Three Thoughts For Aspiring Writers Of Speculative Fiction

Richard Dansky has what he calls three rude thoughts for aspiring writers of speculative fiction. Here they are:

  1. “If there are more proper nouns in your back cover text blurb than non-proper ones, you’re probably doing something wrong.”
  2. “Unspeakable evil probably doesn’t live in your mom’s basement.”
  3. “If your star-spanning galactic empire doesn’t have working cell phone technology, you may want to rethink things a bit.”

Dansky explains.

0 thoughts on “Three Thoughts For Aspiring Writers Of Speculative Fiction”

  1. Alas, I think I’ll quibble with point two. I mean, I get what Dansky’s saying: Horror writers need a little verisimilitude in their writing. But his interpretation’s a bit narrow. For example, I’m a believer in total depravity, in the idea that unspeakable evil is lurking not only in the basement, but in the cars you pass on your way to work, in the checkout line at the supermarket, in the person who stands in the pulpit on Sunday and those he preaches to in the pews. Evil is everywhere, but few of us see it — at least until it’s given eldritch form.

  2. Still that seems to be a grander idea than the one he was criticizing. He was talking about small thinking, and you’re talking about profound, spiritual evil.

  3. Hey, folks:

    Glad to hear you enjoyed the essay. The point I was trying to make with the second bit was not that “horror doesn’t live at home” or anything to that effect. Rather, it’s that it’s extremely unlikely that the nameless, faceless horror that’s going to devour the entire world for no good reason other than that it’s evil always seems to find its way back into the world via the basement of a blocked writer’s ancestral family manse. Trailer parks? College dorms? Downtown condos? Nice houses along a golf course built in the last five years? Not so much – but it does seem to have an astonishing affinity for the cluttered-up basements of writers’ families. That’s all I was getting at there.

    Best,

    Richard Dansky

  4. Thanks, Richard. I’d think trailer parks and old government buildings would be the favorite haunts of world dominating evil–nasty, nasty places.

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