Posted by Nicky Drayden on Apr 4, 2010 in
Announcements For me, world building for novels is like eating chocolate covered awesome. I love it. Maps, floor plans, pages and pages of notes on culture, history, technology. Fun stuff, right? But what role does world building play in short stories where every word is precious? How can you establish a credible world and believable rules in the span of paragraphs? How do you create a sense of space without overwhelming the reader with backstory?
In April, we’ll journey to places that exist only in our collective mind space, and take up temporary residence in worlds limited only by imagination. I hope you have your passport ready!
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Mar 5, 2010 in
Announcements Next up, character arcs! Or lack thereof as the case may be. I’m personally a fan of characters that don’t change, because let’s face it — change is hard in real life. But we’re not writing real life, we’re writing fiction, so at some point or another we’re going to have to deal with THE CHANGE. No, not that change…the one characters go through. What makes them different (for better or worse) at the end of the story from what they are at the beginning?
So, during March we’ll be dissecting characters. It’s not as gruesome as it sounds. Then again, maybe it is. We’ll just have to see!
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Feb 21, 2010 in
Announcements Congratulations to Kij Johnson for her short story Spar (Clarkesworld Magazine, Oct 2009) making it to the ballot of the 2009 Nebula Awards! See the rest of the nominees on SFWA’s Blog.
Read my review of this striking story here.
Tags: Nebula, science fiction
