Ingredients for delicious stories.
It’s something I’ve heard from many writers and I’ve complained about myself. How do you write dialogue that sounds realistic? Maureen, leveraging some of her screenwriting experience, offers some unexpected advice in the latest Story Kitchen newsletter: How to Write Dialogue that Sounds Realistic.
Check it out and if you’d like these kinds of tips delivered to your inbox twice a month, join the newsletter below!
[This is Part 2! Read Part 1 here.]
Gentlefolk and scoundrels, the question before us today is, “How do I get started writing science fiction and fantasy?”
Part 2 of this guide picks up where Part 1 left off. In Part 1, I covered some steps that are more generally about writing fiction. This time, we’ll focus on writing SFF specifically. AND it turns out there’s so much more to say that I’m going to split this up and tackle Part 3 next week. Whew!
As I mentioned last time, SFF is a vast space with infinite variation, and all kinds of stories and styles. I won’t get into the many subgenres here, because that could be a blog post on its own, but whatever kind of speculative writing you want to do, in my opinion, belongs in SFF. In my view, SFF is incredibly inclusive.
Therefore no advice about writing SFF can possibly cover every kind of SFF writing that you might want to try. And any “rules” that exist for SFF subgenres don’t apply to many other subgenres. That said, there’s one thing that all Speculative Fiction (SFF) shares that sets it apart from a lot of other literature, and that is the speculative element! So a lot of this guide will be about how to think about your approach to the speculative element in your fiction. (And that approach can be different in every story, too!)
For easier navigation!
If you’re just starting to write an SFF story, it might be a good idea to think about what you consider speculative about it. Or in other words, how does the story’s reality differ from the reality you live in?
In some cases this might be a pretty simple answer. You could be writing about life on a spaceship one hundred years from now. Or maybe the world of your story is example like your lived world but there are werewolves. Or your story world is haunted by ghosts. Or maybe you’re writing a story set in an alternate history where Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo and conquered England.
Other times this might be trickier. Maybe in your reality spirits are real and they communicate with humans. Is that speculative, or is it your lived experience? For example, the way I grew up, we prayed to the spirits of our ancestors every morning and every evening and left food for them. What isn’t “real” about that?
That said, I have to admit none of the ancestors every talked back. So maybe my speculative element would be that my grandmother talks back to me one time when I’m praying in front of her photograph.
Horror is a little bit different than Fantasy and Sci-fi because horror doesn’t necessarily need a speculative element. The horror, the dread, or the terror can be generated by elements that exist in the writer’s physical reality. Horror, in my opinion, focuses on the reactions to the elements, whether they are speculative or “real,” that provoke these emotions. But we still count horror as part of SFF.
It can be useful, I’ve found, to keep a list of speculative elements you’d like to explore. I sometimes frame them as “what if” questions. What if the ghost of my grandmother spoke to me? What would she want from me? How would I react? What problem would I face if this happened? Who else might I talk to about it? And so on.
I’ve heard some writers say that if you can drop the speculative element without changing the story, then you don’t really have a strong enough speculative element, but I personally don’t believe this to be strictly true. I think you can use speculative elements as mood and setting. You could write a story on a spaceship that could work equally well on an ocean liner with very little adaptation, and I think that’s fine, actually! However, you want to develop a little awareness of reader expectations (which I’ll get into in the next section.)
How integral the speculative element is to the story is a mark of genre, usually. Speculative fiction that drifts towards literary fiction can have a very light engagement with the speculative elements, while so-called “hard sci-fi” (a term I personally dislike) tends to be much more focused on the speculative elements, and such elements are often central to the plot. Some fantasy stories are very wrapped up in a fantastical element, like magic, while others only glancingly deal with it.
But we’ll get into that. For now, just consider, what’s different about your story world compared to your lived world? What are ways that could play into the story? What are the characters’ reactions to the speculative elements?
The speculative element in a story is sometimes more like a thought experiment that allows the story to explore an extensive what if scenario. For example, what if humans lived on Mars (as in Kim Stanley Robinson’s series, Mars Trilogy)? These kinds of stories might have levels of extrapolation that consider various developments of the speculative element, from the obvious and intended to the unintended, the accidental, the side effect. They might explore how people are harmed by the speculative element or how they seek to leverage it for personal gain.
Other times, the speculative element works in the story as a metaphor, for example the vampire as seductive foreigner and outsider (as in Bran Stoker’s Dracula), making literal the danger of the “exotic” Other when Count Dracula comes to London and brings his vampire plague with him.
While I think it’s better, for me at least, to write the first draft without thinking too much about what the speculative element in your story does for the text, it’s often helpful after you’ve written a chunk of it to ask yourself, what is the function of the fantastical in my story? Is it a thought experiment I can explore, or is it a metaphor that helps the reader feel something I want them to feel?
Speaking of metaphor, something that SFF writers have to be careful about (and this has to do with reader expectations) is, establishing whether you’re writing about something literally or metaphorically, especially at the beginning of the story when your reader is still getting situated in your story. If I write something like “The trees reached their leafless branches up towards the bare winter sky” as my first sentence, I’ve created a little instability for the SFF reader with the word “reached.” Is it a metaphor? Or is this a world where trees can literally stretch and reach their branches, like Ents? Be careful of this, to avoid confusing the reader on a point where you didn’t intend confusion. (Deliberate confusion is a whole other thing!)
And this is where genre comes into play. In a literary novel, that word “reached” would most likely be read first as a metaphor, not literal. But in the world of SFF, your readers are looking for and expecting a speculative element.
So, how do you think about genre? The most useful way I’ve found is this framing: genre is a conversation. When you encounter a story, what other stories is it in conversation with? What tropes does it play with? What other stories does it seem to reference, either to be inspired by or to subvert or to argue with? This conversation framing also provides the flexibility for seeing genre as fluid, not necessarily constrained to a single mode.
Readers as people who are invited into the conversation, and they will have some expectations about what the conversation will be about. Some readers will be new to conversation and have Mystery readers expect that the mystery will be solved by the end of the story. Horror readers want to feel dread, or terror, or horror, or all three. Romance readers expect the lovers to find love by the end of the story. And so on.
So what do SFF readers expect? This is where a little bit of genre understanding can help, especially for longer works, like novels and novellas. Short stories, in my experience, can be very flexible because there are so many markets for different kinds of stories, and also because the length of short stories means that readers can dip into something they don’t typically read, or something that’s more experimental or challenging, in a way they wouldn’t be as eager to do for the length of an entire novel. A novel is an investment!
The best way to start understanding reader expectations is to read a lot of SFF stories and ask yourself questions about what you read. After reading the first page of a novel, ask yourself, what are my expectations about this story and this world now? How did the writer establish those?
Typically, you want to introduce the speculative element right away in genre SFF fiction. This is for two reasons, in my experience: one is the aforementioned reader expectations. Your SFF fan came to your novel or short story for werewolves, and it’s nice to include at least a hint of that promise early on.
The second reason is because of worldbuilding. You usually want to signal to the reader what kind of world your story is taking place in early on, both because the reader will feel excited to encounter the speculative elements, but also for efficiency. The more you can establish some norms about your world early on, the less time you need to spend dismantling reader assumptions, if that makes sense.
Let me explain. Say you’re writing a story about a coven of witches who are trying to summon a spirit of a long dead sorceress. You’ve set this story at a women’s college in the Northeast of the United States, in the year 1878.
Let’s say your first scene is a wonderful conversation between two friends as they walk between buildings during classes. Unless you deliberately include details that signal the time period of your story–details like dress, or maybe habits of speech that feel more old-fashioned–your contemporary readers are going to first assume a contemporary setting. With that assumption, if you mention that one of the characters gets a message over the wireless, most readers will be confused and it will take more time to undo their assumptions and rebuild what you want them to think of as the setting.
Then, let’s say there’s no mention of magic until chapter five, when the two friends meet the rest of their coven to do some magic. Now the reader has to readjust their expectations again to include the idea that there’s magic. Some readers will be further confused about this, since the magic could contradict some of what they’ve already assumed about the world.
In my opinion, a strong beginning to both a novel and a short story will contain enough seeds of your speculative elements and other important world information so that the reader can continue to build on their assumptions instead having to question, dismantle, and then rebuild anew.
What if you’re writing horror, where the source of the horror is something that you want to reveal later? In that case, I’ve seen a lot of stories that establish the mood and tone of the story in the first paragraph, even the first line. You don’t have to reveal the horror, but you want to, again, let the reader know through little details and your language that they’re in for a delicious horror story. Even if you’re writing a scene that’s warm and comforting, as a way to contrast the horror that’s going to happen, find ways to include a small unsettling detail that will plant a seed in the reader’s heart, getting them ready for the horror to come.
I can’t remember which writer I heard this from, but someone once said that the very first line of the story should aim for the end. I think that’s a great way to think about handling speculative elements, too.
But that doesn’t mean you need to open with a bunch of explanation, or a history lesson, or anything like that (unless you want to and you can do it artfully!) Rather, try to think about a detail or two in the first line or paragraph that can convey just enough of the world that will let your reader build the world as you give them the bricks. It can be as simple as a word. And don’t be afraid to using “telling”! “Telling” can be crafted into a compelling opening.
Some examples of great openings:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
In a wooden house on a modest farmstead by a dense wood near a roving river to the west of town, miles from the wide road and far away from the peculiar madness that is men at war, lived the Missus, the Missus’s grown daughters Adelaide and Catherine, the Missus’s sister Bitsy, the Missus’s poorly mother Anna, and the Missus’s fifteen-year-old slave girl Sully, who had a heart made of teeth—for as soon as she heard word that Albert, the Missus’s husband, had been slain in battle, she took up arms against the family who’d raised her, slipping a tincture of valerian root and skullcap into their cups of warmed milk before slitting their throats in the night.
Rivers Solomon, “Blood is Another Word for Hunger”
This example is interesting because it uses a metaphor – “heart made of teeth” — but immediately explains it so the reader isn’t confused whether it’s meant to be taken literally. The writer demonstrates their confidence there.
“Cognitive load” is my term for what you’re expecting your reader to hold in their heads as they read your work. It’s something that all texts ask of readers, but there’s a difference of degree. Compare the following two opening sentences:
“The boy who will become court magician this time is not a cruel child.”
Sarah Pinsker
The Court Magician, by Sarah Pinsker.
It’s a simple sentence, but it carries weight. We know the setting has a court, indicating a monarchy; we know that court has a magician, which suggests there is magic in the world. Notice also the play of time. We’re in the present tense (“the boy…is not cruel”) but there’s also a flash forward to the future, when the boy will become the court magician. The phrase “this time” also implies this is an event that has happened before. In other words, it implies there have been a string of court magicians, and further implies they are discovered or perhaps trained since they were children.
And then there’s the assertion–he’s not a cruel child–that inevitably makes us wonder, “But….? Why are you insisting he’s not cruel? There’s something there, something to pay attention to.”
So already we have some worldbuilding and we suspect the story is going to engage with this question of, is the boy cruel, or not?
Like I said, a lot packed into fourteen words! But none of it feels overwhelming. Either the information is subtly presented so we almost don’t notice it, or it’s information that we can slot into a genre fairly easily, like the idea of a court magician in fantasy stories.
Here’s another opening sentence that I made up for the same story:
“The boy Alphonse, the future court magician for the Regent of Olaria, learned his trade from Great Gretta.”
Jane, making it up.
We have the boy and the court and the magician as before, but we also have a bunch of names – Alphonse, the Regent, Olaria, and Great Gretta. That’s a lot of proper nouns for a reader to keep in their head, and they don’t know yet which are important for the story. That’s what I mean by cognitive load–how many new elements, including proper names, are you asking the reader to pay attention to? Lots of speculative fiction also uses neologisms–made-up words to describe things that we don’t have in our physical reality–and those also take up load in the reader’s head. Also, a lot of the information occupies the same space–they are names of people and places. In the earlier (and much better!) example, we had information that subtly suggested things about the way court magicians were selected. And no names at all.
Critically missing in the bad second example is what I consider the hook of the first sentence–the assertion that the boy is not cruel. For this and other reasons, the cognitive load for the reader is a lot while at the same time the sentence just feels… flat. Passive. Like it’s landed on the page with a thud and isn’t going anywhere. To me, the first example feels like a sentence that’s about to take flight.
This blog post is already too long so I’ll stop there. Next week, I’ll wrap this up. (I hope!)
Note: Part 2 of the Absolute Beginner’s Guide: How to Get Started Writing SFF is going up tomorrow!
This week on the podcast, Maureen and I talk about a motivational technique she uses in her classes, where you write a contract for yourself. The contract should include goals, a timeline, and also some sorts of rewards. It might be a good idea to create a contract after you finish a project or take a class, or if you’re facing a stretch of time that you want to carve out for writing.
It’s also important, though, to pace yourself and not set goals that will burn you out. Be kind to yourself!
Check out the podcast here: Contracts with Yourself and Rewards
My contract is here: Jane Writing Contract August 2021
“How do I get started writing science fiction and fantasy?”
I’ve seen this question crop up often enough in the online spaces I’m part of that I thought I’d put together some thoughts about it. As with any advice about anything creative, please don’t take anything I say to mean, “This is the only way.” I only mean, “this is the way I’ve done it, and how I’ve seen other people do it.” Use this guide as exactly that–a guide, a template with which to build your own roadmap. Your way will be different! But maybe my way can help you discover your way.
I organized this roughly into an order so that each step develops and builds on skills and practices in a logical way–at least, in a way that feels logical to me! Many of these steps can be done concurrently, of course. And feel free to skip any that don’t make sense for you. Or go in any order you want! This guide isn’t the boss of you!
Table of Contents:
Good question! I use this term to mean “Science Fiction and Fantasy” in the broadest sense while also including Horror. Another umbrella term that I like is “speculative fiction.” For me, this includes horror, magical realism, fabulism, alternate histories, historical fantasy, steampunk and cyberpunk and all the -punks, fairy tales, slipstream, weird fiction, secondary world, and more. I’m not a fan of drawing too many boundaries between genres because I think the most interesting writing is often at the edges, and genres are fluid anyway. For now, don’t spend too much time thinking about genre or subgenre. It’s more useful (and more exciting!) to explore widely, in my opinion.
So you want to write SFF! That’s great! In my experience, SFF is a vast, infinitely variable, rich space to explore that’s evolving all the time. In short stories, we’ve seen a crop of exciting new markets open up (markets, in this case, means places you can sell your stories). There’s a resurgence of novellas (which is fiction between about 17,000- 40,000 words.) Novels have crossed genres and categories. English-language SFF outside of the UK and North America continues to expand and become more internationally available, translation efforts are expanding, and the readership for English-language SFF is increasingly global. It’s a really exciting time for readers and writers of SFF!
If you’re a writer who already knows how to write in another genre or in literary fiction, and you’re looking for advice about writing specifically SFF, hang tight. I’ve got you covered, and we’re going to address your concerns in Part 2. So come back next week for that!
For those who are brand new to writing prose fiction (including prose fiction for SFF), read on!
Anyone new to writing prose (and this includes folks who might already be adept storytellers in other media, like screenwriting or poetry or visual arts) can benefit from reading a lot. I suggest starting with short stories because, well, they’re short! You can sample a lot of different voices and methods in a relatively short time! And for this purpose they’ll work just as well as a novel. But by all means, if you’re really into novels and short stories just don’t do it for you, then read novels.
Remember, no one is born knowing how to write prose. It’s a skill. Everyone had to start somewhere. Yes, even N.K. Jemison, Ted Chiang, and Lois McMaster Bujold. Even Octavia Butler (!!!). (I know, I have to remind myself of this too.)
But Jane, I hear you say, what about talent? Yes, it’s true, some writers are naturally talented. But in my experience, talent only gets you so far. Talent without the work to back it up … that’s not enough to get really good at writing SFF and to keep progressing as a writer.
So, read. The first thing you want to do is, train yourself to understand the basic mechanics, the nuts and bolts of prose. I mean on the level of, “what words does the writer use?m What’s the punctuation? How long are the sentences and the paragraphs?” Be thoughtful, and ask yourself a lot of questions as you read.
For example:
The technical side of writing has little to do with whether or not you can tell a good story; think of it like understanding how to use the tools. Reading helps you understand the scope of the tools, what they are, and how they can be used. It’s like understanding the techniques of cooking: how to use a knife, how to sear, how to braise, how to stir fry. With those techniques you can make an okay meal or a sublime one, depending on how you apply the techniques and the ingredients and all that.
As with anything, just remember that there are as many ways to write prose as there are writers in the world, so stay flexible and open-minded to what you encounter.
As for where to read short stories, there are a lot available online. Some of my favorite SFF markets are:
This can be done concurrently with reading… assuming you have the time, of course. If you don’t, then I suggest putting aside some separate times for reading and for writing.
To start with, you don’t even have to write full stories. You could try writing a journal every day, or freewriting for a few minutes regularly. Try writing down your dreams every morning (this is a great source of weird ideas for stories!) Try writing down memories. Practice expressing complicated feelings on the page, practice converting imagery and sensation. Carry a notebook with you and take notes about what you experience wherever you go.
For slightly more formal activities, try working through some writing exercises. Ursula Le Guin’s book, Steering the Craft, is basically a workbook for developing prose. Go through those exercises. The 3AM Epiphany is another one.
If you have the resources, and if you feel like it would help you, consider taking a basic creative writing class on prose. Local community colleges usually have an affordable option to check out, and there are online workshop options as well. But don’t take a screenwriting class. Screenwriting is a different form of storytelling and it won’t help you on the prose level, which is what I’m suggesting you practice now.
There are online collections of writing prompts. Set a timer and respond to the prompt. If you hate timers, you can also go by word count–try for about 500 to 750 words.
Don’t judge any of these exercises. No one needs to see them but you. These are the push ups and sit ups of writing. That said, I’ve had stories come out of exercises that I’ve then gone on to develop and sell to a market, so although that’s not the point of doing these, it’s a nice bonus. 🙂
Here’s a link to get you started: https://ghost.org/blog/10-minute-writing-workouts/
If you’re the kind of person motivated by goals and deadlines, then participating in something like Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) could be really helpful. I’ve used Nanowrimo in the past to draft lots of words quickly. The goal is 50,000 words in a month. Some years I hit it, many years I don’t, but it’s a fun, community-supported way to ramp up your regular writing habits. The only caveat is, don’t compare yourself to other people because everyone writes at their own pace, and don’t feel bad if you don’t make it to 50K. To me, that’s not the point–it’s about showing up to write regularly and giving it a shot. There’s also a Camp Nano that happens in April and July.
You can try journaling. That’s another form of writing, and it still gets you to show up to the page. For a couple of years I wrote every morning, just writing about what I was thinking and feeling, writing down my dreams, and whatever I felt like. I found it really freed up my ability to get words down, and it helped me practice how to express emotions on the page. I’m a big believer that any kind of writing is good for you. You’re using those writing muscles in different ways.
If you’re part of a fandom, try writing fanfiction. Yes, it’s a legitimate way to learn to write! Most fandoms have supportive fanfiction communities where you can practice skills and get gentle feedback and cheers. (All of us can use cheers! Especially when we’re starting out.)
Keep going. Keep writing. Try to find a way to make writing a regular practice–not necessarily daily, but find a way to make it into a habit. Yes, you might be bad at it in the beginning. You might hate your clumsy, awkward words. Don’t worry about it. If it bothers you, don’t reread what you wrote for a while, just keep going forward. And I bet you’ll find that you’re not as bad as you thought (imposter syndrome is real!) And anyway, it’s okay to be a beginner.
The next step is to finish something. I suggest this “something” should be a short story as opposed to a novel… because you can write a short story in a couple of days, whereas even a sloppy novel is going to take a lot longer than that!
You’ve probably already written something that’s story-shaped! Maybe not a complete story, but a lot of us start by writing a beginning, or a scene, or a few ideas we’d like to explore. Pick one and write it. Don’t judge yourself; no one has to see this but you. Write to the end. This is really important because it’s too easy to start new things when you get frustrated (ask me how I know! haha), and learning to finish a story is one of the most powerful things you can learn to do.
(Hint: It’s totally okay to be inspired by a story you read to try to write one that’s like it, or that borrows some of its features. This is how we learn!)
If you’re stuck, try asking yourself these questions and treating them like writing prompts:
Don’t worry about whether the story’s “good” or “bad.” These are still exercises. You’re practicing, like a musician doing scales, like a painter doing life drawings. You’re training yourself. As you write and finish these experiments, take some time afterwards to reflect on what excited you. What felt rewarding? What elements of the story invited you? What felt difficult or uncomfortable? You’re getting a sense of your strengths and weaknesses.
Writing is hard. As Cat Rambo says, to get good at it, you have to either be incredibly talented, or be prepared to work your ass off. Most of us are in the latter category.
This step, like all the steps here, is optional. However, I highly recommend it. There are lots of groups for people who are learning to write SFF, at all levels. I’ll list some of them below. If you write fanfiction, you’ll probably find some people in those spaces who can form your community.
You can use these groups to workshop stories (more on that later), get critiques, or just have company. Co-working or co-writing sessions, communal writing sprints, a place to seek advice, and even just places to commiserate and share the pain (writing is HARD WORK after all!) can be wonderfully nurturing. They can help you feel less alone and remind you that, yes, writing is hard and yes, other people are learning to do it, and so can you. Discord has a bot that can set up writing sprints for you, if you find a community on Discord you want to hang out with!
In my experience there are two reasons you want to join a critique group or a workshop: to meet other people who are serious about writing, with whom you can build community that may or may not include critique, and to level up your reading and writing skills.
A critique group is typically free, and self-organized by maybe a couple of members. The might meet in person or over videoconference, perhaps once a month or so. A critique group can also be entirely online and never meet. Instead, they send stories and critiques to each other. Each group will have different methods and standards. Try a few different ones out to find one that works for you. Or, start your own!
Workshops are typically organized by an institution or an individual, and they usually have a cost. Workshops tend to be more focused and directed by a facilitator or instructor. Some workshops require an audition (an application process where you submit samples, a cover letter, etc.) They can be online or in person and last anywhere from a day to several weeks. Clarion and Clarion West, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, and Taos Toolbox are the most well-known workshops with a focus on SFF writing, but there are several others that aren’t as expensive or as intensive.
On workshopping and critique: I believe a good critique group can be really helpful. A good workshop-style class can be really helpful. But not always. Don’t feel like you have to be in one to get better as a writer, because you don’t. If it doesn’t work for you, there’s nothing wrong with you! They don’t work for everybody.
The thing to remember about workshop and critique is, it’s all just opinions. Some opinions are more informed than others, true. Some actually draw on a deep well of experience with stories. But still, at the end of the day, critique is subjective. Everyone reads stories through their own lenses and sometimes those lenses are helpful to you, and sometimes not. Feel free to ignore any advice or critique that doesn’t resonate with you. YOU are the expert in your own story.
What workshops and critique groups are really good for, though, is refining your reading skills. I learned way more about writing by giving critiques than by getting them. I learned how to read stories, how to think about technique and craft, how to ask myself questions about the text and writer’s intent, how to articulate the magic that short stories employ, and in the end, those are skills that stay with you and make you a stronger, more intentional writer. Writing critiques for other people’s stories is a precious gift you can give yourself. So do so generously and thoughtfully.
I also suggest that you find other SFF writers to exchange critiques with, or at least, other writers who are familiar with and love speculative fiction. SFF has certain expectations that not all readers of other genres or literary fiction are aware of.
Reedsy also has a list (although I’m not familiar with many of these, they might be worth checking out!).
There are a lot of places to get writing advice. I think it’s worth exploring a lot of these, but take everything with a grain of salt. Or maybe a huge, heaping spoonful of salt. Just remember that in writing, you can do whatever you want. You can tell, not show. You can write a prologue. You don’t have to save the cat. You don’t have to follow the hero’s journey, or a four act structure, or the Freytag pyramid, or any of that.
If something about the advice resonates with you, or sparks ideas, great! Use it! But if it doesn’t, don’t worry about it! There are as many ways to approach writing as there are writers.
That said, when I began writing, I found some of those craft books very useful because they gave me guard rails as I explored my writing skills. I enjoyed having some structure that I could work with. Sometimes, having complete freedom to do anything can be a bit….terrifying, honestly! And paralyzing! Sometimes a little prescriptive advice is not a bad thing–I think of them like training wheels. 🙂
I personally have phases where I like to listen to feedback. Near the beginning, when I have the glimmering of an idea, I like to brainstorm with a few trusted people. I might even have them read my opening and then go from there. I recognize this is pretty unusual! But I like it. Then I need a lot of time alone with the story to work on it, draft it, think about it, tinker with it. The next phase where I like getting feedback is when I have a full draft, pretty polished and ready to go, with an ending.
There are some people who just aren’t the right readers for your story. You’ll learn to recognize them and thank them for their feedback but ignore it. Others will be exactly the kind of readers you want to reach. You’ll learn who these are, and you’ll listen really closely to them–not necessarily to their advice about how to fix a story, but to how they read the story. This is where you can suss out whether the story is having the effect that you want, or which parts are working and which aren’t.
So, read stories and ask yourself questions about what you read. Start small and start simple. Practice finishing stories. Don’t worry about quality for now. Find a sustainable writing routine. Write as much as you can. Maybe find some other people to write with.
And tune in to part two next week in which we’ll explore advice that’s specifically for SFF writing!
Resources
What do we mean by strong characters? In this case, we mean characters who are compelling. Who seem to have rich inner lives. Who are nuanced, complex, complicated. Characters who seem to leap off the page and come live in your head and refuse to leave even after you finish reading the book or watching the show. The kinds of characters you write fanfiction about.
Maureen has an exercise on how to access your ability to work with characters like this, in this week’s newsletter, which you should sign up for!
I wanted to take the time this morning to think about the elements that made a character strong enough to live in your head rent free. In my experience, it doesn’t have much to do with a deep, detailed backstory or a list of personality traits. I don’t know about you, but those approaches–writing out their childhood or filling out a bunch of personal details like favorite color and most hated person–never really worked for me. Also, they felt like a lot of work! And what does a character’s favorite color say about them, anyway? Why would you need to know that? (Maybe you do, if it comes up in your story. But do you really need to know that if it never comes up?)
Instead, Maureen’s exercise has you try to get to the emotional core of a character, and explore it. This is especially fruitful to do when you can get into a territory that is emotionally intense or difficult. And yes, you’re going to be putting a lot of yourself into it, because that’s how we write. Everything we write is built from our blood and tears. Characters are no exception. More than almost any other element of writing, writing characters is an act of radical empathy.
A character that readers resonate with, whether they’re “likable” or not, are characters that feel like they are true, at their emotional core. Like the characters reveal some truth that can’t necessarily be expressed in words. This is what you’re trying to get at. Yes, it’s hard! Writing is hard! It sucks, I know. But hard doesn’t mean impossible, hard means you can get there with practice.
On a much lighter note, this week’s podcast talks about tropes! So after you do some heavy emotional mining with your characters, check out our episode on tropes — how to use them, how not to use them, and why they’re useful.
Happy writing!
It occured to me recently that we haven’t really talked about the podcast on the blog yet, and that we probably should! Maureen and I started the Story Kitchen Podcast this spring. The project came out of our twice-weekly co-writing sessions on Zoom, during last year. We met up so we could ostensibly work on our manuscripts, but would often end up talking about writing, sharing tips, debating technique, and thinking a lot about how people learn to write (we’re both teachers, so this is something that’s on our minds a lot!)
Thus, the podcast was born! I try to keep the Podcast page on this site updated, but you can listen to it at a lot of places: Apple podcasts, on Spotify, on Google Podcasts, on Spreaker, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Castbox–on almost any plaform that distributes podcasts!
The latest episode is about fanfiction, one of our favorite topics. You can listen to it below:
I also wanted to give a shoutout to this awesome episode of Fansplaining, The Craft of Writing Fanfiction, which is a wonderful episode, and I discovered after we recorded ours, but it’s a great discussion and it reflects a lot of our experiences in writing and reading fanfiction!
Other episodes we’ve recorded:
In the first episode, we talk about how to think about feedback on your writing. Not all feedback is useful. How do you decide? And what do you do with the feedback that isn’t helping you?
How to develop creativity is a particular interest of mine, something I’ve studied and experimented with for the last several years. What I’ve learned is that creativity is a skill, and like any other skill, it can develop with practice. In this episode we talk about what to do when you’re stuck and how to develop your creativity.
In the episode, Our Favorite Writing Techniques, Maureen and I share the best practical writing tips that elevated our writing. Even so, growth as a creator isn’t always steady. In When You Hit a Plateau we discuss a time in our evolution where we felt like we weren’t growing, and what we did about it.
And last week, we realized we hadn’t really defined what “technique” is so we tackled that topic in What Exactly is Technique Anyway?
And now you’re all caught up! See you next week!
There’s no real standard for scenes or even chapters. The rule is really ‘if it works, it works’. William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, has a chapter in his novel As I Lay Dying, that is five words long. “My mother is a fish.” So how do you know how long your scene should be? The answer is, you don’t. There are novels that don’t have chapters. They’re just one long continuous story.
But there are ways in which scenes are often structured. If you’ve got a scene that isn’t working for you, then you can try structuring it.
First, if you don’t mind, go watch a ten minute short film. It’s animated, and it’s about a puppy. It’s called Feast and I swear, it’s charming. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2icqx7
I’ll wait.
Charming, right? It’s made up of several scenes (a scene in a screenplay changes every time there is a change in location or a jump in time, but scenes in prose work differently.) But it’s structured in a classic way.
It opens with the lost puppy who is adopted by a Dudebro. Dudebro and dog live an idyllic life and then Dudebro falls in love with a girl who makes him eat healthy. A scene starts with two characters wanting different things. The dog wants to eat all the good stuff but the girlfriend wants everyone to be healthy.
A scene progresses with obstacles. In this, the dog wants both all the food AND the Dudebro to be happy. When Dudebro and girlfriend break up, dog gets all the food. But that’s an obstacle to Dudebro’s happiness. Dog makes active choice to help Dudebro and girlfriend get back together.
Dog gives up pizza for happiness. Dudebro and girlfriend get married. Then they have a kid who is messy and feeds dog junk so dog gets happiness and pizza, and meatballs and cupcakes.
So how does this particular structure work?
Often a scene does that with a ‘button’, that is a line that feels like the end of a scene. So in a heroic quest, a scene might end with a line that reminds us of the stakes of the story. ‘It was a wonderful moment, but she remembered with a chill that the Dark Lord was still out there.’ Anything that feels like it ‘buttons up’ the scene is good, and there are an infinite number of ways to do that.
Another way is a cliffhanger. Endings of scenes and stories is an art, and at the end of the day there are suggestions, but no real rules.
To sum up, one way to structure a scene is to set it up, play it out, and stick the landing. But that’s not really a formula so much as a guideline. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story or book where every scene was structured this way. Doing this, it’s hard. Endings are especially hard. Good endings are amazing and have a strong effect on the reader.
I said I’d show you a way to structure a scene. I didn’t say it would be easy.
I’m a big fan of writer youtubers. There’s something about seeing and hearing a writer talk to me, with a shelf full of books behind them, that I find soothing and inspiring. A few weeks ago I came across a new-to-me writer on Youtube, Shaelin Bishop, who posted a video which shared their top 12 writing tips.
There are great tips in the video, but the one I’d never heard before and which really stood out to me as something profound and interest was this one:
Find the despair in the hope, and the hope in the despair.
Shaelin describes this (as related by a writing professor) as a source of tension: “If a scene is only despair, there’s actually no tension because there’s no possible way forward.”
This made me stop and think a lot. I’ve heard people talk about scene craft as driven by objectives — as in, your protagonist wants something! And other people (or elements) in the scene want something else! But this idea of the tension between despair and hope is a big picture, more holistic way to think about it, something that transcends character goals. It suggests that each scene is a microcosm of the despair and hope in the entire story: will the main character resolve the story question, or not? Where is the hope that they will? And where is the despair if they don’t?
This framing also suggests stakes, which I like, since that’s something that I often forget to illuminate for my reader. What do readers hope for? And what do they despair about?
Based on my thinking about this this week, I decided to give myself an assignment: go through a couple of scenes in my current WIP, a novella, and look for the hope and the despair. How can I play those against each other? Can I use this question to highlight stakes where I need to?
Happy writing!
NaNoWriMo in November is the challenge to write a draft of a novel in a month. Lots of people have done it and communities have sprang up to talk about how to prepare for the challenge, how to do the challenge, and how to join with other people to do it.
Camp Nano, in April and July, is a similar challenge but instead of writing a novel in a month (because face it, some people just can’t, whether because for example, they have a job and a toddler, or because writing 2,000 words a day doesn’t work for them) the writer sets their own goals. The goals usually involve a daily practice.
Is it a good idea? Depends.
Camp Nano has some really cool aspects.
Camp Nano Drawbacks
Camp Nano and NaNoWriMo might be just the thing someone needs. If you want to do them:
Camp Nano is a great thing for a lot of writers.
Set goals that are easy, you can always do more, but you’re going to feel shitty if you do less. And use it for who you are, where you are, and getting to your own goals.
There are a lot of ways to build a world. We tend to think of worldbuilding as something for science fiction or fantasy. I don’t think of it that way. Mysteries are often tied to a particular place, like Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police mysteries[1] or the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn, set in the world of English aristocracy of the 18th century.
Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is a lovely example of creating a very specific world in a very specific time, the waning days of Dublin’s economic boom and bust—and as good worlds do, it grounds her series in an authenticity that convinces the reader that this world is real and makes the stakes of the story feel real.
There is a lot of advice on the web for worldbuilding. Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin has a masterclass on worldbuilding and (https://www.masterclass.com/classes/n-k-jemisin-teaches-fantasy-and-science-fiction-writing/chapters/elements-of-worldbuilding ) Brandon Sanderson has a technique for building magic systems that you can find in his lecture series on YoutTube.
I will state up front, I don’t like Rendezvous With Rama. I tried it several times and just not my thing. It’s a book that has really meant a lot to a lot of people, so I assume that it’s like licorice, which my husband loves and which I hate. It’s not a case that Rendezvous With Rama is not good writing, it’s a matter of preference.
Thinking about worldbuilding in the way mystery and romance writers think about it can be a different and sometimes useful way to worldbuild. I’ve created four prompts that can help bootstrap both setting and worldbuilding. Also, they give me an excuse to research and I love research. So much easier than writing.
[1] Linda Rodriguez, indigenous American writer, discusses Tony Hillerman and issues of appropriation in a post http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2012/04/literary-mystery-noveliststony.html She feels that Hillerman was respectful but points out that not all indigenous writers and readers agree.
When you build a world, you should think about language, customs, and culture. Think of a story set in a horse racing track.
The horse racing track has its own language—in English, there are words we use at a track that we don’t use much of any place else. Horse races are described in miles but also furlongs. There are stakes and claim races, win, place, and show.
There are different kinds of people at a race track. There are the people who come to watch the races; some of them sit in the stands. Rich people and companies have boxes where food and alcohol are served. Serious gamblers may stand at the edge of the track instead of being in the stands. Then there are the horse people—trainers, grooms, exercise boys, veterinarians. And there’s another group that works at the track—they take the money, work in the office, or serve food.
There are customs—the ‘call to the post’ where a trumpet fanfare is played, the winner’s circles. For the Kentucky Derby, women wear fancy hats and people drink mint juleps. The winning horse gets a blanket of roses (which the horse probably either ignores or wants to eat.)
There are uniforms—the ‘silks’ that the jockeys wear.
It’s a complex world and if your story is, say, a mystery involving a horse racing track, knowing this is the world of your story.
Your world is not interesting in and of itself. Your world is interesting because it
Some people want to build a consistent world from the very beginning. I’ve always thought of Tolkien as this kind of writer, but Tolkien turns out to have been more of a pantser than I ever realized. There’s a letter to his son (http://hedgepickle.blogspot.com/2013/02/trotter-description-of-development-of.html) where he describes writing a scene where there’s a character sitting in the corner in an inn who he calls Trotter. Tolkien had no idea who the character was—eventually it would turn out to be Aragorn, who you would think was pretty essential to both world and plot.
I build my worlds the way theatre sets are built—that is, you can see a door at the edge of the set and the yellow flowered wallpaper that suggests a hallway, but if you go backstage, there’s no hallway. I want everything the reader sees to feel lived in, as if it has history. But I want to evolve my worldbuilding, as Tolkien did, to fit my story, so I don’t try to plan everything out at once.
When I’m thinking about worldbuilding, I’m rarely thinking about geography or even buildings. I don’t really world build systematically. I like things to feel messy because my everyday life is messy. When I first saw Star Wars, I had never seen a science fiction movie where things were dirty, and it just made everything more real.
When I’m teaching worldbuilding, I suggest that the writers think about:
By language I mean jargon or language. (Junot Diaz has very interesting things to say about using English and Spanish in his works. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/nyregion/outsider-with-a-voice.html ) But everybody uses jargon. If your world is a university, there is tons of language; GPA, required courses or GDEs, Fraternity, Sorority, tenure. At my university, D Clearance is a big issue (it’s a hoop some students have to jump through to get into certain classes.)
There are social classes in university, too. Students sort into lower classmen, upper classmen, graduate students, PhD candidates, scholarship kids, frat and sorority kids. People have opinions about Business Majors versus Theater Majors. Then there are professors; tenured, part time, TA’s. There are administrators who work in admissions, or residence life (more jargon there) and the working-class folk (in the US, often BIPOC in a mostly white landscape) who keep the place running; landscapers, cashiers, housekeeping. Each of them experiences the university in a different way.
There are a lot of weird cultural rituals; ‘rushing’ for fraternities and sororities, homecoming, commencement, school colors.
Dress and architecture come in, too. A lot of universities in the US strive to echo the architecture of Oxford or Cambridge—brick or stone buildings, ivy, walks through grassy lawns.
When you are thinking of where your story is set, if you have trouble with setting, maybe jot down a few notes about these four categories and see if they help you build out your world.
