Thread by @adrianbowyer

I like #ScienceFiction, but the quality of a lot of #SF movies and TV is awful. A while ago I threatened to do a thread of rules for SF scripts. This is it.

All these rules degrade to mere guidelines if the drama is a comedy.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules ...

The overriding rule, never to be forgotten, is: "Coincidence is a failure of art." - Tom Stoppard

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

It is easy to blow something up. It is hard to have a character say something original, insightful and clever. But writers are dirt cheap. The ratio of explosions to wit should be 1:10 or less.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

If at any point a reasonably scientifically informed audience is going to say, "But... PHYSICS?!" do it another way. The same goes for not following Darwinian evolution.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

If the action is set in the future or the past, go through the script and remove every contemporary informal idiom of speech, where "contemporary" means at least the last fifty years. Replace EVERY cliche with a newly-coined metaphor or phrase.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

The good guys should not beat the bad guys (if they do) because the bad guys have a system with a single point of failure.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Human culture has much more continuity than saltation. Have characters in the future occasionally do something from the past as a hobby - making bread, riding a horse, painting in oils; that sort of thing.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Spend money on set dressing. They won't have oil drums in the future, nor will ship's containers make it to other worlds.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Constraints make things more, not less, interesting. In particular, if something is powerful it should be difficult to use. For example, if someone is capable of telekinesis, then, when they use it, it should cost them a few days bed rest. And so on.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

The Universe runs on conservation laws (Lagrangian symmetries). To make them more convincing new phenomena should also exhibit conservation laws.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Arthur C. Clarke's "indistinguishable from magic" law is true. But that's not an excuse to put in any old glowing-orb nonsense when the plot needs a deus ex machina. Go back and rewrite the plot so the deus ex machina isn't needed.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Faster than light travel makes everything parochial, and therefore less interesting.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Bipedal life will be very rare in the universe, as it is on Earth.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Artificial gravity is less captivating (!) and less probable than weightlessness.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

"Go with your gut," will be just as terrible advice in the future as it is here and now. Plots should reflect this immutable fact.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules

Brainstorm a number of un-commented-on technical innovations and put one in the background of each scene for the audience to notice, or not.

#ScienceFictionScriptRules