Learning from Others

Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction contains "Semper Fi," one of his own stories. Only this story is annotated with Knight's thoughts on what he was thinking when he wrote it and the devices he used. The story is on the even pages, the notes across from it on the odd pages. This is a great idea and is extremely helpful. I wish more people who pen books on writing would annotate their own stories.

You can find some other books that are very helpful in explaining how sf/f stories work:

Robert Silverberg's Science Fiction 101 (formerly Worlds of Wonder) contains Silverberg's thoughts on each story from a writer's point of view. The stories are somewhat old school, but there's good stuff there. (Silverberg's introduction alone is worth the price of the book.)

Two other books that do the same thing (recommended to me by Gordon Van Gelder at Clarion) are Paragons and Those Who Can, both edited by Robin Scott Wilson. Both contain examples of stories and author essays on plot, character, theme, point of view, etc. Paragons contains more current writers (Nancy Kress, Karen Joy Fowler, Lucius Shepard, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Kessel, etc.) than does Those Who Can, but both books are excellent.

Intersections is a collection of stories submitted to and critiqued at the Sycamore Hill Writers' Conference, an invitation-only event featuring some of the biggest names in sf/f. Not only do you get great stories, you also get to read how the participants critiqued each story. Extremely valuable. Intersections is edited by John Kessel, Mark L. Van Name and Richard Butner.

That's it for today. Happy writing, happy studying.

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