I was re-reading the postscript I had on Old Man’s War just before I sold it, and which I subsequently removed from the Web site. I think it’s interesting enough as a discussion of the mechanics of writing that I’ll go ahead and repost it here. Astute observers will note that I wrote it before I actually sold OMW, and so the entire discussion of writing successful SF is a little presumptuous. On the other, it is sold now, so there you have it. The first graph, talks about OMW a little bit, but the meat of article — what I call Heinlein’s Theory of Characters — is generally applicable. Anyway, here it is.

Lessons From Heinlein

A number of readers have commented that Old Man’s War is strongly reminiscent of two classic science fiction novels: Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. In both cases…