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Free Lesson Plans for Kid’s Fantasy and SF Writing Workshop

August 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here’s a writeup of the first lesson from a fantasy and science fiction writing workshop I’ve been teaching at my local public library for the last two weeks. It’s for kids ages 9 to 15, but the lessons are useful for anyone. And in case you too are teaching writing to kids … I’ve found this first lesson is a good ice breaker. It’s basically a really sneaky way of getting them to talk about what they want to write, and to do a first session of what amounts to freewriting … but without blowing trumpets and announcing that You’re Going To Make Them (Gasp!) WRITE!

Some kids, especially the younger ones, come to class with no hangups at all and don’t need any coaxing. But other kids (usually the older ones) can be very shy about sharing their own writing.

By the way, if you’re teaching a writing workshop and want to use this lesson yourself, go ahead. Cut and paste and use as you will as long as you credit me: creative commons, blah blah blah, share and share alike. There are two more lesson plans already posted at www.inquisitorsapprentice.com. I’ll try to put the rest of the lessons from this year’s workshop up there too. Just be patient, since I’m crazy busy trying to finish two books right now and it may take a few weeks for me to scrape together the time to write out my class notes in full and check for typos. Especially the checking for typos part. Am I the only person who finds that hunting down typos often takes longer than actually writing the darn thing?

 

What You Read is What You Write

Let’s talk about you. Who are you? Not you the everyday person, but you the writer. What makes the writer inside you tick? What kind of stories do you want to write? And why?

Asking yourself why you want to write might seem silly or pretentious at first. But it’s really a very practical question. Why? Because knowing why you write can help you figure out what to write … and how to write it.

So before we start writing, I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about reading. Take out a pencil and paper and jot down the answers to a few questions for me. What do you like to read? What books could you read over and over again? What characters do you know so well that it feels like they’re your best friends? What imaginary places have you spent so much time in that you feel like you know them better than your own back yard? What stories — stories in books, stories in movies, stories in comics, or even stories in computer games — get you so excited that they make you start imagining your own worlds and characters and thinking up your own stories?

Ahem.

So … uh … did you answer those questions? Or did you just skip ahead to this paragraph? Yeah, I know. And I know why too. I mean, you already know how to read. You’re here to learn how to write. So why can’t we get on with it?

Because here’s the thing. Those books I’m asking you about? The books you read for fun, during summer vacation, or after school, or under the desk while the teacher’s not looking? Those books are pure magic. And they can teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about writing.

That’s the single lesson I hope you’ll take out of this workshop. In fact, even if you forget every other thing we talk about for the next two weeks, it won’t matter in the long run if you just remember this:

Writing great fantasy and science fiction isn’t about following some complicated set of rules, or turning in assignments that come back all covered in red ink, or learning a secret handshake that only “real writers” know. It’s about retelling your favorite stories in new and different ways. It’s about learning to think like a writer — not just when you’re reading a favorite book, but also when you’re reading comics, or watching movies, or playing computer games. It’s about learning to see STORY in places you might not ever have though to look for it. It’s about learning to notice how good writers tell stories and what they do that makes you want to keep reading or keep watching or keep playing. And most of all, it’s about imagination — the same kind of imagination you use when you read a favorite book and bring the world and characters to life in your own mind.

But … is it really that simple? Can you really learn to write just by reading your favorite writers? Yes you can. In fact, that’s exactly how all you favorite writers learned to write themselves. And every writing rule you’ll ever read in a book or hear about in a class is really just a way of trying to describe the indescribable thing that great stories do … and that you can learn to do yourself simply by reading lots and lots of stories.

Sounds like a lot of work, huh? I mean who’d want to read thousands and thousands of pages of stories just to learn how to write? Well, gee, I don’t know. Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings? Or Harry Potter? Or Percy Jackson? Have you read any of them more than once? Have you read all of them more than once? I have. And I didn’t do it because I thought it would make me a better writer. I did it because it was fun.

If any of the above describes you then you are in the right place. And you already know everything you need to know to write great stories yourself. All you need to do is take the same powers of imagination that bring your favorite books to life inside your head — and use them to tell your own stories.

So let’s take a look at some of your favorite stories in order to figure out what makes them tick and whether you can learn to write the easy way just by reading your favorite writers…

 

Exercise #1: Reader, Meet Writer

This exercise is easy. Take out a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side of the page make a list of your favorite stories. Don’t stop to think too much about it. Just list your favorite stories in any order they come to mind. They can be books, or movies, or comics, or even games. It doesn’t matter. Just write them all down in whatever order you think of them. Now go to the right side of the page, where you still have lots of nice empty white space to write in. Here, next to each story, try to jot down some of the specific things you love about it. A great world? Lots of action? Great characters? Imagine that you’re talking to a friend who’s never read the book (or seen the movie or played the game). You’ve got one minute to convince them that they really need to read this book. How do you do it? What so great about this book that they have to read it instead of every other book in the library??

Now go back down the right-hand side of the page and look at what you’ve written down. See any patterns? What did you talk about? What pieces of the story did you mention when you were trying to convince that imaginary friend to read it? I’m going to guess that a lot of what you wrote down included answers to the following kinds of questions that most people tend to ask themselves when they’re reading a story:

• what’s this story about? (“a magical battle between good and evil” or “superheroes fighting crime” … or “Dragons!”)

• what kind of world is this story set in? (“Middle Earth” or “Outer Space” or “a world just like ours except….”)

• who’s the main character, and what does he want, and who’s trying to stop him from getting it?

 

Exercise #2:

Now take a good long look at the two lists you just made. Scan the whole page, both sides. See any patterns? What are they? Take out a fresh piece of paper and try to fill in the blank below:

I like to read stories about _________________ set in worlds where _________________ with characters that ______________________.

There might not be one single version of this sentence that describes all the stories you like. And the kinds of stories you like may change over time too, so the answers you come up with today might not work for you next month. So do this exercise every now and then, especially when you’re stuck for story ideas, or have a story that doesn’t seem to be working for you. What you find out might surprise you! And it will almost certainly help you.

Bottom line: There’s no one right kind of story to write, but if you stick to writing stories that are like the stories you love reading, then you’ll be excited about them … and being excited about your story is the best way to make sure readers are excited too.

Like the old saying goes: you can’t please everyone … but you can please yourself! So when you sit down to write, write the stuff you like to read. If it’s fantasy, write fantasy. If it’s science fiction, write science fiction. If it’s comic books, write comic books. It doesn’t matter what it is. And it doesn’t matter if other people like it, or want to read it, or think it’s what you should be writing. All that does matter is that you like it.

Here Endeth the LESSON!

 

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What’s in YOUR Dystopia?

July 25, 2011 By 1 Comment

Night Bazaar asked me to write a guest post about dystopias. The post turned into a long one — and that’s the drastically cut version that doesn’t talk about much of the stuff I started out to talk about. I think I will be writing more about dystopias in the medium term future. And much of it will be an attempt to find a satisfactory answer to a fan I met at Readercon last week named Adriana, who asked me a series of big questions about my treatment of the Syndicates in Spin State and Spin Control … and then vanished before I could really come up with a satisfactory answer. So, Adriana, if you’re out there, I’m still trying to answer you. Or at least I’m thinking about it….

Dystopia is about the gap between how things are and how we want them to be. That gap is called conflict. And though conflict is often invoked when writers talk about how to hook readers, most people never really unpack what it means in science fiction and fantasy. SF and Fantasy are transformational genres. They’re not just about getting a date to the prom or whether Elizabeth is going to marry Darcy. They’re about reimagining the world. So the central conflict of good SF and fantasy — the kind that readers remember and talk about long after they’ve read the final page — is not inside the book but outside of it. It’s the gap between the world the you and your readers live in and the world you and your readers want to live in….

Crack open even the most bleak and cynical dystopia, and you will find a utopia folded into it like the fortune in a fortune cookie. Or let’s put it another way: Dystopia is the subway station. Inertia (or readerly cynicism) is the gap you have to get your readers safely across if you want them to climb on your train. And Utopia is where the train is going.

Looked at in this way, the difference between dystopia and utopia is simply one of emphasis. A dystopia gets readers on the train by telling them how bad it is where they are now. A utopia does it by telling them how great things could be if they take the leap of faith and come along for the ride. But there’s always a train, and last station at the end of the line is always Utopia.

 

You can read the full post at Night Bazaar.

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Best SF and Fantasy First Lines for Kids’ Writing Workshop?

June 20, 2011 By 18 Comments

Okay. So this is a desperate plea for help posing as a book giveaway. I’m teaching a kids’ writing workshop at my local public library this summer. The workshop is for kids 9  to 14 who want to write science fiction and fantasy, and the librarians have specifically asked me to link my writing exercises to books in their collections so they can encourage the kids to … um … you know … read.

This request reminded me of a writing exercise I’ve always loved: taking the first line of a published book and letting students use it as the first line of their own story. Great first lines make great writing prompts. But equally important — especially for young writers — is the revelation that different people can spin wonderfully different stories from the same first line and there’s no one right way to tell a story.

The thing is … the workshop meets for six classes. And I want to send the kids home from each class with at least half a dozen first lines to choose from. Because there’s nothing worse than having to slog through a writing exercise that just doesn’t get your creative juices flowing. Which means that, by my back of envelope calculation, I need 36 first lines.

So … um … help?!?

What are your favorite first lines from kid’s SF or fantasy books? And in the hopes of getting you to actually track them down and post them, I’ll make this an official(ish) contest and offer a free signed ARC of The Inquisitor’s Apprentice to anyone whose first line I actually use in the workshop. (Not like I have a box of ARCs in my basement I’m trying to get rid of or anything. Why do my publishers even send me these things? They should know better by now!)

SF and Fantasy only, please. And though you don’t have to limit yourself to books that are officially classed as YA or Middle Grade, please bear in mind that the workshop is for 9-14 year-olds. So try to stick to books you think the average 14 year old will actually enjoy.

Um, what else? Oh. Here’s my favorite first line … or one of them anyway:

“I always get the shakes before a drop.”


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What Do You Stand For?

May 6, 2011 By 15 Comments

This is not going to be a normal post. Something happened last week that really shook me: a friend, Egyptian legal scholar and human rights activist Amr Shalakany, was imprisoned for the “crime” of insulting the military — an offense that carries a fifteen year prison sentence. Amr is back home now and the charges against him have been dropped, so this is not going to be a desperate plea to “retweet to free Amr!” However, I’m still having a hard time this week taking what I do for a living very seriously. And I find myself asking tough questions about whether I’m doing enough in life to stand up for the things I believe in.

First a little bit about Amr Shalakany. I’ve known him for years. I’m married to a colleague of his, and we are linked to each other in a close-knit academic community where people read each other’s books, attend conferences together, and engage in the kind of intense after-dinner up-until-all-hours intellectual debates that soon turn mere colleagues into friends. In such a setting you soon come to know who a person is and what he stands for in the world. So I’ve known for years what Amr Shalakany stands for: for peace; for the rule of law; for a world where ordinary people have the right to live as they choose, think for themselves, and speak truth to power without fear of punishment.

According to the Egyptian military, however, this respected human rights lawyer spent last weekend burning down a police station. The fact that the military would make such a ludicrous accusation in the first place shows that they have so little respect for the truth they can’t even be bothered to lie competently. And the fact that they dropped the charges says less about their respect for the truth than about their tactical judgment that they can’t target a prominent academic with impunity … or at least that they can’t do it yet.

I have not talked to Amr since his release, but if I know him he won’t be crowing about getting off. He’ll be unhappy that he was spared because of his status as a internationally-known scholar, while some 5000 civilians have already been sentenced by military courts in group trials without legal counsel. Amr will be hard at work figuring out what to do next to stand up for the dream of an open, peaceful, democratic Egypt. And he’ll be worrying about the Egyptian military’s obvious attempts to install what Washington Post blogger William J. Dobson called “a culture of impunity” — one that would turn Egypt into a truth-free zone where the military can say or do anything without fear of consequences.

Basically, Amr will be doing exactly what he’s done for most of his adult life, first as a scholar and now as a pro-democracy activist: standing up for the truth. And that is what I want to talk to you about today.

Standing up for the truth is a strange thing for a science fiction writer to talk about. But it is something that has been on my mind a lot lately — largely because I have been reading two writers, Geoff Ryman and Nnedi Okorafor, who embody my ideal of using the literature of the fantastic to speak difficult truths about our world. Amr’s arrest has brought my thoughts about these two writers’ work into sharper focus. And it has left me asking myself what I stand for in life — and what I’m doing to stand up and be counted instead of sitting comfortably on the sidelines.

The relation of fiction to “truth’ is always complicated. And for fantasy and science fiction writers, it is doubly complicated. If realist fiction is ‘the lie that tells the truth,’ then fantastic fiction is a lie that doesn’t even have the decency to put on a little makeup and try to pass for the truth. This double removal from reality lays fantasy writers open to (sometimes legitimate) accusations of escapism. But I see fantasy’s freedom from the rules of realist fiction as imposing a duty to a different kind of truth.

If you’re writing realist fiction set in your little corner of the everyday world, then it’s reasonable (though not particularly admirable) to claim that you don’t need to worry about other people’s problems because they aren’t relevant to your little slice of reality. In other words, realist writers can afford to ignore the larger world and all the uncomfortable and challenging “Others” it contains — other faiths, other experiences, other people’s hopes and dreams and sufferings. But if you’re building new worlds from whole cloth as fantasy writers do, then you must take into account all the multifaceted complexity of our own world. If you don’t, then your imagined world will be false — and so, at some level, will every story and character that inhabits it. At best, that kind of fantasy offers readers an escape from the world. (And an empty escape at that — not the good, refreshing, reinvigorating kind of escape that well-written fantasy offers.) At worst, it reconfirms all the injustice, prejudice, and pettiness that make readers want to escape from the world in the first place.

That’s not what fantasy is about. Not for me, anyway. That’s not why I write it, or why I read it. And I’m pretty sure the same goes for you. We engage in fantasy precisely because we want to understand our world and ourselves. We engage in fantasy because we are disturbed enough about the state of the world to feel the urge to escape from it. We engage in fantasy because we are hopeful enough about the state of the world to believe in the power of the imagination to transform it for the better. We engage in fantasy because of a brave and childish faith that the stories we tell can change the world we live in.

This is what Amr Shalakany has done for most of his life. First, as a scholar who tried to retell the complicated story of Egypt’s history in a way that would help it build a viable future. And now, in a very different way, as a pro-democracy activist. Except that the “transformative story” Amr and his fellow activists are telling in Egpyt right now is one told in actions, not just words on paper. And in telling this story — telling it on the streets of Cairo to men with guns who very much don’t want to hear it — they are putting themselves in terrible danger.

I feel humbled in life by what Amr Shalakany and his fellow democracy activists are doing, just as I feel humbled in my work by writers like Geoff Ryman and Nnedi Okorafor. They make me ask myself if I’m doing enough to stand up for the truth, both in my life and in my writing. And the fact that this question makes me uncomfortable is probably a pretty good hint that the answer is no….

I don’t have any wise words or ringing truths to leave you with. I don’t know what you can or should do to stand up for the truth in your own life. There is no one right way to stand for truth — mainly because the truth is different for each of us, in subtle yet vitally important ways. But I do know that the first step towards standing up for the truth is to protect the truthtellers. So I hope that as you go through your day, you will keep Amr Shalakany in mind. And I hope you’ll remember all the other people, many of whom we never hear about, who risk themselves every day in this world to speak truth to power. And I hope you’ll think about what you can do to stand up and be counted with them. I don’t have any easy answers. Actually, I don’t have any answers at all. But I do know that’s what I’ll be thinking about….

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How to Cure Writer’s Block in Three Easy Steps

April 20, 2011 By 17 Comments

No, folks, it’s not just hype. I will now reveal my foolproof, works every time, guaranteed to change your life, silver-bullet cure for writer’s block:

  1. Get knocked up;
  2. Have a baby;
  3. Have your babysitter quit on you two months before your next book is due to the publisher.

Don’t believe it works? Just try it. I dare you….

Seriously, though. As someone who has suffered repeatedly from severe cases of writer’s block, I’ve learned over the years that my writer’s block grows in direct proportion to my available writing time. The more time I have to write, the more of it I spend agonizing and procrastinating. And the less time I have to write, the better I get at sitting down and hammering out words on demand. They’re not always inspired words. But they’re just as good as the words that I spend so much time agonizing over when I have the time to agonize.

This embarrasses me. Just saying it sounds dangerously close to admitting that my writer’s block is either an psychosomatic illness or pure unadulturated laziness. So I’ve spent a lot of time over the years resisting this conclusion. After all, who wants to think of themselves as a lazy hypochondriac?

But you know what? I’m nearing the half-way mark of my allotted writing days upon this earth according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And if life is offering me a choice between spending the next half of my life as…

  1. a tragically heroic victim of writer’s block, or
  2. a lazy, procrastinating hypochondriac who actually manages to write a book every year

… then you know what? I’ll pick the prize behind door number 2.

And now that I’ve confessed my sins, let me put you onto some of the books that have helped me confront writer’s block over the years. I’m looking at them right now, as a matter of fact, because I keep them on my desk where they’re the first thing I see every time I get distracted and look up from the computer screen. And you know what? The books that have helped me most are precisely the ones that take a no-nonsense, just-sit-down-and-pound-the-keys view of the writing process. This doesn’t mean that they unfeelingly tell you to gut it out without offering solace or sympathy. But it does mean that they treat writing as a learned skill that can be practiced, perfected, and performed in the absence of heavenly choirs and harp-plucking muses. I don’t know if these books will help you. But they certainly have helped me. So here’s the short-list:

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life. It’s a little strange that one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read was written by a dancer. But there you go. Life is like that. Twyla Tharp understands what it takes to be creative under pressure, and she articulates better than anyone else I’ve ever read the nuts and bolts of developing the good work habits that keep productive artists from panicking when the going gets tough.

Barbara Baig, How to Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play. Baig divides the writing process into two separate steps: first, coming up with content; second, putting that content into words on paper. She argues that when we learn to write in school there’s too much focus on getting the words right and far too little on coming up with content. She thinks that the habits learned in school lead writers to sit down at the page and expect to produce words before they’ve done enough playing and noodling and daydreaming to know what they want to write about. The result, she argues, is writer’s block. I believe her. And the techniques she describes have helped me restart the flow of words even on days when I was sure the well was dry.

Stephen King, On Writing. A lovely book about the craft of writing fiction, and the first one I recommend to people who think they want to write but don’t quite know how to get started. King doesn’t spend much time talking about writer’s block (probably because he doesn’t suffer from it), but the whole book is a down-to-earth account of how King has managed not to be the kind of writer who suffers from chronic writer’s block.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. Like King’s On Writing, this book is more of a memoir than an instruction manual. But it offers a number of helpful concepts to stalled-out writers. My personal favorites are ‘shitty first drafts’ and ‘radio K-FKD.’

 

There is one more thing that has helped me fight off my recurring bouts of writer’s block. It’s so silly that I almost didn’t mention it. But it works for me, so I’ll pass it on just in case you can glean some wisdom from my silliness. I have this coffee mug. It’s blue, and cheap, and I bought it at a little mainstreet drugstore that long ago went out of business. It has a picture of Homer Simpson on it. He’s huddled into a pathetic little ball, and the thought bubble above his head says:

“Alone! I’m alone! I’m a lonely insignificant speck on a has-been planet, orbited by a cold, indifferent sun!”

I call it my science fiction writer’s existential despair mug. It makes me laugh at myself. And it makes me able to write. Somehow I don’t think those two things are entirely unconnected to each other.

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