Archive for the 'language' Category
October 15th 2011
What Is YA?
My post last month, Is Harry Potter YA?, turned into a more general discussion of the definition of YA in the comments, so I decided I might as well continue the discussion this month. I first heard the term Young Adult applied to books in the early ‘70s. It described fiction written for adolescents, who weren’t [...]
July 25th 2011
The Skill List Project: The Raconteur Viewpoint
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time around, we talked about Avoiding Viewpoint Mistakes. This time we’ll look at one of my favorite viewpoints, but one that definitely requires skill: the viewpoint of [...]
May 31st 2011
The Skill List Project: Viewpoint Selectivity
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time around, we talked about Viewpoint and Story Experience…but since I consider viewpoint to be the #1 key to story success, I want to dig into it [...]
March 25th 2011
The Skill List Project: Reading Analytically
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time around, we talked about Reading judiciously. At the end of that posting, I made the rash promise to show “judicious reading” in action: I’d pull apart [...]
December 21st 2010
The Skill List Project: Punctuation and its Discontents
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. This time around, we’re looking at punctuation. Chunking and Timing Like grammar, the point of punctuation is to help you and your readers make sense of what you’re [...]
November 25th 2010
The Skill List Project: Learning to Love Grammar
This is another blog post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. This time around, we’re looking at another fundamental building-block of writing: grammar. Making Sense Grammar prevents you from tripping over your own feet. The point of grammar is [...]
October 29th 2010
The Skill List Project: Vocabulary
The last time I blogged here, I started The Skill List Project: an attempt to list the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Why? Partly as a way for me to think about the many aspects of writing sf; partly to tell would-be writers about skills they should try [...]
July 28th 2010
Narrative, Resonance and Genre
One thing I was often told when I was starting out as a writer was that story trumped everything, that a good story would always resonate because good stories were universal. Now, I’m always suspicious of any sentence that includes “universal”, because all too often what we take for universal is just assumptions so ingrained [...]
Author Information
S.C. Butler
Butler is the author of The Stoneways Trilogy from Tor Books: Reiffen's Choice, Queen Ferris, and The Magician's Daughter. Find out what Reiffen does with magic, and what magic does with him... Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard is the author of the upcoming Aztec fantasy Servant of the Underworld, published by Angry Robot. Her short fiction garnered her a nomination for the Campbell Award. She lives in Paris, France. Visit site.
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