Issue One will still remain for sale and those who have been published in that issue will still be paid when royalties come in, provided your Paypal address remains the same.  Anyone who currently has submissions with us will be emailed shortly with suggestions for other places to submit to.

On a happier note:  this does not mean that a magazine is completely out of the question for the future.  I have intentions to re-open a different magazine with less submission restrictions and in online format at some point (likely by Summer 2011).  Information about that will likely appear on my blog.  SBS was a fantastic adventure.  I learned a great deal with marketing, book formatting, submission procedures, and so on, and I expect I’ll have much more to learn in the future.

Thanks again, everyone, and have a great year!

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When you write, how much planning do you generally do? Are you like me, and only plan a few scenes ahead and occasionally know your ending before you get there, or do you like to have everything planned out before you even begin writing?

Recently, I had to write an essay for my comp. 100 class. Everyone was given the same topic: write an essay about how to write an essay. Simple, eh? Enough so, since we’d just spent half the semester going over the basics of how to write an essay and we now had to write about that and do it at the same time. Unfortunately, that meant I had to do some serious planning. If I was going to sit down and write a paper informing whoever was going to read it that planning was an essential part to writing a good essay, I had to do it myself, too.

I’ve met writers—“met” as in known people on writing sites such as Young Writers Online (from here on out known as YWO)—who plan out each chapter in great detail before even beginning to write. I’ve seen some of these peoples’ outlines and stared in surprise as I read tiny details of their yet-to-be-written story, details that I wouldn’t even dream of deciding upon until I was very near to writing the scene, or—perhaps—in the middle of writing the scene itself. On the other hand, all the planning I do before I start a novel or short story is to make sure that I know the basic plot. But is lots of planning necessary? I suppose it depends on the person. For me and my fantasy novels, it’s worse when I do plan.

Occasionally it’ll happen that I don’t write for a while, and in those cases I’ll figure out a lot of what is going to happen in the next few chapters or so, but I find that the more time I have to think about what I’m writing before I actually sit down and do it, the harder the scene is to write. Fresh ideas are easiest to deal with, and there’s a certain thrill about writing into the unknown which doesn’t occur when I know what the next four chapters will be like. This is a perfect example of why I don’t plan: with so many ideas in my head at one time, it’s hard to focus on the scene I’m currently working on. When I was little, I would have just skipped the difficult section to get to the “good part,” but that doesn’t really work anymore, even though I did try it once. (My advice if you want to leave sections for later: don’t skip parts. They’re a pain in the butt to edit in later.)

On the down side of lacking planning, it does make it very easy to get stuck, or be at a loss for what happens next. All too often (which isn’t that often, now that I think about it) I find myself writing a scene and getting really into it when I realize that I can’t continue because I don’t know what the next part is. I’ve gotten used to that, so it doesn’t bother me too much.

Planning is one of those things that everyone talks about, yet it’s really up to the writer. Maybe you’re one of those people who enjoys or feels that it is necessary to sit down and at least know what is going to happen halfway though his or her story. Now, even after writing that essay and planning the heck out of it, I still do little to no preliminary steps for my novels. It’s not necessary for me, and the more I plan the less likely it is that the story will go anywhere. But obviously, this doesn’t work for everyone, and even for me it depends if I’m writing essays or novels.

What are my blogs going to be about?

For the main duration of Summer, I’ll be writing a story from scratch. And I’ll be doing it with you guys, so that when I get to the “writing” bit, I’ll post a blog about it and talk you through some different approaches. It’ll be like a reality TV show where you can watch a piece of writing take fruit from a simple idea, to a story that I could send out to publishers.

Hopefully this’ll generate some interest, but we’ll see. I’ll be blending some bad jokes, good articles, and general writing help. Well, as much help as I can be.

These blogs will be a journey. Dorothy will travel to the end. And it’ll be numbered so. I may get bored of WordPress norms, and splurge a little meandering. Dorothy gets distracted by shiny objects (tin man?) and such.

Enjoy!

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Dorothy Lands in Munchkin Land

Ideas & How to Get Them (1)

You’ve decided to write a story (novel, whatever, but I’ll be addressing ‘short stories’ primarily). You’ve got your pens out in order, paper crisp, and laptop keys polished.

But you’re stuck because you have a lack of ideas.

And this is the first hurdle of writing.

You can’t be a ‘good’ writer without ideas, without creativity and imagination. In my opinion, it’s just not possible. Yes, fan-fiction is a thriving community, and can be productive but there’s nothing like having your own original ideas, and eventually writing them down.

Ideas come in different shapes and forms for different people, and different writing styles, so here’s a basic low-down, throw-down (although most of these originate from experience/observing in one way of the other):

Thinking — This is something that SF/Fantasy/Speculative writers might use. Basically, ideas come from you thinking about stories and ideas. Seems obvious? Well yes, but “thinking” in terms of “What if”s and play on scenarios, thought experiments and the like. What if trees could feel pain? What if people were born female and had to get sex-changes to become male? What if it snowed in Summer?

Take an ordinary situation and turn it into something else. Presto. You’ve got conflict.

They are often a good way to get thinking. And they could influence a number of SF, dystopian ideas (1984 might be, “What if your thoughts were being watched?” Fahrenheit 451 “What if books were banned?” Brave New World “What if people were born into their social classes?”) but not limited to that genre. They just came to mind first. It also works just as well for realistic fiction.

Another way of thinking up ideas would be trying to draw up conflict (crucial to every story) and give it a setting (in time/space). Think of a contrast that seems striking, something that will hook your reader and yourself. Abnormal circumstances that pivot around characters. Try and make your “character”/”setting”/”conflict” unique, or abnormal, and that might help get the juices flowing, since a good story hinges around originality.

• A vegetarian, and an avid meat eater are locked together in a meat processing factory
• A girl who is afraid of the dark becomes allergic to light
• The Earth starts to orbit the moon

Flashforward is the first example that come to mind. It’s TV show where everyone on Earth glimpses their future for 6 minutes or something like that (a major what if). Immediately there is a conflict between the future, and the present. And that is quite a big one that’ll spawn other internal conflicts within the characters etc…

Another more structured way of getting ideas, though the easiest yet often most over-looked, is to write about something that interests you.

If you like playing badminton, then write a story based on that. If you like researching about anti-matter then write a hard SF story about that. The more it interests you, then the better you will write.

So how does this come into my story experiences personally?

Well, a large majority of stories do spring off What If situations. I have plans on writing a novella based on the idea of “What if a small child became God?” and the tangent–the plot bunnies that come off that are bordering on wonderfully dangerous. Contrast is also an important aspect that I try to get as early on as possible.

Turtle Bay, is where I played with the conflict between my two main protagonists, and partners who can’t bear to stay together. The idea of the turtles acting as a veil for death is also something that I wanted to play about with. This idea of innocence and death, both being natural, and how I could write a story based on one, but about the other (double meanings).

Death and children is an interesting one. Again, the idea of innocence/death appeals to me (morbid, meh) and I think that the ‘blog story’ will revolve around the conflict of Death vs Innocence. Well Summer to be exact, but that’ll be explained in later posts. So you gotta keep reading to find out where Summer comes in. I’ll thank whoever manages to figure out how Summer comes into the conflict. CLUE: Films, and the scenes revolving around death, cemeteries, and burials.

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I may not be able to cover all the points next blog, but I’ll try.

Next Time (on Oz TeeVee):

Ideas from Experience/Observing (Plot)

Ideas from Fan-Fiction/Expansion on other stories

Ideas from Images (Poetry/Setting)

Ideas from Characters (Novels)

Ideas from Technique

SBS is now officially sold on The Book Depository for a very reasonable price (currently $8.50 USD).  The best part about that is that The Book Depository offers free worldwide shipping to just about anywhere!  So, head on over and get a copy and support our little magazine!

To those that have already purchased a copy, we’d like to say a big, hearty thank you!  You all rock!

Remember, the Steampunk issue is still open to submissions!  So, submit!

• Your submission doesn’t fit the theme.
  Our second issue is a Steampunk issue.  If you don’t submit a Steampunk story or poem, then we can’t be expected to accept it, now can we?
• Your submission is written poorly.
  Broken English, bad sentences, too many spelling errors, and so on.  This is just normal business, folks.
• Your submission is written well, but doesn’t quite snag us.
  This is probably the most common one we send out.  A submission may be quite good, but the ending isn’t right, or the story moves too slow, or something.  Maybe the story is really great, but one thing throws it off (we’ll likely ask for a rewrite).  The good news is this:  if this is why your story got rejected, it means we’d like to see more from you.  Good writers sometimes write stories that don’t work.

There are certainly other reasons for rejection, but they are too numerous and uncommon to list here.

I’m writing as a response to someone we rejected recently who seemed to imply that we didn’t want to print his/her story in the second issue of SBS because we are biased against Muslims.  Considering that my co-editor is, in fact, a Muslim, and considering our track record for being rather inclusive in the first issue (roughly 50/50 on gender and we didn’t ask about race, but knew that a handful of people in that issue were of color based on information made available to us), this is a rather ridiculous statement.  Coincidentally, this writer was rejected for a combination of the first two reasons above.  It wasn’t a Steampunk story and the writing was quite poor (not to mention that the author submitted it in an inappropriate format).

But, I guess this is just normal business, right?

Submissions are officially open for Issue #2 of Survival By Storytelling Magazine. Please be sure to check our guidelines, as a few things have changed there, including this:

We are looking for poems and stories that fit within the Steampunk subgenre. All forms of Steampunk are acceptable, provided that the basic Steampunk “aesthetic” exists in your poem or story. While we are perfectly fine with what might be called the “typical” Steampunk story, we are also interested in new and unique takes on the genre, whether from an aesthetic or structural viewpoint. Literary forays into this subgenre are appreciated, along with stories or poems that treat seriously the “punk” in the name. What does real “punk” Steampunk look like? Show us and impress us. So long as it’s Steampunk, we’re interested.

We are also interested in non-fiction dealing with some aspect of the Steampunk genre: history, literary criticism, book reviews, writing advice, etc. So long as it comments upon this genre in some way (even vaguely, even on a very curious and obscure level), we’re interested.

(Note: While Steampunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction, we have no preference for the quantity of fantastic or science fictional elements present within your work. We care more about the story than how many four-legged steam crawlers you have running around in your world. That’s not to say we don’t like four-legged steam crawlers (we do), but we want to have a very open mind when it comes to representations of this genre; if you’ve never written genre fiction before, now might be a good time to give it a shot, even if you are interested in a very limited genre feel.)

• Survival By Storytelling will be theme-based from now on.
  Some of the early criticisms of the first issue (which I completely agree with) were that the magazine didn’t seem to have a major theme except that all our contributors were fairly young.  Considering the publishing climate right now (as I see it), I think it would be best to think of ways to make the magazine appealing to a select, but more unified audience (if that makes sense, let me know).
• SBS will flirt more with the edges of genre than it did in the first issue.
  Personally, I am a science fiction and fantasy nut.  While the first issue certainly did its fair share of flirting with genre fiction, I think taking the magazine more into territory I am familiar with will be best.  We will still take poetry and non-fiction (you can write poetry about technology; I know a guy who does it).
• SBS will get a facelift.
  We’re going to build a whole new website for the magazine, change how we design the actual book, etc.  We’re also going to change how we market, and this will be aided by the above change, since I have a better idea how to talk to SF/F people than I do folks at The New Yorker (and I don’t mean that as a slight, since there is certainly a lot of crossover).
• SBS will not be a strictly “genre” magazine.
  While our themes likely will be more genre based, I want to stress that we are not going to be just another genre magazine.  Yes, we’ll take genre, as we always have, but we absolutely do want to see literary approaches to our themes (even if such themes are specifically genre; you can interpret “literary” however you want).   If, for example, you can write an incredible Steampunk story with a compelling style and excellent attention to character, then we’ll probably take it, even if your Steampunk elements are light.

I think those are the only changes that need to be brought up.  While submissions are currently not open, we will be opening them soon.  I am working on updating the submission guidelines.  That said, I suppose I should reveal the theme for the second issue:  Steampunk.  We’ll have more detail in the coming weeks.

How long have you been writing and what sparked your interest in it?
I have been writing seriously for roughly 5 or 6 years, though I was storytelling before that (and somewhat surviving.)

Who are some of your favorite authors and what are some of your favorite books?
I enjoy TS Eliot, Sartre, John Berryman, Ezra Pound, Kierkegaard, Hunter S. Thompson, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Whitman. You can imagine then what my favorite books are.

What inspired you to write your story/poem? Where did it come from?
The terrible summer of 2008, which shall henceforth not be mentioned again except by literary vices and devices.

What advice would you give to any budding young writers out there?
Always be writing something, even if it’s a questionnaire.

What, for you, makes a good story/poem?
Like a good amusement park ride, you return to the start and say, AGAIN!

If you could buy any one person alive today, who would you buy and why?
His holiness the Pope, Benedict XVI. I’d like to pitch a reality show where we live together.

More interviews to come! Make sure to check out the first issue of Survival By Storytelling!

How long have you been writing and what sparked your interest in it?
I started writing stories when I was in second or third grade, but I didn’t become serious until eighth or ninth. I don’t know what exactly sparked my interest in it. I think I’ve always been interested in telling stories.

Who are some of your favorite authors and what are some of your favorite books?
Some of my favorite authors include Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. My favorite books include pretty much everything I’ve read from those authors, as well as Catcher in the Rye, Written on the Body, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. I also like some fantasy and science fiction, but besides Harry Potter, none of my favorites are coming to mind.

What inspired you to write your story/poem? Where did it come from?
My friend was trying his hand at flash fiction, so my competitive nature drove me to write “One Last Look.” I’ve always liked dark fantasy, and the idea just came to me while I was lying in bed. I quickly turned on a light and wrote it down.

What advice would you give to any budding young writers out there?
Write often and don’t get discouraged. Take criticism to heart, but, again, don’t get discouraged. Teenagers rarely write masterpieces.

What, for you, makes a good story/poem?
I think a story relies mainly on character. I can sift through thick language and endure a plot that digresses and meanders as long as I feel something for the characters.

If you could bring any one person back from the dead, who would it be and why?
I can’t really think of someone who I’d raise from the dead. I don’t think a person risen from the dead would make for lively conversation anyway, seeing as he or she would probably be too preoccupied with his or her own death.

More interviews to come!  Make sure to check out the first issue of Survival By Storytelling!