by Richard Chwedyk
Here’s an assignment I give my students:
They receive a copy of the first chapter of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
It is roughly 2,250 words.
I tell the students that Mr. Wells has just received a note from his editor. “Great stuff, Herbie, but you go on too long here. Cut this first chapter in half.”
by Dennis Mathis
It was madness. The classes went on until the janitor came to turn out the lights, and we never seemed to get anywhere. This wasn’t a course about writing, it was about readers and how infinitely bone-headed they could be.
By Ashley Lauren Rogers
There are numerous examples of classic science fiction and fantasy stories that deal with gender and what happens when we deviate from expectations of that gender. Include popular shows like Transparent, movies like The Danish Girl, and celebrities like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and the politically polarizing Caitlin Jenner–and it’s no wonder that an increasing amount of fiction, including YA, is featuring trans and nonbinary characters. So how can writers–especially if they aren’t trans or nonbinary–create such characters?
by Sara Ryan
Whatever your situation as a writer, I’d like to encourage you to try writing in the comics format. I keep using the word “format” to emphasize that, as advocates of comics have often been compelled to repeat, “It’s a format, not a genre.” Comics are not just about superheroes, or crime, or memoir, or humor, or romance, or journalism, or realism, or surrealism, or science fiction, or fantasy. Comics can be all those things and more.
by Susan Forest
I like seeing a passage, whether my own or someone else’s, improve with a changed word choice, a question answered, or an idea clarified or extended. To create an entirety—a book—from the discrete stories that make it up, by juxtaposing ideas, styles and emotional content, was a satisfying and creative process that was new to me.
by Megan Leigh
When it comes to equal representation in fiction, women have a long way to go. There simply aren’t enough female characters in books and that’s counting those that appear only as romantic interests, victims to be saved, or someone’s mother. Is it really so much to ask for an equal number and variety of well-written, three-dimensional female characters?
by Curtis C. Chen
Okay. You wrote a novel. That was the easy part.
Now you need to write a synopsis.
by Jeffe Kennedy
Mystery readers expect to find out who done it. Suspense readers expect the big bad to be stopped. Romance readers want the romance to end with promise.
by Yoon Ha Lee
I used to say that I learned most of what I knew about writing from Jon Gindick’s “Country and Blues Harmonica for the Musically Hopeless.” While not quite true, I do find it useful to apply principles from music and musical composition to writing fiction.
by Tobias S. Buckell
Today, while waiting for my new office chair to be delivered, I asked followers at Twitter to send me some questions. In response, someone tweeted: “When to trunk and when to keep rewriting?”
Val Vega is an ordinary Puerto Rican high school student until she gets drafted by aliens to serve as ambassador of the primitive planet called Earth! Two Galactic empires are on the brink of war, and only Val can salvage interstellar peace.
Forthcoming work includes novella His Unburned Heart (about Mary Shelley and her husband’s heart) from Raw Dog Screaming Press (May, 2024) and novel Egyptian Motherlode (co-written with Jacob Weisman) from Fairwood Press (October, 2024).
Register now for the 2024 SFWA Nebula Conference--A weekend of professional development, panels, and networking for ALL genre writers!
