Posts by Standback
It's absolutely fine, and quite correct! It gives the editor very helpful information -- namely, that two different venues have decided to publish your work (and, which, which can sometimes be a h...
Here's the thing about race: different people have very different ideas about what race means, and how race affects individual's lives. Some people's ideas of race is inextricably tied with their ...
All writing has political elements to it, whether you like it or not. Your question is a great demonstration of this. Some people consider LGBTQ people to inherently be (a) extremely rare, and (b)...
As a frequent beta-reader, often for friends, I struggled with this question -- and I'm pretty happy with the answers I've figured out. Don't pronounce judgment; help the author level up It makes...
OK, I'm going to rephrase your question a little. Your problem is this: You have information to impart, which is (a) interesting and (b) important. However, the act of imparting that information is...
Do consider why you're choosing to write a crying scene. What it means; how it develops; what you're hoping to get out of it. Because I think a fair bet is: the point isn't to observe, in minute d...
In this case, recognizing the problem -- recognizing that you want a narrative arc, that something should be intensifying beyond the scope of a single sexual encounter -- is also half the solution...
The crucial question, which will help you figure out how to write this, is: why is this detail important. And that question has two angles: Why is it important to your story? Why is it important ...
Science fiction has some unique staples, but there are a million structures and styles. Certainly there's no single structure that encompasses everything from the taste of genius in "Flowers for Al...
Asimov's is one of the best-known, most-respected magazines in the SF genre. Their volume of submissions is immense (I don't know precise numbers, but e.g. F&SF very recently got 192 submissio...
If publishing rights are yours, then they're yours, and you can reprint the story as you like. Yes, it's possible some publishers will be uninterested (or less interested) in a story that's been p...
It sounds to me like you have Book 1 with four main characters, and Book 2 with only one of those characters continuing. Lots of series do this, including Narnia and Dragonlance. But, it's importa...
Sexism isn't a yes/no kind of thing, and it's a mistake to treat it as such. Saying that a story or an idea is "sexist" is shorthand. What it means is that it creates, encourages, or reinforces se...
Fantasy and science-fiction is a genre that's bigger on the inside, and you'll find a lot of weird fiction enjoyed and celebrated within the genre. Surrealism and oddness definitely have their plac...
I think you're holding magazines to a very high bar here! F&SF and Clarkesworld are pretty amazing, but there are so many reasons for submissions to get replies more slowly than that -- and wha...
This is really the number one advice I can give anybody entering creative competitions: Learn how the competition works. Every competition has rules. Wordcount; formatting; themes. Some of them...
You're worried that your own work is similar enough to a popular take on the genre, but substantially different from it -- so readers might be coming to it with the wrong expectations. That's a ve...
This depends on the character. You're quite right to realize that the set of images a character will use, should depend a lot on that character's "inner lexicon"; on the particular imagery that ch...
Great question! A great difficulty here is that there's not really much in the way of "professional beta readers." Someone who's really known for giving excellent feedback, and offers that as a se...
There are two obvious concerns: One is being a plagiarist; the second is being derivative. Plagiarism has heavier consequences, but it's much easier to avoid. If your magic school is called Hugwor...
Because maintaining suspense over who will live and who will die is only one of a story's many goals. And in most stories, it's not even a very important one. The fact that The Protagonist Survive...
While there is no one single way, here's a practical approach. You need to be capable of answering a few crucial questions about your work: What is the work's overall feel and style? What, about...
You should be able to answer a few questions here. Why is the flashback necessary for the story? What does it add or change, that makes this a better story than without it? Why is the flashback i...
Add an additional point of uncertainty. "Will the story progress" is not an interesting stakes. But nothing's keeping you from adding other stakes that will grip the reader. Consider, for example:...
This is, indeed, the translator's job. For example, here's Gili Bar-Hilel, talking about translating the Harry Potter books into Hebrew: Fantasy books are often full of imaginary words created...
