Science Fiction & Fantasy: Creating Unique and Powerful Worlds

Writing science fiction and fantasy is exciting because anything can happen. The difficult part is that anything can happen.

This Skillshare class will cover principles and guidelines that will help shape your worlds and characters into memorable and unique stories. We'll be looking at classic SF/F works such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. We will also look at stories that may be unfamiliar to you to help us understand what makes them tick, and how we can use their lessons to create our own stories.

This class is for beginners, but the ideas and exercises that we'll cover are applicable to all levels.

These topics are discussed:

• Worldbuilding
• The ripple effects of reality changes
• New perspectives on classic tropes
• Get into the POV characters in fantastic realities

Lincoln Michel is the author and co-editor of Upright Beasts, a genre-bending collection. He also edited the Gigantic Worlds science fiction anthology and the Tiny Nightmares horror anthology. His work has appeared in The Paris Review and Strange Horizons. Terraform and Granta also. He is a fiction writer in the MFA programs of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.

(Moebius)