Speculative Fiction Writers Association
An Online Critique Group with Members from Coast to Coast
PART ONE: THE PROBLEM What do L. Frank Baum, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Orson Scott Card, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman. H. P. Lovecraft, J .K. Rowling, and J. R. R. Tolkien have in common? Each is a beloved author who has written foundational speculative works that continue to inspire today. In …
What are the Hugo Awards? Hugo Awards are one of the preeminent speculative fiction awards. They call themselves a ‘science fiction award’, but many of the nominees and winners are clearly in other genres like fantasy, time travel, or even the supernatural. The Hugos date back to the 1950s and …
My critique journey began in college, where I majored in English literature and dissected stories. While school equipped me with tools to better exhume meaning from novels, it could not prepare me for my trek into freelance editing, where I helped emerging writers find their voice, create compelling characters, and …
What if? What if the Neanderthals had become the dominant species of Hominids? If Napoleon had conquered America? If there had been no Industrial Revolution? If space aliens had come to Earth to fight for African-American civil rights? Welcome to the world of Alternate History. When I first had the …
I used to believe I didn’t like fantasy fiction. I’d mentally scoff at the concept, believing it was comprised of writing based on fairy tales, or concepts so unrelated to real life no rational adult or serious writer could possibly want to indulge in it. As has so often occurred …
I love science fiction, but I’m a terrible fan of it. I love spaceships and technology and new ideas and robots and aliens, but I could not save a conversation by talking with any kind of fluency about representations in books about any of them. I’ve always been better at …
For writers, literature is an ultimatum. Are you going to enjoy it? Or are you going to learn something? It’s a false dichotomy, really. Doing both isn’t so hard. Growing in your skills and superpower has a certain satisfaction in itself. And sometimes understanding the fiddly background bits in stories …
Your job. Your social life. Your kid’s soccer tournament. Only a major overhaul can fix your WIP’s* character arc. And the last story you submitted for publication got a flat rejection. How do you stay motivated to write when the universe is against you? Two of our members keep writing …
Writing advice surrounds me. Everyone, it seems, is an expert. One day, all that information on self-publishing, pitching a story, and writing query letters will come in handy, but for now I feel like I’m drowning in unhelpful advice. Sink with me to the bottom of the writing-advice ocean, where …
Short stories are fun to read because they pack an unexpected emotional punch. However, “short” does not mean easy to write, or a formless type of expression. Quite the contrary, they are written and rewritten numerous times with herculean effort to be efficient, banish loose ends, conclude with a plot …