Interviewing Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan
Helloooo!
I recently reviewed the great Spec Fic for Newbies by Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan — Runalong The Shelves a really interesting focus on all the sub-genres in the speculative worlds of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction. Focused for writers but also useful for bloggers and just anyone interested in this genre we love it is a fascinating read. I was lucky to have the chance to ask Tiffani and Val some questions on this great read.
How do you like to booktempt Spec Fic for Newbies?
We like to describe it as the next best thing to being in the classroom with us! It’s a fun and engaging guide to the histories and mechanics of thirty Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror subgenres: Aliens! Big Dumb Objects! Solarpunk! Urban Fantasy! Cosmic Horror! And more! Because not everyone has had the chance to study SFF/H writing at school or university and, even if they have, maybe they haven’t had the chance to do so with a sympathetic instructor. This is their chance to do so. We love these subgenres and we want to share that excitement with others. Between us we have twenty-plus years of classroom experience teaching Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and even Comics. We’ve received awards for it (‘Lecturer of the Year”; “Innovative Teaching Award”) and we see this book as our chance to share what we’ve learned with people far beyond our courses and our universities. Spec Fic for Newbies is about making these hugely exciting areas accessible to new writers. Come join us!
How did the idea of exploring the various sub genres come about?
In one way it was a natural evolution of how we taught our classes (one discrete subgenre at a time) and selecting the core topics that underpin these genres. Each of them is so rich and unique that they deserve spending the time on them. It’s almost an act of resistance against those classes that try to teach all of Science Fiction and Fantasy in a single ten-week block or, even worse, those that offer a single SFF week in a larger writing course. In another way, of course, it’s been about finding the appropriate means for the teachers in us to smuggle in our emphasis on character or use of sensory language or showing-and-telling-as-appropriate: a subgenre-by-subgenre approach lent itself to the discussion and practice of key writing skills in effective and enjoyable fashion.
In a third way, it’s a result of who we are as writers. Val tends more towards the Science Fiction side of things (especially space action and military SF), and Tiffani more towards fantasy and horror (especially historical fantasy and twisted fairy-tale-esque stories). As university lecturers, it was hard to keep our enthusiasm for our favourite subgenres in check, so we just… stopped trying and embraced the fun! Writing the book was a way to let what we love about SFF/H and all of the subgenres and various major tropes free and to show newer (and even more established) writers what’s so great about writing them.
Why do or even do we need genre classifications?
Good question! The most direct answer is that they’re a marketing tool. They help get readers’ eyes on what they’re looking for. In that way they’re super useful. But for writers too, it helps to know the history of the subgenre you’re writing in (if only so you don’t reinvent the wheel). But subgenres are not, and should not be, a straitjacket or an impervious dividing wall. This is something we stress a lot in the book: genre barriers are permeable. Stories can and do (and must!) drift from one subgenre to another. Throughout Spec Fic for Newbies, we encourage new writers to mix and match. There is after all no one way of writing anything! Trust the marketing team with the marketing and write your story.
What struck me reading the book is that each sub-genre itself is evolving constantly. Which do you think has changed the most? Which are your personal favourites?
Tiffani: I love Apocalyptic Fiction! I read The Stand when I was around 11 or so, and it made me a sucker for a pandemic story (which was super weird when we all recently lived through one!). Apocalyptic tales have been around forever, but one thing that is finally changing is the representation in them. I did a boatload of research back before writing Spec Fic for Newbies on how women’s bodies (and non cis-male bodies) are estranged in apocalyptic fiction and presented it at Helsinki Worldcon (“Where are the Tampons?” Catchy title, right?). I’ve been working on my own apocalyptic novel that basically focuses on women and children and non-cis males and how they survive and thrive after a big event. For decades, apocalyptic stories were about manly men saving the day, but that is changing and I am here for it!
Val: I love Big Dumb Objects! Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres and the like! I always knew that I loved them, of course, but I got seriously into them again when I was writing the relevant section of Spec Fic for Newbies. Really went down the rabbit hole with that! I’ve even started playing with some of those ideas in my own fiction lately. In terms of the evolution of subgenres, of course, the biggest transformation across the board is the increased diversity on display as we move towards the present day. It’s wonderful to see the increased opportunities available to all writers and to read stories from truly global and representative perspectives.
How did you design the writing exercises?
Most of the exercises are based on writing assignments we have used in our classes. So, in that way, the majority have been road-tested with real people. Some, though, we created especially for the book. Tiffani runs various writing workshops and uses prompts based on quick internet searches to help spark ideas, so that’s one thing we reproduced here and there in the book. Overall, they’re a mixture of story prompts and what we like to think of as design challenges (create a character, build a setting, etc.) In all cases they’re intended to get people practising the ideas we discuss in each section. The idea is to get writers engaging with subgenres by starting with the particulars and expanding from there; so, for example, don’t start with a gigantic galactic conflict but, instead, with a character who has been forged by their experiences in such a conflict. It’s absolutely our hope that we’ll someday be reading published stories inspired, partially or in full, by these exercises!
Do you think it helps writers to know what the genre rules are so it helps to play with their concepts? Is genre-bending on the rise at the moment?
Absolutely! Knowing the conventions of a particular subgenre–I think we’re uncomfortable with saying “rules”!–can be super helpful. Not so you’re beholden to how things have been done before, but so you understand how the ideas and the tropes have been approached by those who have come before you. It helps a writer understand what ground is well trodden and, more than that, where there are voids in the Swiss cheese of subgenres that they can explore with their own fiction. Because all writing is a conversation. We’re familiar with how it’s a conversation between the text and the reader, but no less important is how it’s a conversation between the writer and the work that has come before it. What can you learn from that? Where can you call it up on how it has fallen short? How can you move the conversation forwards?
What else can we look forward to from you in the future and where can we find out more?
The next project we’re working on together is Spec Fic for Newbies: Volume 2 from Luna Press! It's going to be launched at next year’s Worldcon in wonderful Glasgow. Volume 2 is organised the same way as the first book in terms of genre histories, spotter’s guides, things to watch out for, and writing exercises, but we get to dig a little deeper. We’re covering a couple of topical subjects such as Climate Fiction, Pandemic Fiction, and Eco Horror, a few guilty pleasures such as Submarines, Mysterious Islands, and Body Swaps, as well as a few more core SFF/H subjects such as Space Opera, Werewolves, Dragons, and Ghost Stories. We’ve been hard at work on it all year and, honestly, we’ve been having a blast writing it and bringing even more of Volume 1’s irreverent energy to bear. We hope people will really enjoy it and find it useful.
Val: This year I started an ongoing column in Interzone called ‘Folded Spaces’ that looks at the history of Science Fiction criticism. It’s a chance to revisit how people saw the future of the field and to connect that work to the present. I also have a new academic article out soon in the journal symplokē titled “A New Persistent Cough: The Coronavirus, Hyperobjects, and the Pandemic Aesthetic”. It considers the ways in which Science Fiction is the genre best equipped to engage with our contemporary pandemic moment. I have a couple of new stories in the works too (including a piece in a forthcoming issue of ParSec which is essentially a Sci-Fi take on the contemporary Mediterranean migrant crisis). I’m also shopping around a full collection of Science Fiction stories; collections are a hard sell, of course, so we’ll see how that goes, but I remain hopeful that they’ll catch the eye of an enthusiastic agent or an independent press!
Tiffani: Earlier this year I started the Underhill Academy for SFF Writers with author and former academic Trip Galey. We both love teaching and working with newer and evolving SFF/H writers, and this platform has given us a chance to create courses and engage with the SFF nerds out there who want extra support and instruction. I’m also working on a novella (a length I’ve never written before) about art and sacrifice and dragons, the aforementioned apocalyptic novel, a short story collection to pair with my novel Threading the Labyrinth (which has moved to Luna Press and will re-launch soon!), and another secret project. And a story I self-pubbed *years* ago called ‘Litter’ (to go through the steps so I could explain it to my students) will be coming out in Wyldblood Magazine; it’s about a group of very young boys with no experience of the world who emerge into an apocalyptic wasteland in search of a mother, so you know things aren’t going to go well!
For Tiffani – What great books have you read recently?
I very recently finished a trio of novels for an “in conversation” I chaired at the Cambridge Waterstones: The Others of Edenwell by Verity Holloway, Unquiet by E. Saxey, and All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes. The authors called them their “sad wet men” novels because of a common trope of, well, sad wet men, but together they were a really interesting look at current gothic horror because they were all set between 1895-1920, with WWI always at the edges. I also recently read Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House (because I love his work and he was a 2009 Clarion-kid along with Val and I); he knows how to mix scary and funny and “Oh my god you’ve written MY family” in just the right way. Oh, and When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill; it was magnificent and will definitely be mentioned in Spec Fic Vol 2!
For Val – if there was one book that you wish everyone could read, not your own, what would it be and why?
Just one?! That’s mean! I’m gonna say Barkskins by Annie Proulx. I was absolutely obsessed with that the year it came out (2016) and I haven’t shut up about it since. It’s a generational tale about two families involved in the logging industry, and eventual deforestation, of the Great Lakes region. Barkskins isn’t Sci-Fi, but it does all the Sci-Fi things in terms of creating a convincing world different from that of the reader and populating it with a series of larger-than-life protagonists. It’s a big book in every meaning of the term, and it offers the reader some stunning characters and set-pieces. An historical novel that kinda ends just where a Kim Stanley Robinson book might begin!
