Speculative Fiction Writers Association
An Online Critique Group with Members from Coast to Coast
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, …
It can be a bit of a crapshoot reading a self-published book by someone you know. Okay, I didn’t actually know James R.D. Hilton. But during my audit of our critique group, he mentioned his book, so I bought it. Turns out it’s my favorite book I’ve read this year! …
My advice on writing? Do not take or give advice on writing. There is no one way to write but the way you write. You will most likely be writing differently tomorrow, anyway. That’s my advice: take it, don’t take it, it’s all the same to me. Aw, come on, …
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 …
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 …
Tammie Painter is the author of The Circus of Unusual Creatures series I have recently been binge reading. Not such a binge since there are only four books in the series so far. The narrator of the stories is Duncan, aka Brutus Fangwrath, Deadliest Dragon in the West. He loves …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Give a group of authors the same writing prompt, and they will write unique stories with diverse characters and emotional journeys, differing plot elements, and singular plot twists that any element of commonality is difficult to find. Such is the power and joy of writing speculative fiction. Even the incredible …