insight, Debbie — I really appreciate the depth of your perspective.

What you said about shifting between inner conflict and larger external forces really speaks to what I’m trying to achieve. I love the idea that the emotional core doesn’t disappear in a high-concept world; it just resonates differently depending on whose eyes we’re looking through.

For me, the key is to let the world’s rules intensify the characters’ private struggles rather than drown them out. When the environment amplifies a character’s fears, desires, or blind spots, even a small emotional moment can feel huge — almost like it carries the weight of the entire system on its shoulders.

That balance between the intimate and the structural is exactly what makes sci-fi so powerful to write.

Thanks again for sharing your approach — it’s genuinely inspiring.

I Posted for a co righter . with about 3 years to live I was told go to school then come on Knowing Il be dead by then this dream is the only thing that keeps me going . maybe it is time to give up and say good night all !

It's not time, Jay A Swendris. I don't know what your doctors have said or why but it's not always about making it. It's about living in the dream in the now by pouring out your stories. No matter how much time you think you have, pour your stories out. They don't have to be perfect. They just have to be poured out onto paper.

Hi, Mikka Hope. I’m a Stage 32 Lounge Moderator. I wanted to let you know I moved your post from the Composing Lounge to the Authoring & Playwriting Lounge since it's about writing a series of books. Let me know if you have any questions.

I read some of what you wrote. You have talent. I can't work on your conversion into a screenplay right now due to personal issues.

Sorry, I'm lost just reading your post, can't imagine any further.

I suspect everyone's gonna want to improve on my work, the loudest being the ones who ignore my offerings. I'd almost rather get a "This sucks" to let me know they're paying attention.

Now the positive feedback is the vast majority of spoken feedback and I have a whole document of these comments which I've already sent to the ignorers (who still keep on ignoring) so therefore nothing that comes my way is unsuspected, although the request for a pilot and synopsis was the first of its kind but still not unsuspected nor unexpected because I've put in the work and have learned long ago that democracy and freedom comes with the price of ignorance, the wish and willingness to not seek out truth or dialogue with others. It's their right to be scroogelike hermits. The Constitution allows it.

Meriem that's both hilarious and chilling at the same time. Whether it's true or not depends on the imagination of the producer. Are they a Ron Howard (Avatar, Avatar Brave New World--I forgot the name of the sequel) or do they have a binary, linear imagination (the same thing that scares so many cisgenders when gender dissolution enters their world). But at the same time, if you're going to imagine a parallel or skewed universe that's very unlike our own, your imagination needs to still be able to create something coherent enough for viewers to get and the production team to make real. I don't think they'll ever make a movie from Finnegan's Wake for that reason but it's a great book if you can get through Joyce's impossible to follow prose.

Thank you very much Marc Ginsburg

The De-Evolution Game was originally inspired by Mr. Nobody, and since my story also deals with parallel universes, I tried using a similar structure. I noticed how the psychologist in the film guides the narrative—each new question creates a new branch of Nemo’s reality. But that structure didn’t work for my story.

I need to invent another way to present the parallel universes while keeping the whole narrative coherent.

Here are some insights from the story. I’d like to know your point of view.

https://www.stage32.com/lounge/promotion/The-De-Evolution-Game-Paradoxes...

Sounds like you had an illustrator think deeply about your message, especially since you approved of the suggestion. My unexpected feedback came from an editor who suggested a different head for my sci fi books. He was right.

If I ever get unexpected feedback, I'll let you know.

Thanks for breaking down the different roles and how to work together, Lauren Hackney!

Thanks Maurice Vaughan :)

You're welcome, Lauren Hackney. This info will come in handy if I write books.

An excellent breakdown Lauren - in practice 2 and 3 often elide.

Especially important: proofreading is the FINAL stage.

Too often writers send a document to be proofread, then make changes and don't keep a record of what they've altered, meaning the whole piece has to be proofread over gain.