Receiving feedback on one's writing may be the most difficult part of the writing process. Most writers believe that feedback is invaluable, yet knowing whom to ask for feedback, and when to ask them, can be difficult. Kevin Jewell, graduate of the Odyssey class of 2009, recently asked his fellow Odyssey graduates about this issue, and here are the answers he received.

When is the proper time for an outside critique? The first draft or the last draft? If I submit a piece while it is fresh/early in my creative process, I'm more likely to be willing to change major plot points and adopt big-picture criticism. But if I submit it later in the process, it's more respectful to my readers (because the writing's tighter) and I get a valuable set of eyes on what is about to be shipped out the door.

Amy Tibbetts, class of 2004

I'll be honest. I have figured out that critiques don't help me at all, and I don't do them anymore. The reason why is because of this exact problem--what's better, an early draft or a final one? I finally figured out that neither works for me.

My early drafts are unformed, half-done, with a plot that is absent, vague, nonsensical or predictable. This has gotten me a lot of "this doesn't feel finished, so I can't help you with it" crits or "this feels like the beginning of a novel but otherwise makes no sense" or "this feels like a novel's worth of plot crammed into 6,000 words and it won't work unless it's a novel."

Part of my trouble may be that my prose comes out polished the first time around, which may confuse critiquers into thinking it's a later draft. Or, maybe I'm just a novelist who can't write short stories--quite possible, since all the "short stories" I've been working on in the last few years became novellas.

But with more final drafts being critiqued, in which I feel satisfied with the story, the critiques feel nit-picky and I end up ignoring all of them.

The place where I really need help is early in the process, when I can't even generate a complete draft because I have no idea where it's going. But critiquing doesn't seem helpful at that stage. Plot-talking with other writers is helpful, trying to explain my idea and respond to questions about it is helpful, but there's no manuscript to be critiqued at that stage.

I'm not saying that my writing is so awesome I don't need to get critiqued--quite the opposite. I struggle hugely, painfully, and desperately with plot. I don't need to have that pointed out to me again and again. Particularly since I've made huge progress via outlining, studying the craft of plotting, etc, and each story I write gets better in that area. But a critiquer might not know how remedial I was to begin with, and how much progress I achieved when I finally created a predictable (as opposed to nonsensical/absent) plot.

My biggest obstacle to writing is doubt. What I need most is confidence and the ability to trust myself consistently. So, critiquing is out. Hope that doesn't sound mean--critiquing has also got me lots of compliments and support and an understanding of my strengths, yet I finally got to a point where I couldn't make progress with critiques.

And I've been writing LOADS since I came to that realization.

Susan Abel Sullivan, class of 2005

I don't know that there's actually a proper place unless the critique group has a specific rule/guideline like polished drafts only, or no first drafts.

Otherwise, I think it's a matter of choice.

There are pluses and minuses to critiquing an early draft vs. a polished draft. Stephen King recommends that you have no help or interference with your first draft. I've come to believe that that is true for me. I've reached a point in my writing where I will get the major elements as strong as I can get them, then submit to readers, saving the polish for the final copy edit. But in the past, I thought revising was the same thing as strengthening style, so I'd spend hours and hours polishing style, thinking I was doing serious revisions.

Now and then, I'll come up with an idea for something, and I'll have readers look at a rough draft to just get their overall reactions. But I'm talking about readers and not a full-blown critique.

I know that when I'm doing a critique on someone else's work, I'd like to know exactly what sort of draft the writer considers the work. Is it a discovery draft? A polished, ready-to-be-submitted draft? Somewhere in between? I like to know because I give different feedback for different draft stages. And also because I've read drafts I thought were discovery drafts that the author had revised multiple times and thought was ready for submission. And vice versa. So, if an author has made the piece as strong as they can, but it's reading like a rough draft, they have a serious problem, and as a critiquer, knowing this can let me point that out so that they can take steps to correct it.

Larry Hodges, class of 2006

Always submit your best work for critique. It's true that some are more willing to "change major plot points and adopt big-picture criticism" early in the process, but the weakness here is in the unwillingness to change these aspects of the story. A short story is, by definition, short, and so such changes are not as epic as in a novel. If you send in early drafts for critique, then critiquers may focus on the problems inherent in an early draft and miss the bigger picture. They also won't be able to critique a final product, meaning that unless you get a second round of critiques, your final draft will be sent in uncritiqued. Most writers make relatively major changes between the various drafts of a story, and so an early draft of a story critiqued will be something quite different than the nearly final version that needs to be critiqued.

For a novel, it's a bit different in that there's a lot more invested in it, and if you wait too long for critique, you waste a lot of time and energy. That's why it's good to have an outline of the novel critiqued, where others can critique the "major plot points" and make "big-picture criticism" (as well as character arcs, etc.) before you've invested too much time in it.

Carl Frederick, class of 2000

Since slightly before I attended Odyssey, I've been a member of Critters (an online critique group with about 2,000 members). With one small exception, I've never sent a story out without having it go through Critters first. And I've rewritten every story based on the critiques--sometimes, heavily rewritten. I get from twenty to thirty critiques per story (depending on story length). The trick is to know how to read/interpret the critiques, and that has come over time. Yes, it takes me a lot of time to individually thank each reviewer, but it is (for me) well worth it. Also, I still gain a lot from doing critiques. It's much easier for me to identify my writing shortcomings when I see them in others' stories.

Maggie Della Rocca, class of 2005

Speaking from the point of view as a critiquer:

I don't mind what stage the manuscript is in, as long as I know what the author wants from me. If I get a rough draft, do I spend time pointing out spending mechanical issues or not? If I know the author, I have a better handle on that question because I am familiar with their style. Otherwise, I do take the time to circle the style tics, etc because the mechanics affect my perception of the story. So when people hand out a manuscript saying "Don't bother with line edits,” I always want to say, "Then don't give me a draft filled with typos."

Having said that, one of the reasons I critique is because it is a great learning experience for me. So I don't have an issue with taking a lot of time, but I am frustrated when I feel the author will dismiss a large portion of my critique because "I've already decided to rewrite that."

As a writer, I find benefits in submitting either early or near finished manuscripts. I appreciate a lot of feedback on an early draft which might change my PoV choice or get a good handle on reader's expectations. When I get to a late draft stage, I'm more interested in editing comments (because I have a terrible eye for my own mechanical errors) and notable inconsistencies.

Certainly as I grow as a writer, my attitude towards critiquing has changed, but I still find the process enormously helpful, both giving and receiving.

Susan Shell Winston, class of 1996

For me, the trouble with test readers is I don't know how honest they are. When I'm asked to test read something, I will, then I'll smile and say it's good, give my responses about what I liked and why, but worry if and how much the writer really wants to hear about what didn't work for me. Personally, that is not the kind of feedback I need.

Critiques can be painful. But if they're honest reactions from a trusted writer/reader, if they're constructive pointing out what doesn't work in their opinion and offering hopefully an idea of what might work to get the same scene better, and if they not only include the positive, but also strive not to be cruel, then I find them invaluable. I would rather be told what is not working before I send a story out, or in the case of a critique of a work in progress, be told before I go off in the wrong direction.

There are some words, I believe, that are too cruel to use in any critique--boring especially is one of them. That word I find attacks the writer more than the work--it's destructive never constructive. There are other ways to let the writer hear a passage is not interesting, but could be fixable if ___ and ___ maybe could happen. But most writers can't get past the word boring to hear what else the reader is saying--the writer only hears that what he has to say is not worth anyone's time listening to, and may stop trying to write at all. The point is, we're trying to be helpful and encouraging.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Gregory Frost will be a guest lecturer at this year’s Odyssey workshop. He is a writer of fantasy, thrillers, and science fiction who has been publishing steadily for more than two decades. His latest work, the compelling fantasy duology, Shadowbridge. and Lord Tophet (Del Rey Books) was voted one of the four best fantasy novels of the year by the American Library Association. It was a finalist this year for the James Tiptree Award.

His previous novel, Fitcher’s Brides was a finalist for both the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel. Other novels include, Tain, Lyrec, and Nebula-nominated sf work The Pure Cold Light. His short story collection, Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories was given a starred review by Publishers Weekly, which called it "one of the best fantasy collections of the year" while hailing the author as a master of the short story form. The collection includes James Tiptree Award, Nebula Award, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and Hugo Award finalist fiction.

His shorter work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Magazine, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, and in numerous award-winning anthologies. His latest short story can be found in Poe (Solaris Books), edited by Ellen Datlow.

He is a Fiction Writing Workshop Director at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA.

His web site is www.gregoryfrost.com. He's on Facebook as Gregory Frost; on Twitter as gregory_frost; and his LJ blog, "Frostbites" is at http://frostokovich.livejournal.com.

Once you started writing seriously, how long did it take you to sell your first piece? What were you doing wrong in your writing in those early days?

Well, if we mark my “serious” Rubicon as the undergraduate writing program at the University of Iowa followed directly by Clarion (which was far more intensive), then it was six years before I sold my first short story. In that time I’d written two dreadful novels, and lots of short stories that were either marketed and failed or else stuck in a drawer because I was never happy with them, as well as those that were never finished. One of those pieces was a story I’d started directly after Clarion and which I revised again and again over the next six years, and which became the second piece of fiction I sold.

What changed in particular...I’m not sure. I think a process of evolution was going on, but I was the experiment, not outside and observing it, and the best guess I can give you is that while I probably felt stuck in place, I was in fact learning by producing a lot of garbage, making a lot of mistakes. Now that I’ve been a slush pile reader for a magazine, which is sort of being the editor who reads the untested fiction, I’ve seen all the mistakes I made laid bare. But that’s how you learn: by getting things wrong, at the same time as you’re analyzing good writing, figuring out how someone else did it well, and then trying again. If I had to pick one thing, it would be learning how to write beginnings. That’s a major breakthrough by itself.

How many stages does your work go through before you send it off to a publisher? How much of your time is spent writing the first draft, and how much time is spent in revision? What sort of revisions do you do?

All of this depends on the work. Shadowbridge went through repeated shaping. What my pal Judith Berman calls her “zero draft”--I probably wrote dozens of those, because that book was channeling out of some deep well of stories and had to be teased into the light. And then in the middle of it, Terri Windling invited me to contribute a book to her fairy tale series, and I set it all aside and wrote Fitcher’s Brides, which was done in three passes, fairly painlessly, and in ten months. The first draft of that took five months. But there I had an armature to work with--a fairy tale structure tested by time; and by accident I’d done all the research into the period and place I was writing about--the 1840s, the Fingerlakes district of New York. And then I went back to Shadowbridge. Almost immediately my father died, and I simply locked up for nearly two years…which was right and truly scary. I was in the grips of an actual writing block: the roiling core of crazy stuff--ideas, images, concepts, “what ifs”--that have been with me simply forever just evaporated. There was nothing. A vacuum. And writers, Carol Emshwiller for one, reassured me that I would come out the other side of it, as she had done, and that what I wrote on the far side of the singularity would be different from before. I’m still the experiment, so I can’t tell you if that part is true, but I did come out. One day it was just “We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.” I went back to “Shadowbridge.

As for revisions, they are so very different from first drafts. First drafts exhaust me after a few hours, and the so-called writer’s high is for me a first draft phenomenon. Revision can go all day by comparison because it’s a different section of the brain, the analytical, editorial section. I expect, as Joyce Carol Oates has said in interviews, that the beginning gets far more revision than the rest of the story, just as the beginning is probably the last thing written. I fear that workshops like Clarion tend to focus on getting you to write a lot of first drafts of stories, but not so much on how to revise those drafts properly; and revision is a skill unto itself, probably the most critical skill of all.

What's the biggest weakness in your writing these days, and how do you cope with it?

Social media: Fighting off the allure of the Internet. I’m glad I write first drafts with a fountain pen, because it means I can walk away from the bloody computer, sit me down anywhere with a notebook and dive in. Cory Doctorow wrote an amusing essay last winter about how a writer needs only to devote 20 minutes a day to his craft, thus allowing for lots of social media time. It’s specious, of course, but he’s right that you have to carve out some time. You can write a draft of a novel in a year if you write 20 minutes a day, provided you produce one page in that 20 minutes. But how many of us can sit down, cold, and just flip over to the writing side of our lizard brain and go? I’m sure there’s someone out there going “Oh, I can do that.” Well, it ain’t me.

From vampires in your short fiction to your unique world in Shadowbridge, do you generally form an idea first before you start a story or do characters appear first?

I think the two arrive in some complementary fashion. No idea comes without, for me, a character rolling in either with it or almost immediately after. And I’ve had stories that began with a character and the story emerged out of them. Some are explorations—following a character to find out both who they are and what their story is. I think Leodora was like that for me. I saw her on top of the bridge at the beginning of Shadowbridge with her mask on, the braid of her hair...and I had to find out who she was. Casting back, I feel as if I just followed her quite awhile. But before the first act of that book was completed, I had written the confrontation with Lord Tophet that occurred at the end of the second book. I had no idea how she and I were going to get there, but I trusted that we would. Took a very long time, but indeed that’s where we arrived. I didn’t know at that point that her mother was “alive” in a mirror, what had happened to Bardsham, or what the fates of Soter and Diverus would be. I didn’t even know who Diverus was until I’d placed the two of them--him and Leodora--in Epama Epam. It’s good to be surprised by one’s writing, though.

Your essay “Coloring Between the Lines” (http://www.interstitialarts.org/why/coloringBetweenTheLines1.html) focuses on breaking out of genre boxes, in particular slipstream fiction. What is your advice to beginning writers who want to cross different genres? Should they experiment or work in just one genre? What are the benefits and/or drawbacks?

Don’t listen to me for advice on how to make a heap of money at this, but my opinion is that you should write what you want to write. If you chase after the dictates of the marketplace--what’s hot today--unless you’re really incredibly facile and fast, it won’t be the hot thing by the time you write it (although, God help us, we don’t seem to be able to get rid of vampires or King Arthur). In some ways, I think you’re better off choosing some territory you really want to write in and carving out that space. Bruce Sterling did that with his Shaper/Mechanist universe. He worked it to where he had an audience aware of what he was doing. Then he moved on, moved out. Charles Stross, likewise with the stories collected in Accelerando.

When you’re beginning, you’re likely looking for your voice, a stamp you can put on your fiction. This is the time to try everything. Absorb everything. If you are going to write in the genres, you’re going to have to bring something to the table that everybody else writing in your turf hasn’t done to death already. I’ve got adult students in a night class who want to write fantasy fiction, but they know fantasy and sf only through things like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, so their work is utterly derivative and dated. They have nothing original to bring to the table. You want to write a Twilight Zone story? Then go read some Nabokov or Cortazar. Bring that into your work. That’s going to make it much more interesting and original (which is somewhat my statement on interstitiality). Aim for great art. If you just get a tolerable story out of it, you still shot for the highest mark, the best you could write.

As a guest lecturer at this summer's Odyssey Workshop, you'll be lecturing, workshopping, and meeting individually with students. What do you think is the most important advice you can give to developing writers?

Give yourself permission to completely [mess] up. Get everything wrong. Make giant mistakes. Try things you don’t know how to do. And don’t beat yourself up for it. That’s how you learn. Get it all wrong now so that later you’ll have mastered all these elements and won’t have to worry about them anymore.

What's next on the writing-related horizon? Are you starting any new projects?

Always. I’m finishing a novel right now, should be done with it before the end of the year (which is good, seeing as how I originally promised it to my agent like last New Year). I just completed a story for a Cthulhu anthology, which I hope is the funniest story in it. I have two stories in the works now, both for projects I was invited to contribute to. There’s a possible third Shadowbridge novel that has nothing to do with the first two, and another novel where all I know is that I have a woman falling through the sky. I’ve figured out who she is, but the story--to borrow from Stephen King--is a fossil I’ve only just started to uncover.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Podcast #31 is now available for download here.

In her lecture at Odyssey 2009, Patricia Bray explored the role of a sidekick in fiction. In this podcast, the first of two parts, Patricia defines a sidekick and explains the inherently unequal nature of the hero/sidekick relationship. Giving examples that illuminate the long literary tradition of sidekicks, Patricia identifies the genres that tend to have sidekicks and the differences between a protagonist's sidekick and an antagonist's sidekick. She explains why sidekicks are necessary in some stories and novels and the specific ways in which they can be used.

Patricia Bray is the author of a dozen novels, including Devlin's Luck, which won the 2003 Compton Crook Award for the best first novel in the field of science fiction or fantasy. A multi-genre author whose career spans both Regency romance and epic fantasy, Patricia has had her books translated into Russian, German, Hebrew and Portuguese. She is a two-time co-chair of the Southern Tier Writer's conference, and her articles on the writer's craft have appeared in numerous publications, including Broadsheet, Nink, STARbytes, and RWA's Keys to Success: A Professional Writer's Career Handbook.

Patricia lives in upstate New York, where she combines her writing with a full-time career as an I/T professional, ensuring that she is never more than a few feet away from a keyboard. Her latest novel is The Final Sacrifice, the concluding volume in The Chronicles of Josan, which was released by Bantam Spectra in July 2008.

Recent/Upcoming Publications

Short Stories

Carl Frederick, class of 2000
"The Universe Beneath Our Feet"
Published by: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2009
Carl's website: http://www.darkzoo.net/

Erica Hildebrand, class of 2007
"Product Safety"
Published by: Everyday Weirdness
Erica's website: http://rogue-psion.livejournal.com/

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"Dead Mass"
Published by: Space Westerns
Larry's website: http://www.larryhodges.org

Krista Hoeppner Leahy, class of 2007
"The Dizzy Bridge"
Anthology: L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: Vol. 25
Published by: Galaxy Press

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Anodos Amongst the Elves"
Published by: New Myths
Jason's website: http://jsridler.livejournal.com/

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Advice From The Devil's Handbook"
Published by: Big Pulp

Matthew S. Rotundo, class of 1998
"Gone Black"
Anthology: L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: Vol. 25
Published by: Galaxy Press
Matthew's website: http://matthewsrotundo.livejournal.com/

Matthew S. Rotundo, class of 1998
"Canaan"
Published by: Jim Baen's Universe

Eric James Stone, class of 2007
"Accounting for Dragons"
Published by: PodCastle
Eric's website: http://www.ericjamesstone.com/

William T. Vandemark, class of 2007
"Phases of Alkahest"
Published by: Brain Harvest
William's website: http://williamtvandemark.wordpress.com/

Carrie Vaughn, class of 1998
"Watching"
Anthology: Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies
Published by: DAW
Carrie's website: http://www.carrievaughn.com/

Nonfiction

Erin Hoffman, class of 2005
"Why Your Game Idea Sucks"
Published by: The Escapist
Erin's website: www.erinhoffman.com

Elaine Isaak, class of 1997
"The Great White Menace"
Published by: AlienSkin Magazine
Elaine's website: www.elaineisaak.com/

Magazines

Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Edited and Published by Scott H. Andrews, class of 2005
Issue #27: October 8, 2009
Issue #28: October 22, 2009

New Myths
Edited by Scott T. Barnes, class of 2008
Issue #8

Recent Sales

Scott H. Andrews, class of 2005
"Excision" to Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine

Barbara A. Barnett, class of 2007
"Dumping the Dead" to Every Day Fiction

Erin Hoffman, class of 2005
"Darkest Amber" to Electric Velocipede

Matthew S. Rotundo, class of 1998
"The Woman Who Hated Halloween" to Damnation Books
"Take This, and Eat" to Cthulhu 2012

Eric James Stone, class of 2007
"Rejiggering the Thingamajig" to Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Contests

William T. Vandemark, class of 2007
"Phases of Alkahest"
Second Place in the Brain Harvest's Mega Challenge

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Congratulations to all of our graduates for their successes, both past and upcoming! If you're interested in seeing a full list of sales and publications, please visit our Graduates' Publications page here!

For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Henry James said, "I know everything. One has to, to write decently." Writing a story or novel, whether fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else, can often involve countless issues that require real-world knowledge. If my hero is stabbed in the shoulder, how much will he bleed? What plants will grow most easily on a space station? How quickly will my zombie rot? If, unlike Henry James, you don't know everything, research becomes key to making your writing believable, vivid, and fresh. It can make or break your work. But when should you research? And how do you incorporate that research into your fiction? We asked Odyssey graduates to discuss how they conducted research, and here are the answers we received.

How much research do you do for your fiction, and do you do it before, during, or after writing your first draft? How much does your research affect your plot and characters?

Maggie Della Rocca

I can't really quantify how much research I do since I don't keep track of it by word count. It certainly varies from project to project. Currently, I am working on writing a novel while conducting research for my next project. Generally, I write in the mornings and research in the afternoon, on days that I don't work.



I start most projects with a loose (very very loose) outline or summary of events. Once I have a setting in mind, I do some research on that, assuming it is an earth or real setting. If it is a fantasy setting, I'll probably draw a rough map and make some universe notes. The research I do before writing is generally pretty broad, but I find it is important to have a grasp of what I'll be writing about, so I don't go flying into impossible or erroneous ideas or concepts in my rough draft. But I never know all the details that require research until I start my rough draft.



Once I get going on my draft, I start discovering holes that need filling. If it seems simple, I'll stop and do a quick internet search to answer questions. If it proves to complicated, I will make a note on a document of what research needs to be done. I often have an open document that I can jot these notes onto as I write my rough draft. When I'm rereading my draft, I generally add to the same notes that I need to confirm certain details, etc.



I like to be really sure I'm going to stick with something before I go too deep into research. For example, I had a subplot in my current WiP that involved organized crime, gambling, and Native American casinos. I had done the light research of checking into Tribal gaming laws and that sort of thing, but hadn't taken the time to contact or interview experts on the subject. I'm glad I didn't because the whole subplot weighed to heavily in the story and I eventually changed it to something simpler--timber poaching. Now I need to do in depth research on that topic, beyond the internet stuff, but will wait until I have finished my complete draft.



So I do research before, during, and after a complete draft, not the final draft but not the first one either. I don't start writing until I have a good grasp of the setting and concept. I do enough research to answer simple questions that crop up and make notes about more complicated issues. I reread what I've written, possibly submit a draft for critiques before doing additional research, since I will likely be making major changes that affect what research I still need to do. I also find that as I do research, my plot and characters gather layers that affect the story, too.



I research more facts than I'll actually need for the story. I try to only show what the PoV character observes or understands, without tossing in pages of interesting research details. I find that it gives the story depth if I know more about the background, without necessarily making the reader learn all about it. Not that I always mind when authors drop in some fascinating historical details into their stories, but there needs to be a limit on that.

Abby Goldsmith, class of 2004

I write a lot of otherworldly fiction, which reduces the amount of research necessary. Whenever I have a story that includes an element of obscure reality, I do thorough and extensive research before and during the first draft. Topics I've researched include cave fungus, ocean liners, spinal muscular atrophy, gigantism in humans, and congenital illnesses.



My personal experiences also influence my stories, and I think this counts as personal research. I've lived in small town New Hampshire and a suburb of Los Angeles, and I've set stories in both places. I like to think my settings come across as realistic.



These research topics are major factors in the story plot or characters, and I believe it's worth spending the time to get them right.


Colleen H. Robbins, class of 2007

When do I research? The majority of my research occurs before and after writing the first draft. I try not to stop in the middle of a writing session, because it interrupts the flow.

I usually have an idea of the research I will need, so I do extensive research before I start the actual writing. While I am writing the first draft I will occasionally check some facts, but then I go through the completed first draft with a fine tooth comb.

When I know that certain historical or scientific facts will be critical to the story or novel, I write up a reference sheet of the most important information to keep by the computer. Having the information at my fingertips does not interrupt the flow of writing. I also keep a note sheet to jot down the information that I feel needs to be double-checked after I finish my writing session for the day, along with the page number it occurs on.

Larry Hodges, class of 2006

For my novel, Campaign 2100: Rise of the Moderates, I did extensive research. Strike that; I did incredible amounts of research. Imagine a novel that's basically a worldwide road trip to real places all over the planet. Extrapolate this a hundred years into the future. (The novel covers the campaign for president of Earth in the year 2100.)

Now I spent many months imagining the storyline, characters, settings, and changes in the future. What would be the main energy sources in the year 2100? What types of transportation? Weapons? Foods? Geography? Clothing and hair styles? Religions? Taboos? Slang? Plant and animal life? Computers? What technologies would rise up and become commonplace? What would be the main political issues? If I didn't do all of this, it wouldn't be authentic 2100; it'd just be a poorly disguised 2009. 



I did most of the research in advance, though I sometimes stopped to do additional research. It's generally recommended not to stop in the middle of writing to research something, but that's what I did as I found myself unable to continue until I know what's needed. Sometimes I'd think of something, do some research, and go back and rewrite or add a section.


My notes for the Campaign 2100 reached 13,000 words, often on seemingly irrelevant topics. They included notes on building construction codes for the Twin Towers; blue whales; sea life in the South China Sea; virtual reality; valuable gemstones; Mormonism; Dalit history in India; wheat cultivation; kangaroo meat; Brodmann Area 10 in the brain; artificial grass; army tactics; artificial limbs; Ethanol and Butanol; scramjets; the Twisted Gun statue by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reutersward; Don Quixote; global warming; Tau Ceti; The Great Wall of China; iguanas; cats; French banking; the Palace of Versailles; salt water aquariums; the Mexican drug trade; and lots, lots more; plus pages of notes on past political directors/advisors, since I named many of the novel's characters after them. Plus, of course, there was all sorts of research on politics itself. 



And then we got to the geography. I became the world's #1 expert on Canberra, Australia; Mexico City; Mount Momotombo, Nicaragua; Vancouver, Canada; Germantown, Maryland; Georgetown University, Washington DC; Moscow; the Khrebet Sikhote-alin Mountains in Russia; Dover, England; Val-de-Marne, France; Sarawak, Malaysia; Osaka, Japan; the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Sultanpur National Park, India; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Esperanza Station, Antarctica. (Of course, this is all circa 2100!)



By doing so much research in advance, I didn't have to interrupt my writing very often. When I needed to know the width of the Dar es Salaam Harbor in Tanzania, there it was in my notes (about 300 feet). When I needed to mention, in passing, the name of a futuristic type of wheat, there in my notes was the name Norman Borlaug, famous wheat cultivator, and hence was my invention of dwarf borlaug-15 wheat. Whenever I needed to bring in a new character, there was my list of campaign directors and advisors to choose from. And so on. 



Since I'd already found descriptions of various locations, including links to maps and photos, I had little trouble describing, say, the beaches of Dover, England, even with the addition of the Great Blue Whale Aquarium.

Yet I probably used at most 1/4 of my research notes. But I didn't know in advance which 1/4 I'd use. Plus, even the parts I didn't use helped visualize the future world, which greatly helped in the writing. For example, I never used my research on artificial grass, but it inspired me to create an America that was mostly artificially green. 



Not all novels are so research heavy. But if you do the research, have it on hand when you write, and use it properly, you have a tremendous advantage over others who are not so prepared.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

ODYSSEY WRITING WORKSHOP ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF ONLINE CLASSES

The Odyssey Writing Workshop, one of the most respected programs for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, is now offering writing classes online. Classes are designed for adult writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Each class is focused on a particular element of fiction writing and is designed for writers at a particular skill level, from beginners to professional writers. The application period for the first class, Showing versus Telling, runs from October 10 through December 10, 2009. The class itself will be held from January 6 through February 10, 2010.

Odyssey Director Jeanne Cavelos explains, "For fifteen years, Odyssey has pursued its mission to help developing writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work by holding its annual six-week workshop. But we can only help sixteen writers each year at the workshop. We wanted to be able to help more writers. So we've taken the teaching techniques that are so effective at the workshop and adapted them to create online classes. We've worked very hard to ensure that our online classes are of the same quality and caliber as our in-person workshop and that they deserve to carry the name of Odyssey."

Unlike most online classes, Odyssey's Online Classes offer live lectures and discussions using Web conferencing software. At class time, students call the class phone number and go to the appropriate Web site. The instructor is live on the other end of the phone, giving the lecture, and students' computer screens become the class blackboard, where the instructor displays various examples and notes. By clicking on the appropriate icon, a student can raise his hand, use the phone to ask a question, and listen to the questions of other students, who are all on the same conference call.

Odyssey's Online Classes are rigorous and demanding, packing valuable content into each session and providing assignments that challenge students to take their writing to the next level. The classes provide the tools and techniques students need to improve their writing, along with feedback on their work that reveals whether they are successfully using those tools and techniques.

Taking one of Odyssey's Online Classes is not equivalent to attending the Odyssey Workshop, and should not be considered a substitute. But writers can improve through many different experiences, and for many, attending a six-week in-person workshop is not possible.

Cavelos says, "If you're ready to hear about the weaknesses in your writing and ready to work to overcome them, you'd be welcome to apply to one of our online classes." Classes provide a supportive yet challenging, energizing atmosphere, with a class size limited to fourteen students and close contact with the instructor.

The first class, Showing versus Telling, will be taught by Odyssey Director Jeanne Cavelos. Sessions will be held for one hour each week for six weeks. Tuition is $295. More information is available at www.odysseyworkshop.org or by e-mailing jcavelos@sff.net.

In addition, the Odyssey Web site, www.odysseyworkshop.org, offers many resources for writers, including free podcasts, writing and publishing tips, a weekly writing blog, and a critique service.

Odyssey Graduates Discuss Their Recent Writers of the Future Wins

Matthew S. Rotundo attended Odyssey in 1998. In addition to Writers of the Future Volume XXV, Matt's stories have appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, Cosmos, and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. He also plays guitar and has been known to sing karaoke. He and his wife Tracy live in Omaha, Nebraska. Visit his blog at http://matthewsrotundo.livejournal.com. Matt placed first in the first quarter of the 25th Annual Writers of the Future Contest.

Krista Hoeppner Leahy attended the Odyssey in 2007. Her work has been published in Writers of the Future Volume XXV, Shimmer, and flashquake. She is a member of Codex, the online writing community, and also the Fantastic Saloon--a group of NYC-based authors. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, NY. Krista placed third in the fourth quarter of the 25th Annual Writers of the Future Contest.

What made you decide to submit to the Writers of the Future Contest? Have you submitted to the contest before?

Matt: I've known about the Writers of the Future Contest for many years now. Its track record for finding new talent in the genre is unmatched. It also pays very well, and generates a lot of exposure for the winners. And who could say no to an expenses-paid trip to Hollywood, a week-long writing workshop, and a glitzy awards ceremony that makes you feel like a genuine celebrity?

I entered the contest a total of ten times. Previous entries had made it to the quarter-finalist (now Honorable Mention), semi-finalist, and finalist levels, so I knew I was doing something right.

Krista: I decided to submit because the Writers of the Future Contest offers aspiring speculative fiction writers an extraordinary opportunity, and you can't win if you don't submit.

"The Dizzy Bridge" was my fifth submission to the contest. I'd had one previous finalist entry, one honorable mention, and two no-shows.

How did you select which story to submit to the judges? How do you feel your experience as a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop helped you in writing the story?

Matt: The story should be as good as you can make it; the contest receives thousands of entries each year. You're up against a lot of competition. Beyond that, my only real concern regarding story selection was word count. Seriously. The contest is equally receptive to works of SF, fantasy, and dark fantasy, so genre isn't much of a concern. But you can't submit anything over 17,000 words (and Coordinating Judge K.D. Wentworth told us that she'd seen plenty of entrants try to game the maximum--without success).

The first draft of my winning entry, "Gone Black," was around 20,000 words, making it ineligible for the contest. After a scathing critique from a friend of mine, it became clear that the story took too long to get started. I lopped over 3,000 words from it, most of which came out of the beginning. My experience at Odyssey helped me with that. One of the important lessons I learned from Jeanne was that my plots needed stronger causal connections. When I undertook the revision of "Gone Black," I could see that the opening scenes were all setup that didn't move the plot forward at all. Though I liked a lot of what I had written in those pages, they had to go. I made the excisions and wound up with a story that was under the WotF word count maximum. So I submitted it. The results speak for themselves.

Krista: In reading the anthologies, I'd noticed that most of the stories were immediately identifiable as either science-fiction or fantasy. I thought "The Dizzy Bridge" might be a good fit, for the story falls squarely within fantasy, whereas some of my other work is harder to classify.

An initial draft of "The Dizzy Bridge"--originally and somewhat awkwardly titled "Underneath the Tail of the Peacock"--was the first story I wrote while attending Odyssey in 2007. So, in a very real way, if I hadn't made the commitment to go to Odyssey, and been lucky enough to be admitted, the story might never have been written.

Both Jeanne Cavelos and my classmates gave me terrific feedback on the story, and their comments and insights were invaluable in my revision process. My heartfelt thanks to each and every one of them.

Less immediately relevant to the writing of "The Dizzy Bridge," but perhaps as significant in my recent success with the Writers of the Future Contest, attending Odyssey strengthened my courage to persist. At Odyssey, I saw myself improve as a writer. (Wonder of wonders--it's actually possible to get better!) That possibility alone has emboldened me to keep writing and keep submitting, knowing that as long as I keep writing, I will keep getting better.

Both of you attended the Writers of the Future workshop. Can you summarize the event for us and what you learned from it?

Matt: The workshop assumes that you're already schooled in the fundamentals of writing; you'd have to be, or else you wouldn't be there in the first place. While there is some review of the basics (and it's always good to review), more focus is placed on the professional aspects--career planning, dealing with agents and publishers, and the harsh realities of the marketplace. It's invaluable information, delivered by established authors who know whereof they speak.

A significant chunk of the workshop is devoted to the 24-Hour Story. We were given three prompts--a random object, a trip to the library to research a topic of your choice, and an interview with a stranger. From these, we had to craft a complete story in 24 hours. The purpose, I think, is to show you what you can do when pressed. I was really happy with the way mine turned out--so in addition to everything I learned, I came out of the workshop with a new story.

Krista: At its simplest, it's a week-long workshop and ceremony designed to identify, foster, and celebrate new talent in the sf field. Many of the top pros in the sf field generously lend their expertise, insight, and support to the writers and illustrators who win the contest.

I learned there are many, many different ways to be a successful writer--the old adage about skinning cats comes to mind--but that all of them involve hard work, dedication, and perseverance. I met eleven new writers--the talented Mr. Matt Rotundo included--whom I look forward to reading for the rest of my life. I learned tips for everything from how to write more quickly to how to handle giving an autograph. I discovered that some of my favorite authors are even more wonderful in person than I'd hoped they would be. I discovered that the field of speculative literature can be just as welcoming and wonderful as I'd always hoped.

Now that WOTF is over, what are your plans for the future?

Matt: Land an agent, sell a novel, win multiple Hugos and Nebulas, and conquer the world. Not necessarily in that order.

Krista: To write, write, write. To read, read, read. Then to keep repeating those two steps.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Podcast #30 is now available for download here.

In her lecture at Odyssey 2004, Catherine Asaro explained how to develop a scientific "What if?" for your story. In this podcast, she covers some of the challenges of getting the science into your science fiction. Too much detail may bore readers, while insufficient detail may leave readers skeptical or confused. Catherine suggests various ways to introduce scientific exposition in your stories while keeping the reader tense and interested. Maintaining scientific accuracy may at times seem limiting to your story, but it may actually force you to be more creative and come up with exciting solutions. Science can also help you to extrapolate and figure out what your futuristic world would really be like. Catherine provides various examples and explains how to develop your novum in a scientifically accurate way, taking into consideration the consequences of that novum.

Catherine Asaro is a writer, scientist, and dancer. Praised for her ability to mix hard science fiction with character-driven stories, she has a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard. Among her many awards, she has received the Nebula for her novel The Quantum Rose and her novella "The Space-time Pool." Catherine currently has twenty-four novels out. Her most recent fantasy is The Night Bird (Luna 2008). Her latest science fiction book, Diamond Star (Baen 2009), is about a rock star in the future. The paperback of Catherine's book The Ruby Dice was also released in 2009. Her next book, Carnelians, will be out from Baen in the next year.

In April 2009, Starflight Music released the soundtrack for the book, a CD also titled Diamond Star, by the rock band Point Valid, in collaboration with Catherine. The CD presents songs from the book, with three additional works by Hayim Ani, lead vocalist and guitarist for the band. After Point Valid dispersed to college, Donald Wolcott joined the project as the pianist for Catherine's vocals in concerts and at science fiction cons.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Recent/Upcoming Publications

Short Stories

Barbara A. Barnett, class of 2007
"A Red One Cannot See"
Published by: Shimmer Magazine, Issue #11
Barbara's website: http://www.babarnett.com/

Carl Frederick, class of 2000
"Teddy Bear Toys"
Published by: Analog Science Fiction & Fact, October 2009
Carl's website: http://www.darkzoo.net/

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"A Tale of Two Wizards"
Published by: Arkham Tales, Issue #4
Larry's website: http://www.larrytt.com/larryhodges/

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"Memory of a Minefield"
Published by: Hypersonic Tales

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"Channel Surfing in Amnesiaville"
Published by: Brain Harvest
Justin's website: http://justinhowe.livejournal.com/

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"Of Shifting Skin and Certainty"
Published by: Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Jenny Rae Rappaport, class of 2009
"The Sock Thief"
Published by: Knitty
Jenny's website: http://litsoup.blogspot.com/

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Billy and the Mountain"
Anthology: Tesseracts Thirteen
Published by: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Jason's website: http://jsridler.livejournal.com/

Mary Rogers, class of 2009
"Big Girl"
Published by: Expanded Horizons Magazine

Lynda E. Rucker, class of 1996
"These Things We Have Always Known"
Anthology: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Vol. 20
Published by: Running Press
Lynda's website: http://lyndarucker.blogspot.com/

Nonfiction

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"Mushishi "the Bugmaster" and the Cryptozoology of the Mind"
Published by: Tor.com
"Coming Soon: Solomon Kane?"
Published by: Tor.com

Elaine Isaak, class of 1997
"Let's Talk"
Published by: AlienSkin Magazine
Elaine's website: www.elaineisaak.com/

Magazines

Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Edited and Published by Scott H. Andrews, class of 2005
Issue #25: September 10, 2009
Issue #26: September 24, 2009

Recent Sales

Derek Hill, class of 1996
"Spike Jonze" to Little White Lies Magazine
Terry Gilliam: A Biography to Schaffner Press
Peter Jackson: Interviews to University of Mississippi Press (editor)

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"Bonesy" to New Myths
"The Meteor Always Strikes Once" to Aoife's Kiss and Beyond Centauri

Contests

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"You and We"
Finalist in the Reading Writers Dynamic Dialogue Contest, August 2009

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Congratulations to all of our graduates for their successes, both past and upcoming! If you're interested in seeing a full list of sales and publications, please visit our Graduates' Publications page here!

For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

What gets you running to the computer, ready to start a new piece? Every writer is different, and even for a single writer, inspiration may strike in different ways for different pieces. We asked the Odyssey graduates to talk about how their story ideas usually develop, and what element of the story is most important to them.

In what order do you normally come up with the various aspects of your stories? Which of the following comes first, second, etc.? Theme, idea, plot, character, something else?***

Larry Hodges, class of 2006

I'm basically an "idea" writer. Until Odyssey 2006, pretty much all of my stories started with an idea or situation, and I then worked out the characters and plot together. At Odyssey, I realized that since I can come up with story ideas on just about anything, I could start with a theme, then come up with an idea or situation using that theme, and then develop the plot and characters. That led to stronger stories. 



Starting with a theme and/or idea doesn't mean you should not worry about the characters. Once I know what the story is about, I try to spend a lot of time developing unique and interesting characters that fit into the story. Often the characters take charge of the story themselves, something that might not happen if I tried to develop them too strongly in advance. In my novel Campaign 2100, I'm still flabbergasted that the most vivid, memorable character, Feodora, started out as an undefined bit character, but she took over every scene she was in, and I ended up with four major characters instead of the planned three. I had to send her on trips just so the other characters could get screen time!



I just went over all of my stories (LOTS!!!), and I only have one story where I started with a character--"Counting Sheep." In that one, I started with an autistic character who endlessly and obsessively counted sheep and never slept, and went on from there, making it up as I went along. Predictably, that story took many more drafts to finalize than just about any other story, and the ending changed about a zillion times. 


Cherie Wein, class of 1999

Sometimes the title pops into my head, and I write a story to go with it. Other times I get a picture of a character or a setting, and I write a story to go with them. I might picture a scene with a couple of characters, and then figure out the backstory and what happens afterward. So I have no particular order to any of them, except when somebody tells me, "Go and write a story about such-and-such." Then some of the elements already exist, and I have to think up the others to go along with them.

Susan Abel Sullivan, class of 2005

My stories seem to start from a variety of places, although I never start with theme, and I don't remember ever starting with plot. Plot is something that tends to evolve as I write.

Of my more recent stories, I tend to start with "what if" questions the most often, followed by the first line of the story or poem popping into my mind complete and unbidden. Sometimes I'll know the end of the story first and start there, working backwards. And my novel began with character.

Examples of "What if":

* The Girl Next Door (short story) - What if a psychopath sent the girl next door a wooden advent calendar? And what if the little compartments contained human body parts instead of candy?

* Acts of Intimacy (short story) - What if an orthopedic surgeon got his jollies from touching the bones of his patients during surgery? What would drive a doctor to such a compulsive perversity? Even though this story started with a "what if?" question, it also started with the end of the story.

* The Accidental Poet (short story) - What would happen if a high school kid could get revenge by writing limericks that came true?

Example of first lines:

* Dead Letter Dogs (poem) - "I mailed my dog to a dead man."

Another example of starting with the ending:

* Finding the Way Home (short story) - A couple have a ghost dog that only they can see. How did this come to be?

Paul Schilling, class of 1999

With the trilogy I'm writing now, it started with the setting, but that poor solar system just sat there in my head until I realized what story would fit it best: two characters from two worlds falling in love, followed by a plot carefully thought out to keep them in close physical proximity and emotional distance until the obvious climax. Two other novels are named after the main characters because they were the reasons I wrote the books: then came the plot. All the rest were idea novels: second came the characters and the plot just came as I wrote.

Curiously, the character novels came out of my fingers faster than most of the idea novels. I suppose the more vivid the character, the easier the other decisions come to me.

Amy Tibbetts, class of 2004

I always start with setting. It's what interests me most and appears most vivid to me. My settings are based on historical times & places but with fantasy (magical or alternative) twists. My characters follow closely after the setting. I like character-driven stories, so once I've decided which setting I want to write in, most of my energy goes into the characters. Plot & theme have always been hard for me. My stories used to go nowhere. But since I've been studying plot and not allowing myself to start writing until the outline is done, it's been much better.

Ellen Denham, class of 2006

I suppose most of my stories start with a "what if," for example: What if you could rig up a machine to make somebody's larynx sing after their death? Or, what if someone with a verbal tic (maybe borderline Tourette's syndrome) had a stroke that affected their speech, leaving them only able to repeat a seemingly meaningless phrase? I start writing from that premise. In the first draft, I'm more interested in exploring the "what if" and seeing what results. I maybe have some plot ideas to start with, then I need to choose a POV character and start writing. Usually I don't know the ending when I start. Typically, the ending I come up with doesn't feel right.

Then, it's time to consider theme. What do I really want to say with this story? Often I can pull one or more possible themes from what I've already written, but I have to decide on what the main focus is going to be. I rewrite the story accordingly. For example, the one about the woman who had a stroke (not a genre piece) ended up being mainly about family relationships. The protagonist felt she'd never again be the "cool aunt" she'd been to her niece and nephews. I decided that the theme was that you're still the same person even with a disability, and people who love you will eventually recognize this. Then, I had to rewrite the story to get in much more about the niece and nephews and cut back on other things.

I'm not sure how well my method works, but it's definitely much better than pre-Odyssey when I didn't do much consideration of theme!

*** =  Question submitted by Larry Hodges.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Scott H. Andrews lives in Virginia with his wife, two cats, nine guitars, a dozen overflowing bookcases, fifty board-feet of lumber, and hundreds of beer bottles from all over the world. He is a graduate of Odyssey 2005. His short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales and Space and Time, and he has been a Finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the pro-rate fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His website is http://www.scotthandrews.com/.

Can you talk about your pre-Odyssey writing process? What kind of writing schedule, if any, did you keep?

I would write all day during weekdays (I had been taking semesters off from teaching), but I was just churning out raw text--I really didn't know what I was doing. I had a general outline of what was supposed to happen in my bloated fantasy novel, and I wrote several full drafts of that and even a sequel. I did write every day, actually far more often than I write nowadays when I allegedly know what I'm doing. For me, writing well takes a lot more planning and care than just churning out raw amateur text did.

What made you decide to attend the Odyssey Writing Workshop?

I knew I needed to improve. I was sending queries to agents and getting only form rejections, and the few local critique groups I was in at that time were not challenging me, so I knew I needed to go to a workshop that would give me thorough instruction and useful feedback.

How do you feel your writing and writing process changed as a result of having attended Odyssey? What insights did you gain into your own work? What surprised you most about Odyssey?

My writing changed drastically. Odyssey is the equivalent of a semester-long college writing course, so I learned a lot.

I think the most important thing I learned at Odyssey was the need to try to see my work from the viewpoint of a reader. I already had theoretical knowledge of lots of the mechanics of writing--for example, I knew what point-of-view was and how to execute it. But I had never thought much about putting myself in the reader's head to see what it was like for them to read the words I had on the page.

The reader of course doesn't know all the backstory of the characters or the world; they probably don't know all the terms and don't get all the prose; and they often don't have an instinctive feel for the spatial or interpersonal situations. So an author has to work within those natural limitations, giving the reader enough that they can understand the author's vision yet still find their own way through it--synthesizing their own unique mental image of the characters and world and how the story is moving forward. In order to achieve that balance of giving the reader the right things in the right amounts, the author has to try to see their own words on the page as a reader would, so they can understand exactly what effect their prose will have. Odyssey was my first experience at trying to see my work from that kind of external perspective, so I could shape it into the most useful form for communicating my vision to a reader.

When and how did you make your first sale?

My first sale of any type was a literary short story, "A Brief Swell of Twilight," which I wrote at Odyssey. It won a $1000 prize in a contest from a college literary magazine, the Briar Cliff Review.

My first SF/F sale, a short story called "Excision," was to Ann VanderMeer of Weird Tales in June 2007. My background as a scientist colors most all of what I write, and that story was a fantasy take on medical science. It also featured a guilt-wracked character in an emotionally wrenching situation, which I do often, and a good bit of vivid gore. Ms. VanderMeer liked the combination of the literary storytelling and the dark, character-centered feel, and "Excision" appeared in her very first issue of Weird Tales, #347.

You've created an online, literary-adventure fantasy magazine called Beneath Ceaseless Skies. What inspired you to create this magazine? What kind of advice would you give someone who wanted to start his own online mag?

I created Beneath Ceaseless Skies because there was no magazine for "literary adventure fantasy" short fiction--fantasy written with the literary flair of current award-winning fantasy short fiction but also featuring traditional fantasy elements, like secondary-world settings and classic character roles such as thieves. Most of the top fantasy short fiction markets these days are skewed toward slipstream or other literary fantasy, and the few remaining swords & sorcery markets sometimes feel inconsistent to me in their literary quality. I love to read (and write) fantasy short fiction that blends aspects of both of those styles, but there was no dedicated home for it. So I started one.

My advice for anyone who wants to start their own magazine is to think very, very seriously about the time commitment. It takes tons of time to run a magazine. Lots of online zines pop up, then shut down after only a few issues because their editors didn't realize how much time it takes. I have to read 250 submissions a month, in addition to editing accepted manuscripts, managing the website, and recording and producing our audio fiction podcasts. If you think you want to start an ezine, make sure you're ready for total commitment--if you flake out after only a few issues, you will disappoint your writers and your readers.

What are the most common weaknesses you're noticing in the submissions you receive?

The most common thing that makes a submission not right for me is the lack of some sense of urgency right from the very first paragraph.

There are lots of different ways to achieve what I mean by a sense of urgency. My favorite is to get a visceral feel on the first page for the protagonist's core burning goal as a character. I believe every character needs a core burning goal, but I see lots of submissions where the protagonist doesn't seem to have any goal, even after the first page, and therefore has no drive as a character.

Other ways to get a sense of urgency early-on can include some sort of strong attitude from the narrator that makes them seem interesting or makes the narrative voice distinctive. An unusual and vivid setting in the opening sometimes hooks me briefly, but a strong goal or attitude from the protagonist hooks me deeper because it's something from the character. Suspense or action in an opening, on the other hand, usually doesn't feel urgent for me because at that point I don't yet care about the character who's in danger.

Short fiction writers need to remember that readers (and therefore editors) have to be intrigued from the very first line. Unlike novels, there isn't enough room in a short story for things to start off slow or for the opening to be anything less than vividly engaging.

Many people think that critiquing the work of others is the price they have to pay to get their own work critiqued. They don't realize that critiquing can help the critiquer to improve is own writing. As an editor, you're doing quite a bit of critiquing and editing these days. Do you think this has improved your own writing, and if so, how? Has any of this constant critiquing and editing hindered your own work, made it difficult for you to slip out of the critical state of mind and into the creative one?

I think all the reading I do of manuscripts, both critiquing and magazine submissions, has made me rather good at seeing flaws in a story and suggesting ways to fix them. I've had numerous pro writers compliment me on my rewrite and editing suggestions for their stories. I don't think that skill has yet benefited my own writing because I'm still too close to my own writing to be able to view it completely objectively. But I know it will benefit my writing eventually.

The constant editing and critiquing has never hindered the creative drive for my own work, perhaps because I'm always critical about my own work. I often spend four to six weeks outlining a story before I even start writing, working out all the holes of plot logic and character motivation, so my creative state has always been rather critical.

Now that you're editing your own magazine, do you find your own writing suffers? How do you manage your time when it comes to the magazine's needs and producing your own fiction?

Yes--my time for writing definitely suffers. The magazine last winter was a seven-days-a-week effort, reading submissions and producing our audio fiction podcasts. It's tough to manage my time because the magazine has deadlines, which must be met, and my writing time is always undefined, so the magazine becomes the priority. That's a balance I'm still working toward.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Podcast #29 is now available for download here.

In her guest lecture at the 2005 Odyssey workshop, P. D. Cacek debunked some of the alleged "rules" about writing. In this podcast, she covers a series of such "rules," explains their limitations and inaccuracies, and provides the more complex truth. For example, writers are often advised to limit the number of point-of-view characters in their novels to three. That's an arbitrary number and certainly not the best choice for every novel. While it is true that an author should think carefully about POV, and keep the number of POV characters to a minimum, the author must write what the story needs. Writers are often told to use complete sentences and correct grammar. That is not always the best option for a particular moment or scene. But the author needs to know the rules of grammar before breaking them, so that when he does break them, he does so mindfully and for good reason.

The winner of both a Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award, P. D. Cacek has written over two hundred short stories, appearing in such anthologies as 999, Joe Lansdale's Lords of the Razor, Night Visions 12, Inferno and the inaugural YA anthology of horror fiction from Scholastic Books, 666:The Sign of the Beast.

Although probably always considering herself a short story writer, Cacek has four published novels, just completed a fifth, Visitation Rites (a good old-fashioned ghost story) and has started writing plays--two so far, The Last Daughter and The Stories Teller . . . neither of which are horror.

A native Westerner, Cacek now lives in Fort Washington, PA . . . in a haunted house across from a haunted mill.

When not writing, she can often be found either with a group of costumed story-tellers called The Patient Creatures (www.creatureseast.com), or haunting local cemeteries looking for inspiration.

You can visit her web-site at www.pdcacek.com.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Jeanne Cavelos is the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She was a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she worked for eight years, editing the fantasy/science fiction program, the Abyss horror line, and other fiction and nonfiction. Jeanne is also the bestselling author of seven books and numerous short stories and articles. She has won the World Fantasy Award and twice been nominated for the Stoker Award.

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Creating Strong Scenes

In one of our recent podcasts, Nancy Kress discussed the importance of writing in scenes. She explained how breaking your story into scenes, and breaking those scenes into their various components, can help you make the most of every moment in your story. I'd like to build on that topic by discussing another important aspect of writing in scenes.

Something that I've found very useful when constructing a scene or editing a scene is to consider what changes in the scene. Ideally, in every scene, something of significance should change for the main character of that scene. Some significant value should change for the main character between the beginning of the scene and the end. Some reversal should take place. For example, a character might go from freedom to captivity, or from love to hate, or from distrust to trust. Robert McKee discusses this concept in his excellent book Story.

Many developing writers create scenes in which nothing much changes--a character sits and thinks about his life, or walks around and thinks about his life, or two characters exchange information, but nothing of significance changes. Often the author is preoccupied with establishing certain background information, setting up character relationships, or describing the world. While those are important tasks to accomplish, they should be accomplished while the plot is simultaneously moving ahead, not while the plot is stuck at a standstill. A scene in which nothing of significance changes is a scene that is not moving the story ahead. If at all possible, it should be cut or revised so that it does create such a change.

A story in which every scene creates a change or reversal is more likely to be dynamic, dramatic, and exciting. Give it a try.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Recent/Upcoming Publications

Short Stories

Kaalii Cargill, class of 2009
"Daughters of Time"
Anthology: Maiden, Mother, Crone
Published by: Drollerie Press

Michael J. DeLuca, class of 2005
"Between Two Treasons"
Published by: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 23
Michael's website: http://mjd.joskinandlob.com/wordpress/

Michael J. DeLuca, class of 2005
"Starlings"
Published by: Abyss & Apex, Issue 31

Jasmine Hammer, class of 2008
"Tornado Juice"
Published by: Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Issue 24
Jasmine's website: http://jasminehammer.livejournal.com/

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"Raiders of the Ballot Box"
Published by: Atomjack Magazine
Larry's website: http://www.larryhodges.org

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"Sympathy Bouquet"
Published by: Ruthless Peoples Magazine
Justin's website: http://justinhowe.livejournal.com/

Adria Laycraft, class of 2006
"Meeting God"
Published by: Hypersonic Tales
Adria's website: http://www.thewriteinitiative.com/

Rita Oakes, class of 1998
"Sorrow's Blade"
Published by: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 24
Rita's website: http://www.ritaoakes.com/

Rebecca Roland, class of 2007
"What the Mountain Yields"
Published by: Everyday Weirdness
Release Date: July 30, 2009
Rebecca's website: http://kannibal-kat.livejournal.com/

Nonfiction

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"Tomorrow's Future Today"
Published by: Tor.com

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"The Sidewalk: Notes from an Amateur Bookseller"
Published by: Internet Review of Science Fiction

Elaine Isaak, class of 1997
"Let's Talk"
Published by: AlienSkin Magazine
Elaine's website: www.elaineisaak.com/

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Robert E. Howard and The Whole Wide World"
Published by: Fearzone
Jason's website: http://jsridler.livejournal.com/

Magazines

Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Edited and Published by Scott H. Andrews, class of 2005
Issue #23: August 13, 2009
Issue #24: August 27, 2009

Recent Sales

Barbara A. Barnett, class of 2007
"The Holy Spear" to Revenant Magazine

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"Memory of a Minefield" to Hypersonic Tales

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"Channel Surfing in Amnesiaville" to Brain Harvest

Sara King, class of 2008
"Planetside" to Jim Baen's Universe

Kelli D. Meyer, class of 2009
"Fragile" to Flash Me Magazine

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Advice from the Devil's Handbook" to Big Pulp
"Paladin and the Concrete Blond" to Nossa Morte
"The Sum of Spectacle" to Ruthless Peoples Magazine

David Stier, class of 2002
"Embracing the Suck" to F Magazine

Carrie Vaughn, class of 1998
"God's Creatures" to Dark and Stormy Knights

Contests

Adria Laycraft, class of 2006
"Heartache"
Finalist in the In Places Between, August 2009

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Congratulations to all of our graduates for their successes, both past and upcoming! If you're interested in seeing a full list of sales and publications, please visit our Graduates' Publications page here!

For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

The 2009 class of the Odyssey Writing Workshop just graduated in July, and we thought you might like to hear what some of the newest members have to say about their experience:

Meg Spooner

Make no mistake, Odyssey will tear away all your comforting delusions about yourself as a writer. But something happens along the way, a painful--but ultimately hugely rewarding--process of discovering true worth, ability, and uniqueness that replaces those false delusions with the truth: you have a story to tell, and only you can tell it.

Travis Heermann
Author, Heart of the Ronin

I would recommend Odyssey to anyone who wants to write science fiction, fantasy, or horror professionally. Your writing will make quantum leaps in quality during a challenging six weeks. Jeanne is a fantastic instructor, and her experience as a writer and also as an industry professional come through in every class and critique. The guest lecturers and writer-in-residence add a fresh dimension and perspectives not only on how to write science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but also what it takes and what it means to be a professional writer.

Kevin G. Jewell

Ray Bradbury says, "throw yourself off the cliff and build your wings on the way down." Odyssey gives you tools and plans to build them.
                           
Jenny Rae Rappaport

Jeanne taught me that a plot toolbox does exist, and how to use it. She has helped me learn to describe concepts that I knew internally, but couldn't verbalize well. It has made me a better writer and a better literary agent.
                           
Arthur Dorrance

This workshop is a contact-high for people serious about writing genre fiction.
                        
Corry L. Lee

Odyssey taught me more than I ever knew was possible. I had to work harder than I've ever worked (even in grad school) but the rewards were even greater. I learned about weaknesses I never knew existed in my writing and gained practical techniques to attack those weaknesses. I made friends I will cherish for a lifetime.
                           
Brad Hafford

Odyssey is more than a journey into the art of storytelling; it makes a writer face cyclopean fears, buffeted by storm-tossed critiques, finally to find shore in a more confident structure and passionate style. It has changed me and my writing profoundly. For the better.
   
Alex Wolfe                  

If a fellow writer asked if I would recommend Odyssey to him, I would do so without hesitation and as emphatically as possible. The experience was, from a craft, social, and overall developmental standpoint, a catalyst beyond anything I could have hoped for in terms of growing as a writer and as a person. I cannot recommend it enough.
       
Mary Rodgers                  

Attending Odyssey was both a privilege and a pleasure. I am so grateful for this experience. Everything from the rigor of the coursework to the joy of bonding with my amazing classmates has been invaluable. I suppose that I could have done without my newly minted caffeine addiction, but that is at best a minor quibble. I can't wait to go home and put all that I've learned
into practice . . .
                           
Sharon Sun

Odyssey really showed me who I was, both as a writer and as a person, and Jeanne did an amazing job at teaching me all I never knew about myself, and then guiding me to where I should go next.
                          
Kaalii Cargill

Attending Odyssey has given me specific, concrete ways to address long-standing issues in my writing.
                       
Kelli D. Meyer

Both the time and money invested in Odyssey were well worth it. I can't imagine any experience paying bigger dividends in terms of improving my writing and my chances of publication.
                          
Peter Simonson

I've never worked with an instructor who was so dedicated to my personal learning. Odyssey is an extraordinary experience because Jeanne puts so much of her love of writers, the craft, and the genres into it.
     
Lisa Poh                  

Before I came to Odyssey, I was wandering, lost in a fog of war, unsure of where I stood in terms of my writing and unable to gauge how far I was from my goals. Odyssey lifted that fog of war, and I, for the first time, can see clearly now where I am in terms of my strengths and weaknesses, and more vitally, how much more I need to work to meet up to those standards.  

Jeanne is far and away the best part of Odyssey. One element that distinguishes Odyssey is that Jeanne is our primary instructor throughout the six weeks, although we benefit from guest lecturers and a week taught by a writer-in-residence. The benefit of this is that Jeanne is like a lighthouse for us through our sometimes rocky and daunting voyage. She's always there to guide us, give us words of wisdom or advice, or fix the broken plots that we bring to her in a panic. She brings coherence and practicality to understanding writing and publishing. She has so much compassion for struggling writers--something I've not experienced in the creative writing classes I've previously taken--and through these six weeks, makes the effort to individually meet with us to talk to us about what makes each of us unique in our voice, to affirm that we do have something special we bring to the table as writers, and to work with us using specific tools to fix the problems we didn't know how to fix. I can't thank her enough for her dedication and passion!
     
Jason Heller                  

If you think you know what you're doing as a writer, Odyssey will cure you of that particular misgiving. But it will replace your crutches and bad habits with real tools and techniques for obliterating ruts, breaking glass ceilings, and digging deep into yourself for motivation and inspiration. Quite simply, Odyssey changed my life. I'll never look at words the same way again.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Barbara Campbell attended Odyssey in 2000. She is the author of the Trickster’s Game trilogy published by DAW Books. (Heartwood -- 2005, Bloodstone -- 2006, Foxfire -- 2009). A lyricist and librettist as well as a novelist, her musicals have been performed throughout the world. She is a member of SFWA and ASCAP. Visit her website at www.barbara-campbell.com.

Can you talk about your pre-Odyssey writing process? What kind of writing schedule, if any, did you keep?

I still tend to go to extremes in terms of my writing process, either writing twelve hours a day or letting weeks go by without writing anything. A big change, though, is that I tend to do a lot more prep work before I actually start writing, detailing the world I’m exploring, the inner life of the characters, the themes and the key plot incidents. That’s the result of a lot of false starts that occurred after I wrote my first novel.

The seed of that story came to me in a dream. Sounds flaky, but it’s true. I wrote the book in three months. It was like I was channeling. It was an incredible experience, but it had an unforeseen (and ultimately negative) side effect: I thought every novel I wrote would--and should--emerge that easily.

Publishers took a look at the mix of historical fiction, fantasy, and romance and said, “No, thanks. We don’t know how to market it.” So I set out to write a genre work and chose…romance! Since I’d grown up reading my mother’s historical romances, I figured I’d be great at writing one.

Instead, I was an absolute disaster, more interested in historical accuracy, I think, than in the romance. So I moved on to fantasy. I stopped and started half a dozen novels. I’d write these wonderful scenes (well, I thought they were wonderful!) and realize I had no idea what they had to do with the story I was telling. And further realize I had no idea what story I was trying to tell! All those stops and starts were incredibly frustrating and left me feeling that I was a one-shot writer who’d already had her one shot.

What made you decide to attend the Odyssey Writing Workshop?

I’d started yet another idea--which eventually became Heartwood--when I got a postcard about the workshop. I hoped I’d get some direction, not only in terms of where the novel was going, but also about writing a fantasy, a genre I’d basically fallen into, rather than one I had read devotedly all my life.

How do you feel your writing and writing process changed as a result of having attended Odyssey? What insights did you gain into your own work?

For me, Odyssey was a crash course in the building blocks of storytelling. I went there feeling adrift, doubting my ability as a writer and my ability to finish a project. I came away with more confidence and a determination that I was going to finish Heartwood if it killed me!

After the ease with which I wrote that first novel, I was surprised to discover that my biggest weakness was creating a strong plot. Jeanne [Cavelos, Director of Odyssey] described the original synopsis of Heartwood as a “scavenger hunt,” rather than a plot linked by a strong causal chain of events. Odyssey gave me the tools I needed to understand my strengths and weaknesses and to work through the problems I was having. Through outlining and scene analysis, I got better at crafting a tight plot.

When and how did you make your first sale?

I sold Heartwood to DAW Books in 2004.

That first book (my "dream" book that didn't sell) got me an agent. She was the one who submitted Heartwood to DAW. And DAW bought it. Very straightforward. However, I will tell you the story of how I heard about the sale. I came home from somewhere and listened to my messages and there's my agent's voice--very coy--saying, "I have good news . . . " Well, what other good news could it be? Of course, I called her immediately. She said that she didn't want to come right out and leave the full news on an answering machine, but she was too excited just to hang up without saying anything.

Some writers have told me that the most exciting day in their lives was when they held a copy of their first published book in their hands. Not for me. Don't get me wrong--that was great. But MAKING that sale, hearing Sue crooning, "I have good news . . . "--that was the best.

How many stages does your work go through before you send it off to a publisher? How much of your time is spent writing the first draft, and how much time is spent in revision? What sort of revisions do you do?

The first draft of Heartwood took about two years. Revisions took at least another year. I basically gutted the first draft and rewrote two-thirds of the book. What started as a rambling 180,000-word manuscript ended up as a much tighter final draft of 100,000 words.

It was written as a stand-alone. Only in the course of conversations with my editor did I embark on two more novels in the series. As a result, my process with Bloodstone was a little different. Now that I was under contract, I didn’t have the luxury of spending three years writing a sequel. I started off outlining the story, but I found I was using the editor half of my brain instead of the creative half. So after three months, I plunged in, guided by a synopsis that outlined some scenes in great detail and had huge gaps where I didn’t know what I was doing.

Occasionally, I wrote out of sequence. I was still getting to know my protagonist, so when I found myself struggling with one of Keirith’s scenes, I moved on to Darak or Griane--characters I knew well from Heartwood--to keep the momentum going.

I revised Bloodstone as I went along, so it took me less time to come up with a final draft. Foxfire had more revisions, particularly in terms of the protagonist’s arc, which I kept refining. I write multiple POV novels, and one technique that I’ve found effective after finishing a first draft is to read all the chapters for a POV character (along with those in which he is featured, but not the POV character) to get a better sense of the overall character arc.

Another technique I use when writing the first draft of a scene is to act it out--literally. I sit on my sofa and hold protracted conversations between characters. It may sound strange, but since my background is in theatre, that kind of improvisation is natural for me.

I’m always amazed by authors who say that they have to get every word right in their first drafts. While their reasoning makes sense (Paul Park once said that if he failed to choose exactly the right words, he would veer ever farther from true north), I know if I worked like that, I’d never finish anything.

Once I know what the scene is basically about, I get it on the page. Then I go back (usually the next morning after I’ve had a chance to think about it) and take a look at it again, refining and rewriting as I go. Once it accomplishes what I think it should, I put it aside and move on. When I’ve got a big chunk of the novel written, I sit down and read from start to finish, noting where there are holes in the plot, gaps in character development, etc.

The scenes of highest emotion (in my books, usually death scenes!) are the ones that undergo the least revision. Those are scenes that “sing” to me and it’s far easier for me to channel that emotion into my writing than it is to craft more prosaic sequences. (What I think of as the “on the road” scenes that I need to tell the story, but that have less emotional oomph.)

What's the biggest weakness in your writing these days, and how do you cope with it?

I still struggle with plot, particularly in the middle of a book. I generally know the beginning and end (although they can change in the course of the story). It’s that great chasm in the middle that’s often unclear. (In the synopsis of Bloodstone that I gave my editor, I described the plot in the middle of the book with the cogent phrase “stuff happens.”)

What I began to do with Bloodstone and continue doing today, is to identify the major turning points in the book and then work around them to determine what things need to happen to lead me to a particular incident and what things will happen as a result of it. This gives me a sort of road map to follow. I’m not slavish about it, though. Sometimes, things will occur in the course of writing a scene that bring up new possibilities, even new characters. If those augment the story I’m telling, I’ll amend my road map to incorporate them.

Ultimately, the guiding light for me is theme. It took me a long time to identify it in Heartwood, although I chewed around the edges for a long time. In my other books, I’ve been clearer about the themes I’m exploring and that helps me shape characters and events.

The final installment of your TRICKSTER'S GAME trilogy was published this year. What do you feel makes your fantasy trilogy different from what's currently getting published, and what inspired you to go in that direction with your work?

Whether or not it makes my trilogy different, I’m less interested in magic per se than the internal journeys of the characters, journeys that force them to come to terms with the dark places in their spirits. That said, the external journeys are pretty dark, too! Heartwood has scenes of torture and mutilation. In Bloodstone, characters deal with the after-effects of rape and child abuse. Which makes it sound like these books are real downers. I don’t think they are. The characters go through a LOT, but despite everything, each book ends on a note of hope.

Ultimately, the books center on family relationships. That wasn’t my intent when I started the trilogy. I was interested in exploring the experience of a nature spirit thrust out of his natural environment and into the body of a human. In the rewrites of Heartwood, I began exploring the protagonist’s relationship with his father. That was Jeanne’s doing, actually. The scene she read between father and son was basically upbeat, with Dad ever-so-supportive of his son’s quest. She suggested that the scene would have more tension and power if the end result were negative. That got me to delve a lot deeper into their relationship. While I didn’t abandon my original premise, Heartwood became a story about a son trying to outdo his dead father and in doing so, inadvertently making the same mistakes his father had made. It also became a book about the love between brothers, both natural and surrogate. And those themes continued throughout the trilogy.

I think I was also influenced by my personal situation. Both my parents were ailing while I was working on Heartwood revisions. My father died in 2003, my mother a few months later in 2004, the month before DAW bought Heartwood. Some of the things I was experiencing definitely leaked into my writing, including relationships between siblings, the perceptions children have of their parents, and the regrets about things said--or left unsaid--that remain with you years later.

Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson has collected 750 rejection slips over the course of his career. How many rejections have you received on a single story? What is your philosophy about rejections?

Since I’m not a short story writer, it’s hard to rack up a high score for rejections. I probably collected a dozen on my unpublished novel.

I try to be philosophical about rejections, to take the view that what I’ve written may not be right for a particular publisher rather than look upon a rejection as an indictment of my abilities as a writer. But like most writers, it’s hard not to take rejections personally, especially when you’ve poured your heart and soul into a project and lived with characters for months--or years.

I can’t spend a year of my life writing something just because I think it fits a niche. I have to write what I feel passionate about and hope that I can convey my passion to readers, to make them care as much about the characters as I do.

What's next on the writing-related horizon? Are you starting any new projects?

I’m working on a new novel, but I have several others in the mental hopper, too. One is a fantasy, the other is mainstream. I attended The Never-Ending Odyssey this July to get the opening chapters of the fantasy critiqued. I’ve taken all my novels there. It’s a “tough love” environment that’s always provided me with great feedback on both the strength and weaknesses of the chapters I present. And it has the added benefit of forcing me to toe the line and write instead of just thinking about writing!

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Sadly, there will be no podcast for the month of August, but rather than leave you with a week of nothing, we thought we would share some of the writing tips found on the Odyssey website. Please enjoy.

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Writing Tip: Punctuation

We'll start with a very basic issue. Punctuation. I know, you were hoping for something more glamorous. But tough. This is important. Many developing writers feel that since they're being creative, they can be creative with their punctuation. A comma goes where it feels right, right?

But nothing turns off an editor faster than incorrect grammar or punctuation. If you really want to write well, you must learn the rules by which the English language functions. Thinking you can write well without knowing the rules of punctuation is like an architect thinking he can design a building without knowing the principles of physics and engineering. The building will not stand. And your story will not stand, either, when it is built from sentences incorrectly punctuated.

Punctuation is an important tool for a writer. Through it, the writer can tell the reader how a sentence is to be read and how different parts of a sentence relate to each other. The rules governing punctuation are not difficult to learn. Take some time to learn the rules below and practice using the various punctuation marks. Once you learn these rules, you'll know them for life, and they will help strengthen your writing for life.

• PART 1: THE COMMA
  Exercises for Part 1
  
  
• PART 2: THE SEMICOLON
  Exercises for Part 2
  
  
• PART 3: THE COLON
  Exercises for Part 3
  
  
• PART 4: THE APOSTROPHE
  Exercises for Part 4
  
  
• PART 5: QUOTATION MARKS
  Exercises for Part 5
  
  
• PART 6: END PUNCTUATION
  Exercises for Part 6
  
  
• PART 7: OTHER PUNCTUATION (DASH, PARENTHESIS, BRACKET, ELLIPSIS, SLASH)
  Exercises for Part 7
  

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For more writing tips and exercises, please visit http://www.sff.net/odyssey/tips.html

For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Recent/Upcoming Publications

Short Stories

Ellen Denham, class of 2006
"The Mouths"
Published by: Hypersonic Tales
Ellen's website: http://ellen-denham.livejournal.com/

Sherry Peters, class of 2005
"The Greatest Honor (A Mabel the Lovelorn Dwarf Story)"
Anthology: Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 8
Published by: Sam's Dot Publishing
Sherry's website: http://www.dwarvenamazon.com/

Brian Rappatta, class of 2004
"The Dead March"
Published by: Shock Totem, Issue #1
Brian's website: http://www.brianrappatta.com/

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"The Desert Island Fifty"
Anthology: Fantastical Visions IV
Published by: Fantasist Enterprises
Jason's website: http://jsridler.livejournal.com/

Eric James Stone, class of 2007
"Like Diamond Tears from Emerald Eyes"
Published by: Intergalactic Medicine Show, Issue #13
Eric's website: http://www.ericjamesstone.com/blog/home/

Eric James Stone, class of 2007
"Attitude Adjustment"
Published by: Analog Science Fiction & Fact, September 2009

Poetry

Erin Hoffman, class of 2005
"Osteometry"
Published by: Asimov's Science Fiction, August 2009
Erin's website: www.erinhoffman.com

Nonfiction

Justin Howe, class of 2005
"The Remarkable and True Account of Life on the Moon"
Published by: Tor.com
Justin's website: http://justinhowe.livejournal.com/

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Hearing the Music"
Published by: The Internet Review of Science Fiction

Magazines

Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Edited and Published by Scott H. Andrews, class of 2005
Issue #20: July 02, 2009
Issue #21: July 16, 2009
Issue #22: July 30, 2009

Recent Sales

Larry Hodges, class of 2006
"Raiders of the Ballot Box" to Atomjack Magazine
"Mummy at the Bat" to Beyond Centauri Magazine

Jason S. Ridler, class of 2005
"Gore, Lust and Courage: A 1980s Rite of Passage" to Butcher Knives and Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film

Carrie Vaughn, class of 1998
Voices of Dragons to HarperTeen

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Congratulations to all of our graduates for their successes, both past and upcoming! If you're interested in seeing a full list of sales and publications, please visit our Graduates' Publications page here!

For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Ginjer Buchanan will be a guest lecturer at the Odyssey Writing Workshop this summer. Buchanan was born in Pittsburgh, PA. She earned a Sociology degree from Duquesne University, and a master's in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh. She was employed as a social worker in Pittsburgh for two years, and then moved to New York, spending 13 years working for a foster care and adoption agency. She eased into the publishing world in the '70s by doing freelance work for various SF publishers, including a stint as consulting editor for the Star Trek novel line at Pocket Books. In 1984 she accepted a job as a full-time editor at the Berkley Publishing Group (now part of Penguin USA). She has had several promotions over the years, the most recent in January of 2007, when she was made editor-in-chief of Ace and Roc, the SF/F imprints of Berkley and NAL. She acquires and edits mostly in those genres but also has several mystery, horror, historical fiction, and non-fiction pop culture writers on her list.

What are the most common problems in the manuscript submissions you receive?

There are two most-common-problems: First, a lot of material is simply not that well-written. And second, even manuscripts that are otherwise adequate lack originality.

Which subgenres do you see way too much of? Which subgenres do you not see enough of?

These days, we have a deluge of Urban Fantasy. As to what we don’t see enough of—I guess I’d say military sf. It works well for us in mass market.

Many authors struggle to write synopses of their novels to submit to agents and publishers. What do you want to see in a synopsis? How long do you like it to be?

You know, I hear that all the time. But the truth is, a synopsis is just the author telling someone what happens in his or her novel. I’m not sure why that’s so difficult, but apparently it is. Anyway, it shouldn’t be any more than a couple pages. I always ask for one, even if I have bought a book from a finished manuscript. Marketing uses it.

You are the editor-in-chief of both Ace and Roc, the two science fiction/fantasy imprints of Penguin USA. Can you describe the differences between the imprints?

Ace is the oldest sf/f imprint in the business. It was founded in 1953 by Don Wollheim. It has a very long history and a very deep backlist, which includes some of the touchstone names in science fiction, both living (Joe Haldeman, John Varley, Bill Gibson) and dead (Heinlein and Herbert). Haldeman, Varley and Gibson, by the by, are still contributing to the front list, as well. Ace is a bigger list and it is more diverse. Roc is much younger. Its identity was established in the '90s, and it skewed toward new authors who wrote non-traditional fantasy. When the lists were brought together, in the sense that the same editors buy for both, we were given the task of keeping the separate identities as much as possible.

Most writers don't understand the concept of a publisher's "list." Can you describe the make-up of your list at Ace and Roc, how many books you publish each month, and how many slots you have for various subgenres? How has that list changed over the last few years?

Ace publishes anywhere from 5 to 6 mass market titles a month and 2 to 3 hardcover/trade titles. Some of the mass markets are reprints of the hc/trades but many are originals. Roc does 3-4 mass markets and 1 to 2 hardcover/trades. There are no specific subgenre slots. We try to balance both lists between sf and fantasy. The last few years—which have been enormously successful for both Ace and Roc—the lists have actually grown.

As a guest lecturer at this summer's Odyssey Workshop, you'll be lecturing, workshopping, and meeting individually with students. What do you think is the most important advice you can give to developing writers?

Three things; be familiar with the genre that you want to write in. But read outside that genre too. And when it comes to marketing your material, be it to an agent or an editor, do your homework and target your submissions.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Podcast #28 is now available for download here.

This is part 2 of a two-part podcast. You can find part 1 in Podcast #27. In his guest lecture at Odyssey 2003, Bruce Holland Rogers discussed narrative theory and the importance of structure. Structure can provide a story with unity and can give an author direction. In this podcast, Bruce explains his own use of structure in flash fiction and continues his fascinating list of various structures that can work well for short stories and very well for short shorts. These include the story in which a character has an epiphany; the ethnographic story; the story that parodies a familiar short document; the story of a character interacting with another and changing direction; the story that's like a picture that can be interpreted in two ways; the traditional story that is compressed; the story of thesis, antithesis, synthesis; the ellipsis that relies on the reader's knowledge of the form, so he can fill in what's missing; the suspense story predicated upon unusual attitudes or activities that puzzle the reader; the logical progression from an absurd premise; the story in which the thing that never happens, happens this one time; and the story that subverts an expected strategy or structure. Bruce discusses the requirements and goals of these various structures and provides examples from his own work.

Bruce Holland Rogers has a home base in Eugene, Oregon, the tie-dye capital of the world. His fiction is all over the literary map. Some of it is SF, some is fantasy, some is literary. He has written mysteries, experimental fiction, and work that's hard to label.

For six years, Bruce wrote a column about the spiritual and psychological challenges of full-time fiction writing for Speculations magazine. Many of those columns have been collected in a book, Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer (an alternate selection of the Writers Digest Book Club). He is a motivational speaker and trains workers and managers in creativity and practical problem solving.

He has taught creative writing at the University of Colorado and the University of Illinois. Bruce has also taught non-credit courses for the University of Colorado, Carroll College, the University of Wisconsin, and the private Flatiron Fiction Workshop. He makes frequent appearances at writer's conferences. He is currently a member of the permanent faculty at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program, a low-residency program that stands alone and is not affiliated with a college or university. It is the first and so far only program of its kind. Bruce offers an annual subscription to his short stories, emailing out a story to subscribers every three weeks for a mere $10. You can find out more at www.shortshortshort.com.

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For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.