Creative Writing

Having been racing my way through many SFF book series, I started to note the differences amongst how they approach certain issues of construction – how they deal with the continuing story, individual novels as part of a larger whole, and ...

When talking to Gollancz’s Publishing Director, Gillian Redfearn, at Nine Worlds (you can listen to the full conversation here), I’ve been mulling over something she said. Gillian posited that we may have a gender default – where we automatically default ...

I am currently on a mission to watch everything Joe Gilgun has ever appeared in. From Misfits to This is England to Pride to Preacher, he has quickly become one of my favourite actors of all time, while also being ...

With Independence Day: Resurgence hitting cinemas this week, I decided to watch the original. I am one of these weirdos who had never actually seen the film, despite its popularity. Well, I’ve seen it now. And while watching it, I ...

Dystopia and other post-apocalyptic tales have long been popular in the SFF world. From YA dysfic to scifi horror (robots! aliens! WMDs!), writers have great fun imagining all the weird and wonderful ways society, the world, even the universe, as ...

An unfortunate aspect of writing is marketing. Writers are not generally at ease with selling their work. Instead, we tend to be more the shy, retiring type, someone who likes to hole up in our dark study with copious amounts ...

Everywhere I go I meet people who say ‘I’d love to have the time to write’. The implication is often that I obviously don’t have enough going on in my life or I’d never be able to do what I ...

Fans of SFF works have a bad reputation for being nit-picky, especially when it comes to the details of world-building. Strong world-building, however, is a big part of why readers are drawn to science fiction and fantasy. If we were ...

For all writers, readers, publishers, agents, and general genre enthusiasts, FantasyCon is one of the friendliest and informative places to be. For those of you unfamiliar with FantasyCon, it is unlike the conventions you may be used to – it ...

Chuck Wendig sets his readers weekly writing challenges. This week’s challenge was to write an essay on why you write. To me, this is one of the most challenging writing assignments I have ever been set. While I pride myself ...