Help! I Want To Be A Speculative Fiction Writer

Author: Heidi Wessman Kneale

Since time immemorial, Man has looked to the stars and asked the question, "What If...?" He's a dreamer of impossible things—of worlds and stories beyond the life he knows. As speculative fiction writers, Man gives voice to these dreams of "What If".

What Is Speculative Fiction?

Speculative Fiction is a broad genre that includes science fiction, fantasy, alternative historical fiction, and horror. Some popular authors include J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. Some mainstream literature—for example, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood—can be considered speculative fiction because they contain some element of the fantastical.

Speculative fiction has been around for thousands of years. Many stories and myths from classical civilizations are classed as speculative fiction, such as the Illiad and the Odyssey. Fairy tales from Europe are included as well. Science fiction has been around since Mary Shelley first wrote Frankenstein—considered the first science fiction novel. Many works of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain are also considered speculative fiction.

Getting An Idea

All speculative fiction starts off with the question "What If?" What if Mankind could travel to the stars? What if Stonehenge had magical properties? The speculative fiction writer takes the World As We Know It and looks beyond. The ideas don't have to be completely off the wall or so removed from our reality to make a word speculative. Subtle ideas—plausible ideas—can create wonderful stories. What if your cat was telepathic after all? What if the polar ice caps melted? What would happen then, and how would these things impact on the lives of the characters?

For example, In Neil Gaiman's short story Chivalry, a little old lady living an ordinary life finds the Holy Grail for sale in a second-hand shop in England. The beauty of this story is not that possessing the Grail is a dramatic life-changing event, but that for her, it is merely another pretty ornament to put on the mantle. Nevertheless, when a Knight of the Round Table comes looking for it, she puts him through his paces to prove himself worthy to claim the Grail.

So, where do ideas come from? When asked where he got his ideas, science fiction author Harlan Ellison is attributed to have replied, "From a post office box in Schenectady." Generally, ideas can come from anything. Ever wondered what would happen if you didn't clean out the fridge? Anything can spark an idea for a story. The trick is to take an idea one step beyond the "here and now" and speculate what would happen if something were true and what the consequences of that would be.

Unique Tools To Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction features some craft tools not found in any other genre. World Building and Supertext are two of the most important tools in the speculative fiction writers' toolbox.

World Building
If a writer is to play with What If, they will need to establish the ground rules of what sort of environment would create the conditions that address the question of "What If". In simpler terms, if you're going to write about boy wizards, you've got to choose what sort of world or conditions a boy wizard would live in. How does magic work? What are its limitations? What are the consequences of using such magic?

World building means creating your imaginary setting by defining the speculative elements. Sometimes this can be as simple as defining one small tweak in what would otherwise be a normal neighborhood, as in Gaiman's Chivalry, or it could be as complex as creating an entire new world with new races, a whole magic system and everything, as in JRR Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings.

Most of world building takes place outside the story. Then you, the writer, determine what elements of this world will figure in the story. When you write the story, you apply the elements as necessary. You don't need to give these elaborate explanations of why and how things work. Simply apply the rules as you portray the story and trust that your readers will pick it up. Speculative fiction readers are a saavy bunch.

The trick is to come across with the attitude of, "Of course this is how it's supposed to be." And when you do it right, your readers will respond, "Yeah, we'll believe that." The most important thing to remember with worldbuilding is consistency. You've got to be consistent in applying your new rules of magic, physics and society. Otherwise, you'll get caught in your fabrication and the readers won't believe you.
Supertext And Its Evil Twin, Cliché
Because speculative fiction is the genre of "What If?" stories are expected to be fresh and different. This doesn't mean that the idea has to be so original nobody thought of it, but the angle you deliver the story should be. It is very difficult for even an experienced speculative writer to come up with an original story. But take a classic idea and add your interpretation to it and you could have a masterpiece.

For example, in Gaiman's Chivalry, the idea of a knight questing for the Holy Grail is a common idea in speculative fiction (Indiana Jones is another example) but to have a little old lady being the guardian—albeit an accidental one—is the angle that makes this story fresh.

Many writers new to speculative fiction (and I have been guilty of this in my early days) is to come up with what seemed like an "original" idea, only to find out that it's been done many, many times before. Ideas dependent on a plot twist at the end are difficult to expand on. They make for great stories the first few times, but due to the narrowness of their scope, the more they are used, the more cliché they become.

For example, stories featuring the last two survivors of a space ship crash on a planet just happen to be named Adam and Eve, or a time travel story where someone has to go back in time to prevent something from happening in order to change the future are considered cliché. It's hard to come up with another fresh take on ideas like these because they depend on the twist to carry the story.

Using cliché as the basis of the story is generally discouraged. So if clichés are discouraged and there are no new ideas, what do you do? You tap into the speculative fiction supertext and explore an angle with your own words.

Supertext is an idea that has been developed by enough writers to become generally accepted as "fact" and is tapped into by various writers to "expand the mythos". The mythology behind vampires is a good example of supertext. Everyone knows that vampires fear the sun, cast no reflection in mirrors, bite necks, etc. When a writer sits down to write a vampire story, they don't need to explain what these elements are. Readers who read vampires stories and editors who buy vampire stories will already be familiar with this term and other tropes of the supertext.

This leaves the writer free to explore their unique angle on the mythos of vampires. For example, a college student majoring in graphic design is turned into a vampire. Unable to attend day classes, but not wanting to quit university, they choose to change their major to computer science and study programming. This suits the student, for programming classes at this university are evening classes and it's easier to book the computer lab in the wee hours of the morning for long programming stints.

Length Of Story

Short stories (5000 words or less) are a popular form for speculative fiction. For novels, the usual word count tends to be over 100,000 words. Anything less is rare, as the richness of novel-level worldbuilding demands the longer form. In fantasy, the trilogy is the most popular of the novel forms, featuring a series of three novels, constructed very much like a three-act play. (Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy.) Five-book series are common (David Eddings' The Belgariad) and even ten-book series (Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time) are not unknown. Singleton novels, especially from new authors, are rare. A new trend in short stories is flash fiction—stories of 500 words or less. The challenge to create a speculative story—world building and all—in this short form creates some extremely tight and well-refined stories.

Writing The Story

Like any other form of fiction, the story takes as long as it takes to tell. Whatever point of view you choose, whatever style, whatever application it takes, just write the story and don't worry about length or conventions. There are no recommended formulae, or guidelines to adhere to, like other forms of fiction (for example, a romance novel must have a "Happily Ever After" [HEA] ending). In fact, speculative fiction writers are encouraged to break any perceived strictures. Different is good. The farmer boy who's really a hidden Prince can only go questing for the Magic McGuffin to destroy the Dark Lord so many times before speculative fiction readers start to yawn and put the book down.

Elise McCrom*, an insider at a major publisher of speculative fiction, states, "The problem with many science fiction (SF) novels, and why they don't get bought even though they are perfectly serviceable, is that they are...perfectly serviceable. The prose is good, the action is engaging, the dialogue is witty, the plot hangs together like a well-tailored suit.

"But the plot is something we've seen before, albeit dressed in different clothes; the dialogue is witty but no more so than lots of other witty dialogue; the action is engaging but we've seen car chases before; and the prose is good, but lots of people can write that well.

"[Editors see] lots of stuff that is well-written but derivative. And while some of that will sell to a publisher who is chasing the latest fad, it's unlikely to break out of the pack, but will instead be seen as ‘Generic Book of Subgenre Foo’, and when the fad for the subgenre passes, it will fall out of memory and never be read again.”

"What makes a book not-derivative....is when a writer draws on source material other than other SF works.”

"Too many writers only read nonfiction as research for the book they're already writing. 'I need to know about X' and often X is something that other writers in the genre are also researching, because it is a trope that recurs in derivative fiction.”

"But if a person just happens to be interested in something, not because they read SF, but exclusive of that reading preference, then they've got something."

"If [writers] read a lot of books that aren't SF, then you have an idea of things that work in books, and approaches that produce good books, but aren't the techniques most commonly used in SF. This, again, will lead to books that aren't coming from the same source as everyone else."

If you're familiar with another genre and wish to try your hand at speculative fiction, go for it! Your "cross-training" may serve you well.

This drawing upon other fiction and even non-fiction forms has created entire new subgenres. Fantastic romance is gaining in popularity. The publishers, Harlequin and Silhouette, recently opened a new imprint, Luna, specifically for science fiction romance stories. Other publishers who don't traditionally handle speculative fiction are looking to these "genre crossover" trends to add freshness to their fiction genres.

Refining The Story

One of the best methods of "test driving" a speculative fiction story to see if the idea will fly is to "workshop" the story. This means handing the story over to a group of readers and getting feedback. Workshops can range from informal kaffeeklatsches (small intimate gatherings of a few writer-type friends) to membership-based online workshops to formal "boot camp" courses.

Many successful workshops use the "Milford Method" of critique: basically, every participant reads the story, and then tells the writer what they did right and what needs improvement. They look for plot, characterization, dialogue, grammar and more. When the Milford Method is applied correctly, it can be a strong and supportive critique method.

Are workshops useful? They can be. Charles Coleman Finlay, published author and administrator of the Online Writing Workshop (http://www.onlinewritingworkshop.com) and an instructor at Clarion 2005 (http://www.msu.edu/~clarion/) explains, "Workshops force us to develop our critical abilities. They also help us learn critical detachment. For most writers, those skills spill over to our own work and we're able to start reading our own work more critically. That helps us close the gap between the story in our head and the story that ends up on the page for other readers to enjoy."

Like a computer or a thesaurus, a workshop is a tool that doesn't do the writer any good unless they know how to use it. "It's very important for the writer to know what they want from the workshop or class," says Finlay. "If a writer goes in with a specific goal like "this will help me solve my pacing issues" or "I want to learn everything I can from this teacher," they'll probably do well."

Getting Published

Speculative fiction is a hot market at the moment, with lots of magazines willing to pay for good stories. One of the best things about getting speculative fiction published is that the editors don't care who you are, what your background is, or how much experience you have (or don't have). All they care about is that you can write a good story.

Editors will buy a good story from an unpublished writer as readily as they would buy a good story from a "Big Name Author". One of the top magazines in the market, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder, tends to publish a high percentage of new writers. It also has a quick turnaround time in responses, so this is a good place for new writers to start submitting.

Speculative fiction markets are easy to find. Most list their guidelines online (could you expect anything less from publishers of science fiction?) and many have listings with market databases. Ralan and Quintamid are good places to start looking for markets.

Once you've found your target market, print out your completed story in Standard Manuscript Format (1" margins, left-justified, ragged right, double-spaced, 12 point Courier font, etc). Type a simple cover letter. No need to try and persuade the editor that you are the best person to write this story. The story will speak for itself. Post your story and your cover letter along with a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) then wait for a reply.

I'll be honest with you: more than 90% of all submissions are rejected. This does not necessarily mean they are bad. Often it simply means the story wasn't right for that particular market. It's common for a story to be sent to ten or fifteen markets before it finds a good home.

Write Speculative Fiction

So you want to write speculative fiction? Go for it. The people who inhabit the world of speculative fiction are a friendly bunch who love to see new blood. So look at your world through the corner of your eye to what isn't—but could be—and ask yourself, "What if...?"

* The name of this contributor has been changed, per her request, to prevent unsolicited contact.