Writing Aliens is Hard
It turns out—and this is going to blow your mind—that writing aliens is rather difficult. I’m working on a science fiction novel and its proving quite difficult to come up with multiple civilizations with complete societies that look, act, and sound radically different to humans. I know, who would have guessed?
For a long time, I couldn’t come up with anything. I’m not typically one to be intimidated by a blank page, but when it came to designing the five alien races I’m planning, I felt like I was staring into the abyss. Where do you even start with aliens? I was worried about two things. Well, three things. No, four things. Five. Yeah, five things.
Aliens being too similar to humans. You can’t change a human blue or give them antenna and call them aliens. That is, to use a technical term, lame.
Aliens being too different from humans. A sentient ocean is cool and all, but how the hell do you write that? How does a sentient ocean, or a sentient gas cloud, or an alien that changes its shape every second interact with humans? Or other alien races, for that matter? Would they be compelling characters if they can’t talk or interact with ways we can interpret? Maybe, but I’m not a good enough writer to solve that problem.
Power-scaling. I’ll keep this vague for now, but let’s say the aliens need to be strong enough to fight against humans, but not so strong that they’d easily win. How do I achieve that balance while still giving them unique abilities, without making it feel like I’m limiting their abilities for the sake of the plot?
Language. How do I handle that? They can’t just speak English–although an automatic translator is a pretty obvious go-to. That’s only a superficial fix though, they each need to have their own languages and ways of communicating. How do I come up with these language models, and how do I translate that to the page?
Different races and ethnicities. Humanity is not a homogeneous blob of flesh, there are different races and ethnicities. There are different sexual orientations (and non-orientations), different genders, different everything. How do I represent these divides among alien cultures? Having these alien planets be utopias that have abolished the idea of race, or never had it in the first place, is an answer, but it’s not one I like. That feels like taking the easy way out, and not a very interesting solution, anyway.
I still haven’t cracked this nutty boy. In fact, I shelved the book for almost two months, so stuck in this miasma did I become. I finally got back to it a few days ago, and I think I’m approaching something some may call “close.”
There are a couple of things that helped me. The first was realizing I was approaching the question from the wrong way around. I was thinking about creating the aliens first, and then plopping them down on planets I created next. That’s not how humanity formed, so why create aliens like that? Humans didn’t arrive on Earth fully formed, the Earth came first and we came later with our “nice planet you have there” attitude. We evolved (and continue to do so) based on the conditions of where we live. I had to create the planets first and then design the aliens based on what as going on there.
The second thing I found was this entry on CJ Cherryh’s Wikipedia entry. She’s a multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, one I’ve got a love/hate relationship with. But on her Wiki page, there’s a whole section detailing how she creates alien species. I have no idea why, but whatever, I’ll take it. Basically, as quoted from the page, it comes down to six key points:
The physical environment in which the species lives.
The location and nature of the race's dwellings, including the spatial relationships between those dwellings.
The species' diet, method(s) of obtaining and consuming food, and cultural practices regarding the preparation of meals and eating (if any).
Processes which the aliens use to share knowledge.
Customs and ideas regarding death, dying, the treatment of the race's dead, and the afterlife (if any).
Metaphysical issues related to self-definition and the aliens' concept of the fictional universe they inhabit.
This section is poorly cited (as in, it’s not) but regardless of where it actually came from, this is still solid advice.
Answering these questions requires a lot of planning and an active imagination. You should see the dozens of pages I already have detailing the human culture I’ve come up with over the last six months. Well, the six months I worked on it until I temporarily gave up. So with all that in place, I came up with a fiery planet full of rock people that can survive hot temperatures!… Yeah, this is still going to be difficult.
