Note: This post, Worldbuilding: Your Fictional Culture, originally appeared in MetaStellar's Writing Advice of the Week. Worldbuilding isn’t just about building a physical world that your characters live in. A working world also needs a working culture or society. You need to create a fictional culture for a functioning, layered world. Keep in mind that … Continue reading How to World-build Your Fictional Culture
School is officially back in session for me, and that means trying to balance the craziest parts of the semester with my thesis along with this blog. I plan to cook up new ideas for this blog, but in the meantime, I wanted to work on another literary journal post. This time I chose gothic … Continue reading 5 Literary Journals Looking for Gothic Fiction
As I continue down my TBR list, I keep finding books that don't fit into the Golden Age parameters I set up for myself. But that's fine by me. I ended up picking up Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and gave that a go. Let's get into the review. Le Guin … Continue reading The Left Hand of Darkness Review
Note: This article, It’s Not Wrong to Make Your Novel Dark (Here’s How to Do It), first appeared in MetaStellar's Writing Advice of the Week. There’s dark fiction, dark fantasy, grimdark, and straight-up horror. All of these genres carry dark and potentially disturbing elements. Some readers like it, and others don’t. However, if you want … Continue reading 3 Tips for Writing Dark Fiction
Note: How to Add Imagery to Your Speculative Novel first appeared in MetaStellar's Writing Advice of the Week column. You might have heard that imagery is pivotal to writing a story. It truly makes a scene come alive, but many sources I’ve seen that talked about imagery have just said “Use the five senses!” and … Continue reading How to Add Imagery to Your Speculative Novel
Romantasy. A combination of "romance" and "fantasy," where both play an equal part in the story. You've probably seen a bunch of these books flooding the market. If you've ever been on the social media platform TikTok, you've likely seen a bunch of romantasy titles being passed around. But have you ever scrolled through reels … Continue reading Romantasy: What Is It?
If you've written a science fiction or fantasy story that turned out to be longer than you intended, don't worry! There's definitely a market for those. Well-respected speculative literary journals look for long short stories, or novelettes, and even novellas. I've created a list of several of them below. Of course, each journal has different … Continue reading 5 Literary Journals Looking for Speculative Novelettes
Got a short fantasy piece that you've written, but you don't know where to submit it? Sure, there are plenty of literary journals that publish both science fiction and fantasy, but those tend to focus more on sci-fi than true fantasy. However, some literary journals look for fantasy specifically, especially high fantasy. Check out this … Continue reading 6 Literary Journals Looking for High Fantasy
To date, I've read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and several of his short stories. But I hadn't yet read Something Wicked This Way Comes, which delves more into fantasy and horror than science fiction. I figured there was no time like the present, and let me tell you, I have so much … Continue reading Something Wicked This Way Comes Review
What if you wanted to read a story that was equal parts fantasy and science fiction, adventure and misfortune? That's about what I got when reading Leigh Brackett's The Sword of Rhiannon. Reading science fiction and fantasy from the Golden Age eventually led me to this surprisingly short novel. So after reading, I decided to … Continue reading The Sword of Rhiannon Review
