Welcome to Speculative Thougths, Issue #1
HOW THIS ACCOUNT CAME TO BE
This e-Zine came together as a collective work in the Fantasy Club at Wattpad. When I first joined Wattpad there were plenty of stories, authors and activity, as well as lots of advertising in the SYS club, but not a lot of active groups or organizations. That has since changed, and there is now the ForbiddenPlanet Sci-Fi Group and the Dark_Dimensions e-Zine, as well as several editing groups such as editorsUNITE and other joint efforts to help one another.
My biggest concern though was that there wasn’t an organized way to help one another out with finding good resources. That was the main reason I started this account. If you go through the Library, there is a section for Writing Help, Interviews, Writing Prompts, Book Reviews, Inspiration, a general Wattpad section, and of course a Fantasy Smackdown section.
The Fantasy Smackdown section includes works from the contestants of the first Fantasy Smackdown competition. I highly suggest taking a look at these entries. They were written over the course of a little over two weeks using a total of four images chosen from eight as inspiration. I will be reviewing the top entries of round one in one of the last articles of this e-Zine.
At the initial release date of this e-Zine, the competition will be in its final round. A winner will be announced in June. Depending on many factors, we may run another Smackdown competition over the summer.
WHY SPECULATIVE THOUGHTS?
I came up with the name Speculative Thoughts because personally, my focus is not just fantasy, or any other genre. I enjoy speculative fiction. Wikipedia defines Speculative Fiction as follows:
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts.
Fantasy to me, is so much more than just swords and sorcery, high fantasy or epic fantasy. Speculative Fiction seemed to be the term that fit what fantasy is to me. I host our activities in the Fantasy Club because that seems to be the best place, especially considering there are already organizations covering the areas of Sci-Fi and Horror.
IN THIS ISSUE
In this issue you will find an article by @Lost_In_A_Dream covering the general subgenres of Fantasy. I’d like to encourage you to think about fantasy subgenres and share with us more subgenres you think that should be included.
You will also find a creatively written article by @Sekkancovering the area of magic in relation to world building. We plant to expand further on the topic of world building in future issues. Contributors are encouraged to visit us in the Fantasy Club to assist Sekkan in his efforts. I’d also like to mention that @Corinder has is working on a World Creation Workshop. It can be found in our Library or at her profile.
To continue with the theme of helping writers to write fantasy, @Crimson613 has compiled a short list of helpful links with a little bit about each link.
We also have an article about a perhaps rather over looked area of fantasy, poetry. @NouMoussahas put this article together with a few examples of fantasy poetry here at Wattpad.
To wrap up this issue, I will be reviewing the top four fantasy stories submitted to the first round of the Fantasy Smackdown by @ZombieSuperhero , @JamesDSwinney , @theolddarkness and @Lost_In_A_Dream.
If you would like to help with the next issue, please find our group at the Fantasy Club. There will be a link to the staff thread in the External Links of this post. Thank you, and enjoy!
