Working on my first scifi book, I keep getting caught up on details that don't directly matter. What is the population of my city? What does the rest of the world look like? There's a class war: how many citizens are in each class? I feel a need to understand everything about my world before I begin writing. These things will never be spelled out explicitly, but I still fixate on them. It's incredibly frustrating. I feel I can't create a complete enough world in which to nestle my story. I am writing in the first person and I think to truly live inside that character's head I need to know everything she knows about her world. Does anyone have advice?
The thing that helped me with Bridge To Voreth's Promise (a later version of Uploaded Fairy) is by actually drawing out the world map first. Then I build everything else around that. The time saving method won't be apparent at first, but it will save a lot of time if you already know what your world looks like.
For example, I knew if the world was covered with purple slime, then everyone wears wooden shoes made out of dead tree bark, they are as skinny as skeletons, and have fairy wings jutting out like bones. I'm not sure if pure science fiction is the same way. But it could help.
I also usually work with a pre-written dictionary of SF terms as well.
Good stories tend to be character driven, right? So, maybe focus on your characters, jot down notes on the world whenever you have them if you want, or just make it up as you go and fill in the blanks later. Personally, I am literally writing things like "I raise my [weapon] to ..." because I have yet to come up with what the I'm going to call my super-cool... you know, ray gun, or something. Other times, since I'm discovery writing, I'll end up making up things about the world on the spot that fit an argument two people are having. But, at least for me, I have ideas about the world, but when I'm writing, it's all about the characters. And that's the only way I, personally, have been able to get things down on paper.
