Fictionistas Office Hours takes place on the last Tuesday of every month, starting at 7am EST. This is the time and place to ask questions about the Fictionistas community and writing fiction on Substack. Introduce yourself, say hello, ask and answer questions. As a community we’ll be here all day, so come and go as you please.
If you’re feeling shy, but want to participate, chose one or more of the following discussion topics to get started:
Are there fiction communities, contests or writing classes you participate in and enjoy outside of Substack?
If you’re a genre writer, what’s one thing about the genre you write in that you think writers should know?
Jul 25, 2023·edited Jul 25, 2023Liked by Jackie Dana, Alexx Hart
I interviewed fantasy writer Francesco Dimitri and he had this to say about fantasy: "We often say that imagination is bigger than reality, but I believe the opposite is true: imagination has limits, reality doesn’t. And the fantastic, in all its form, reminds us of that. It reminds us that no matter what we think, we are probably wrong. That what seems impossible today is the reality of tomorrow - or yesterday, in some cases. Things can be different - these four words, I think, encapsulate the genre, and they are lovely" you can read more here: https://thewritinggrove.substack.com/p/novelist-francesco-dimitri-on-puglia
Hey Lloyd, can you share a little about the creative writing class you're leading in Italy? I saw your Note about it, and it fits in the topic of other writing groups and classes outside Substack. It sounded really interesting.
The first one is travel writing and starts Sunday (fully booked). Two more workshops later this year in Puglia, Italy - Writing Setting and Writing the Gothic Genre. Writing Setting will focus on writing setting/place and using it effectively to reveal character, progress plot & drive conflict. The Gothic course will focus on genre basics, including power dynamics & the supernatural.
We'll use a sample text for writing exercises and have daily sessions to provide feedback and encouragement. The participants will stay in a 900-year-old monastery for 7 nights, perfect for inspiration! We'll go on tours of the city and excursions with local guides. But the focus is writing, and you'll have enough time (and space) to work.
Lastly, I live part of the year in Nardò, where we have the workshops, so I know it well. It's lively but small enough (30k residents) and not touristy; thus, the writers will have a calm, peaceful experience.
I'm just going to pop in and say 'hello'! We're all volunteers and share a common vision for helping each other succeed as fiction writers, both on and off Substack. There's probably a dozen or so who contribute actively to the success of Fictionistas, and we're glad you're here!
Are there fiction communities, contests or writing classes you participate in and enjoy outside of Substack?
I have been participating in a memoir writing group for sometime. We meet twice a month and read our work. Only memoir, so not really fiction. Buti it is amazing to see how creatively these memoirs have been arranged. I am an academic, but I write short fiction (just getting to self publish) and poetry (been a while) and memoirs (nothing formally published as of yet, but written often in an anonymous blog for friends and family). I write mainly because the stories want to be written. There are patterns and learnings in these stories, of my life and other characters who do not leave me alone.
Every writer at some point wishes to be read. Since academic writing is part of the job, I never thought of myself as a writer.
I write, because these stories want to be written.
If you’re a genre writer, what’s one thing about the genre you write in that you think writers should know?
Currently working on memoir. Well, memoir is both painful and healing to write. If the readers can get some learning, healing or understanding out of it....it adds to the healing that the writer feels.
At my fiction substack, Gibberish, this month I have been hosting a Writing Competition modeled after a cooking show I've been watching. Had about 12 people apply to participate, I chose by unscientific means five unfortunate souls. Those five have been duking it out in three challenges over the course of the month. The third and final challenge is in progress RIGHT NOW and is due before this Saturday.
The five fiction writers are Vincent Marshall, Sara Dietz, Derek Petty, Christina Nicole, and Cork Hutson.
All five of them have been doing a spectacular job in this competition, and before it wraps up they deserve some attention. I hope everyone can go check out their publications and read their stories because I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one. What's great too--the application was only open to people with fewer than 200 subscribers, so these are new, "young", and relatively undiscovered fiction writers.
I can't claim to have "discovered" them, but by golly have they really blown me away. There is so much talent here. Please--I implore you!--check out all five, read their stories, and tune in this weekend and into the next week for the results of the first ever Gibberish Writing Competition. It's been fun for me and (so I'm told) fun for them and it's been great to read so many wonderful stories and provide feedback.
As a "genre writer" myself, people should know that genre is not be a straitjacket for the story. I put that sentence in the blurb of my Substack for a reason. Many seem to have this idea that "fantasy" and/or "sci-fi" should be of a certain mold.
Hi all, I’m launching my Substack, uploading one chapter a week starting in August. It’s a revenge fantasy set in fictional Rome. While it falls in the fantasy genre, it targets readers who despise fantasy. And five second pitch: are our wants worth what we must give? If not, can we do nothing? For now I have the prologue and blurb up and would appreciate any feedback if this is your kind of read. All for free of course
I was in on the Zoom writing prompt last week and what I ended up writing, I worked into a story for the seralization thing I'm doing on here. Harold and Sallie are a human and a fairy who live in the woods. This was the prompt result from last week...
I need to gather up all my Harold and Sallie stories into one spot/link/whatever you call it (coffee hasn't kicked in yet) off my About page, but if y'all are interested, the first one is here...
Right now what I'm working on is re working the H and S stuff I've published, as I think they need some fine tuning and a few details added.
I'm also trying to figure out the best way to market my writing. I'm not jumping on the Threads bandwagon, I don't use ticktok (in all honesty, I'm REALLY burned out on social media right now), so I've been looking at lit magazines that publish print and online to submit stuff to.
I've really enjoyed the community that I've found on Substack!
Marketing and promoting our writing is definitely a struggle. Substack has a great ecosystem though, and while it will take time, there are better returns here. There's nothing wrong with still using social media, but it's becoming nearly impossible to experience growth that way.
An opportunity for quoting you/your stacks has arisen.
I am writing something for my TLS stack on the nature of Fables, and what I intend to do with them in the future in fiction.
If this is a type of writing that interests you, even if you just have your own definition or an opinion of the relative value of Fables, please leave a short (1 sentence max) comment here and I will try my best to quote you in the finished text. Apols in advance for brevity but we all know the reader's attention span is short esp. with summer heat melting their minds in many a place. Thanks and happy writing!
Hi. Just wanna say my Substack is also a blog, where you can find links to what I’ve published and where it’s available, but here is where I’m gonna put my short fiction. Haven’t decided what to provide for paid subscribers, but I’m not in a hurry to do that yet.
Hi all, I just started my substack just about a month ago. I'm mainly using it to publish my short stories. Perhaps a chapter or two of the novel I've been working in if I'm feeling daring, all free, of course.
First I'd like to give a shout out to two substacks I recently engaged with. Starting with William F. Edwards and his substack The WartHog Report. He was tremendously encouraging during the Fictionistas July Workshop Thread and his short story, The Swordsmen (https://warthogreport.substack.com/p/the-swordsmen), was fun to read and give feedback to. Then there's Andrew Paul Ward and his substack A.P. Ward's Literary Fiction (https://apward.substack.com/). He has great stories that are very well-written, in my opinion.
A question that I grapple with as a writer is the idea of prose vs. story. I am of the opinion that prose is the most important component to fiction writing. However, I suspect that I am in the minority. It seems that most writers put story over prose and that honestly confuses me. My view is that plot has a limited scope and what has kept fiction alive for all these centuries has been our ability to transform the writing style. Am I putting too little stock in story? I really can't tell.
Additionally, I know that there are no universal guidelines to prose. So, how do we as writers know when our prose is sufficient? What distinguishes a master storyteller from a high school Tumblr post? I work under my own best practices, but they're not shared by everyone. It's hard to navigate.
Hello. I have some Twitter chats where I get together with some writers to chit-chat writing. #writestuff, #writechat and #writeandwine are my favorites. Although, it seems with the way things are going we should discuss alternate places to have the chats. 🤔
I’m an interactive fiction writer. Some folks think the most interesting choices in IF are ones that greatly branch the narrative (“should I kill the man or let him live?”), but I think the most interesting choices are ones the reader invests in emotionally, and those can be as “small” a choice as which tie to wear if the character is, for example, going to an important job interview or speaking at their father’s funeral.
Haha, not at all! This is a common misconception, not a “subtweet .” And by the way, I like big branchy choices, but I don’t think they “outrank” the smaller ones.
That's a really great point about giving more value to some of the smaller choices, which in turn may lead to other sets of big branchy choices. When I was creating the adventure I sent you, I thought of it more like a funnel. That would be my inexperience, but it's great to know for the future!
Hey 👋 I'm in a couple of online writing groups, both still going strong from their births in the pandemic. One is a Flash Fiction group and the other is horror.
I've talked about my Fiction here on Substack but haven't shared any yet. Mainly because I'm in the midst of a novel rewrite and my brain is in that mode.
I've got an idea for another book which I may serialise on here, thanks to Sarah Fay and her inspiring Writers At Work stack. I'm looking at how this could work.
1. I always recommend Stop Writing Alone, https://stopwritingalone.substack.com , as the group has helped me become a more productive and effective writer. And it's nice to just not write alone. The group leader, Nicole Rivera, is one of the two masterminds behind our Fictionistas monthly prompt celebrations, so some of you may be familiar with her. Anyway, it's a great group and you can be anywhere in the world. (And it is NOW on Substack because I encouraged Nicole to bring it over here, but I have been participating since 2020 when it was a whole different animal!).
2. I am mostly a fantasy/YA writer. If I had just one piece of advice for writers in those genres, it would be, build a preliminary world before you start, but don't get stuck trying to figure it all out before you start writing. And as you build the world, you do not need to insert your worldbuilding into the story. Use it to inform how the characters act, where they live, what they eat or do with their time, etc. No one likes big infodumps. I know it can be painful to spend hours/days/years building your world and then not show it off, but trust me, if you have done it right, everything you write, down to the words your characters say or don't say, will be informed by the work you did.
3. As the Fictionistas co-organizer, I don't want to play favorites. so I will share one of my favorite nonfiction Substacks: Capricorn Born is a really cool weekly tarot spread that can help you focus your intentions for the week. And she features some really nice decks (I may have bought one or two of them afterward!). https://capricornborn.substack.com/
Hello! I don't know if this is the right place to ask... I'm currently setting up a new Substack for a steampunk dystopian piece. Can anyone advise on copyright/content ownership? Is it 'safe' to post works on here? Thanks!
It’s “safe” in the sense that Substack will not assert any rights over your work. Posting on Substack will be considered publication for many other purposes, such as contests, so that’s something to keep in mind. And, of course, as soon as you publish some thing on the Internet, somebody else might try to violate your copyright (e.g. steal it for their own purposes) so you have to be prepared for that. I haven’t heard of anybody sharing their fiction on Substack that has run into others stealing it, but the whole process is relatively new, so who knows. I just mention it because it’s the reality of the Internet.
Thank you Jackie - I'm probably overly flattering myself that anyone would rip it off! I think I'll start by just posting the odd snippet to gauge interest, and thank it from there. Thanks again. :)
I interviewed fantasy writer Francesco Dimitri and he had this to say about fantasy: "We often say that imagination is bigger than reality, but I believe the opposite is true: imagination has limits, reality doesn’t. And the fantastic, in all its form, reminds us of that. It reminds us that no matter what we think, we are probably wrong. That what seems impossible today is the reality of tomorrow - or yesterday, in some cases. Things can be different - these four words, I think, encapsulate the genre, and they are lovely" you can read more here: https://thewritinggrove.substack.com/p/novelist-francesco-dimitri-on-puglia
Hey Lloyd, can you share a little about the creative writing class you're leading in Italy? I saw your Note about it, and it fits in the topic of other writing groups and classes outside Substack. It sounded really interesting.
Hi Brian, sure!
I'm running 3 writing workshops this year. https://www.writinggrove.com/workshops
The first one is travel writing and starts Sunday (fully booked). Two more workshops later this year in Puglia, Italy - Writing Setting and Writing the Gothic Genre. Writing Setting will focus on writing setting/place and using it effectively to reveal character, progress plot & drive conflict. The Gothic course will focus on genre basics, including power dynamics & the supernatural.
We'll use a sample text for writing exercises and have daily sessions to provide feedback and encouragement. The participants will stay in a 900-year-old monastery for 7 nights, perfect for inspiration! We'll go on tours of the city and excursions with local guides. But the focus is writing, and you'll have enough time (and space) to work.
Lastly, I live part of the year in Nardò, where we have the workshops, so I know it well. It's lively but small enough (30k residents) and not touristy; thus, the writers will have a calm, peaceful experience.
Join us!
Awesome! Thank you for sharing what you're doing!
The gothic workshop/retreat sounds absolutely amazing 😍
Thanks, Susan! I think so too ☺️
I'm just going to pop in and say 'hello'! We're all volunteers and share a common vision for helping each other succeed as fiction writers, both on and off Substack. There's probably a dozen or so who contribute actively to the success of Fictionistas, and we're glad you're here!
Are there fiction communities, contests or writing classes you participate in and enjoy outside of Substack?
I have been participating in a memoir writing group for sometime. We meet twice a month and read our work. Only memoir, so not really fiction. Buti it is amazing to see how creatively these memoirs have been arranged. I am an academic, but I write short fiction (just getting to self publish) and poetry (been a while) and memoirs (nothing formally published as of yet, but written often in an anonymous blog for friends and family). I write mainly because the stories want to be written. There are patterns and learnings in these stories, of my life and other characters who do not leave me alone.
Every writer at some point wishes to be read. Since academic writing is part of the job, I never thought of myself as a writer.
I write, because these stories want to be written.
If you’re a genre writer, what’s one thing about the genre you write in that you think writers should know?
Currently working on memoir. Well, memoir is both painful and healing to write. If the readers can get some learning, healing or understanding out of it....it adds to the healing that the writer feels.
Hi Fictionistas! I have some shoutouts to make!
At my fiction substack, Gibberish, this month I have been hosting a Writing Competition modeled after a cooking show I've been watching. Had about 12 people apply to participate, I chose by unscientific means five unfortunate souls. Those five have been duking it out in three challenges over the course of the month. The third and final challenge is in progress RIGHT NOW and is due before this Saturday.
The five fiction writers are Vincent Marshall, Sara Dietz, Derek Petty, Christina Nicole, and Cork Hutson.
All five of them have been doing a spectacular job in this competition, and before it wraps up they deserve some attention. I hope everyone can go check out their publications and read their stories because I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one. What's great too--the application was only open to people with fewer than 200 subscribers, so these are new, "young", and relatively undiscovered fiction writers.
I can't claim to have "discovered" them, but by golly have they really blown me away. There is so much talent here. Please--I implore you!--check out all five, read their stories, and tune in this weekend and into the next week for the results of the first ever Gibberish Writing Competition. It's been fun for me and (so I'm told) fun for them and it's been great to read so many wonderful stories and provide feedback.
Very cool, thanks for sharing, Scoot!
As a "genre writer" myself, people should know that genre is not be a straitjacket for the story. I put that sentence in the blurb of my Substack for a reason. Many seem to have this idea that "fantasy" and/or "sci-fi" should be of a certain mold.
No they don't. No they don't.
Hi all, I’m launching my Substack, uploading one chapter a week starting in August. It’s a revenge fantasy set in fictional Rome. While it falls in the fantasy genre, it targets readers who despise fantasy. And five second pitch: are our wants worth what we must give? If not, can we do nothing? For now I have the prologue and blurb up and would appreciate any feedback if this is your kind of read. All for free of course
I was in on the Zoom writing prompt last week and what I ended up writing, I worked into a story for the seralization thing I'm doing on here. Harold and Sallie are a human and a fairy who live in the woods. This was the prompt result from last week...
https://kimhayes.substack.com/p/ghosts-in-the-machine
I need to gather up all my Harold and Sallie stories into one spot/link/whatever you call it (coffee hasn't kicked in yet) off my About page, but if y'all are interested, the first one is here...
https://kimhayes.substack.com/p/harold-and-sallie
Right now what I'm working on is re working the H and S stuff I've published, as I think they need some fine tuning and a few details added.
I'm also trying to figure out the best way to market my writing. I'm not jumping on the Threads bandwagon, I don't use ticktok (in all honesty, I'm REALLY burned out on social media right now), so I've been looking at lit magazines that publish print and online to submit stuff to.
I've really enjoyed the community that I've found on Substack!
Marketing and promoting our writing is definitely a struggle. Substack has a great ecosystem though, and while it will take time, there are better returns here. There's nothing wrong with still using social media, but it's becoming nearly impossible to experience growth that way.
Dear friends of Fictionistas,
An opportunity for quoting you/your stacks has arisen.
I am writing something for my TLS stack on the nature of Fables, and what I intend to do with them in the future in fiction.
If this is a type of writing that interests you, even if you just have your own definition or an opinion of the relative value of Fables, please leave a short (1 sentence max) comment here and I will try my best to quote you in the finished text. Apols in advance for brevity but we all know the reader's attention span is short esp. with summer heat melting their minds in many a place. Thanks and happy writing!
Chris
Hi. Just wanna say my Substack is also a blog, where you can find links to what I’ve published and where it’s available, but here is where I’m gonna put my short fiction. Haven’t decided what to provide for paid subscribers, but I’m not in a hurry to do that yet.
https://richwatson.substack.com/
Hi all, I just started my substack just about a month ago. I'm mainly using it to publish my short stories. Perhaps a chapter or two of the novel I've been working in if I'm feeling daring, all free, of course.
First I'd like to give a shout out to two substacks I recently engaged with. Starting with William F. Edwards and his substack The WartHog Report. He was tremendously encouraging during the Fictionistas July Workshop Thread and his short story, The Swordsmen (https://warthogreport.substack.com/p/the-swordsmen), was fun to read and give feedback to. Then there's Andrew Paul Ward and his substack A.P. Ward's Literary Fiction (https://apward.substack.com/). He has great stories that are very well-written, in my opinion.
A question that I grapple with as a writer is the idea of prose vs. story. I am of the opinion that prose is the most important component to fiction writing. However, I suspect that I am in the minority. It seems that most writers put story over prose and that honestly confuses me. My view is that plot has a limited scope and what has kept fiction alive for all these centuries has been our ability to transform the writing style. Am I putting too little stock in story? I really can't tell.
Additionally, I know that there are no universal guidelines to prose. So, how do we as writers know when our prose is sufficient? What distinguishes a master storyteller from a high school Tumblr post? I work under my own best practices, but they're not shared by everyone. It's hard to navigate.
Any input would be helpful, thanks!
Hello. I have some Twitter chats where I get together with some writers to chit-chat writing. #writestuff, #writechat and #writeandwine are my favorites. Although, it seems with the way things are going we should discuss alternate places to have the chats. 🤔
I’m an interactive fiction writer. Some folks think the most interesting choices in IF are ones that greatly branch the narrative (“should I kill the man or let him live?”), but I think the most interesting choices are ones the reader invests in emotionally, and those can be as “small” a choice as which tie to wear if the character is, for example, going to an important job interview or speaking at their father’s funeral.
Uh oh, I feel like you're talking about a recent playthrough. 😳
Haha, not at all! This is a common misconception, not a “subtweet .” And by the way, I like big branchy choices, but I don’t think they “outrank” the smaller ones.
That's a really great point about giving more value to some of the smaller choices, which in turn may lead to other sets of big branchy choices. When I was creating the adventure I sent you, I thought of it more like a funnel. That would be my inexperience, but it's great to know for the future!
Hey 👋 I'm in a couple of online writing groups, both still going strong from their births in the pandemic. One is a Flash Fiction group and the other is horror.
I've talked about my Fiction here on Substack but haven't shared any yet. Mainly because I'm in the midst of a novel rewrite and my brain is in that mode.
I've got an idea for another book which I may serialise on here, thanks to Sarah Fay and her inspiring Writers At Work stack. I'm looking at how this could work.
Thanks for sharing, Susan!
Thanks for the great questions, Brian!
1. I always recommend Stop Writing Alone, https://stopwritingalone.substack.com , as the group has helped me become a more productive and effective writer. And it's nice to just not write alone. The group leader, Nicole Rivera, is one of the two masterminds behind our Fictionistas monthly prompt celebrations, so some of you may be familiar with her. Anyway, it's a great group and you can be anywhere in the world. (And it is NOW on Substack because I encouraged Nicole to bring it over here, but I have been participating since 2020 when it was a whole different animal!).
2. I am mostly a fantasy/YA writer. If I had just one piece of advice for writers in those genres, it would be, build a preliminary world before you start, but don't get stuck trying to figure it all out before you start writing. And as you build the world, you do not need to insert your worldbuilding into the story. Use it to inform how the characters act, where they live, what they eat or do with their time, etc. No one likes big infodumps. I know it can be painful to spend hours/days/years building your world and then not show it off, but trust me, if you have done it right, everything you write, down to the words your characters say or don't say, will be informed by the work you did.
3. As the Fictionistas co-organizer, I don't want to play favorites. so I will share one of my favorite nonfiction Substacks: Capricorn Born is a really cool weekly tarot spread that can help you focus your intentions for the week. And she features some really nice decks (I may have bought one or two of them afterward!). https://capricornborn.substack.com/
Thanks, Jackie!
Hello! I don't know if this is the right place to ask... I'm currently setting up a new Substack for a steampunk dystopian piece. Can anyone advise on copyright/content ownership? Is it 'safe' to post works on here? Thanks!
It’s “safe” in the sense that Substack will not assert any rights over your work. Posting on Substack will be considered publication for many other purposes, such as contests, so that’s something to keep in mind. And, of course, as soon as you publish some thing on the Internet, somebody else might try to violate your copyright (e.g. steal it for their own purposes) so you have to be prepared for that. I haven’t heard of anybody sharing their fiction on Substack that has run into others stealing it, but the whole process is relatively new, so who knows. I just mention it because it’s the reality of the Internet.
Thank you Jackie - I'm probably overly flattering myself that anyone would rip it off! I think I'll start by just posting the odd snippet to gauge interest, and thank it from there. Thanks again. :)