Writers spend a lot of time thinking critically about beginnings and ends. These are crucial moments in creating a satisfying story, but they’re also the easiest turning points to consider. What’s the first moment of trouble, the first moment of choice? What’s the final confrontation, the culmination of the character’s desires and needs? Execution, of […]
I’ve been writing and submitting fiction for nearly two decades now, and while I don’t have an itemized list, I believe I’ve received about one trillion rejections. One particular criticism appeared again and again: The opening is too slow and the stakes are too low. This complaint began to wear at me like a stone […]
Isabel J. Kim is a Korean-American science fiction and fantasy writer based in New York City. An attorney by day, she also co-hosts Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture. Her stories have been included in the Locus Recommended Reading List, as well as TOR.com’s Must Read list. Her work has been published in […]
Nick Olson’s newest book, a speculative novel-in-flash titled Afterglow (Alien Buddha Press), will be released in June. Nick is a freelance editor and author of both literary and speculative fiction. His previous novels, Here’s Waldo and The Brother We Share, are available now. He is the editor of lit zine (mac)ro(mic). Nick let me take an early peek at Afterglow and I loved the complex future history he has envisioned.
What are your writerly obsessions? What theme, idea, or image do you often gravitate towards? As a mixed-race writer (Black and white), I feel myself coming back to the idea of in-betweenness again and again. In fact, I think I gravitate toward the speculative because it allows me to grapple with human issues of love, […]
It’s one of the most memorable Horror movie endings. Heather runs down the stairs of a crumbling house, screaming Mike’s name. He isn’t responding. Anything could’ve happened to him. Then there’s a glimpse of him in the basement. He’s not decapitated or consumed in witchfire. He’s just standing in the corner. That’s all we see […]
I always tell my writing students that today is an exciting time to be an author interested in both genre and literary fiction. That the barrier between the two is dissolving, that readers care little about labels, that even the Pulitzers and National Book Awards have genre works among the finalists, and that authors like Kelly Link or Carmen Maria Machado or Ted Chiang or Jeff VanderMeer can build readerships in both fields. And all that’s true. But at the same time, the literary and genre worlds remain in some ways very separate.
I used to be absolutely terrified of zombies. I avoided any zombie story like the plague (lol get it). But in 2013, I had an emergency C-section with my oldest daughter, Aryn. After thirty hours of labor, a sweet, bespectacled doctor leaned down and brushed my sweaty hair out of my face and told me […]
Does my protagonist get to be Black and have clinical depression? Be neuro-divergent and transgender? The default setting to writing diverse stories often presents as a “this or that” scenario. Or leaves an author feeling as though certain demographic boxes need to be “checked” to ensure their book is perceived as inclusive “enough.” The fallacy […]
I. In my English classroom in high school, there was a large poster in the front of the room. In thick, lurid lime-green block letters it stated: “Every moment spent reading is a moment spent learning how to write.” Even now, I still do not know who this quote is attributed to, but I know […]
As part of a deal I made with myself to improve my writing this year, I decided to commit to studying bestselling novels all year long. Why? Because Debbie Macomber once recommended this to me while we were both at a festival dinner. She seemed so certain it helps. I was grilling her relentlessly about […]
First published in The Masters Review “I don’t believe a teenager would think this.” This is a critique I’ve heard often while writing my YA novel, a story about a teenage girl who goes to live with her father in Sioux Falls one summer; when she arrives, she finds he’s left town. Rather than calling […]