LOS ANGELES — Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America will hold this year’s annual business meeting at the 2009 World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, Calif.
The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don’t. If it’s useful, use it. If not, don’t.
By Patricia C. Wrede General How do ordinary people feel about foreigners? Non-humans? How ready are they to accept different
By Patricia C. Wrede General Which peoples/countries/races fought, allied, traded, or were traditional rivals? Where are there still hard feelings
By Patricia C. Wrede Copyright © 1996 General Do average people believe old tales, or do they dismiss some that
Rules of Magic
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What things can magic not do? What are the limits to magical power? How do magicians try to get around these limits?
By Patricia C. Wrede
I. The World
1.
Basics
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Are the laws of nature and physics actually different in this world, or are they the same as in real life? How does magic fit in? How do magical beasts fit in?
General
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In which geographical areas will the story take place? How much ground will the story cover? What are the most striking features of landscape, climate, animals, etc. in thisarea? How will these features affect travel time, communication, etc.?
This website is intended to be a pivotal part of the Science fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s mission to inform, promote, support, defend and advocate for writers.
Update: sfwa.org is in a transition state at the moment while we wait for some things to finish propagating through the internet. At the moment, if you go to sfwa.org you might get a parked page with advertising. This should change by the end of the day although for some people it may take up to 72 hours.
Our webmaster had a minor traffic accident today. No one was injured, but it’s made us get a slow start on the transfer. At the moment we are waiting for the domain name to finish transferring to our new registrar. Once that happens, we will change the DNS servers to point to the new site. It is unlikely that you will see any change between now and Sunday afternoon or evening.
Thank you for your patience.
