This is kind of a tale of two books. The volume is only 137 pages long, and nearly half of it is useless. Chapters 1 and 5 (there are only five chapters) deal heavily with the state of the sci/fi-fantasy publishing industry, but a LOT has changed in the past dozen years. Hence you get gems like this one on page 113: "For your first novel, you don't need an agent unless you've got a contract offer from a publisher."

Yeeeaaahhhhh....

So unless you're interested in literary history, all you need is the end of chapter 5 where Card elegantly describes the importance of certain habits and mindsets of writing. Those are timeless.

Chapter two is on world-building, which you would think would be enlightening, but Card spends most of his time focused on a few specific tropes. So unless you're interested in time travel or warp speed, the bulk of the chapter can be summed up in a sentence: Really map out all sequelae of any new technology or magic, so that you know deeply what it does and how it influences culture. Good advice, but repetitive.

So that leaves a chapter on story and plot, and another on micro-edits like diction and titrating exposition. These are wonderful, chock full of ideas that are both helpful and inspiring. I gained four or five really helpful pieces of advice. Four stars for that? Yeah, I'd say so. Giving advice on craft to unknown strangers is tough, and so a handful of takeaways that truly improve writing is at least par for the course, maybe even a birdie.

Found second hand.

4 stars for content, -4 stars for the author.

This book should've been called "How to write Science Fiction (with some side notes on Fantasy)".

Literally, this book is like 85% Sci-Fi, 8% Fantasy, and 7% about life as an author.

All in all, this book was disappointing. I already knew everything he tried to explain. The only things I could take away were words of advice and a very good example on how to handle exposition.

(the rating of 4 stars should be viewed as comparable to other course literature and not to reading fiction)

I learned a ton from this, and it actually got me giddy to get back into writing - usually these types of books have the opposite effect.

There were parts of this book that I merely skimmed (I was reading it with the question How do we create a fantasy world? in mind since that was the question my university had attached to the reading) but I know that I would like to come back to this book in my free time cause it is a gold mine of knowledge.

(Also, when I discovered that the author was the one who had written Ender's game

I had this friend, Phoebe, who believed in faeries. In order to receive advice from her fairy godmother, she completed a daily tarot reading and wrote her analysis into a journal. This was a habit she’d kept up for YEARS. Buncha damn nonsense, I thought.

Then I had a tarot reading of my own.

On one hand, I was right. It possessed no prophetic power. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. There was no fairy godmother.

But on a different hand, I was wrong. It was actually quite useful. In the process of analyzing what was essentially a randomized selection of cards, I was forced to think about my desires and troubles in a new way. The reading derailed my thinking in a positive way. And it provides a fun little exercise in meditating upon your life.

I lead with this short anecdote because I believe how-to writing books serve a similar function. None will contain some magical piece of advice that you’ll read and BAM! suddenly you can whip up stories like a boss! Such a magical how-to writing manual doesn’t exist. And if it did, I’m quite sure there’d be some horrible string attached where like you have to sign a pact with the devil and can only write using the blood of people you love, so at night you secretly take blood from your lover. She eventually comes to believe in vampires and festoons garlic around your house, the smell of which drives you mad and makes it harder for you to write and so you must draw more blood from your lover. You tell yourself, just one month of this and then the book will be done and you’ll make a gazillion dollars and you’ll take her somewhere nice, to her dream vacation spot in Rome. You finish the book. And it does make a ton of money. But only a tenth of a gazillion and it’s not enough. I mean, you were KILLING YOUR LOVER for that. It had to be the greatest book in the world. So you begin on your next one and…

Uh wait where was I?

Oh right, how-to writing books. Point is, any how-to writing book is like my friend Phoebe’s tarot readings. They primarily serve as an external framework on which you can hang and organize your own thoughts about writing. Here are mine, about the various sections in Orson Scott Card’s How To Write SF & Fantasy. Hopefully they will give some good ideas!

Part 1. The Infinite Boundary

Probably the biggest takeaway in terms of actual writing advice is that readers prefer a balance of novelty and familiarity.

Which of course is true of everything, not just writing. If we meet a new person who’s DIFFERENT from those we know, we’re attracted. If we see a store that looks DIFFERENT, our interest is piqued. Failure to be different will result in boredom. On the other hand, if something is TOO different, we feel frightened or alienated. Suppose this new person REALLY likes trampolines. As in unheathily obsessed. As in, he spends 6 hours a day jumping on a trampoline. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy. Six hours. Okay, little too weird. Not so attractive after all. Or maybe when we walk into the store, we find they accept neither cash nor credit. They only take pinecones. Uhhhh... 180! Out the store. Bye bye.

It harkens back to Richard Bausch’s advice to young writers: “Never be boring & never be muddy.”

True. Also useless. It’s more or less equivalent to saying, “Write awesome stuff!” Yeah, well, duh.

Part 2. World Creation

There’s a lot in here about where ideas come from. I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that if you want to write speculative fiction and have trouble coming up with ideas, you shouldn’t be writing speculative fiction. As Ray Bradbury once said, spec fic is the “fiction of ideas.”

Perhaps of greater use is Card’s discussion of the ‘idea net.’ He says that it consists of three questions: “Why?” “How?” and “To What Result?” He doesn’t talk much about the latter two questions (kinda ignores em actually – which I think is best) but he delves deeper into the WHY. He says that the WHY is always two questions, split between first cause and final cause.

The first cause is basic plot. It's simple cause & effect. Example: My protagonist hits a car that’s backing out of a parking space. The driver – a huge man – gets out and stalks toward him, enraged. Okay that’s the first cause. It’s a reaction to an event that happened and is easy to write. I'd think of it as the "skeleton" of the plot.

But then there’s the final cause, the INTENT, and the exploration of this is what separates mundane writing from good writing. It's the "heart" of the plot - the motive force animating the skeleton. Why is the huge man getting out? Cause he wants to beat the protagonist up. Why does he want to do that? Because his wife is in the hospital with cancer, and she’s dying, and he feels so damn impotent. He suspects she has cancer because they live downstream from the chemical factory where he works. But here, here is a chance to take back control in at least one corner of his life. So he's going to beat my protagonist up.

This WHY exploration is analogous to understanding a character’s desire. As Vonnegut stated in his rules: “Every character should want something, even if it’s just a glass of water.” In fact, that’s exactly how I brainstorm characters. For every character in every scene, I’ll jot down what they desire. In particular, it’s a good to have opposing desires. There’s something to be said for three characters in a snowstorm, hungry and cold, trying not to die. There’s something a lot more to be said for those three characters in the same situation and there being exactly ONE sleeping bag.

Part 3. Story Construction

Probably the best section in the book. The most useful anyway.

In his exploration of where a story begins and ends, Card offers four archetypes of stories:

Milieu – This is a story in which the setting, culture, or technology is the primary interest. This story begins when a stranger enters the world and ends when the stranger leaves (or decides to stay). Jurassic Park is a milieu story. The characters and their stories are an excuse to see dinosaurs do cool stuff. Like when they talk about the bug in the amber and getting DNA out? Yeah that serves no purpose but to build the setting. Matrix is a milieu story. Indeed, most sci-fi blockbusters are milieus. The characters exist just to show some cool special effects – to explore the fantastical world.

Idea – This is the story of a mystery. It begins when a question is asked, e.g. who dunnit? and ends when the question is answered. Obviously mysteries & detective fiction are Idea stories, but so are any in which a GIANT question looms over the story. I’m not a huge fan of these types of stories. The question ends up having to do too much of the heavy lifting – see my review of Speak.

Character – This is the story of, well, a character arc. The story begins when a character’s life becomes so unbearable that he/she can no longer deal and begins the process of making a change. It ends when the character either makes that change or fails and returns to how things were. Card makes the interesting point that not all stories must have full characterization. He gives the example of Indiana Jones – does he undergo a dynamic change? Not really.

Event – This is the story of order vs. chaos. A better word than ‘event’ might well be ‘epic.’ Basically, something has gone wrong in the universe and is not the way it should be. The lord Sauron has returned. Helen has been abducted by the Trojans. The white walkers are rising beyond the Wall. The Sith have returned and are seeking to undermine the galactic senate. This story begins when the main character gets involved in the disturbance and ends when the world is returned to a new order, to an old order, or falls into chaos.

These are interesting categories, to be sure, but how useful are they? Just for the hell of it, I went through six or seven issues of Asimov’s & F&SF keeping the MICE quotient in mind. What I discovered is that the easier a story fit into one of these categories, the less I liked it. Instead every story I loved was a blend. For example, a character is so unhappy with his life that he embarks on a strange and dangerous journey into new realms and comes out changed. In other words, impossible to decide whether it’s milieu or character.

This is especially true of novels. Consider Game of Thrones. Yes, this is clearly an event story – the rise of the white walkers. This series will certainly end when order or chaos is established one way or another (or GRRM dies). But it’s milieu too. So many characters are constantly entering new lands. Jon Snow goes to the wall – and then beyond the wall. Tyrion crosses the sea. Even the Starks going down to King’s Landing for the first time is milieu. And every character has a pretty clear arc that deals with being unhappy about their situation in life. Arya hates being a powerless girl so she becomes an assassin. Jon hates being a bastard so he seeks the honor and purpose of being a man of the Night’s Watch. etc.

Or how about Harry Potter?!

He’s definitely a stranger. One of the great joys in the HP series is discovering all the awesome stuff in the magical world. The story begins with his invitation to Hogwarts. It ends when the school year is over, and he returns to his mundane life. So milieu right?

But the precipitating story arises because HP hates his mundane life! He can't stand the Dursleys. He sees Hogwarts as a means to free himself of it. So it’s a character story right?

But the greater overall structure is the return of Voldemort! The story begins when Harry receives the Hogwarts invitation which signals his involvement in the epic struggle of good wizards vs. bad wizards. The books end with the destruction of Voldemort. So… event story?

See what I mean?

I do think MICE is quite useful for making sense of story structure, but I think it very rare that any story clearly hews to one category or the other. In my experience, every successful spec fic story needs to at least contain milieu and character arcs.

Part 4. Writing Well

This is a rather short section in which Card does a line-by-line analysis of good writing. His analysis is clear and interesting…

…but it’s unlikely to help you write well. You can’t micro-manage a story on that level. It’s too stressful. It slows down the flow of ideas to the point that the resulting prose feels cold and lifeless, even if it may be mechanically sound. You just have to read and edit and read and edit until good prose flow is second-hand.

With that said, a refresher never hurt anyone. His discussion of metaphor (and how it’s dangerous in speculative fiction) was interesting, as I’d never quite considered the potential pitfalls. Card says that, given the exotic nature of spec fic, writers must be careful with metaphors or else readers might think they are literal.

The last section is very dated, though it did have a nice cheerleader vibe to it. Not much to say about it, though, hence why it doesn't have its own section here!

Summary

In short, will this book make you a better spec-fic writer? Well… The thing about teaching anything, writing included, is that if you teach REALLY well, then what you’re teaching seems retroactively obvious. In fact, it’ll seem so commonsensical that your students will think they haven’t even learned anything at all.

This happens to me all the time when I teach. It’s dangerous. It causes the students to fail to mentally encode the lessons.

Thus to get the most out of this book (or any writing book or any education at all), you’re going to have to do like my friend Phoebe did with her tarot readings. It’s not about the tarot, but her analysis of it. You gotta spend the time thinking about it and taking notes. So, yes, I concluded that MICE isn’t actually very useful – but the process of making that decision WAS fruitful.

If you put in the thinking time, then yes this should make you a better spec-fic writer. Won’t necessarily make you a good one, of course. But better? Yeah.

“Cómo escribir ciencia ficción y fantasía” de Scott Orson Card. Un ensayo entre el manual y la autobiografía que podría hacer las delicias de aquellos a los que les guste este autor y además quieran aprender cómo desenvolverse en estos géneros, tanto a la hora de escribir como de intentar publicar tu obra El libro está escrito con un lenguaje sencillo.

La obra se divide en cinco capítulos y un añadido con varias entrevistas a autores de ciencia ficción y fantasía de reconocido prestigio.

El capítulo uno se llama “La frontera infinita”. En él Orson Scott Card nos cuenta acerca de su experiencia en los géneros de la ciencia ficción de manera autobiográfica. Lo hace de un modo ameno ofreciendo consejos sobre lo que se ha de hacer a la hora de escribir, y sobre todo, lo que no hay que hacer.

También explica cómo podemos separar los géneros de ciencia ficción y fantasía de acuerdo con su criterio, y a pesar de que en las librerías, siga habiendo cierta confusión a la hora de catalogar ciertos libros y autores.

El capítulo dos se centra en la creación de mundos. El autor nos habla de las ideas, del tiempo prudencial que hemos de dejar para que maduren y plasmarlas sobre el papel para que se conviertan en esa gran historia que imaginamos en nuestra cabeza.

También nos explica cómo tratar las reglas de la magia, la importancia de cuidar el lenguaje, de planificar nuestro escenario. También presta atención a las reglas que debemos crear a la hora de presentar por ejemplo los viajes en el tiempo u otros temas recurrentes en el género.

En el capítulo tres se trata la construcción de la historia, de cómo debemos cambiar cosas a medida que redactamos y de lo positivo de hacerlo. Da consejos sobre cómo debemos crear a nuestros personajes principales, al protagonista de nuestra historia o a la estructura de la historia (para crear el suspense en el momento adecuado y resolverlo de manera satisfactoria a la tensión creada a lo largo de las páginas, y al mismo tiempo, hacerlo en el momento adecuado.

Explica el cociente MIPA (medio, idea, personajes y acontecimientos), dejando claro que la importancia de cada uno de sus componentes (de los que habla en detalle) y que viene dada por el autor según la historia que quiera contarnos.

El cuarto capítulo nos habla de las técnicas para escribir bien, de la trascendencia de elegir bien el nombre de nuestros personajes, de la necesidad de fijarse en las acotaciones y los guiones de diálogo, del cuidado del suspense en nuestras historias. El buen uso del lenguaje, saber escoger las palabras y cuándo y cómo usar blasfemias y obscenidades (si cabe).

El quinto capítulo lo dedica a la vida y al negocio de la escritura. Aborda el miedo del escritor, ese que todos sentimos alguna vez y que nos paraliza. De las continuas subidas y bajadas emocionales que experimenta un escritor. Informa de las revistas, libros antologías de ciencia sci-fi, fantasía y ficción especulativa que merecen mención y también aconseja sobre cómo enviar una obra a una editorial o revista, carta de presentación o contactar a un agente. Por último, nos habla de la vida cotidiana del escritor y de la disciplina que debe seguir para salir adelante.

La obra es culminada con las entrevistas a seis autores conocidos dentro del género: Elia Barceló, César Mallorquí, Andrzej Sapkowksi, José Carlos Somoza, Bruce Sterling y John C. Wright, que responden a varias preguntas relacionadas con la escritura, su modo de vivirla y afrontarla, y la metodología de trabajo que siguen entre otros temas.

Un libro bastante interesante para aquellos que quieran conocer el modo en el que deben narrar sus historias y conocer más detalles acerca del mundo editorial y de la experiencia que ha tenido este autor dentro de él.

If your genre is science fiction and fantasy, this book is invaluable. Orson Scott Card is both one of the best writers on writing and one of the most honored authors in the field. He brings his deep intuition and clear voice to the issues specific to speculative fiction, such as how to world build without doing an info dump, how to maintain believability when dealing with the fantastic, and how to handle metaphors when the world of your novel is so alien that what would be clearly metaphorical in mainstream fiction might be a literal description. He also deals with issues that apply to all fiction, such as where ideas come from and how to mine their dramatic potential, but through the lens of SFF.

I would have awarded five stars if the publishing industry information weren't out of date. The book came out in the 80s, so a lot has changed. Card mentions magazines that don't exit anymore, says a 15% agent commission is highway robbery, and advises that you don't need an agent until you sell your manuscript! Unless you go the self-pub route that is no longer good advice, since few publishers accept unagented manuscripts. Ah, the good old days. I should have started writing years ago, before the publishing industry imploded. Or maybe not. Maybe the ebook revolution will be good for authors. Right now, it's hard to tell.

First, the ebook version I read was RIDDLED with typos and other errors. I'm not reducing my rating for that, however, as it is obviously not the author's fault (this book was originally published before the advent of eBooks), but that of the typesetter who quite obviously scanned the pages from the paperback into a pdf and converted to ebook without bothering to fix anything.

But I digress.

It's a fantastic introduction to world building and a number of other factors unique to sci-fi and fantasy. Well worth reading and I would highly recommend to anyone looking to write speculative fiction.

A really interesting and educational aid for writers of the said genres. Although some information is a little dated in regards to publishing etc the meat and bones of world building and sci fi tropes are well discussed. Well worth reading if you are a budding writer.

A quick read, but an insightful look into some broad considerations in the approach to SF and Fantasy. Though some of the advice is surely out of date, a few sections offer timeless advice that I'm sure I'll be looking back to time and again.

I've read a ton of books about writing (some good, some garbage), and I've written a ton of stories (some good, some garbage) and while Orson Scott Card's "How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy" may sound too narrow in focus for many purposes, it's a real gem with tips on writing and life that will be of use to anyone laboring with words for a living, regardless of genre.

The tone is no nonsense, at times reflective, warmly humorous, and genuinely helpful. It's basically everything you could want from a good teacher and an experienced practitioner. And speaking of teachers, the section on what kinds of courses to take (and avoid) is worth the sticker price alone.

The more books about writing I read, the more I find that the ones that stick to the practical and eschew the philosophical are best. Which makes sense, if you think about it. After all, no one can teach you creativity, and if you need someone to motivate you to write, well, then, you're probably in the wrong field, since this game is already crowded with highly motivated people pounding the letters off their keyboards just to get the most meager remuneration or recognition.

It also seems to be a general rule that the shorter books are the better ones. Orson Scott Card's "How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy" is short, and it's good, so apparently the rule still holds. The version I have was written in 1990, so some of the advice may be out of date, but you'll have to search hard to find it if it's there. Also, it would be pretty lowbred to fault a guy for not including info about online submission methods when the internet (as most of us know it) was still in its nascent form. After all, Mr. Scott-Card does not have a time machine, that I know of. Highest recommendation.

Great advice on world-building and story construction. This book is worth reading for those two chapters alone.

The last chapter on the life and business of writing seemed a bit out of date, though, therefore only 4 stars instead of 5.