A space opera is a subgenre of sci-fi that focuses on large-scale space exploration with epic conflicts, heroic characters, and grand settings. There are many stories today that fit into the space opera term and it includes quite a lot of elements, deep narratives and more. Space operas also love to focus on things often included in drama like romance and adventure. Space opera doesn’t just concern itself with the technology, but it also focuses heavily on the humanity of the characters involved. So, for today’s post, I’ll be covering what a space opera is and how you can write your own space opera story.
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What is a Space Opera?
A space opera is a story that is often set in a vast and expansive universe with galaxies, planets, and more. The scope of these settings is very vast and expansive and there are civilizations, empires, species, and more that all interact with each other.
Space operas often involve high stakes and there’s often things like war and conflicts that affect the fate of entire worlds.
Furthermore, space operas involve characters that are heroic and grand in scale. There are characters like ship captains, generals in an army, warriors, space pirates, and more. A lot of these characters tend to be extraordinary and have abilities that exceed the other characters in the story. For instance, look at the video game Mass Effect, which has you play as Commander Shepard who is a strong and charismatic leader and has abilities that other characters cannot.
Space operas involve a lot of complex political relationships and there is a lot of politics involved in space operas. You have empires that can span galaxies, interstellar governments, trade organizations, secret groups that play roles in the political landscape, colonization, and more. The balance of power dramatically differs often in space operas and some groups are much more powerful than others.
Space operas also feature lots of elements of standard drama stories like romance and themes of loyalty, heroism, and sacrifice. There’s a lot of focus on the personal struggles of the characters and not just the world and universe around them.
Space operas obviously will involve a lot of space travel, space battles, and highly advanced technology. You can blend magic and technology to create interesting advanced forms of space travel and weaponry.
In an overall sense, space operas will have A LOT of heavy and intricate world building and it may be more complicated than some other subgenres you are used to out there. Where you can maybe work in one country for some fantasy stories, in space operas, you are expected pretty much to have galaxies and planets that are each built up in a unique way.
How to Write a Space Opera Book
Start with a Concept
The first thing you should be doing when you go to write a space opera book is to think about the concept. Your concept needs to be grand and it needs to have a lot of stakes involved in it. This could be something like a war between planets and/or galaxies, a quest for some ancient alien artifact, or something similar. The concept should start out broad because you will need to fit lots of plot lines and character adventures and arcs into it.
World Building is Next
The next thing you want to do is focus on world building and this is likely going to be the hardest part of writing a story like this. You have to create a universe that is vast and feels like there is life in it beyond one singular planet like Earth or something like that. You want diverse planets with lots of species and cultures on it, you want different political structures and you want to establish the relationships between the different planets.
Each planet that exists in your universe and each galaxy that exists with its own set of planets needs to have a lot of thought put into it. You want to consider the differences between each and how these differences impact the importance of that particular place.
Technology and how it impacts daily life, travel, warfare, interactions with others, etc… all matters and is important to think about. Especially with this being a sub genre of sci-fi, you need to think hard about technology and the advancements that have allowed the universe to become the way that it is in your story.
If you want to learn more about how to get started with world building, then check out this post. If you want to find solutions to keep track of your world building, then check out this post as well.
Complex and Interesting Characters
The next element you need for your space opera is to have complex characters that matter and make a difference in the overall scheme of the story. You want characters that are compelling, have clear motivations, strengths, weaknesses, and flaws. The main characters need to have some sort of arc where by the end of the story they have changed either for better or for worse. You also want to think about the archetype you want, but you can easily play around with these.
Furthermore, you want to work on character relationships such as alliances, romances, rivalries, etc… These sorts of relationships can greatly impact the course of a story in a space opera.
You have a wide range of characters that you can choose to write about in a space opera and it ultimately depends on what your goals are for the story.
Plot, Plot, PLOT!
After designing your characters, you want to work on outlining your plot. The plot of your story can be split into the three-act structure, and if you want to learn more about that, you should check out this post.
You want to start by thinking about the main conflict in your story and what the issue that the characters will be working with is. You want to think about who the key characters are within this conflict and who are characters that exist on the side, possibly just to further certain plot points.
In addition to this, the plot of a space opera needs to be very epic and grandiose. There will have to be some sort of high stakes scenario involved in the overall plot and the subplots will also need to be interesting, engaging, complex, and they must add to the overall plot.
Action and Suspense
Throughout a space opera, you’re going to need action and things need to be happening otherwise it’ll feel like a boring story. Most space operas have a lot of action and combat scenes in them and these scenes serve to push the plot forward and add some excitement to the story.
I’ve talked about combat and fighting in two different posts before. In a post I wrote about writing military sci-fi, I mentioned some information about combat scenes so you should check out that post for that section to use as a reference. I’ve also written about how to write epic battle scenes, which I wrote at the time for fantasy, but a lot of the same elements can apply to sci-fi as well.
Beyond simply just action, you need to include some level of suspense. Mixing suspense in with action allows for you to have a story that has proper pacing and doesn’t feel rushed or too slow. If you want to learn more about how to make your story feel more suspenseful, then check out this post!
Themes
You want to work on the themes and the message that your story is trying to deliver. What sort of themes are important to the story and what actually matters in the grand scheme of things?
The themes in space opera stories tend to be tied to the larger, overarching conflict. There may be some sort of war that causes characters to question their morals and their standings in a complex political world. For instance, Star Wars did a great job of this where characters were constantly forced to question their morality and their ideals as the war went on, with characters wondering if they were doing the right thing or not and what the costs were to do the right thing.
You also want to try and balance the emotion and humanity of the story with the darkest aspects of the plot. You want to show how the personal struggles of the main characters of the story intersect with the larger conflicts and events happening in the course of the plot.
It’s OK to Imagine Things
Space opera is a subgenre of sci-fi that isn’t very strict on scientific accuracy because it’s very vast and a lot of things are of your own design and can be very much based solely on imagination. However, you want to try and establish your own rules for why certain things work the way that they do. How does a starship get powered? How does speedy travel work? Is there magic interwoven with the technology?
Science is great to use as a tool to enhance the story, but readers of space operas are aware that the science is not the main part of the story and that the plot itself and the characters and how everything interacts as a whole is the more interesting part they want to invest time into.
Conclusion
Space operas can be some of the best stories out there because they include so many unique and interesting elements to them that allow readers to travel with the characters to vast galaxies. The biggest challenge in space opera stories has to be the aspect of world building and the complexity that comes with it. Second to that would have to be the sort of character relationships that you need to establish and work on, as space operas are typically highly character-driven works.
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