Screenwriting : How to Write Sci-Fi Scripts by Leon Fairley

Hi, Leon Fairley. Great to meet you. I also watched the Netflix webinar. Is Sci-Fi your main genre to write?

Hi Maurice. My noob status got this posted in the wrong lounge. Yes, SciFi and Fantasy are my true joy. I would like to give something back.

I've posted in the wrong lounge before, Leon Fairley. I write a lot of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. What are you working on?

Hey, Leon Fairley - were you able to comment on the Official Lounge Post from today's Netflix + Stage 32 webinar as well?

https://www.stage32.com/lounge/screenwriting/Stage-32- -Netflix-Webinar-How-to-Write-Hit-Sci-Fi-for-Television

That way you can participate in all the conversations going on there!

Hey Leon, this is Karen from the Stage 32 team. I just wanted to let you know I moved your post from Acting to Screenwriting, as it fits much better there. Let me know if you have any questions, and all the best to you!

I was. I would suggest that comments be at the top of the discussion instead of the bottom. I had to find the comment section squished right before another discussion started hence I missed it originally.

Maurice Vaughan - I haven't made a serious attempt at any solid storytelling. The World Building always seemed overwhelming. I am thinking I am going to try a couple short stories on a Fan Fiction site to write in worlds I am already familiar with and enjoy. Just to get writing.

Short stories are a good start, Leon Fairley.

You know, there's this urban legend of Robert Ludlum being a former CIA operative or at least a hire...he of course denies all this claiming his virtue in writing of agency world only on his imagination...but if u dive into his books, he has so much details, slang and other memorabilia about the agency life, it's hardly likely he just got all that on watching Mission Impossible...so, my point is, gotta know your subject...

As for the format sake, just read such scripts, but mind to categorize your story wise..."Interstellar", "Alien" and "The Man from Earth" are all sci-fi....but atmosphere is worlds apart...

I don’t see SciFi as a genre and more as a setting. It has some elements that make it look like a genre. But if you look at it as setting you can tell any story.

The hardest thing is to make any future tech feel like it has evolved from nature needs. The internet for instance came about from the need for communication. Electric cars from fuel crisis.

I hold firm on the belief that nothing changes without a pressure being put on it. So what pressure have shaped your particular SciFi landscape and how would that impact the world and the people in it.

Don’t do a lot of SciFi. More alternative reality which seems to lean into it.

Its always tempting to explain everything in the world right away, but finding how your characters see these elements as "normal" will help you to not get too bogged down in the weeds. Audiences can pick up a lot about a world without having to have characters explain everything. Take the beginning of 1984, "The clock struck thirteen" is written as if this is normal, but tells the audience that this is a different version of the world they're used to.

CraigDGriffiths I am with you on this one. So it’s a Sci-fi, but is it a love story, a story about vengeance, a road movie? There has to be an actual story. I’ve been writing a few love stories recently. They just happen to be in a cyberpunk setting.

Watched the Sci-fi workshop and was inspired but I'm wondering if disaster flicks like, Twister, Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 are considered Sci-fi? If yes, then I have an idea. If not, what genre does it fall under?

I agree with Craig that SciFi can be seen as a setting. My original story was set on 1980's earth had no SciFi aspects at all. Advised that my writing "showed promise" but there was no interest in the story as it was, a journalist friend suggested I set the story somewhere else. So I set it in my first love - SciFi - and that changed everything! My advice is to write your stories... You might find your characters tell you what the setting should be.

@sasha Tomas I would call them Action stories assuming the looming/happening disaster is a significant element of the story.

Leon Fairley Yup, looming disaster is at the heart of it. Action makes sense.