Keep an eye on the world around you and see what stories present themselves.As I said in class, I’ll be posting notes after each Wednesday session, which all three classes can use to ask questions about or comment on what we covered. I encourage the students to hop into the discussion here, but it’s also open to the public.
We started by talking about what makes a story and the idea of character(s) involved in a conflict with rising tension that moves to a resolution at the end. It’s a pretty classic model and Vonnegut says some useful things about it here. Everyone brought a two line description of the story they’d like to write, and we listened to those and talked about which would work as is for stories and which need some narrowing down.
In discussing how we know when a story will be good, we looked at the first few paragraphs of stories by Carol Emshwiller, Joe Hill, and Kurt Vonnegut. I asked you to, in the coming week, look particularly at how people begin stories, and for Week 2, people will be bringing in a story beginning by someone else that knocks their socks. I mentioned that there’s plenty of online magazines to find speculative fiction in and here’s a brief starter list for you (feel free to add recommendations in the comments): Abyss & Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Tor.com. One of the things I mentioned is that reading other people’s short fiction, particularly good stuff, is important: you’ll find more story ideas coming to you, you’ll learn new tricks from them, and you’ll become familiar with the markets you hope to sell to.
We also spent some time on writing process and the idea of timed writings, as taken from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and did some in class. Feel free to post yours here if you like it. I urged you to spend some time this week thinking about your writing process and perhaps trying to change it up a little: writing by hand instead of the keyboard, or in a place you don’t normally write.
>>I mentioned that there’s plenty of online magazines to find speculative fiction in and here’s a brief starter list for you (feel free to add recommendations in the comments):
One thing I found pretty helpful are the Hugo nominated stories featured in audio over at Escapepod.org. Save the .mp3’s to your player of choice and listen on your way to work / school / date / etc. Another great audio fiction site is of course is The Drabblecast at http://www.drabblecast.org. They have some fantastic features.
If you want to be mega-cool, try transcribing some of your favorite stories to screen or paper. Peace & love.
I absolutely agree with that – one of the things I keep is a notebook where I copy out passages from stories and novels that I really love. It’s part of how I try to figure out how the author’s achieving the effect (and how I might use it.)
Timed writing was great. I can’t believe I haven’t tried that before. I went through one of my collections last night and read the first three paragraphs of each story and was surprised to see how well they fit the pattern you discussed. I’ll do a few line edits on one of my short stories tonight and get it sent over to you. I’m really enjoying the class!
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Let's Retain ALL the Rights!
One of the questions being raised repeatedly on a discussion board I participate on is the question of electronic rights. Should a magazine be able to buy a story and display it on their website in perpetuity without additional payment? Does it make a different whether or not it’s behind a paywall? If there’s no additional payment, when should rights revert? What happens with something like an anthology that is in electronic form and hence won’t go out of print the way a hard-copy edition does?
I’m presuming that most people reading this know that normally when you “sell” a story to a publication, what they’re actually buying is the right to publish it in a particular form. You, the author, retain any rights not spelled out in the contract. You can (and I encourage you to) sell the story again as a reprint, and you may want to look at forms like audio or in another language.
This is something that’s still very new, and it’s not something that’s been factored in when lists like SFWA-qualifying markets were put together. It’s not mentioned on sites like Ralan.com or the Submission Grinder. As a writer, though, you need to be aware of what you’re selling.
If you’re publishing, how do you feel about perpetual rights? Is the horse already well out of the barn as far as that goes, or can writers push back on the practice of acquiring perpetual rights without payment?
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
This is from a military fantasy story currently in progress. It’s set in the same world as Tabat, although it does not take place in that city, and is referenced in two other works (“Love’s Footsteps” and The Beasts of Tabat.) I hope you enjoy it:
You cannot smell the roses in the hours before dawn. It is only when sunlight touches the vast blossoms, each as large as a human head, that crowd the tallest branches of the Hedge, that the petals loosen. The perfume seeps out into the air then, first as a hint of sweetness, then stronger.
By midmorning, the smell is so intoxicating that approaching enemies lay down their arms and sit, staring into the air, nostrils flared, breathing, smelling. It grows heavier and heavier throughout all the day, and only begins to ebb when the sun completely slips below the ocean horizon to the west. The Hedge borders the Rose Kingdom on three sides, and on the west is that blue line.
This is what has protected the Rose Kingdom for three handfuls of centuries, years and years of peace and protection engendered by a great ancient enchantment whose details are still argued.
But pieces of that enchantment still linger and are renewed each year when a child is given up to the Hedge to become a Knight of the Rose.
#
When Jordan’s mother gave him up to the Gardeners, he was four years old. He knew this because much of it been made of his fourth birthday. He was given cake and a folded paper boat of his very own. And most preciously a caress from his mother, which was a rare thing indeed.
Most of the time he was an extremely solitary child. Because everyone knew he was would be given to the Hedge, there was no point in teaching him anything. There was no point in wasting any of the household’s resources on him, other than what was necessary to keep him alive and healthy until it was time to give him up.
He had two younger brothers, Coulin and Fedyrmor, but they were only babies. Coulin barely knew enough to talk and Fedyrmor more only cried. Anyway they were watched over by their nursemaids most of the time.
He knew that he was to be taken to the Gardeners. No one had made much secret of it, speaking freely before him though rarely to him. He found himself looking forward to it. Anything might be better then An existence spent lingering in hallways and edges of rooms, ignored and unnoticed. The Gardeners wanted him. That was important. They wanted him, not either of the other two. He was promised to the hedge, it was meant for him. He had a destiny, where most people had to bob around in the streams of their lives not knowing where they would land. At least that was how Jen the housekeeper’s son, with whom Jordan socialized with whenever (although sadly rare) the occasion presented itself, described it all.
“You will have a role,” he said, as Jordan trailed after him helping him spread bird netting over the pillline bushes and their ripening fruit, scarlet hearted berries whose flesh was a watery pink.
“A role?” Jordan tugged the netting around the branches, trying to pull it as Jen did, so it slid over the thorns rather than snagging on them. His efforts were less successful.
Jen secured the netting to the main trunk with a strip of white cotton with edges tipped in blue to show that this harvest was destined for household use rather than commercial purpose.
“An important role, I mean. I’ll be a housekeeper like my mother. but you’ll be a Rose Knight. You’ll defend the kingdom. You’ll keep everyone safe from harm.”
“I suppose.” Jordan considered. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it, the idea that he would be important.
6 Responses
>>I mentioned that there’s plenty of online magazines to find speculative fiction in and here’s a brief starter list for you (feel free to add recommendations in the comments):
One thing I found pretty helpful are the Hugo nominated stories featured in audio over at Escapepod.org. Save the .mp3’s to your player of choice and listen on your way to work / school / date / etc. Another great audio fiction site is of course is The Drabblecast at http://www.drabblecast.org. They have some fantastic features.
If you want to be mega-cool, try transcribing some of your favorite stories to screen or paper. Peace & love.
I absolutely agree with that – one of the things I keep is a notebook where I copy out passages from stories and novels that I really love. It’s part of how I try to figure out how the author’s achieving the effect (and how I might use it.)
Timed writing was great. I can’t believe I haven’t tried that before. I went through one of my collections last night and read the first three paragraphs of each story and was surprised to see how well they fit the pattern you discussed. I’ll do a few line edits on one of my short stories tonight and get it sent over to you. I’m really enjoying the class!
Awesome! Thank you for volunteering for the first workshop.
And yeah, once you catch onto that first three paragraph thing, you realize how much the good stories are packing in there.
I just e-mailed you my story for the workshop.
I really enjoyed the class last night! The timed writing was fantastic.
Thanks! I missed the part where you talked about the first three paragraphs and what they do. Is there any way I can get caught up to speed on that?