Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 71

The Life Story of a Short Story

Hello. I’m a short story. Since Poseidon’s Scribe never got around to blogging about the whole short story process, he invited me to guest blog today. My title is “Alexander’s Odyssey,” and I was written by Steven R. Southard. My life story is typical of other tales, and might be obvious to many of you, but the steps weren’t clear to Steve when he started.

1. Idea. I started as an idea. You did too, I suppose, but with stories you only need one human with an idea, if you know what I mean. Gett...

Dear Arthur C. Clarke

Though you’ve been dead these past eight years, you live on in your stories. That’s true for me and for millions of others.

Throughout my life I’ve read many of your works, including more of your short stories than I can remember, and the following novels: Childhood’s End, The Deep Range, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, Rendezvous with Rama, Rama Revealed, The Songs of Distant Earth, and The Hammer of God.

I recall purchasing your book 2001: A Space Odyssey (or ma...

Meet the Punk Family

If you’re into science fiction, particularly alternate history or speculative fiction, there are some interesting sub-genres to be aware of. They all have -punk in their name: cyberpunk, clockpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, and atompunk.

I’ve blogged about steampunk before, but here I’ll step back and introduce the Punk family.

Cyberpunk. This term describes fiction involving a world of the near future where computer technology has made life miserable and degraded society. Author Bruce Bethke is c...

10 Reasons You Really Are Good Enough to Write Fiction

Perhaps you have a story inside you, but you feel too scared or intimidated or inadequate to believe you could ever write fiction. Here are some ways to banish those feelings.

First, there are at least three levels of fiction-writing. (1) These days you can write and publish something yourself without an editor, at near zero cost. (2) You can get your writing accepted by a publisher, but not make enough money to live on. (3) You can write fiction as your sole means of support. I’ll limit mysel...

Dear Robert Heinlein

Yeah, I know the records say you’ve been dead since 1988, but I figure you found or inherited some way to cheat the reaper, like your character Lazarus Long did. By some weird and inexplicable means, I think you could be reading this.

Over my lifetime, I’ve read several of your novels and short stories. In my high school and college days, I read “By His Bootstraps,” Time Enough for Love, Star Beast, The Man Who Sold the Moon, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, Farnham’s Freehold, a...

Books in the Shadows

Recall the brouhaha in February and March 2012 between PayPal and Smashwords? It’s been a year and a half since then; time for a retrospective look.

It started when PayPal told Smashwords to remove all content referring to bestiality, rape, and incest from its website or else its customers could no longer buy books using PayPal. The problem for PayPal was that it was backed by major credit card companies; all of whom had reputations to uphold. They couldn’t be seen as permitting, let alone adv...

The Seed and Twist Revisited

I’ve mentioned a couple of times before (here and here) my method of coming up with story ideas. I call it the seed and twist. The seed is some humdrum, everyday thing. The twist is where you look at the seed in a new way, give it some novel alteration.

By way of illustration, I’ll discuss the seed and twist for each of the stories I’ve had published to date. Don’t think of it as a glimpse into how my mind works; you don’t want to know. Think of it as a jumping off point for coming up with you...

A Review of “The Six Hundred Dollar Man”

My story, “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” received a favorable review by Lototy over at Coffee Time Romance. Check out her review here; she really understood the message of the story, and knows how to craft a fine review.

I don’t know if Lototy even likes coffee, but someone should buy her an urn-full. Someone like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Dear Dr. Asimov

You may have some difficulty reading this, since you’ve been dead for over 21 years, but I hope somehow this tribute finds its way to you nonetheless. I just wanted to say thanks, however belatedly, for your books and the way they influenced me.

I started reading science fiction in the early 1970s, and by then you were a giant in the field. I read dozens of your short stories, and some of your novels including Foundation, Fantastic Voyage, The Gods Themselves, The End of Eternity, The Naked Su...

Make Your Readers Cry

How can you cause your readers to cry? No, I don’t mean crying about having bought your book. That’s easy. I want to explore how you should write so as to cause readers to experience a powerful emotional reaction, one you actually intend to cause. It need not be sadness, but any powerful reaction.

I can’t find the precise quote, but Isaac Asimov once said the aim of writing good fiction is to maximize the emotional response of the reader. That makes it sound so mathematical; simply take the mu...