by Samuel Poots Editor’s note: This piece is part of a rolling series, Writing from History, in which creators share professional insights related to the work of using historical elements in fictional prose. In 2009, I met my hero. I was eighteen, painted blue, and wearing a borrowed kilt, a brave choice for November in […]

by Marie Croke Editor’s note: This piece is part of a rolling series, Writing from History, in which creators share professional insights related to the work of using historical elements in fictional prose. As speculative fiction authors, we twist and remake reality. Yet, when it comes to retelling events or using fiction to manipulate a […]

by Emily Jiang AN INTRODUCTION OF SORTS: To Boldly Go Where I Have Never Gone Before “We often fear what we do not understand. Our best defense is knowledge.” –Tuvok Over 15 years ago, when I enrolled in an MFA program for Creative Writing, I had no idea what social justice was. Around that time, […]

by John Dale Beety Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Playtesting Game Narratives series, curated by SFWA’s Game Writing Committee. In science fiction and fantasy (SFF) terms, game writing is exactly what it sounds like: writing for games. Calling oneself a game writer, however, is akin to declaring oneself a scientist. Divisions within game […]

by Jeff Reynolds A game we authors enjoy is “discuss how the short story market used to pay so well you could make a living from it.” When the topic appeared again recently, I wondered: Is there any truth to this view? Did writers of the past make a living selling nothing but short fiction? […]

M. J. Engh (26 January 1933 – 11 July 2024), also writing as Jane Beauclerk and Mary Jane Engh, was a librarian, scholar, teacher, editor and writer. She wrote short fiction, non-fiction, and speculative novels, including 1976’s Arslan, later released as A Wind from Bukhara. Engh was honored by SFWA in 2009 with the title […]

by Yoon Ha Lee When I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, I adored classical mythology, Arthurian mythology, the Cthulhu mythos. I was the weirdo who holed up in the library reading Tacitus, Plato, and Sylvia Plath for fun. I had ambitions of writing science fiction and fantasy. Yet the science fiction and […]

by Kanishk Tantia This essay is the fifth of eight in the Publishing Taught Me: A SFWA Anthology Project. The first story I ever wrote was unabashedly my own: written with unfiltered childlike enthusiasm, completed within a single draft and, to my eyes, perfect upon completion. Two donkeys killed each other because one was purple […]

by Austin Conrad As advice, “write what you know” is nearly as hackneyed as “show, don’t tell.” Both pieces of advice are essentially correct, but writers hear them so often we don’t really process either recommendation. This is doubly true in speculative fiction. After all, very few of us have ridden on the back of […]

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 […]