GenresFiction
Science Fiction
What if the future, or the science, changed everything.
Science fiction changes one part of reality and then takes the consequences seriously. It might be a technology, a discovery, a different history of science, or a future that followed from choices we are already making. Readers will forgive a great deal of invention if the world behaves as if it has rules, and they will lose patience if the science appears only when the plot needs a door to open.
The idea is not the whole book. Someone still has to want something, lose something, or be forced to decide. A future that is only a tour of clever objects gets old quickly, even when the objects are good. Write the ordinary life of the world, the food and the work and the jokes, because that is what makes the extraordinary part feel inhabited. You don't have to predict the future accurately. You do have to mean it.
The kinds of book inside it
Space opera
The canvas is large, ships and empires and long journeys, and it works when the personal story is large enough to be seen at that distance.
Hard SF
The science is load-bearing, so you should know it well enough to play fair, and still remember to write people.
Cyberpunk
Technology and money have pooled in the same hands, the streets are usually wet, and the book is interested in who gets left out of the upgrade.
Dystopian
A society has gone wrong in a way the reader can recognise, and the story needs a person who feels the system rather than a pamphlet about it.
Time travel
Cause and effect are the puzzle, and the rules of the trip should be fixed early enough that the ending can use them.
First contact
Meeting another intelligence is the event, and the interest is in misunderstanding, translation, and what both sides think they want.
Military SF
Rank, tactics, and loyalty give you structure, and the war should have a reason, even if the soldiers only half understand it.
Climate fiction
The changed climate is not background colour. It shapes where people can live and what they are willing to do about it.
Solarpunk
The future is not only a warning. The book looks at how people might build something better, without pretending the building is easy.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.