By Samantha Garner When you think of video games, do you think of rich character development? Unfortunately, many people believe video game characters are either implausibly indestructible, or worse: boring. As a fan of fantasy and action role-playing video games, I’ve seen that belief transcended many times. As an SFF writer, I often find inspiration […]

by L. E. Torres One day in 1986, after concluding an exciting Dungeons & Dragons campaign with my high school friends, I decided to write a novel telling their exploits. The game had been a roaring success, all non-stop action and nail-biting excitement, so how could its novelization be any less of a triumph? The […]

By Noah Sturdevant   Who are you? No, not in a “name, rank, and serial number” kind of way or the physical parts on display. Not the broad character traits you associate with yourself, either. It’s a complicated question, right? It can be hard to define, even to yourself, much less others. In fact, just […]

By May Haddad Knot tying (“nodology” in Latin, “kompology” in Greek) is a time-honored skill honed in seafaring for millennia. Its history intertwines with maritime exploration, naval warfare, and the development of trade routes all over the world. Even as synthetic ropes replaced natural fibers, knots used by sailors centuries ago remain in wide use […]

By R.J. Huneke I recently went back to something for the first time in many years: I wrote the entire first draft of two SFF works, a short story, and a novel, in longhand. There was an ease of flow to the writing that surprised me. A plethora of vocabulary jumped to the page. The […]

By Gunnar De Winter Much has been said and—obviously—written about the writer’s voice. But what if that voice speaks in a language that is not your native one? While a writer’s voice is, by definition, hard to define, it lives and thrives through idiosyncrasy. Your voice as a writer is the collection of verbal quirks, […]