Hey beautiful posters of this lovely forum! I'd like to write an introductory preview of myself before addressing my problem. I've always loved writing, I think I started at when I was 10 years old and did a lot of stories. Although they were pretty bad and amateurish, I really liked the feeling I got when I finished another chunk of a story. I wrote around 8 or so fantasy related stories, some short some around 50 pages. But when I started high school, I started drawing and got sucked into it. I stopped writing wholly for 4 years. Now I'm finishing high school and I want to get back into it. I started producing some ideas at september and continued to do since. Most have been fantasy themed, and they weren't really interesting. Generic fantasy with magic, swords and chosen ones. But about 3 months ago, I watched Akira and then the Ghost in the Shell and those got me hooked up on cyberpunk. And not long after, I found an idea. I started developing it and it started growing and growing on it's own. Rather than the storyline, I started creating the lore and I'm pretty damn confident about it. Now my biggest problem is that, I have never written a cyberpunk themed story, hell, not even a sci-fi related one except for a really short story. And I don't want to destroy a good idea with my inability to tell the story. I have so much stuff planned that I even started thinking about making it a lifelong story that I will be developing for the years to come. My second biggest problem is that I'm not an native English speaker, and as far as I know, cyberpunk stories have tons of scientific stuff that I may have a hard time explaining everything that is going on. But I absolutely want to write it in English for two reasons. First, I started developing the story in English and every idea I have come up with is in English. A lot of them will become meaningless if I decide to translate them to my language. And the second reason is that, the audience in my country that is into sci-fi and fantasy is non-existent. Well maybe not as bad as that but you get my point. I wouldn't want to write something ( especially not something as long as this story will be) that isn't going to be read. I'd really like to learn what people think about all this. As I have already said, I'm planning this to be a long project so your advices and suggestions doesn't have to be quick-to-do instant things. I'm especially looking forward to those long term suggestions that will help me plan things better. Thanks in advance.
My biggest question is: Why? It's not your genre, you have no market, it's not in your language, and you don't have the background knowledge expected for the genre. So what makes you so driven to write this story, as opposed to all the others for which you're better equipped? I didn't ask this to put you down. I ask because you should ask yourself that, because you're approaching a mountain climb barefoot and in a tee shirt. If you really are committed to the project, you have reading to do. A lot of it, in English. Learn all you can about the steampunk genre, and all the science behind it you can lay hands upon. Write short stories in the genre and submit them to magazines that include steampunk, to sharpen your skills. Plan to spend quite a while before diving into the big project.
First of all, I'm 17 years old and I'm a student so marketing and such doesn't interest me right now. But all the other problems, as you said, height a lot than my own, maybe more than I can climb. My biggest drive is that, I want to write this story, not others that I may or may not be more qualified at. I have an idea, I like it and I want to explore it. I'm not sure if this is a motivation big enough for making me commit to this story for the years to come, but what matters is the present, right? Also, I'm planning to study translation at college so either way, I'm going to be reading a lot. Thanks a lot for your reply, I'll be awaiting any and all suggestions with excitement. Oh and the genre is cyberpunk, not steampunk.
i have to ditto all cog said... if you have only seen a few ordinary cars from afar and have only been inside a couple of them while they were standing still, would you really want to jump into a formula 1 race car and try to drive it in the monaco grand prix?... do your homework... learn the ropes... practice till you can at least come close to perfect... then, if you still have to write that story, go ahead and do it...
