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        As I sit here writing this, reading the Mr. T vs The Matrix site for the tenth time, listening to Star Trek: First Contact theme music, and taking the occasional swig from my 64 oz. Pepsi Thirst Buster that's now empty (doh!), I can't help but think that, wow, it's pretty screwed up there are no Articles on the FSA yet. It's been online how long guys? I mean, damn, does no one care? Is there simply nothing to say? Has anyone even thought about contributing more then their fan-fics to the site? Granted (most certainly so), writing stories is an incredibly slow and time consuming process, but is the place just gonna be a big links page? The FSWC had more then this site, and it died quietly and without any apparent notice by the community.  [Editor's note: Actually, the Archive has many, many more stories than FSWC ever did.  Plus, we have this article.]  I'd rather not see that happen again, so I'll try and do my part to keep things fresh (at least until I get "Beyond Laramis" finished and out the door).

        If there's one thing that can set a story apart, make it something special, something that'll make people think, make them wonder about the possibilities, the directions FreeSpace 3 could go in, something that can up the ante for everyone forever, it's gotta start with one simple thing, gotta pass one simple test: the test of originality. The test of concept. The test of creation. You have to blaze your own trail, you can't follow someone else's. You have to sit there staring into your computer monitor for hours on end just thinking, thinking of new and unique ways to do things, new courses to set, new places to go. The FreeSpace universe can never reach its full potential if everyone plays Follow the Leader, Simon never said "Bottlenecks are for the inspired."

        FreeSpace is FreeSpace, the backbone of it is Terrans vs someone else, with fighters and capital ships duking it out with ever-escalating levels of technology. Beyond that, though, is where the author comes in, this is his place to shine, this is where he seperates himself from the rest of the pack, from the rest of the community. Right there, from the word Go, is where storytelling quantum leaps past movies and missions and campaigns, past objectives and events and directives, past it all, into territory that doesn't have to deal with the limitations of FRED and the game's engine and the buttons on your joystick. The opportunity for greatness on this level simply doesn't exist anywhere else, but if the project doesn't rise to the occasion, if it isn't inherently unprecedented (regardless of how this is accomplished), from the beginning, the work simply falls into the Clone & Conquer category, and does nothing to broaden the horizons of the FreeSpace universe, and therefore, isn't worth doing (atleast until more thought is put into it and it becomes more then this).

        So how do you do it?, you ask. How do you come up with an "unprecedented" story? How do you revolutionize something that is so large, and pays so little attention? Settings, setups, and characters, that's how. Any one of those are a good place to start, though setting is definately number one straight out of the gate. You need the story to take place somewhere unexpected, somewhere spectacular, somewhere that'll make the nebula look boring and unimpressive in comparison. Somewhere that'll make the reader wish he could fly a mission there, somewhere that'd take the player beyond just space or nebula, to something else entirely. No matter how intriguing your plotline is, or how cool your heroes are, if it's all housed in a "Been there, done that," setting/situation, no one's gonna care, and that leads to an underwhelming reception by your readers, and consequently, death to the story.

        Once you've got the "Where" down, it's time to move onto the "How." A rediculous reason for a great setting destroys the awe factor and credibility of that setting, which defeats the entire purpose and wrecks everything from the very beginning. "Capella blowing up made a Jump Node to Sol, so that's how they got there," for example, just doesn't cut it, not by a long shot. You need to explain how that Nova created a Jump Node, why it leads to Sol, and how the Shivans did it. "The subspace field created by the Sathanas fleet in the Capella system created a cataclysm within the star's core that, being subspace-based in origin, unleashed a subspace shockwave upon detonation that ripped open a hole straight into the fabric of subspace itself, a hole that can be entered but only exited out at a similar location, under similar conditions, where other subspace ruptures have occured. Taking into account the extreme instability of a temporary, explosively-based created Jump Node, the Sathanas fleet had no choice but to exit out at the nearest possible escape vector, that being the collapsed Sol/Delta Serpentis Jump Node destroyed by the destruction of the SD Lucifer 33 years before, leading to their direct access to the Sol system." Far more believeable, and casts your story in a sort of, "What if" light, allowing you to go wherever the hell you want to, the gift all writers strive for. Obviously, that explanation needs some work, and would be far more in-depth within an actual story, but you get the idea.

        As for character development, your story can't truly hit home without anyone to sympathize with, no matter how well it's written. The common problem with the FreeSpace games is that the player is just the "pilot," and while that works well enough for the setting there (you're just a knat in a crowd), that simply doesn't work in the novel/short story world. You have to take things where FreeSpace hasn't gone before, remember? Having someone to care about is the first item on everyone's wish list for FreeSpace 3, and if you give them a taste of that early, your success is guarenteed (assuming everything else pulls together as well). Give each of your main characters a background, a history, a personality, a different and unique perspective on the world. Give the reader more then one point of view on what's going on, and do it in just such a way that the "bad guy" is, from their side of the coin, just as "good" as the hero is. Make them more then just "the dudes that show up every now and then and kill and kill and kill until they're driven off."
 
        The enemy has to have a say in what's going on, and you have to convey their feelings and motives far more then anyone else's. Hammer home that they're not mindless, they have a reason for doing what they do, and that we're the bad guys from their point of view. Try and take it so far you almost get the reader cheering for the bad guy, and make them feel sorrow and regret at the defeat/death of the villan (i.e. Magneto, if you truly know where he's coming from). If you can accomplish this, then your story is connecting with the reader on levels you can't possibly hope to reach otherwise. Aspire to do more, and you'll earn the admiration and respect of all that see you. Be mediocre and outdated, and you'll get overlooked and forgotten. The choice is yours.

- Rake

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