Practical Writing Advice: Writing Help for Speculative Fiction
Writing speculative fiction (which broadly encompasses the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, among others) comes with its own unique set of challenges not present in writing other genres. Now Write!: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror is a collection of short writing help essays and exercises by speculative fiction writers for speculative fiction writers.
Now Write: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror edited by Laurie Lamson
Image from Amazon.com
The Now Write! series of books has writing help for lots of genres and formats, such as mystery, screenwriting, and nonfiction. I’ve come across plenty of writing books that were aimed at writers in general or writers of literary fiction. While that can be helpful, I also like to check out books with writing help for my particular genre. Since I’m primarly a fantasy and horror (and occasionally science-fiction) writer, I decided to check out the Now Write! book on speculative fiction.
The format of Now Write! is great for busy writers – it’s divided into broad sections on particular writing topics, such as Understanding Your Genre and World Building. Each of these broad sections contains short articles written by a speculative fiction author, followed by an exercise to help you put their advice into action. I particularly enjoyed discovering new speculative fiction authors by reading this book.
Now Write! has great advice not only to help improve your writing craft overall, but also has writing exercises you can use on a daily basis or if you’re feeling stuck in one particular area (such as coming up with a title, which tends to be fairly difficult for me.) Now Write! is a useful addition to any speculative fiction writer’s bookshelf (whether physical or digital!). This book is available $7.99 on Kindle or $13.70 in paperback at Amazon.
Have another writing resource you’d like to recommend? Leave a comment below!
If you’re looking for more writing help for speculative fiction, check out my previous post on the inspirational and useful Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer.
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