Welcome to the Fiction Emailer: A newsletter that aims to make sense of our chaotic world through the lens of ‘Speculative Journalism & Fiction’ by rayaan_writer. Visit my website to know more.
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Quick Note on Today’s Edition: I obsess over the craft of storytelling in any medium. I end up consuming way more info than I need to, but always with one purpose in mind: Writing IRL. Some habits have helped me align my creative north star. It's drawing maps, looking for souls in newsletters and trying to replicate them, and capturing voice notes from gibberish scrawls in print. This edition is all about that.
1) Why drawing maps is a good way to start writing
Every fiction author has an idea how to start a story. Some say to:
begin with your plot,
fix your ending first,
create a rich origin tale for your characters.
But author N.K. Jemisin, in her MasterClass, says she uses maps to understand her story more deeply. She starts drawing maps and...
names the cities,
designs the geography,
builds the politics of the land,
and charts the weather systems.
This helps her decide how her characters will live, behave, and react.
Now comparing this with non-fiction writing, I believe the ‘Business Model Canvas’ (BMC) by Strategyzer is a great map, a visual aid that can help someone with:
What are they looking to solve through their writing
Who is their target audience
How can they make money from their writing
If you are looking to map your writing life and visualise it, then BMC is a good gateway to begin. By merging it along with Design Thinking Questionnaires (Bill Burnett’s resources) as a self-reflection, you can unfold the north star for your career. Do this exercise with a pen and paper!
I've pasted below a screenshot of author Jemisin's guide to world-building with maps because I adore drawing maps. I find them therapeutic. This is an underrated creative hobby to experiment if you want your imagination to go wild before you start writing.
Once you have figured out the long-term picture of your writing life with BMC, then the next possible question is: where do you want to write? I’ve kept my focus on building this newsletter because nothing beats owning an audience through an email list. Thus, I’m always on the lookout for quality newsletter writing, which leads me to…
So many newsletters, so little time, but the ones I open are usually the ones with a soul.
Now what’s a soul?
I often come across advice that says writers need to find their voice. My understanding is this: Voice is the ingredient that defines how you tell your story; it is the style of words you use, your grammar, your punctuations, or the way you loop in a fact into an anecdote with rich vocabulary, grace and humility.
Soul, on the other hand, adds a layer of quirkiness, the depth of contextual knowledge of a topic, a subtle sense of humor or wit laced with candor and clarity. It can be a mix of these or it could just be one. But the root element that binds a soul is the promise that you offer when a person opens your newsletter: addressing the reader’s need. I often stumble upon such high-quality magical writing in newsletters I subscribe to:
I love The Browser for their curation of long-form reads. It’s like walking into a library of rare finds from the nook and corners of the Internet. I imagine myself that the Browser team are like jewelers dusting gold off a rough piece of ore. It’s clear they read a LOT to filter out only the BEST. Thanks to Browser, I have now stumbled upon writings from publications that I have never heard before such as Aeon, Asimov Press, etc. (Btw, Here’s a replug to my old essay: How to write curations that outlast AI)
In Splice Frame (weekly update on media product and design) by Rishad Patel, you will always find a personal story in the opening section of each edition. It’s often a conversation that Rishad has with a friend or a work acquittance that eventually leads into the core theme of the newsletter (Read an edition). What stands out is Rishad’s style of narrating a story by blending facts and opinion subtly.
I look forward to ‘Transfer Orbit’ by Andrew Liptak for its soulful curation of upcoming sci-fi/ fantasy books, and author updates on this genre. It’s evident from Andrew’s writing that he is a nerdy dude who LOVES this genre. (Sample this gargantuan piece: Kingdom come: How George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones took over popular culture)
Last week, I mentioned Ann Friedman’s pie charts in her newsletter. Now that’s a strong soul that brings in character to her writing as Ann draws them by hand!
It definitely takes time to conjure a soul into your newsletter. I’m figuring this out myself. But to get started, I’m just trying to replicate the quirky things my favourite newsletter writers do and iterate as I progress. The more I read, the better idea I might get. But I have to keep writing because in the end Volume + Consistency + Intent is the greatest way to game any digital platform.
While our aim is to occupy the online space as storytellers, it is often the most mundane offline activities such as scribbling notes on paper that lead to a creative spark you never imagined. Which leads me to the following:
3) Is it easier to capture notes while reading on print?
I get distracted easily if I read from my phone or laptop. And I struggle to capture the ideas that crashes in my brain as I read. I’ve tried note-taking apps to help me organise this burst of creative interpretation that explodes after reading a million Substacks.
But it’s different whenever I read newspapers or books. These physical objects fortunately don’t have notification alerts (yet). They seem to spark a sensation in me (especially the smell of new books) to make notes more actively.
Here's how that goes:
When I read from a print medium, I jot down micro notes with my pen on the corner of the pages or in a diary. I list down my thoughts as short bullet points and then try to give them a headline. This exercise, particularly just adding my own headline, often leads me to answer the core theme of this newsletter: Speculative Journalism and Fiction.
Some of the questions that I ask myself as I make notes are:
How would I recommend this article or this section from a book that I’m reading to someone in two sentences?
What do I love about this writing?
What was the thinking behind this writing?
What didn’t I like?
What was missed in this piece?
What does this mean to Speculative Journalism & Fiction?
Questions like these are the fisherman’s net that I cast out to capture the spinning words that rumbles in my head. And to give them a structure further, I use Wispr Flow (a voice-to-text dictation tool) and I yap out loud by referring to my handwritten notes (that are just crisp words of tiny sentences). [I wrote in detail about this process in my earlier edition: Is Speaking Out Loud Grammar’s Last Defense?]
I used to perfect this step but it took a long time to learn that some writing aren’t meant to be published. They exist way before the real writing begins as they are vital offline exercises that no AI prompts can (or should) replace.
Writing on hand helps me crack open my brain to get a grip of the creative wildfire. Many times this process has led me to germinate my seed of ideas into long-form essays.
Love live the print medium!
And that’s all for today!
Did you like reading this edition? Should I do better? Please don’t hesitate to offer me your feedback. I am open to ideas and suggestions.
Feel free to reach me at [email protected] or you can simply reply to this email or comment below. See you soon! 😊❤️
