Archive for the ‘The Craft of Writing’ Category

The Ecology of World-Building

By J. Dianne Dotson World-building takes many forms in genre fiction. Whether a story takes place on another planet, in a mystical land, or in a hellscape of horror, adding touches of realism enhances the world for its inhabitants. Using ecology is one way to achieve that realism.  What Is Ecology? Ecology is the science […]

ROMANCING SFF: “So, How’s Your Love Life?” and Other Questions to Ask Your Characters

By Katherine Garcia Ley We’ve all seen them: the thirty pages of interview questions you should ask your characters. The analytical texts on astrological signs. The “ultimate of ultimate” tools offering twenty-some Enneagrams for character development. All these resources are fantastic. Heck, I use them, and they’re amazing. I’m a list-loving personality theory hoarder. These […]

Writing Eyebrows: How to Orchestrate Emotion in Your Story

by Hunter Liguore Creating new characters takes a careful eye. When an idea comes, we might rely on familiar images to fashion characters that aren’t truly our own, but rather influenced through media images or by people we’ve encountered or known well. What is often missed in the early drafting of characters is the up-close […]

Tired Disability Tropes In SFF: Do Better

By Anessa Kemna  Science fiction and fantasy should be the perfect places for disability representation. Writers make the rules in their worlds. But it’s difficult to find disabled characters and even harder to find quality representation in the SFF genres. It’s difficult in mainstream fiction too, but a genre built on imagination should have higher […]

Numinous Fantasy

by Gabriel Murray We tend to remember our first brushes with the imaginary vast: when we read our first children’s portal fantasy, were enchanted by the animated world of our first Studio Ghibli film, or got lost in our first strange, endless game map. As writers, we often want to bring our own readers there […]