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Archive for the ‘The Craft of Writing’ Category

Writing The Other Rechristens Financial Aid Program to Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship

News from Writing the Other:

Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford, administrators of Writing the Other online classes, are pleased to announce that their scholarship program, launched in 2016, is now retitled the Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship. This name change, in honor of the award-winning and beloved science fiction and fantasy novelist who passed away in April of this year, comes about not only because Vonda was a friend and mentor to both Shawl and Bradford, but also because without her there would be no scholarship fund.

New Life and Old Deadlines

by Noah K. Sturdevant

So you went and had a kid (or another one). Congratulations! Now you’re in the special club, where you may need to write to support your little bundle of joy, but don’t have any time to do so.

Age Is Just a Number

by Jeff Reynolds

When I was eight, I wrote my first short story. It was bad, as the writing of an eight-year-old tends to be, full of tropes and endless misspellings. It long ago disappeared into the trash bin of my personal history. But my teacher gave me an A on the work, and I was hooked.

Odyssey Writing Workshops Online Courses

News from The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust: Odyssey has been a pioneer and innovator in holding live online classes since 2010. Live class meetings allow a virtual “physical college classroom” experience, in which students can participate in discussions, ask questions, and learn from an instructor who is responsive, in the moment, to students’ concerns, confusions, […]

The Art of Story as Worldbuilding

by Nathan Nance,

So you’re writing SFF, and you’ve got spaceships to design. Engine systems to map. A haunted forest to populate. A talking badger to draw. If you’re not a rocket scientist writing hard sci-fi, how are you supposed to make your version of James S.A. Corey’s Rocinante, you know, fly?

Collaboration

by Daniel Brotzel

Finishing a book sounds like hard enough work when there’s just one of you. Can working with someone else really help? Yes! says Dan Brotzel, who’s recently launched a novel he wrote with two pals. Here’s the why and the how…

Count Your Successes

by Luna Corbden

I have turned my inner narrative around with one simple new rule: “Count your successes.”

Sketching a Story

by Paul Jessup

Novels are hard, yo. I mean, books in general, maybe writing overall? But for me making that leap from short stories to novels was a difficult transition. I had to completely change my writerly habits, completely reinvent the ways I was doing things altogether.

The Jargon and Slang of the Fantastic

by Ken Pelham

World-building is more than misty mountains, crumbling castles, dripping neon cityscapes, and talking rats. It’s also about psychology and language, and the language equation includes the everyday corruptions of jargon and slang.

A Tiny Bit of Mathemagic

by Filip Wiltgren

Want to be insanely productive? Check this:

I live in a country where the fruit comes with stickers on it. Meaning that before you eat your apple, you need to remove a piece of plastic, clawing at the little sucker, then going and tossing it in the garbage. This takes about five seconds.