Archive for March, 2012
Totalizing Claims
01Mar12
Are you worried that your secondary-world fantasy seems too modern, enlightened, and progressive? Are your characters overly aware and critical of the ideology of their setting, creating a frame-breaking Mary Sue effect by which they act as mouthpieces for your contemporary opinions about race, class, and gender? Do you sometimes struggle to write characters who, […]
Filed under: WRITING STYLE | 1 Comment
Tags: Balzac, gene wolfe, K J Bishop, poe
Beginnings: The Promise
01Mar12
Welcome to SpecTechnique, a technical blog for speculative fiction writers. Every day, I’ll be presenting a different technique of interest, we’ll cover everything from action to aphorism. Today we’re going to look at intro paragraphs. The intro paragraph is probably the most important paragraph in a short story. That paragraph may be all that busy […]
Filed under: BEGINNINGS | 4 Comments
Tags: carole johnstone, james morrow, jonathan kellerman