This was supposed to go out in November. We all know what happened.
[Also, never change your subheading a second before you send a newsletter as I did for the one that went out most recently. I hang my proofreader head in shame.]
BSFA Voting
First things first, the British Science Fiction Association awards voting to create the shortlist is open one more day! If you’re a BSFA member, you can vote here: https://www.bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-awards-longlist
Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 1, by me and Val Nolan, made the shortlist last year, and Vol 2 is on the longlist right now. If you enjoyed the book and found it beneficial, we’d be honored to have your consideration for the shortlist!
Behind the Scenes of Spec Fic for Newbies: On ToCs
My co-author Val Nolan and I have started writing Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 3 in earnest. Writing non-fiction, especially book length, is a different animal from writing a novel, and for those curious, I thought I’d share a bit about it.
First of all, by now (volume THREE!) we know what we’re doing. But when we started the first book back in 2021/2022, we had to feel our way through things a bit. If you’re curious about how to navigate co-writing, I describe it in “How I Accidentally-On-Purpose ended Up a Co-author, and You Can, Too!”
The first step to writing a Spec Fic for Newbies book is to come up with a table of contents (ToC) that includes subgenres and tropes that people (sort of?) expect, but we also want to talk about some topics that we’re excited about (and we get REALLY EXCITED about some topics because nerding out about cool shit like dragons and apocalyptic fiction is our jam!). Lots of these are topics that come to mind when people hear the words Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror. Readers often think of a ToC—if they think of them at all—as just a list. Like, the author came up with a list of things to talk about, wrote them down on a post-it, made that into an outline, and TA-DA! table of contents. To be honest, that is part of the process, just not all of it. Granted, Spec Fic for Newbies isn’t a project that requires a chronology like a history book or a chemistry textbook, so there’s not a hard-and-fast science to setting up our ToCs. But we do want the final product to make sense and to cover subgenres and tropes that have some weight to them.
The second volume came about, in part, because we realized we had mentioned Space Opera a few times in Vol 1 but never covered it in depth. So we sat and listed everything else we could think of that might be fun to write about and, more important, for readers to read about. We ended up with over 60 items! Because Vol 1 included 30 items (10 each for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror), we knew we had enough to write two more books: a trilogy! However, when we began to think further about the ToC lists we had, we realized that we weren’t the right people to be writing in depth about certain subgenres/topics from a place of expertise or experience. I’m a middle-aged white woman who grew up in the US, and Val is a slightly less middle-aged white guy from Ireland. While neither of us is bankrolling politicians or running media platforms, we’re both highly educated and carry a certain amount of privilege that we have to acknowledge. So, subgenres such as Africanfuturism or Wuxia fantasy aren’t ours to define or explain, really. Instead, when writing the sections of the SFfN books, we make sure to be as inclusive as we can with our examples, be they prose, comics, film, television, games, etc. We want all SFF/H writers to know that there are writers out there representing them.
So, back to the ToC: We ended up with over 60 subjects. From there, we went through and put them under the Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror headings (sometimes, like Time Travel in Vol 1, they belong in more than one genre, so we have to make judgment calls). Then, we started to split things apart so that there was a balance of subgenres between Vol 2 and Vol 3; we didn’t want Vol 2 to be more subgenre heavy and Vol 3 to be more trope heavy. We also wanted to spread certain topics across the two volumes to find a balance in ideas or themes. For example, fairies ended up in Vol 2 so elves will be in Vol 3; dragons are in Vol 2 and dinosaurs (squee!) in Vol 3.
You’ve got a list of topics for the volume, so now what?
Once we come up with a solid ToC for a volume, we then call dibs! (or shotgun!) Yes, we go through the list together and claim the ones we want to write. Usually, this is pretty friendly; Val tends much more towards the SF topics, and I gravitate to the Fantasy and Horror ones for the most part. There are usually some that we both want to contribute to, so they get labeled “BOTH” on the chart (more about the chart below).
Sometimes, as we’re drafting sections, one of us might end up writing the bulk of a “BOTH” section; then, we’ll revisit the ToC and re-assign some things to keep it all Even Steven. And sometimes, topics that end up in a ToC get erased! For Vol 3, we recently had a meeting during which we discussed a topic that Val wrote that wasn’t on the list and how it should replace a topic that, we decided, didn’t really work. Instead, we combined two topics together that match thematically to keep to the 10-subjects-per-chatper rule. Added to each ToC are also the book’s main intro, intros for all three chapters, and a conclusions section. There are a lot of moving parts!
The practicalities (the chart mentioned above):
To keep track of things, we have a google spreadsheet containing all of the sections for a single book along with columns that contain the info on who called dibs, whether it’s been drafted, how many words it is, who (and when) it’s been edited, and whether it’s finished.
We also have a google doc for each section, plus the intros, where we can throw ideas and titles as we gear up to write the new book. Editing usually happens via track changes on Word, though, so that we can see where a sentence or even paragraph has been moved or deleted. Plus, having drafts of edits helps us if we have to go back and check anything. Then we have a last ToC meeting and decide the final order of the sections.
For Spec Fic for Newbies, the chapters are all in the same order: SF then Fantasy and then Horror. But inside each, the sections need to have an order that just feels right. For example, in Vol 2 we knew Space Opera had to come first because it was the catalyst for the whole book to happen. And The Multiverse is last in that chapter because it contains multitudes! For Fantasy, starting with Mythological Fantasy makes sense because of the history involved; the same with having Folk Horror first in the Horror chapter because the heft of historic sources adds resonance that feels natural to start with. Then, Ghost Stories felt like a natural second section because of its history, while Last Person Left Alive thematically belonged at the end! It doesn’t always end up so obvious, but there’s always a reason for the final order.
So that’s what goes into a table of contents for a book like Spec Fic for Newbies. Coming up I’ll share a more in-depth look at how we write a section of the book, which is some of the most fun work we’ve ever done!
Until next time…