Archive for the ‘Writing Technique’ 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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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, […]

SFF Writing for White Goblins: Decolonising your Defaults

by Nick Wood (NW) & Isiah Lavender III (IL) After finishing a working stint as a psychologist in Aotearoa, New Zealand, I (NW) visited the signing site for the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). This was a bilateral treaty between the colonising British Empire and the tangata whenua (or “People of the Land”, a.k.a. “Maori”), signed […]

Unusual Governments to Take Inspiration From

by Eleanor Konik   Often, speculative fiction relies on common government types, like monarchies and republics, because they’re familiar to readers. History, however, offers other examples of sociopolitical systems. They can be a gold mine for worldbuilding ideas that stretch beyond the mainstream. Informal Governments Many societies worked just fine without strict hierarchical leadership. Power […]

Cyberpunk: Writing for Tomorrow

by Naomi Norbez With the release of Cyberpunk 2077 a few months back, there has been some debate about what it means to be cyberpunk, and how that genre should be executed. As someone making a response game called Eyewear Cleaner 2077, I thought I’d throw in my two cents. In a world of free data […]

Using Unreliable Narration to Create Voice

by Priya Chand   All narrators are unreliable. If you’re reading this thinking “hey, you’re misusing the term; ‘unreliable narrator’ refers to a specific convention”–well, I’m narrating this post, so what follows is all my interpretation! I do, though, genuinely mean to say that all narrators sell readers on a specific version of events and […]