In Today’s Journal
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* A New Short Story
* A beginner’s guide to dystopian literature
* My Writing
* Of Interest
The Bradbury Challenge Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Erin Donoho “A Strange Encounter” 2600 Contemporary Suspense
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Pin Stripes” 3120″ Syfy
- KC Riggs “The Last Hippo in Egypt” 1605 General Fiction
- Dave Taylor “The Silver Locket” 2,448 Magic Realism
Congratulations to all of these writers.
A New Short Story
“The Magic Cakes” went live on Saturday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
“The Magic Cakes” is the story of Little Red Riding Hood (Little Red Cap) and is derived from a blank verse poem with the same title I wrote back in the early 1990s. It has a bit of a twist ending.
Only four stories left after this one!
A beginner’s guide to dystopian literature
Note: All of the following is copied and pasted directly from the 1440 Society & Culture newsletter. I asked for permission, but never heard back. So yeah, I stole it, but not with any evil intent. I just wanted to pass the word. Great stuff.
Dystopian literature is a literary genre focused on postapocalyptic, totalitarian, or otherwise oppressive societies. It is a form of speculative fiction in that its stories often take place in the future, though its writers often comment on the present.
The word “dystopia” is derived from the Greek for “bad place.” It’s an inversion of “utopia,” a term popularized by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book, “Utopia,” a satirical work about a society free of want. The modern dystopian story does not just take place in an undesirable setting; it also features an oppressive power structure that claims to offer utopia, with one of the earliest examples being Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels.”
The international conflicts of World War I and World War II inspired some of dystopian literature’s most influential novels as writers encountered the utopian promises of fascism and communism. In the decades that followed, more writers would follow the example of those early novels, using the dystopian model to critique artificial intelligence, climate change, and more. (See an analysis of the form’s 20th-century evolution.)
Explore everything else we learned about dystopian literature.
Also, check out …
- The letter Aldous Huxley, author of “Brave New World,” wrote to his former student George Orwell after reading his novel “1984.” (More)
- In 1992, social critic Neil Postman argued modern technology is dystopian. (Watch)
- Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” on his dystopia of censorship. (Watch)
- The real-world locations of science fiction dystopias. (Read)
My Writing
In case anyone’s wondering, other than cycling through the first novel of the Nick Spalding series, I’ve done nothing with fiction to speak of this year. For a few reasons, I probably won’t cycle through the whole thing as I’d planned:
- I already know the story, so it bores me.
- I’ve already learned more than I knew before about fiction just by cycling through that one short novel, and
- I don’wanna.
Instead I’ll just upload the ‘new’ first novel to replace the one that’s already out there.
Yes I miss writing novels, though not so much short fiction. No, I’m not sure when the hiatus will end.
In nonfiction words, even with a more slack schedule, as of today I’ve written 18,420 words in TNDJ this month and 61,720 words of nonfiction on the year.
Okey doke. This ends a streak of eight TNDJ posts in a row. Now I’ll go back to posting at least every Monday plus another one or two now and then. 🙂 Hey, whatever comes.
As always, any questions on anything about writing or publishing, feel free to ask. My email addy is harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
Of Interest
Practice typing classic books You can also train yourself on the writing rhythms of your favorite authors by typing-in their works.
The Novel 1440’s finds regarding the novel. Several perspectives.
Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories Very short, very humorous video.