Speculative Fiction That Asks Big Questions
I think I said in one of my blog posts earlier this year that I hoped to self-publish my work-in-progress by the end of 2018. Of course as we all know, plans are made to be changed, and mine was no different. Once I discovered Pitch Wars and the PW community, I decided I’d enter…
Most of the writers I know aren’t only writers. They work day jobs, raise families, do volunteer work, have a life that requires tending. You know how those everyday pressures are sometimes enough in and of themselves to make you want to scream. Add deadlines (self-imposed or otherwise), long hours in front of the computer…
I’ve always poo-pooed the saying “Write what you know.” Bull, I’ve said. I’m pretty sure Mary Shelley never built a Creature from human cadavers in her basement, yet Frankenstein has become a classic. Great writers always write things they don’t know. If they can do it, so can the rest of us. It only recently…
Who wants to read a flat novel that leaves you on your sofa throughout the entire book? Nobody, that’s who. A really excellent story snatches you off your couch, plunges you into the story, and drags you—flapping in the breeze—along for the ride. You feel the tension along with the protagonist. You experience the disappointments…
Last week I mentioned that my fiction intensive class (with author Lydia Netzer) would be critiquing the first 25% of my manuscript. Everyone said they loved it. Many offered specifics on what they loved and why, as well as what drew them in. On the other hand, every student found issues that will require significant…
I am a huge jigsaw puzzle fan. Oh, it’s been a while since I put one together on my kitchen table; I seem to be too busy doing something else these days—writing. You know the drill. Worldbuilding, working out plot, defining and enlivening characters who you then “put up a tree and pepper with rocks.”…
If you are writing fiction, you must know your characters better than anyone else does. It’s helpful to get a good start on that before you plug them into the plot. Why? Because you can’t use them to their (and therefore your) best advantage if you don’t know everything there is to know about them…
So you submitted your work to a magazine or agent or publisher, and now the long, long wait begins. Every day, you check your e-mail (maybe multiple times) or dash to answer the phone. The time drags out, passing so slowly it feels like it’ll take forever for that editor to get back to you….
If you’ve ever seen natural pearls, you know their beauty. The tale of how pearls are formed is common lore. A tiny irritant—say, a grain of sand—intrudes into the shell of a mollusk and begins to damage the delicate tissues inside. To protect itself, the animal secretes layer after layer of luminous nacre to coat…
(or “Please Ignore My Browser History”) I’ve heard it said that a good exercise for writers is to ask “What if.” What if a team of scientists went to Mars and one of them got accidentally left behind? What if a white journalist in 1960 Mississippi decided to write an expose on the treatment of…