Quebec Writers' Federation Workshops

Spring Session 2012

SENSE OF WONDER: WRITING FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION STORIES

Eight Tuesdays, 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. (April 3 to May 22)

1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Workshop leader: Claude Lalumière

This workshop will focus on the writing of SF, fantasy, and other genres of the fantastic. We will also look at fiction markets and discuss how to research and find the right venue for the right story. It's one thing to write a good story, but it's important to be able to place that story in the magazine or anthology where it will have the most impact and visibility. Students are encouraged to bring their computers to the workshop.

The first half of the eight-week course will mainly focus on exploring and discussing various subgenres; readings will include stories by a mix of classic, current, Canadian, and international authors. Readings will be assigned on week 1; all stories will be easily available online. Students should read the stories for each thematic discussion prior to the relevant class. Students are encouraged to bring and discuss other examples of stories fitting that week's theme. The themes are: science fiction, fantasy, fabulism (joined by guest author Camille Alexa, Endeavour Award finalist for Push of the Sky), and horror (guest lecturer: David Nickle, author of Eutopia, named best horror novel of 2011 by Barnes & Noble).

The second half of the course will mainly focus on workshopping student texts.

Each week we will research the best relevant markets for that week's subgenre or student texts. Throughout the course, we will look at how to blend character, plot, setting, and theme to create believable worlds, engaging characters, and stories that succeed in evoking that sense of wonder inherent in all literatures of the fantastic.

Week 1
Hour 1:  students introduce themselves and discuss the works and writers that inspire them, and talk about their goals with writing and with the workshop. Hour 2: Finding the right market for your fiction.

Week 2
Science Fiction: Radical Social Speculation
Readings: stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, and Pat Murphy

Week 3
Fantasy: Fabulous Creatures
Readings: stories by J.G. Ballard, James Alan Gardner, and Lucius Shepard

Week 4
Hour 1: Horror - guest lecturer: David Nickle (author of Monstrous Affections and Eutopia. Hour 2: group discussion on horror fiction.

Week 5
Fabulism: The Beauty and Magic of Objects (joined by Camille Alexa)
Readings: stories by Camille Alexa, Kelly Link, and Ray Vukcevich

Weeks 6-8
Workshopping student stories

Claude Lalumière is the author of the story collection Objects of Worship and the mosaic novella The Door to Lost Pages and the co-creator of lostmyths.net. He has edited ten anthologies, including four volumes culled from the CBC/QWF Literary Competition, Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic, and Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction. Claude was a Montreal bookseller (owner of danger! and Nebula) in the 1990s and is now the Fantastic Fiction columnist for The Montreal Gazette. His stories have been anthologized in both Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF. http://lostmyths.net/claude

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