News from the nonprofit Odyssey Workshop: ODYSSEY RESIDENTIAL SIX-WEEK WORKSHOP FOR FANTASY, SCIENCE FITCTION, AND HORROR WRITERS NOW TAKING APPLICATIONS Just the facts summary: Who: Writers of Fantasy, SciFi, and Horror who want to improve their skills through in-depth instruction and feedback from Jeanne Cavelos, a bestselling author and a former senior editor at Bantam […]
by Cat Rambo
One question comes up more than any other when I teach writing: how do I know when a piece is ready for submission?
This summer’s workshop runs from JUNE 5 to JULY 14, 2017. Class meets for over four hours each day, five days a week, for both workshopping and lectures.
by Dennis Mathis
A new hyper-detailed neurological atlas identifies 862 different structures making up the human brain. What are the odds that only five of them are about detecting reality?
by Gargi Mehra
When 2015 dawned upon us one year ago, I, like all reasonable writers, penned down certain resolutions. One of them was to test the oft-repeated advice doled out on most, if not all, writing websites – write a fixed quota of words every day.
This winter, writers can level up their skills in three key areas through live, intensive online classes offered by the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust. Odyssey is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit known worldwide for offering some of the best in-person and online programs for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
by Rosalind Moran
The moody male lead is widespread throughout all genres, but it can be difficult to see why anybody would want to spend time with him. He’s brooding, exceedingly individualistic, melancholic, and disposed to hanging around outdoors during thunderstorms for no good reason beyond cultivating his mystique.
by Rosalind Moran
A regrettable trend across much fantasy writing is that of a horse not really being a horse, but simply a plot device; a vehicle to help carry a story along. Horses, however, are not vehicles.
by Richard Chwedyk
Here’s an assignment I give my students:
They receive a copy of the first chapter of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
It is roughly 2,250 words.
I tell the students that Mr. Wells has just received a note from his editor. “Great stuff, Herbie, but you go on too long here. Cut this first chapter in half.”
by Dennis Mathis
It was madness. The classes went on until the janitor came to turn out the lights, and we never seemed to get anywhere. This wasn’t a course about writing, it was about readers and how infinitely bone-headed they could be.
Completely reliant on automation and artificial intelligence to manage their lives, desperate human beings learn to survive, bond, and unlock the power of their minds when a war destroys all the world’s power grids. “An Enthralling Page-Turner!”
S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She is the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Meru and Machinehood. Her stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and she is a former editor of Escape Pod.
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