A Writer's Guide to Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy

This manual full of hands-on, practical, put-the-book-down-and-start-writing advice speaks to new and emerging authors of science fiction and fantasy. The bestselling SciFi writers who have compiled the book offer more than pep talks and success stories; they explain genres and how to bend and blend them, giving concrete suggestions for overcoming inevitable writing problems across genres: self-editing, creating plausible characters, and building a plot without writing formula fiction. With a combined fifty years of experience, Kilian and Moreno-Garcia save writers time, energy, and grief by showing them how to master the craft of storytelling and how to market their stories as successfully as possible. Their invaluable advice persuades readers to go beyond expectations of market and genre, pushing them to be better writers, and to add their own unique voices into the growing speculative fiction arena. For aspiring writers of the SciFi & Fantasy genre, this book will light the way to creating your own books.

Crawford Kilian has been teaching and writing online since the 1980s. He has published more than twenty books, including Writing for the Web, Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Sell Your Nonfiction Book. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of Signal to Noise, named one of the best books of the year by BookRiot, Tor.com, BuzzFeed, io9, and more; Certain Dark Things, one of NPR's best books of the year and a Publishers Weekly top ten; the fantasy of manners The Beautiful Ones; and the science fiction novella Prime Meridian.