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 […]
by R. K. Thorne Worldbuilding is a fun aspect of writing fantasy and science fiction. It is so tempting to get lost in drawing maps, hoarding pictures, plotting lineages, or researching how that awesome weapon system could actually work. Our efforts often focus on geography, history, and politics. But part of worldbuilding should be envisioning […]
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 […]
by Marie Brennan Recently, I’ve seen a number of online discussions about stories without conflict, especially stories from outside the Western narrative tradition. I’m not the right person to discuss those specific approaches, but listening to the conversations has made me realize how narrow a definition of conflict my teachers presented to me. If your […]
By Lorraine Wilson Statistics are easy to quote, but difficult to connect to, don’t you think? It’s easy to say that 20% of people in the UK are disabled, but within publishing we account for only 5%. To say migraines are, according to the World Health Organization, the sixth highest cause of “Years Lost to […]
By Kathy Flann We think of humor as something that just … happens. Yet, as someone who writes both humor and fiction, I’ve learned that each is a distinct craft with challenges that can multiply when combined—not unlike when Ray, Peter, Winston, and Egon cross the streams in Ghostbusters, risking total protonic reversal. Okay, maybe […]
By Maria Haskins Writing flash fiction—commonly defined as a story of no more than 1,000 or 1,500 words—can seem daunting at first try. Or addictive if you’ve already caught the flash-writing bug. These tips are based on my love for flash as a reader and writer, and I want to emphasize that they are tips, […]
By Jeff Somers It’s often noted that in baseball, making an out 70 percent of the time is considered all-star play(1). Although every writer’s experience will be different, writing often seems to offer a similar success ratio in terms of failed stories. Sometimes that failure also comes fast, which gives you the opportunity to start […]
By Kahina Necaise Convincing fiction is about cause and effect. That’s why, in my work as an editor, the two questions I ask most often while diagnosing an issue with a client’s story are: Does this come out of nowhere? Does anything ever come of this? Does this come out of nowhere? is about unclear […]
By Rebecca Hardy I love systems. I think most worldbuilders do, at least to some extent. Systems of magic. Systems of currency. Systems of governance and geopolitical conflict in underwater cities, postapocalyptic wastelands, and galactic civilizations. And . . . systems in the real world, which can sometimes be the most challenging of all. I’ve […]
Her whole life, she’s been warned to stay away from the Glass City, gleaming on the horizon. Her destiny, written in the stars, is to find out why. This environmental fantasy novella releases September 20, 2024 from University of Tampa Press.
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