How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

For me as a novelist and a playwright, that’s a nightmare. Screenwriters are always shifting scenes around, and everything is planned in advance. I can’t write chapter 3 until chapters 1 and 2 are working well. But hey, at least I finally learned to tone down the playishness of my stories. He shouldn’t have, because you shouldn’t have to read your own story aloud for people to respond to it positively. Then, because I was a good narrator/actor, he changed the grade to an A. I had a teacher give me a C on a story - until I read it aloud in class. People talked, and people thought things, and then people did things. In the meantime, I got some rejection slips for science fiction stories, and I realized later that what I was really doing was writing plays - stories that consisted of dialogue and action. That led to my work with audio plays for Living Scriptures in Ogden, UT - many dozens of half-hour scripts. I began adapting history and scripture stories into plays.

And poetry was all I cared about writing till I got to college and discovered that it was fun to doctor bad scripts. My fourth-grade teacher, Fran Schroeder, sent a poem of mine to a California teachers’ newsletter, which published it.

books? Which do you prefer?Īctually, I got my start writing poetry. Aside from formatting (obviously) what’s the biggest difference in writing screenplays vs. You got your start in creative writing doing scripts and seem to have dabbled here and there over the years. Nothing makes cleaning the kitchen go by faster like a galactic battle to deter a hostile interstellar takeover. We hope you enjoy this interview as much as we did and encourage you to have a listen to any/all of Card’s body of works available at. We couldn’t have been more excited to learn more about his creative process and find out how even after all these years, he was able to find the inspiration to create new worlds for his legions of fans to explore.Įager to pay it forward in the literary world, he also dedicates his time to various writing workshops and has penned several books on the act of creative writing, because he is a better person than we could ever hope to be. Huzzah for the king of Sci-Fi fiction writing! We at were lucky enough to score an interview with Orson Scott Card, one of the most popular and prolific fantasy writers to date.Ĭard dominates in every literary arena he enters from screenwriting to news articles and everything in between (in terms of fantasy anyway).

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card