I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Adam-Troy Castro – with a few from myself…
I read my first story by Adam-Troy Castro in the June 2001 issue of ANALOG, a curious tale with the unlikely title of “Saturday Night Yams With Minnie and Earl”; most recently, I read “Minnie and Earl Get a Kitten” in the September/October 2024 issue of ANALOG. Castro’s science fiction short stories are really good at carrying me away and giving me something to think about, and so I thought I’d use a couple of interviews of him to shed light on WHY I might like his short science fiction, and HOW I could learn something of writing short SF from him.
“Usually I write between a thousand and two thousand words per day…It was autobiography with a science fictional twist, and it was therapy, and it came out in a kind of explosion. It needed to exist.”
The interviewer asked, “Do you have any advice for other writers?”
“Don’t be comfortable. If what you write strikes you as routine, it will feel routine. Dig deep.” LIGHTSPEED; August 2022
To tell you the truth, until recently, I haven’t had the time to write that much. By the same token, in the past twenty-eight years, I’ve managed to write (and often been paid for!) seventy-seven short stories, essays, and reviews; one book of children’s sermons (it’s actually been in print since 1998), and a YA/MG science fiction novel. So, writing to get published CAN be done while working a full-time job.
As for what’s been uncomfortable for me…I’ve only started to learn that recently, asking myself, “How do I know what I’m saying?” I also found out it’s possible for me to write stories I wasn’t sure what I was trying to “say” until I was done with it, had put it away, and took it out to read it again. (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/08/possibly-irritating-essay-how-do-i-know.html)
That has happened recently with a story I wrote in 2011 (on a REAL typewriter!). I wondered how (a quote from the movie “Apollo 13”) “I remember the NASA Public Relations guy [saying]: “All the networks dumped us. One said we make going to the moon look about as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh.” This kind of attitude might have grown up again. While there’s lots of talk about spaceflight in some place, most real people don’t care. My story “High Carnival” looks at a way we might be able to turn that around…
Apex Magazine: What motivates writing a story like this? What sparked the initial concept?
Castro: You know, certain stories come with brilliant little back stories, fascinating little anecdotes, intense little explications of creation, to the point where the behind-the-scenes tale is as, or more interesting than the fiction…This is not one of those stories. I vaguely recall writing it, but can no longer summon the genesis, at all. Sorry.
My own stories? I can’t always remember the exact inspiration, either. Some, though? It’s clear. Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what my THEME is. It’s sort of vague, but I look at it as an exploration of what I want people to know; persuade them, for example, that education has changed as time has passed. For example, for years after I started teaching, it was nearly impossible to get a teacher to tutor a student when they were ill or had an injury they were recovering from. When I was a counselor, we had a young person who was undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease. She was smart, got high grades, and was a wonderful kid…but we never found a teacher to tutor her.
If she had been diagnosed and confined TODAY, there would have been NO PROBLEM CONTINUING HER EDUCATION. We had to problem-solve during the COVID pandemic. Schools went 100% online AND…it was very, very messy. We made mistakes; made the pandemic WORSE for some families, and we lost a large number of students in the struggle to figure out what we were doing.
BUT…there were science fiction stories that talked about some precursor to distance education. We just didn’t figure it out completely; and how many teachers do YOU know who would have listened to some crackpot scifi writer telling us how to educate kids???
Anyway, Education is a focus of my stories; thriving with an alternative way of learning; my faith. All of those have found their way into my stories. All of them will CONTINUE to.
Apex: You write a variety of styles, characters, and perspectives. Is there any specific point-of-view that you find you most naturally lean toward in rough drafts, or does experimenting with POV drive how you approach the initial composition of a story?
Castro: Although the story dictates the voice, I sometimes find myself unduly steered toward first-person, present-tense, though that often goes away after I lie down for a while. As a reader, I like anything that emotionally affects me…As a writer: one reason I like mystery, if not as a genre, then as a format for science fiction stories, is that it gives the protagonists an excuse to walk around asking questions, and figuring out the world on their own, which is a very organic way of explaining it to the reader at the same time.
I was NOT a mystery reader as a kid, or even as a young adult. But as an adult, I’ve gradually fallen in love with certain CHARACTERS in mysteries. Me and my wife loved the TV show BONES…her because the mysteries were fascinating; me because I LOVED the science in the stories. Bones – Temperance Brennan – was forensic scientist, and it was the science that drove the stories. I’ve started to play around with mystery somewhat. As well, the mystery of location is what I fell for in the LONGMIRE series of books – NOT THE TV SHOW! I love the novels because they’re so much deeper than TV can ever get.
However, in learning to love the mystery, I’ve discovered that ALL fiction is mystery. Even romance is mystery – characters meet, and in every one, especially the romantic comedy/mystery, you know they’ll fall in love in the end. As they’re people, they’ll also have relationships.
That’s what’s started to creep into my own stories. NOT always romance; but sometimes reconciliation, another theme I discovered that’s meaningful to me. That was recent and I’ll be using that as a theme more in the future.
“Where’s there reconciliation in scifi????” you shout at me. You’ll find my discussion of the the subject here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/11/possibly-irritating-essays-time-travel.html and here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/01/possibly-irritating-essays-spider-man.html
I’m working on it…now lastly:
Apex: What was the most important (to you) piece of writing advice you’ve encountered?
Castro: Worst piece of writing advice, ever: “You will never sell a word; Best: the well-known editors who took me to breakfast to say, “Adam, that first story you sold us? Were you a little unnerved that it was coming out of you? You were? Okay…have you felt more comfortable of late? You have? Well, that’s what you’re doing wrong.”
Castro: Despite international publications, award nominations, compliments from people I grew up reading, and so on, I still think of myself as an amateur who has yet to prove himself. With twenty-seven books published or contracted, I find the finish line is still moving, and that the worst possible thing for me, ever, will be catching up with it.”
And there you go. More with more authors and what I’m learning, in future posts!
References: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-adam-troy-castro-30/#:~:text=Don't%20be%20comfortable.,Dig%20deep.
Reference: https://apex-magazine.com/interviews-2/an-interview-with-adam-troy-castro/
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