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Filmmakers Jon & Matt Firman On How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

An Interview With Ian Benke

Know the Implications of Your Technology; This goes hand-in-hand with understanding the world you are creating. Beyond the rules and logic you set up for your world, it’s also really important to have a good understanding of the technology, magic, or scientific phenomena that exists because understanding how it all works can not only help you better suspend the disbelief in your story, but it can also help you better understand and express how these things impact the characters.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are hugely popular genres. What does it take for a writer today, to write compelling and successful Science Fiction and Fantasy stories? Authority Magazine started a new series called “How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories”. In this series we are talking to anyone who is a Science Fiction or Fantasy author, or an authority or expert on how to write compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy .

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jon & Matt Firman.

Jon and Matt Firman are Baltimore, MD-based indie filmmakers. After spending more than eight years immersed in the local film community, the two brothers saw a real need for writers to have an easier way of turning their ideas into stories. There’s a lot of great ideas in the indie space, but most have a hard time landing on the page. Good scripts are the lifeblood of the film industry, and in the indie world they are hard to come by. So Jon and Matt decided to explore the benefits of using AI to help writers manage their process from idea to script, which led them to develop Story Prism, a suite of AI-powered writing tools to help creators flesh out their stories

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share a story about what first drew you to writing over other forms of storytelling?

Matt: I spent six years in college because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But by the Summer of 2012, I graduated with a teaching degree after surviving a horrible internship that really shed light on the harsh realities of being an educator. I have a huge amount of respect for those who get into it but, for me, I just couldn’t handle working 70 hours a week taking care of 150 kids. My heart wasn’t in it. Pursuing a teaching career was out of the question.

I graduated completely spent and totally depressed because I had dedicated so many years and had put so much money and energy into trying to figure out a career for myself only to end up with nothing but debt. At this point I was willing to do just about anything to feel better. So when my brother, Jon, who went to film school, suggested that we team up and make a movie, I thought, “Okay. What do I have to lose, anyway?”. At any other point in my life I would have said no. But I just wanted to be happy again even if it was only for the summer, and the last time I truly felt that way was when Jon and I were kids making stupid movies with our family’s hi-8 camcorder.

The problem was that Jon knew how to make films. I didn’t, nor did I know how to write. So In order to make this partnership work at least one of us had to learn how to do it, and since Jon knew more about filmmaking I had to be the unlucky bastard. I literally spent the next several months writing on a word doc, locked in a room. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and then I wrote some more. And with every story, I’d get halfway through before realizing how poorly constructed it was. Eventually I’d convince myself that the whole thing sucked. It would blow up right in my face, and then I’d have to start all over.

That whole summer and fall season was an endless cycle of false promises I had made to myself and Jon that quickly eroded this optimism I had about the future prospects of writing. It certainly made me question whether I should even be doing this. I was ready to give up until one night, very late into the night, I was watching this sci-fi documentary show called, “Through the Wormhole,’’ and in the middle of this one episode a story idea suddenly popped in my head. I quickly wrote it down, and after writing the bare bones of it from start to finish, I just sat there in complete awe before literally shaking and crying out of pure joy. Finally, finally! I had a story that could work and get us where we wanted to be…Or so I thought.

It would ultimately go on to fail, but it was the first story that, at least, stuck and worked on page. And that was okay because it wasn’t the success or failure of the story, itself, that told me to be a writer. It was the feeling I had when I finally came up with something that I truly fell in love with. The best way to describe it is a complete sense of enthrallment that encapsulates every atom of your body to the point where you feel like you’re going to explode into candy and children’s laughter. I became an addict, and knew that if I ever wanted to feel that deepest and most exhilarating feeling I had ever felt in my life, again, I had to keep writing, and it had to be about things that I loved. So, for me, it’s the feeling I chase, not the story. The story is the means to that feeling.

And that’s really what’s aiding my persistence and ability to weather through the tough times. There is no other experience that compares to what it feels like to craft something you believe is beautiful. So for any aspiring writer out there, if you can’t feel enthralled by your own work you may want to reconsider a writing career. Doesn’t mean you have to love the process of writing. You just have to love what you’re pursuing because it really helps when you’re stuck in the weeds and have deadlines to meet.

You are a successful author. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Jon & Matt: We can’t exactly classify ourselves as successful authors, but we’ve written and shot films for over eight years, and now we’re using our shared knowledge to create Story Prism. But, you know, if there’s one thing 2020 has taught us, it’s that considering people’s advice is great so long as you don’t treat it like gospel because even professionals can be wrong. So with that disclaimer, the following character traits are what we think were most instrumental in getting us on the right path to success.

Be Open: If you want to be a successful author in science-fiction and fantasy or really just any kind of fiction, you have to be more open to things like new people that come into your life, new ideas that challenge your views, new paths for finishing your works, and even new criticism that can be so valuable, it shatters your stories.

Openness should be a huge part of your ethos because unlike other professions, fictional writing is all about expressing your philosophical views about the World allegorically through plot and characters, and if you’re a closed off person, then the philosophy you express will either be superficial and weak, or worse, it’ll be replaced by preachiness and mainstream parroting.

This is because you’ll have never taken the time to step out of your own bubble to see the world differently. So always be open, especially if what you’re open to leads to the destruction of everything you know about reality and how it works. The cognitive dissonance is painful, but if you can work past that, then your view of the world will be much more refined and unique, which will certainly give you an edge.

Don’t Fear Risk: By 2016, we felt confident and foolish enough to put 25k into this short 30-minute proof-of-concept, which was only our second film, so our experience was okay at best. This was insanely ambitious because it was shot in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, and in the worst neighborhood in Baltimore, MD. And 25k? All of that came from savings and loans. 25k isn’t a huge amount, but considering we were still living in our dad’s basement, the thought of throwing that much money into anything seemed crazy.

It didn’t take us to Hollywood, but it taught us a lot about filmmaking and even gave us the credibility we needed to get a bunch of great people in the area together and shoot our third film, which got us into the Maryland Film Festival. Of course, that gave us more traction and opened up new opportunities that ultimately led to developing Story Prism. So was that first step risky? Definitely. Did we get a huge payoff? Nope. But did it provide value for us to leverage for more? Absolutely. If we were risk-averse, we would have never worked our way into the position that we’re in right now making AI-powered writing tools.

So that’s the thing. You’ll never get better at anything, nor will you ever provide yourself with the right value and opportunities to advance yourself if you’re not willing to take a chance. That means not fearing the downside of losing and understanding that even if you fail, you can always learn from your mistakes and fail forward. But if you don’t even make those mistakes, then you’ll never learn how to improve. So don’t ever be afraid of taking a risk if you want to be a successful author because this profession is one giant risk, and if you’re like us when we first started, you have nothing to lose!

Be Creative: This is obvious, of course, but what isn’t obvious is that most people can become a lot more creative than they think. Not everyone will become the next iconic writer, but most can do a lot better and that can mean the difference between steady living and begging for work. The key is to do the following:

First, consume as much media as possible, and by media I don’t mean FOX or CNN. I mean non-fictional academic media like books, podcasts, or documentaries from a whole range of different disciplines. Embrace a life of intellectual curiosity and consume as much knowledge in as many different areas as you can. By exposing yourself to a whole range of different knowledge about the World, you can better understand it and thus, better express that in more interesting ways when you’re creating fantastical scenarios. This also helps you discover your “Writer’s voice”, which is just meaningful philosophy about reality expressed through the compilation of all the choices you make when building your stories. It’s the uniqueness in that underlying philosophy and the connection we feel to it that makes a writer stand out the most.

The second key to being creative is simple, yet paradoxically challenging. Step out of your comfort zone, regularly. Okay, you don’t have to jump out of a plane or travel to a war-zone, but maybe hang out with that coworker who’s a little quirky or go out on that date you think will end horribly. Take the trip that’s too far out or that class that feels too intimidating to try. And while you do these things, meet new people and weave in and out of different social groups, even the ones you disagree with because it will ultimately give you the experiences you need to truly express them within the interesting scenarios you create.

At the end of the day, creativity is just the deconstruction and reappendaging of our memories from both vicarious and direct experiences. So the more experiences you gain whether they’re from books or from real-life moments, the stronger and wider your creative palate will be.

Can you tell us a bit about the interesting or exciting projects you are working on or wish to create? What are your goals for these projects?

Jon: Well, there’s certainly a lot of films we want to do, particularly sci-fi, but currently we’re focused on building Story Prism, a suite of AI-powered writing tools that are designed to help creators plan their stories faster. As writers ourselves, we often spend a lot of time in the planning phase before actively hashing out our screenplays. This can be a daunting and tiring process, which is why collaborating with others is more effective.

But a lot of times writers, especially those starting out, go at it alone. And although many have a solid network to get the necessary feedback they need, they don’t exactly have someone to sit there for hours and help them sift through the weeds. That’s why we’re incorporating AI into our writing tools, so as writers structure their stories, they can also bounce ideas and riff off of the tools themselves. It’s not exactly the same as having a friend, but it works really well when you’re holed up in a room all alone staring at a blank screen.

Our goal with Story Prism is pretty simple. We just want to help as many creators as possible develop their stories faster so we can all have more content to enjoy. There are a lot of successful writers, but we suspect there are many more who have the potential to be successful. They just need the right kind of help. Oftentimes people have great ideas, but once they start writing they get lost and that leads many to give up.

Story Prism allows anyone with just a story idea to be able to transform it into its fundamental elements using interactive tools that can communicate suggestions related to your idea, which will make you less likely to get stuck while planning. You can also use it to “Test drive” your story. For example, in our Character Builder Tool you can speak directly with the characters you design and ask questions, or place them in a scene you are writing to see what they would do.

But the one thing we stress is that Story Prism is not something that will ever write for you. The AI works more like a mirror, reflecting and remixing your ideas back to you. This gives you greater insights about your ideas so you can expand on them quickly and effectively.

Wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define sci-fi or fantasy? How is it different from speculative fiction?

Matt: Science fiction, in its purest sense, is really just taking science, technology, or some kind of social/environmental change and either making it the centerpiece of the story like, “Andromeda Strain” or just having it be the world that the characters exist in like, “The Road”. Fantasy, on the other hand, is completely made up in pretty much every way, so the world that’s created, the rules and physics, the people, the culture, style, and events are all completely untethered to anything remotely connected to reality, though a lot of them do get their inspiration from mythical stories and folklore.

You might see some resemblance to our World like kings or swords, but for the most part, fantasy is detached from reality. However, what isn’t detached are the deeper meanings and themes behind these stories, which is why we’re still able to relate to fantasy so well. It’s just the worlds in these genres that are foreign to us, and that’s what makes them so exciting because they’re like watching complete alternate realities of ourselves and seeing how we behave in them.

Now, how is sci-fi and fantasy different from speculative fiction? Well…It’s not really all that different, especially fantasy, which is just a subgenre of speculative fiction. So all fantasy is speculative fiction. With science fiction, it’s possible to differentiate the two even though most science fiction falls in the speculative realm. Science fiction deals exclusively with technology, science, and changes in environments that are either possible or will be possible, at least as far as we know. Speculative science fiction deals with technology, science, and changes in environments that aren’t possible nor will they ever be possible as far as we know.

So I would consider the book, “1984” to be sci-fi because even though, yes, it’s speculating a, “What-if” scenario, that scenario is still in the realm of possibility. In fact, some would argue that we’re living in that World, today. But then you have stories like, “Hyperion”, which is speculative sci-fi because that World and what happens to the characters isn’t possible in our reality. Perhaps in the distant future, some parts of that story might come true, but at this point it’s all speculation, so we can’t say for sure if any of it is possible or likely to be realized.

It seems that despite countless changes in media and communication technologies, novels and written fiction always survive, and as the rate of change increases with technology, written sci-fi becomes more popular. Why do you think that is?

Jon: Written fiction survives because unlike other forms of communication, it allows you to be a part of the creation process since you’re forced to fill in the gaps and paint the picture in your head. With other mediums like film or theater, you don’t have much room to imagine the story. Written fiction forces the reader to use their imagination in a way that other mediums just haven’t figured out yet.

So there’s something really personable and exciting about novels that you can’t find anywhere else. For every great story that’s written, there are millions of unique versions of that story being born in people’s heads since every reader will visualize it differently. That’s the true power of fictional novels, and is probably one of the reasons why it remains so resilient.

Now, sci-fi is an interesting genre that I think is gaining a lot of traction because we live in a unique time characterized by great technological advancements that are sudden, disruptive, and very life-changing, which is exciting, but it’s also scary. A lot of us seem to be waking up to this realization that the choices in how we develop and use our technology today will have far reaching implications for the future.

What better way to explore these concerns than through science fiction. It gives us a way to examine these consequences without having to go through them. And as much as sci-fi provides us with warnings, it also provides us with inspiration since a lot of these stories influence those who go off to create the future, for better or worse.

So I think sci-fi literature is becoming more popular because right now in 2021 there is a real need for processing and understanding the implications of science and technology. We use stories from all genres to better understand reality, but sci-fi is particularly great at helping people better understand what reality could be in the future. And since technology is changing so fast and already showing negative disruptions in our lives…Well, that just makes science fiction more imperative to read.

In your opinion, what are the benefits to reading sci-fi, and how do they compare to watching sci-fi on film and television?

Matt: The obvious benefit is that it makes you better than everyone else (joking, of course). But seriously, I think the real benefit to reading sci-fi is the exposure you can get from so many different voices and unique concepts that are harder to find in film and T.V. Granted, it isn’t that film and T.V are incapable of being as diverse as literature. It’s just that with the current business model and the nature of filmmaking, it’s harder for stories to be told on screen.

With film, you need a lot of people, time, energy, and money. With literature, you just need one creative writer, a pen, and paper. Obviously, it’s very challenging to write great sci-fi, and getting yourself out there is a huge challenge in and of itself. But from a logistics point of view, it’s much easier to write a story than to make a film, especially sci-fi, which naturally has a lot of CGI and special effects.

That’s why the industry depends so much on centralized institutions, who somewhat recently, began favoring existing intellectual property (IP) over spec pieces. Spec piece is just a fancy way of saying passion scripts not based on any existing IP. So big studios will favor adaptations and reboots over original pieces. But it wasn’t always like this. I’m gonna sound old saying this, but it’s true.

Back in the day, movies and shows were more unique in their stories because studios bought spec scripts from writers and actually made them. But with the advent of digital technology and the ease of copying and distribution, major production companies found their bottom-line crumble before their eyes. So in a desperate attempt to shore up their losses, they decided to lean heavily on existing IP, which are safer bets when it comes to getting a return on their investments.

Now, when a screenwriter becomes good enough to get noticed, a producer will ask to see their body of work, but it won’t be because they want to turn any of them into movies or shows. They’ll ask because they’re trying to assess the writer’s style and quality so they’ll know where and what to put them on. Yes, sometimes a spec script gets made, but most of the time it’s a project the studio is working on, which of course, is usually an existing IP.

The novel World is very different because it’s much easier to self-publish, so assuming you have a creative knack for it and are able to master your craft, then you have a pretty good chance of doing well on your own. Talented writers in the novel world can create with less restrictions, which means there’s more content that’s more unique and powerful.

The film world obviously has many amazing stories, but sadly those amazing stories are harder to find these days, even though there’s more content being released. It’s because too many talented screenwriters and filmmakers are being treated like contractors instead of creators. They’re being told what to work on instead of being given a space to work on things that they care about and want to sell.

That’s the real difference between novels and films. One is a more closed medium than the other. But film doesn’t have to be this way, especially as technology becomes more advanced and cheaper. That’ll make it cheaper and more accessible for people, and if creators no longer have to rely as much on studios, then you’ll probably see better content that’s newer and more powerful than what we have today. The biggest lesson we can learn from the novel world is that easing creative restrictions and the technical challenges associated with marketing actually helps more than it hurts.

What authors and artists, dead or alive, inspired you to write?

Jon: Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, and Alfred Bester are 3 authors that have inspired me.

Matt: Philip K. Dick is definitely my number one. Beyond that? Hard to say, but some of my top favorites are Arthur C. Clark, Dan Simmons, Alfred Bester, and of course, Aldous Huxley.

If you could ask your favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy author a question, what would it be?

Matt: I would ask Philip K. Dick if he had the cliff notes for, “Exegesis”…It’s for a friend.

Jon: I would ask what their thoughts are on the current state of affairs. Is the future what they envisioned it to be?

We’d like to learn more about your writing. How would you describe yourself as an author? Can you please share a specific passage that you think exemplifies your style?

Matt: Jon and I pretty much have the same style, so I think it’s safe to say that when it comes to how we write science fiction, both of us are really into creating surrealistic moments or events that are grounded heavily by reality. I think a good example and execution of this is what Christopher Nolan does with his stories. They’re fantastical on the one hand, but then on the other hand the fantastical feels as though it’s happening in our reality.

Everything, from how it unfolds to the aesthetics and logic of the technology, feels so real. You could almost mistake the movies for being historical recreations. Inception’s technology is an exception, though. I’m pretty sure it was just a box that filled air into your veins.

Regarding the meaningful points about life that we like to explore in our stories? For us, it’s all about the nature of reality, itself, and the journey one goes through to discover that true reality. I guess it’s because we grew up in the 90’s, so as we were developing, we were seeing all these current events unfold that really began to challenge our sense of understanding what’s really true about the world, about how our institutions and leaders operate, and about how a lot of what we were led to believe was predicated by hidden incentives.

That’s an emotionally powerful process to go through, so that’s what we like to do with our characters. We set them in a familiar way of life only to get them to break away from the standard path, which puts them on a literal journey whereby at the end, they come to see everything differently than how they saw it before, including their place within it, which is generally the realization that they were pawns in a larger game. That’s certainly a common theme and structure, so we’re certainly not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but it works, and it’s what we love to do.

Could we share a specific passage that exemplifies our style? Well, we’re filmmakers, so I’m not so sure it’s right to just share a passage from one of our scripts when we can show you a trailer for one of our first films, “10–42”. This is about random people, including copies of existing people suddenly popping into existence. The world finds itself in a crisis as more and more strangers seem to keep flooding in, which is drastically increasing population levels.

It started off as a humanitarian effort, but soon devolved into a secretive mass extermination effort to try and mitigate the rapid influx. In this world, the government has mandated that you must report these, “Doubles” as they’re called so that they can be taken into custody for, “rehabilitation”. In the middle of this world is a former cop who works for this group of human traffickers who’ve focused their attention on stealing doubles because they can’t be traced as easily as a person with an identity. So the main character goes around impersonating a cop and snatches up doubles before the real cops arrive when they’re called in. Unfortunately, he owes this dangerous group a lot of money and must now capture 14 doubles by 12 A.M or face the wrath of this ruthless gang.

Check out the trailer, but be kind! We were young and dumb when we made this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rJ37robGXc&t=17s

Based on your own experience and success, what are the “Five Things You Need To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories?” If you can, please share a story or example for each.

Meaning and Purpose

I think meaning and purpose is the number one thing writers should incorporate into their writing. In every story, things happen. Characters speak to each other and even to themselves. If you don’t have meaning behind those actions and spoken words then you end up with a flat story that doesn’t have a reason to exist. And by meaning, I don’t mean the superficial things like they were angry because their friend messed up their car. I mean the deeper reason behind those emotions and actions. Why was the person infuriated and smashing his own wrecked car instead of just being angry? Maybe because that was the one thing they managed to keep in the divorce settlement that completely destroyed them. And maybe that relationship is the one thing they can’t let go because deep down inside they believe that in order to be happy they have to control their lives and the outcomes of events.

That’s what writers really mean when they tell you to add reasons behind the actions and words. But the reasons shouldn’t be random. They should be meaningfully connected to the premise of your story or the larger point. So with the famous story, “Macbeth”, the premise is, “Blind ambition leads to ruin.”, and all the actions taken and words spoken by the characters relate back to that larger point.

Science fiction is the same like everything else. Behind the space battles and aliens is almost always a larger point, and we do this as writers whether we’re romantic novelists or sci-fi filmmakers because the whole point of creating stories is to give people meaningful philosophy that can be argued and chewed on, which helps people process and make better sense of reality as we know it. So always, always, always add meaning in your stories.

Understand Your World

With romance, comedies, actions, and thrillers, most of the time you don’t have to worry about understanding the world you created because it’s generally based in the present. But when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy, it’s almost always set in the future, in some other alternate timeline, or in just a completely fabricated world. And, even when they’re set in our world, something scientific, technological, or magical exists, which fundamentally changes that world. So as a writer, it’s imperative that you understand the environment you are creating, whether it’s a modern world that has been impacted by a change of some kind or if the entire world is fantastically made up.

And the more different your world is from the real world the more focus and attention you need to give it so as to maintain that suspension of disbelief. If you were writing, “Lord of the Rings” you’d probably have to work out some of the history of that world along with the magic, the creatures, groups, and cultures within it. But if you were writing, “A Scanner Darkly” then you’d just need to focus on the drug, Substance D, and the way the government fights against the drug epidemic. Everything else about that World is pretty much the same as ours, and doesn’t require all this structural building.

But even in the most fantasy-based worlds like, “Lord of the Rings” don’t assume that you have to know every meticulous detail about that world. You just need to focus on what matters most. Knowing every single part of Middle-Earth’s History is not important, nor is it really possible to do and still tell the story. But perhaps the story of how the Ring came to be is important, or maybe a little history on Bilbo Baggins is called for to give context. Paint the parts of the world that are important and leave the rest to your readers.

Know the Implications of Your Technology

This goes hand-in-hand with understanding the world you are creating. Beyond the rules and logic you set up for your world, it’s also really important to have a good understanding of the technology, magic, or scientific phenomena that exists because understanding how it all works can not only help you better suspend the disbelief in your story, but it can also help you better understand and express how these things impact the characters.

Now, this isn’t to say you have to have an entire book written about the theories and principles on the technology or magic. But you do need to know enough so that when it’s written, your readers can understand and believe it’s logic. For instance, there’s one particular story I’ve been hashing out on and off where a neurologist invents a Nano-web that can be surgically implanted on top of the brain. This physically alters neural connections so people can have better control over their emotions and perceptions of the world.

But what’s interesting are the implications because as it turns out, this neurologist discovers that if you alter the neural connections in just the right way, you can perceptually step out of this universal construct and into another one that simultaneously exists in the same plane of space and time. Your body remains, but your mind ends up elsewhere, and to those around you, it just looks like you’re in some vegetative state. Essentially, this allows you to transcend from one perceptual state into another where in each state you are a completely different person or not even a person at all.

Now, I didn’t just invent all of this. The Nano-web tech came from a YouTube video I watched, and the different perceptions of the same universe existing in the same plane of existence came from Steven Wolfram’s interview with Lex Friedman who talked about these theoretical concepts that may actually turn out to be true. Do I know the math and physics behind all of that like Steven Wolfram? Hell, no. But can I understand the brass tax of the physics and logic and then infuse that with theoretical technology to make it feel real? Absolutely.

And that’s what it’s all about. It’s about getting your readers to actually feel like this is real even though it isn’t. By having a deeper understanding of the tech, magic, or phenomena, you can take your stories to the next level because you can create more depth to the logic and how it affects people.

Be Offbeat and Different

It’s probably good to do this with any genre, but this is especially true for sci-fi and fantasy because it’s a genre that almost requires you to be that way. The interesting world, technology, and magic can only go so far in peaking the reader’s interest. To really engage your readers, you want everything about your story to be interesting, not just your world. And, the best ones are interesting because they’re offbeat and weird. That’s why I love Philip K. Dick’s, “A Scanner Darkly” because it’s not just the interesting world, but also the character’s, the dialogue, and of course, the twist at the end. The style in which it was told made me feel like I was on an acid trip, which was great because the whole story followed these Substance D addicts, so the texture fit perfectly.

I also loved the off-beat nature of Alfred Bester’s, “Stars My Destination”. It was set in a kind of Star Trek World (minus interstellar travel), but what made it really stand out for me was the realism, which made it so off-beat and different. On the one hand there was this glamorous interplanetary travel and super tech that allowed people to do amazing things, but on the other hand there was a real dark element to the whole World. You don’t really get a lot of that from Star Trek or Star Wars. Those worlds and scenarios are much more wondrous than terrifying and dangerous, even when they’re supposed to be terrifying and dangerous at times.

In, “Stars My Destination”, though, you get a great mix of the good and the ugly, which gives it that off-beat tone you just don’t get in a lot of science fiction or fantasy. And I think the key to that is in exploiting juxtapositions. Show the wonder and the horror. Show the good and the ugly. Show the normal clean stuff and the off-beat that almost makes the moment ethereal and not of this Earth. But ground that with real science or logic so it can feel more real.

Wow Em With An Anagnorisis

Alright, so this isn’t essential, but man, does it work really well in sci-fi and fantasy. Remember the Roadrunner Cartoon where the Coyote runs off the cliff, but instead of immediately falling they stand in the air blinking for a moment before suddenly realizing their situation and falling? That’s basically the visual representation of what an anagnorisis is. It’s a story structure device used to get your readers to believe reality is one way so that later down the road, when you reveal that it’s a completely different reality, your reader gets this big, “Ah-ha” moment that feels very satisfying.

The best example of this is, “The Matrix”. The entire first act shows the, “Real world”, which feels familiar to us, but there are certain things happening that begin to make us feel like something is off about it, though it isn’t quite clear what that is. But by the end of that first act, it all comes together when we learn that the world isn’t even the real world. It’s just a simulation. That realization dawns on us, and suddenly, we feel like a kid discovering that we’re living on a rock suspended in the middle of space.

It’s an extremely powerful feeling that not only keeps us engaged before the moment occurs since we have to know what this is all about, but when the moment does occur, it really elicits that sense of awe and wonder, which is what drives us to discover and create new things. You can kind of mess up on the world and logic in the tech or magic, but if you wow em with a strong anagnorisis then a lot of that can be forgiven. So think of it as that secret sauce, which can make that otherwise normal dish into a culinary masterpiece.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Entertainment, Business, VC funding, and Sports read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 🙂

Naval Ravikant because he’s probably the number one entrepreneur that we most identify with. It’s amazing what he’s doing with Angellist and really, our big picture goal with Story Prism is to turn it into a market-network similar to his company, so it’d be great to sit down and talk about to him about his process from starting with nothing to getting to where he is today.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

If you wanna learn more about what we’re doing over at Story Prism, check out beta.Storyprism.io and sign up at the bottom if you’re interested in trying out our beta. Also, if you’re interested in learning about the writing process and our thoughts about the future of the film industry, subscribe to our free substack blog or follow us on social media — just search Story Prism.

Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: Ian Benke is a multi-talented artist with a passion for written storytelling and static visual art — anything that can be printed on a page. Inspired by Mega Man, John Steinbeck, and commercials, I.B.’s science fiction writing and art explore the growing bond between technology and culture, imagining where it will lead and the people it will shape. He is the author of Future Fables and Strange Stories, the upcoming It’s Dangerous to Go Alone trilogy, and contributes to Pulp Kings. The CEO and Co-Founder of Stray Books, and an origami enthusiast, Ian is an advocate of independent, collaborative, and Canadian art. https://ibwordsandart.ca


Filmmakers Jon & Matt Firman On How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.