Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress
Nancy Anne Kressis an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain which she later expanded into a novel with the same title. She has also won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2013 for "After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall", and in 2015 for "Yesterday's Kin"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth20 January 1948
CountryUnited States of America
In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is
You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.
Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.
There are two wrong reactions to a rejection slip: deciding it's a final judgment on your story and/or talent, and deciding it's no judgment on your story and/or talent.
You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.
Religious reverence for one's own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff.
Technology is Darwinian. It spreads. It evolves. It adapts. The most dangerous wipes out the less fit.
Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.
Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.
The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, 'How does it end?' Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don't like the ending, chances are they'll say they didn't like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works.
It's very hard to write a story with only one character. This is because readers want to see your protagonist interacting with others. We come to know people through their interpersonal relations. Even Jack London, in his classic short story 'To Build A Fire,' gave his lone Arctic explorer a dog so that the character would have someone to talk to.
Slipstream fiction is usually defined as fiction with a contemporary setting in which story elements are mimetic (that is, seem real) - except for one or two eerie strangenesses. Unlike outright fantasy, these are not explained or integrated into an alternate-reality setting.
The climax is the place where the opposing forces in your story finally clash. This is true whether those opposing forces are two armies or two values inside a character's soul.
You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the same: Choose the type of ending that best suits what's gone before.