Oil well and old house in front of dead corn stalks and sand dunes.

Climate Fiction

Climate fiction, often referred to as “Cli-Fi,” is a genre of literature that focuses on the impacts of climate change and environmental issues. It explores how these changes affect individuals, societies, and the planet as a whole. The genre can encompass a wide range of narratives, from dystopian futures to …

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Cowboy writing with pen next to a campfire

Showdown, Don’t Tell: Keeping a Consistent Narrative Voice

Fiction writers have a lot of rules. “Show, don’t tell” sits near the top of the rulebook, right up there with point of view (POV), use of said tags, and eliminating adverbs. But sometimes we follow those rules straight into a literary box canyon. So take off your cowboy hat, …

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Writer with pen and paper creating new worlds from his imagination

Tips for Building Worlds

Worldbuilding can be the most liberating piece of telling stories in speculative fiction, particularly in sci-fi and fantasy. Being unbeholden to the limits of our world allows your characters to have an entirely different set of environmental, cosmic, and cultural settings. It’s an opportunity for you, as the writer, to …

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Blue fantastical female adorned with flowers and intricate jewelry

Creative Writing: What does ‘creative’ mean?

What we writers do is called ‘creative’ writing. But what is that, really? What do we have to do, to be ‘creative’ in our writing? The definition of ‘creative (adjective)’ is ‘involving original ideas in producing an artistic work.’ So, to be ‘creative’ writers, we must make original ideas. Ideas not heretofore conceived …

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Bruce Schindler picture with high tech background.

Meet Our Member: Bruce Schindler

What inspired you to start writing?  High school: short humorous story read aloud got positive reaction. Wrote poetry and science fiction while in Vietnam, none published. Was a photographer/editor in the public affairs detachment of the Wyoming Army National Guard. After wife died, remarried horse lady and moved to Nebraska. …

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Foundation Book vs AppleTV Production

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a seminal work of science fiction, prominently topping many lists of ground-breaking and genre-defining works. The original story consisted of three related books: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. Each represents a step for humanity in the evolving political progression from the current First …

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Babel–Meaning or Madness?

Into the plethora of genres and sub-genres in today’s fiction rockets BABEL, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, by R. F Kuang. The title says it all. History, deeply interwoven in a fantastic view of what might have existed, the long (500 pages …

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