Archive for the ‘SFWA Blog’ Category

From The Inside Out: Worldbuilding Through Extrapolation

by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

It’s virtually impossible to do ALL of your SFF worldbuilding prior to writing your book/story. How much weight is given to each stage depends on the author (some prefer to do a lot before starting, some build nothing before writing). My own preference is to build the foundation–just enough to get me started, then build more along the way, and go back and change stuff after I’m done.

The Art of the Playlist

by Paul Jessup

Ever since I first started taking writing seriously as a teenager, I’ve always written to music. Back then it was a bit more difficult than it is now, in the days of Spotify and gigantic playlists that can stretch on for hours or even days. Back in those days I would make mix tapes for my writing, each story and scene would get its own mixtape of songs that I felt carried the tone and the emotion of what I’m trying to convey.

How to Avoid Writing That’s as Clear as a Mountain Stream

by Chris Sumberg

The phrase “clear as a mountain stream” gets splashed around pretty loosely, sometimes in reference to clear writing but also in reference to the sometimes not-at-all-clear names of actual bodies of water, clear or otherwise. When you take time to examine the hard, cold facts, it makes you wonder if writing that is as clear as a mountain stream is, in fact, very clear at all.

The Dream Foundry

by Anaea Lay

We’re building a community meant to capture the community.  The whole community.  We want to find beginners and bring them in to nurture them, help them learn, smooth their career path.  We’re going to have resources that are useful to prose authors, and illustrators, and game designers, and people working in film.

How to Win a Short Fiction Contest*

by Shawn Proctor*Winning not guaranteed.In project management, the key is to begin with the end in mind. So maybe I should have foreseen that my flash story, “A Good Egg” would be published by Flash Fiction Online as a reprint in September and, previously, would have be a winner of the 2017 Podcastle Flash Fiction Contest. Unfortunately, writing with the end goal in mind has never worked for me.