Archive for the 'learning to write' Category
October 25th 2011
The Skill List Project: Plot Flow
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, I talked about overall plot structure, and how to develop a starting seed into a plot…but I was working on the “big picture” level: the [...]
October 21st 2011
Works In Progress
I’ll be teaching this weekend at the South Carolina Writer’s Workshop Annual Conference. It’s an event I’ve done before and one I love at attend. Great people, talented writers, and a welcoming community. One of the topics I’ll be covering in the course of several panels and workshops I’ll be running is self-editing and revisions, [...]
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 [...]
September 29th 2011
The Skill List Project: Starting to Plot
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, I laid out some basic terminology for talking about plot. This time, I’ll look at how to get started on developing a plot: figuring out the [...]
August 25th 2011
The Skills List Project: Plot Units
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, I promised we’d look at skills related to plotting. This will take several postings to cover; we’ll start with some basic terminology about the units [...]
August 23rd 2011
A Year To Remember
When I first started writing professionally, I had a vision of what my career path would look like. I understood, from all that I had been told by people wiser and more experienced than I, that success wouldn’t come easily, and that the first several years of my career would be a struggle. But I [...]
August 15th 2011
Do You Want to Be a Writer, or Do You Want to Write?
There is a difference. The first is an ambition, the latter a disease. In the long run, it doesn’t much matter what your motivation is. Motivation is motivation; it’s just a matter of how strong it is. People who want to be writers are generally charmed by the idea of being famous, or working from [...]
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 [...]
July 15th 2011
Does Heinlein Matter?
He used to. He used to be the be-all and end-all of ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s SF. This despite the fact that most critics think his later output is far inferior to his Golden Age writing and juveniles. Even during the rise (and fall) of the New Wave, Heinlein’s star, no matter how scorned, never [...]
June 21st 2011
The Skill List Project: Avoiding Viewpoint Mistakes
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 Selectivity. This time, we’ll dig into viewpoint again because I want to talk about something that really makes beginners look amateurish: [...]
Author Information
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.
David B. Coe
David B. Coe is the author of eleven fantasy novels, including the books of the LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, and Blood of the Southlands. He has also written the novelization for the Ridley Scott production of ROBIN HOOD, starring Russell Crowe, that is due out in May 2010. In 1999 he received the Crawford Fantasy Award, given annually by the IAFA to the best new author in fantasy. He has a Ph.D. in United States environmental history and lives on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with his wife and daughters. Visit site.
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.
David B. Coe
David B. Coe is the author of eleven fantasy novels, including the books of the LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, and Blood of the Southlands. He has also written the novelization for the Ridley Scott production of ROBIN HOOD, starring Russell Crowe, that is due out in May 2010. In 1999 he received the Crawford Fantasy Award, given annually by the IAFA to the best new author in fantasy. He has a Ph.D. in United States environmental history and lives on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with his wife and daughters. Visit site.
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.
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.
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