Writing popular fiction

this climb on himself.
    The crystal rungs, gravitron, and Chalk's own statement make the reader wonder what this future world is like. As he reads a bit more to find out, the plot snares him expertly.
    Here's a third and last example of the background-as-lead-in from another Silverberg novel,
Nightwings
:
Roum is a city built on seven hills. They say it was a capital of man in one of the earlier cycles. I did not know of that, for my guild was Watching, not Remembering; but yet as I had my first glimpse of Roum, coming upon it from the south at twilight, I could see that in former days it must have been of great significance. Even now it was a mighty city of many thousands of souls.
    Clearly, Roum is Rome, and the story is set so far in the future that the present is forgotten. Such a background interests the reader, because he wonders how it came to be and how it differs from our world. The mention of guilds, Watching and Remembering, serves to add a note of mystery, of the exotic and curious.
    Ordinarily, you should avoid the use of a "frame" in opening and closing your story. This is a narrative device in which the reader is addressed more directly than in the body of the plot with the intent of setting the story off like a gem in a gold brace. More often than not, the new writer will create a brace of lead, not gold. If you feel you
must
employ a frame, keep it short and dramatic, as in the following two examples. From
The Puppet Masters
by Robert Heinlein:
Were they truly intelligent? By themselves, that is? I don't know and I don't know how we can ever find out.
    If they were
not
truly intelligent, I hope I never live to see us tangle with anything at all like them which
is
intelligent. I know who will lose. Me. You. The so-called human race.
    From
The Masks of Time
by Robert Silverberg:
A memoir of this sort should begin with some kind of statement of personal involvement, I suppose; I was the man, I was there, I suffered. And in fact my involvement with the improbable events of the past twelve months was great. I knew the man from the future. I followed him on his nightmare orbit around our world. I was with him at the end.
    Once begun, a science fiction novel requires a continuing balance of new plot developments and new background material, especially in the first few chapters. Experience at the keyboard, working on science fiction stories, and a study of the better science fiction writers will help you master this technique. To help you learn what to look for in your own work and the work of others you are studying, let's examine the first chapter of one of my own novels step-by-step, with special attention to how the plot and the background can be developed simultaneously.
    The book is
A Darkness in My Soul
, published in June, 1972, by DAW Books, a publishing company begun by Donald A. Wollheim, formerly Vice-President of Editorial Policy at Ace Books and a well-respected, long-time editor of science fiction.
    Chapter One
For a long while, I wondered if Dragonfly was still in the heavens and whether the Spheres of Plague still floated in airlessness, blind eyes watchful. I wondered whether men still looked to the stars with trepidation and whether the skies yet bore the cancerous seed of mankind. There was no way for me to find out, for I lived in Hell during those days, where news of the living gained precious little circulation.
    I was a digger into minds, a head-tripper. I esped, I found secrets, knew lies, and reported all these things for a price. I esped. Some questions were never meant to be answered; some parts of a man's mind were never intended for scrutiny. Yet our curiosity is, at the same time, our greatest virtue and our most serious weakness. I had within my mind the power to satisfy any curiosity which tickled me. I esped; I found; I knew. And then there was a darkness in my soul, darkness unmatched by the depths of space that lay lightless between the galaxies, an ebony ache without parallel.
    The first two paragraphs are part of a frame, but packed with narrative hooks and exotic background. The main hook: what did the hero discover, through ESP, to so change his life, and what trouble did it cause him? The background teasers include strange names—Dragonfly, Spheres of Plague—and the existence of a man with ESP who evidently exists in the future.
It started with a nerve-jangling ring of the telephone, a mundane enough beginning.
    I put down the book I was reading and lifted the