Archive for the ‘The Craft of Writing’ Category

Reimagining Conflict

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 […]

Treading on Embers

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 […]

I Feel Funny: Humor Writing Tips for Novelists

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 […]

10 Hands-On Tips For Writing Flash Fiction

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, […]

Story Salvage: Finding the Opportunity in Failure

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 […]

Two Essential Questions to Ask As You Self-Edit

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 […]

Sidequesting: An Antidote to “I Should Be Writing”

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 […]

Developing Games and Developing as a Parent

by Karlyn Meyer Note: This article first appeared in The Bulletin #216 in October 2021. I started making my first video game the week I found out I was pregnant. Games featured heavily in my relationship with my partner; we had played video games together in college, and even got engaged while doing so, and […]

Why Writing Second Person POV Appeals To Marginalized Writers

by Valerie Valdes Note: This article previously appeared in The Bulletin #216 in October 2021. You open the SFWA Bulletin to start reading an article about second person point of view (POV), and immediately you’re put off. You didn’t expect the article itself to use this POV, since most articles don’t. What a cheap gimmick, […]