Intensive: Crafting a World: Speculative Fiction

Learn how to construct believable worlds and characters in this workshop, which will cover research techniques, common tropes and conventions of speculative fiction and genre-specific approaches to world-building.

2pm Research for the End of the World

From technological advances such as human/machine integration, possibilities of political and civic collapse, to environmental projections into the heights of global warming – writing believable worlds takes research. What strategies and inquiries can speculative fiction writers use for researching the yet unseen possibilities of our futures?

With Jane Rawson, Marlee Jane Ward and Melissa Ferguson

3pm Imagination as Civic Responsibility

“Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. I suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.” – adrienne marie brown

If the world we are living in is largely dictated by the imaginations and blueprints of the powerful, then we must recognise that our collective ability to imagine different worlds is a precious resource for resistance. In this conversation, we wonder whether imagination, particularly through the speculative genre, may be a form of civic responsibility towards our communities and future generations.

With Claire G. Coleman and Jordi Kerr

4pm Workshop: World Building

Crafting entire worlds, societies, systems and landscapes through the power of imagination, research and the written word is no mean feat. World-builder extraordinaire, CS Pacat, guides us through constructing compelling settings and characters. We’ll cover some common conventions of speculative fiction world-building, and strategies for ideating then communicating your world to readers.