Authors Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett On How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories
An Interview With Ian Benke
Humor is necessary, because it’s human. You can have dragons and elves and prophecies and world-ending spells and the occasional joke will serve, gloriously, as much-needed contrast, to make the unreal feel familiar, the impossible everyday.
Science Fiction and Fantasy are hugely popular genres. What does it take for a writer today, to write compelling and successful Science Fiction and Fantasy stories? Authority Magazine started a new series called “How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories”. In this series we are talking to anyone who is a Science Fiction or Fantasy author, or an authority or expert on how to write compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jones & Danielle Bennett.
Jaida Jones and Dani Bennett are married co-authors who live in a haunted Brooklyn brownstone with eight cats. Their published work includes four novels from the Havemercy series, an epic fantasy series that explores the boundaries of magic and extraordinary events that test the mettle of men, challenging the heart and soul of a kingdom. Their most recent release, Master of One, is a high-fantasy YA novel filled with sinister sorcery, gallows humor, and a queer romance.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share a story about what first drew you to writing over other forms of storytelling?
Jaida: I have a very specific memory from fourth grade that marks the beginning of my obsession with writing, specifically fantasy. I’d just watched Willow for the first time (and immediately watched it a second, third, and fourth over the weekend) and had fallen in love with all of the magic, the adventure, and especially the humor. I wrote my own heavily inspired tale, which a teacher read out loud for the rest of the class some weeks later. After the reading, a boy who’d bullied me for years (he’d continue for the rest of middle and high school) told me the story was good, and didn’t add a nasty joke at the end of his compliment. And I was hooked, because it seemed to me there was no stronger magic than that of the written word.
Dani: I honestly have been writing stories for as long as I can remember. My love of writing I think originated as a love of reading. When I was little, my grandma asked my dad if he thought it was okay that I read so much, because I was reading through meals and in class and by the headlights of the car behind us at night. So I definitely think a strong love of reading books themselves influenced me to want to try to write my own stories.
You are a successful author. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Jaida: Perseverance is number one — the number of rejections we’ve received in our time is staggering, and I often forget that all it takes is the right reader to set something other than rejection in motion. It can be extremely easy to lose sight of that fact, especially after the fifteenth “so close, but no offer-cigar” rejection in a row, when all I want to do is crawl into bed at 3pm and become one with the comforter, which doesn’t have to feel things.
Dani: Stubbornness? I agree with Jaida, that the ability to take a licking and keep on ticking, in terms of rejections, is paramount. The desire to stick with something, even though you have zero positive reinforcement coming in takes a peculiar kind of stubbornness. Discipline — a cousin of stubbornness, discipline means just sitting down and writing every day whether I’m in the mood to do it or not. A lot of writing is the hard work of forcing myself to get started. If I waited to feel inspired every time I wrote, I’d never get anything done! I think with writing, and indeed with many art forms, there’s a sense of mystery and wonder that makes it seem like you’re doing something other than hard work, but at the end of the day, it’s mostly just hard work. And that’s okay! Optimism — this goes hand in hand with the stubbornness as well, but I really do believe that everything will work out as intended. If we don’t sell a certain manuscript, then maybe the next one will sell! (Jaida chiming in here, that Dani has such beautiful Canadian optimism, and it keeps me afloat. Or makes me furious. Or both!)
Can you tell us a bit about the interesting or exciting projects you are working on or wish to create? What are your goals for these projects?
J&D: Right now, we’re editing a manuscript we’ve been working on on-and-off since we finished the first draft in 2015. It started out as a young adult fantasy, did the rounds on submission, got summarily (if positively) rejected, and was ultimately set aside for a few years while we wrote, polished, and went on submission with Master of One, which was published November 2020 with HarperTeen. Trying to write new things during the Pandemic proved incredibly hard for us, so we turned to older manuscripts that could use a fresh eye and (a lot of) work, and after a few rounds back and forth with our incredible agent and a friend of ours who provides us with the most invaluable feedback, the story has become an adult fantasy which, hopefully, an editor will want to work on further with us!
Wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define sci-fi or fantasy? How is it different from speculative fiction?
Jaida: This is so hard! I feel like it’s one of those “a square is also a rectangle but a rectangle is not also a square” situations. With speculative fiction, I think there’s more room to suspend disbelief and not provide rules or even answers for the magic(s)/science(s) at play, whereas with hard sci-fi, fantasy, or sci-fantasy, you have to fully establish the structures, the limitations, the parameters of either the magic or the science as a fundamental pillar of the worldbuilding.
Dani: I don’t really discern between speculative fiction and sci-fi/fantasy. For example, sci-fi and fantasy are often grouped together even though they’re totally disparate categories. In my mind, science fiction has some kind of scientific bent or focus driving it, whereas fantasy involves magic in place of that science. Speculative fiction can be both! I agree with Jaida that the main difference probably lies in the structure or specificity of the worldbuilding elements.
It seems that despite countless changes in media and communication technologies, novels and written fiction always survive, and as the rate of change increases with technology, written sci-fi becomes more popular. Why do you think that is?
Jaida: As I always say, “if I wanted to watch miserable people fight each other without magic involved, I’d turn on the news.” The need to escape to worlds other than our own is intrinsic to the human experience. Plato wrote about shadows on cave walls, for sure, but he also invented orichalcum and wrote about the lost city of Atlantis. It would be a much less interesting life to live if we weren’t always hungry, searching for magic with the same fervor as I hunted for four leaf clovers in the park as a kid.
Dani: There’s something about reading. It’s like taking yourself to the movies, only the movie is playing inside your mind. Sitting peacefully with a book is very relaxing, and I think that even as the world modernizes around us, the things that bring us calm are always desirable.
In your opinion, what are the benefits to reading sci-fi, and how do they compare to watching sci-fi on film and television?
Jaida: Films, television, video games, animated series — all can be so luscious and immersive, incredible to lose yourself in. But despite all these updates to media, streaming services, short-form text and image-based social media apps, people are still buying books. There’s something to creating the film in your head as you hide in a bathroom at a family gathering with a book that no amount of mind-blowing special effects or picture-perfect casting will ever quite live up to. It’s the element of yourself that you bring to the reading experience, of your own imagination, that can’t be captured on any screen.
Dani: I think books have the ability to deepen and enrich stories told on-screen. For television series that I enjoy, I almost always want to refer to the books behind the show, to give myself a chance to steep in the worlds and lore.
What authors and artists, dead or alive, inspired you to write?
Jaida: Around five years ago now, I became utterly obsessed with Richard K. Morgan’s writing style, especially the way he writes action. It completely rearranged my brain and showed me new, urgent, immediate ways of creating motion and sweat and impact with only a few deft words. (I’m obsessed with the blend of sci-fi and fantasy in his A Land Fit for Heroes series.) And I can’t let this question pass without also mentioning the first writer I read who made me think, That’s exactly what I want to do: Tamora Pierce, specifically The Woman Who Rides Like a Man and Wild Magic series.
Dani: Diana Wynne Jones showed me that not all protagonists have to be likeable and not all heroes must behave heroically. I was obsessed with Patricia C Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons series, particularly the princess Cimorene, who doesn’t behave like a typical princess at all. And I must steal Jaida’s answer of Tamora Pierce! I was borrowing the Wild Magic books from a friend, and I have such a clear memory of finishing Emperor Mage and then promptly biking to my friend’s house that evening to demand the concluding book.
If you could ask your favourite Science Fiction and Fantasy author a question, what would it be?
Jaida: Ooh, this is one of those tough questions I know I’ll think of an amazing answer for…after we submit these answers and I can’t update it. (A similar paradox to the “what’s your favorite book?” “*immediately forgets all books that ever existed*” a situation that regularly haunts me…) But, OK, I’d love to chat with Mary Shelley, not really to ask her any questions, but to thank her and beg her to tell me a spooky story next Halloween…
Dani: I can’t choose a favorite! I would want to pick Tolkien’s brain in terms of creating your own language and naming conventions, that’s linguist expertise that you can’t beat!
We’d like to learn more about your writing. How would you describe yourself as an author? Can you please share a specific passage that you think exemplifies your style?
J&D: This is an excerpt from our YA fantasy novel, Master of One. We’re currently working on an upcoming cover reveal for the paperback version that comes out November 2022!
“”I have an idea.” The prince deftly cut the knot of tension in the room with the honeyed warmth of his voice. He braced himself with his good hand on the back of his chair, composed enough to smile at his guests. “Why don’t I lead you on a tour of the grounds? No glass to concern yourselves with out there.”
“Sure,” Rags found his voice. Grateful for the distraction. “Shining Talon here likes nature stuff. Might as well let him hug some trees.”
“Trees,” Shining Talon said, “do not like to be hugged.””
Based on your own experience and success, what are the “Five Things You Need To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories?” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
J&D: Like any art, writing is subjective and we don’t believe there are any finite rules that will universally work for everyone. That being said, there are a few tricks that we rely on consistently:
1. Characters first! This is again a deeply personal choice, but we always start our books by coming up with the characters that inhabit that world.
2. Magic needs some concrete rules, or a structure to ground it in place. It’s fun to add a cost to powers as well, in order to make them less all-powerful.
3. Naming conventions. One of the things we work on with every book is trying to unify the names we use with some defining trait. This is another grounding technique that makes a world feel more alive and less spun from whole cloth.
4. Humor is necessary, because it’s human. You can have dragons and elves and prophecies and world-ending spells and the occasional joke will serve, gloriously, as much-needed contrast, to make the unreal feel familiar, the impossible everyday.
5. Do it because you love it, and even when you hate it, you won’t be able to quit.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Entertainment, Business, VC funding, and Sports read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 🙂
J&D: We have to say, we really appreciate Rick Riordan for all the work that he’s done in terms of making his fantasy inclusive. Mistakes will always be made undertaking this worthy effort, and no one is perfect, but the amount of work he puts into this makes it clear he does care, and that’s the absolute most amazing thing to witness in someone as wildly successful as he is. We wish we’d had his books when we were younger! Other obsessions: Summer Camp Island, created by Julia Pott, and Centaurworld, created by Megan Nicole Dong. We absolutely love the fantastical worlds established in both series. We’re also enormous Bioware fans, and would love to chat with their writers, because of how they adapt their epic storytelling to the video game medium!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
J&D: We’re @ladyjaiduh and @thremedon on Instagram; @jonesandbennett on Twitter; and occasionally update our website, jonesandbennett.com! (We have tried to understand TikTok, and have determined we are officially too old.)
Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success.
Authors Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett On How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.