I’ll be frank, dear readers, my novel had a bit of a problem in the outlining department. As ready as I told myself it was, I wasn’t sold entirely on the structure of my story. I loved part one of my blueprint, which followed Michelle and Quinn as they went from foes to friends. It was focused, sweet, and vulnerable. I liked part two as well, albeit slightly less so than its predecessor. It centred on Michelle atoning for her past mistakes, which was all good stuff, but my ideas required her to venture around the various future boroughs of New London. Suddenly, my small-scale young adult sci-fi drama started to become something far heftier in its scope. Part three was the part I liked the least, blowing the entire narrative up into a vast sci-fi epic where our heroes flee to the outer realms of a 2090s Britain. The shape of the novel went from an intimate fable to a sprawling epic in the space of a few hundred pages. At least that would be the case if I stuck to the original framework.

Everything felt uneven and messy, as if two different books had been smushed into one. Each part of the outline wasn’t playing by the same rulebook. While this approach can certainly work for some novels, it wasn’t working for the type of story I wanted to tell. This was meant to be Michelle’s story: a teenage girl struggling with her identity in a dystopian world. I loved the idea of zooming in on her particular experience, with the worldbuilding serving more as a backdrop that influenced her tormentors and peers. These themes were jumping off the page in the part one outline, yet by Part Three, they were barely visible; drowned out by peculiar towns and deadly rouge droids. Something needed to change.

As I drove to work this morning, my mind mulled over this hiccup, wondering what the solution may be. I started to think back to the science fiction stories I loved growing up, the ones set in unfamiliar worlds, yet held my attention all the same. What was it about their environments that kept me engaged? How did my mind stay locked onto those alien lands without getting confused or bored by their geography or politics? First, I thought about Star Wars. The 1977 original limited itself to only a handful of locations, I recalled. Despite being set in a galaxy crammed full of worlds, backstory and political infrastructures, George Lucas was highly selective in the spaces he chose it all to play out within. There was the Lars moisture farm that served as Luke’s home, the nearby town of Anchorhead, a handful of segments of the Death Star, and the Massassi Temple on Yavin 4. Beyond that, very little of the wider galaxy was shown. Instead, Lucas used these locations to establish the wider world that his epic saga would build upon in future instalments. The urge to venture to the many more cities occupying his imagination were held onto for future sequels. 

Musings on Lucas’s debut sci-fi saga  got me thinking about another beloved fable from my younger years, this time from the world of video games. At the age of nine, I became obsessed with the 1997 SquareSoft bestseller, Final Fantasy VII. Among the many aspects of the game that captured my developing imagination was its use of the metropolis, Midgar. The opening eight hours took place exclusively within two sectors of the game’s fictitious capital. We spent that time becoming familiar with the characters, towns, and communal structures that made up the city. Then, after a devastating event, our heroes are forced to flee to the wider world of Gaia. At this point, the scope of the game explodes from a confined space to a globe-trotting epic spanning an entire planet.

When Square Enix remade the title for the PlayStation 4 in 2020, they decided to expand the story into a trilogy of games. This was partly due to the original game’s size, not to mention their desire to flesh out aspects of the story they couldn’t initially execute partially in thanks to the limitations of 90s technology. Enix decided that the first part of this rebooted trilogy would focus entirely on the Midgar segment. Those initial eight hours were ballooned into a 40-hour game, guiding players on a linear narrative through Midgar’s various sectors and introducing new faces alongside familiar ones. The game concludes with our heroes making their way to the city’s borders, ready to explore the wider world. 

What struck me about this creative decision was its sheer effectiveness. By restricting the story to Midgar, the game could meticulously flesh out its core conflicts without overwhelming the player. We learned everything we needed to know: the evil of the Shinra corporatocracy, their destruction of the planet by draining its Mako lifeblood, and our heroes’ place in it all. This confinement acted as a pressure cooker, forcing the characters together and allowing their relationships to develop within a sprawling concrete jungle. The game didn’t need globe-trotting to build its foundation. Instead, Midgar served as the perfect microcosm, communicating the state of the entire planet while simultaneously teasing the vast, unknown world that lay just beyond its walls.

It was at that moment I realised the solution to my story. Why not shape Book One of Synthetic Empires like that of the Final Fantasy VII Remake? Instead of throwing all my towns, cities, and future British landscapes into a single book, why not limit the environments to Michelle’s home and her college? Did she really need to venture all over the place? Did this book really need to be so large in scale?

Furthermore, a sixth form is the perfect environment to introduce readers to this world. What I loved about Part One was the simplicity and relatability of Michelle’s life. She’s a young kid figuring out who she is, who just so happens to have been born into a world ruled by bigots. Having her take on the literal government was never necessary to tell her story. She’s just a citizen caught in a vile machine. How do I bring that system to her without turning her into a larger-than-life hero? The answer is through her school. What better way to communicate the callousness and prejudice of a hostile social structure? The bullies, teachers, and outcasts of her world are representatives of the larger society around her.

It’s also a good way to make this story more relatable. It may be set at the tail end of the 21st century, but I still want it to be rooted in our reality. A sixth form with its hierarchies and tormentors is a perpetual setting, stretching through every era. It’s a bridge between our world and the fictional world of tomorrow. Additionally, it’s a world I know from past experience. As a kid who was on the receiving end of bigoted bullying, I’m familiar with the mentalities of peers consumed by antipathy and hatred. What better way to explore those experiences than through a science fiction story about a girl and her robot best buddy?

Confining the story to Michelle’s home and school once felt limiting. After all, why shift from screenplays to prose if you can’t make use of the unlimited budget the written word provides? There’s no need for CGI or location budgets; I can write entire worlds into being. Yet despite that initial assumption, restricting the story’s spaces feels oddly liberating. Now I can hone in on the social circles and hierarchies of Michelle’s everyday environment. I can communicate the authoritarian empire’s evils through a small, relatable world. I can explore themes of belonging, identity, and love through the geeks, popular kids, bullies, and teachers that occupy the grounds of the Lionheart Academy. I can still have this be about Michelle and Quinn breaking free from their oppressive lives. Only now I can do it without resorting to high-speed bike chases or trips to crumbling London boroughs.

Shifting from entire towns to just a school doesn’t change what my story is about. By reducing my focus, its potential has expanded. Suddenly, for the first time in a while, everything feels possible.