Industry News

The 2024 Australasian Shadows Awards (previously known as the Australia Shadows Awards) winners were presented at Conflux in Canberra on October 7, 2024.

The award is given by the Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.”

Novel

• WINNER: When Ghosts Call Us Home, Katya de Becerra (Page Street; Pan Macmillan)

• Polyphemus, Zachary Ashford (Darklit)

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BizarroCon has announced the finalists for the 2024 Wonderland Book Awards for Excellence in Bizarro Fiction.

Best Novel

• The Last Night to Kill Nazis, David Agranoff (CLASH)
• Elogona, Samantha Kolesnik (WeirdPunk )
• Glass Children, Carlton Mellick III (Eraserhead)
• Edenville, Sam Rebelein (William Morrow)
• Soft Targets, Carson Winter (Tenebrous)

Best Collection

• All I Want is to Take Shrooms and Listen to the Color of Nazi Screams

...Read More

by Eugen Bacon

Editor’s note: This piece is part of an occasional series titled Writing by Other Means, in which authors share personal experiences and industry intel around different production contexts and writing tools.

You have a novel, a novella, a short story in your head—you just need to write it. The muse is humming, no shortfall of ideas. But you need that time, an hour or three, to sit at your workstation, perhaps with noise-cancelling headphones, to zone out the world, get on with it.

But your day job is a beast—roaring its demands. The boss is a monster, or maybe you’re the boss on a snarl. The minute you’re home, domesticity rushes at you in the face of a pug or a Weimaraner spoiling for a run in the park, a coon cat or a Persian arching its back and rubbing at your shins, almond-shaped eyes glowing, MEOW—where’s the trout? Perhaps it’s a kiddie—even grown, they act like they’re four, keening for your attention: Mom, Da, are you listening? Perhaps it’s your mate—angling to unload about one helluva day. All contending with your laundry, the vacuum cleaner, the stove, the dishwasher…

There goes your workstation, no getting on with it. The heck do you get time to write?

Enter sudden writing.

It works in chunking. Spurting in bite size.

Think of a novel. Think of how many mini-scenes you can extract from it. Right from the onset of writing. Your mini-scene could be in crafting the synopsis, way before you write. Or in shaping out a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. Now you’re writing: There’s the opening hook…Maybe there’s the inciting incident that kindles your hero/ine from their ordinary world to adventure…

• the obstacles—real or imagined to their quest
• their interaction(s) with a mentor—a friendly stranger, someone who inspires them to take up a gauntlet
• their encounters with allies, enemies, conflict, conflict

…all the way to a closing. Doesn’t matter your approach—it doesn’t have to be the hero/ine’s journey. Each tiny episode, be it a character journey, interaction, or event, is a mini-scene. You could break down your novel into thousands of mini-scenes, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Think of a short story—the scores of inherent mini-scenes. Moments in time. It could be an argument between characters. Or a love scene. Or your protagonist moving from A to B. Less than half a page of intensity and immersion, ten to fifteen minutes of a solo scene in your head, in a scribble, in your phone. Focus on that one moment, as you wait for the traffic lights to change, for your turn in a queue, as you warm a cuppa in the microwave. As you run Milo in the park (most likely it’s Milo running you)…As you crack open a can of wet food for Mittens…As you soak (finally) in the soapiest suds.

Getting started

Write on the go: jot down points that are little triggers for the scene you’re going to write. Draw the scene in your head, on a pad, in your phone. With simple word or phrase prompts, craft the bones of a sharp and meaningful conversation. Hone that fight scene, the sequence of it: who pulls what arm, which way does the blade swing? Dance your protagonist in your head, so vivid. Yelp, punch. Spin, snatch, run. One moment. Focus on “sudden”—one mini-scene, a piece of your story. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just chart the essentials.

Here’s a moment in time that I scratched in a minute, prose-poetic scribbles on the go:

Who was a trick question

He saw a woman with eyes whose beauty

radiant as a summer meadow

he thought of

~sweet peas

~roses

~dahlias

~lilies

Was she punishment or consolation

Was he a wolf or a dog?

It was the essence of a scene:

He found a woman named Dash who was a trick question. Her beauty was a radiant summer meadow, and he thought of the pink, salmon and white of dew-kissed sweet peas, the sunniest yellow of baby-fresh dahlias, the rarity of blue and peach roses that weren’t the popular kind because they self-picked where they grew, and the purpliest lilies that belonged in a wedding, and buzzed pureness and a hint of coquetry. Was she punishment or consolation? And was he a wolf or a puppy?

And here’s dialogue, journaled on the go:

You have uncertainty about everything

Even me

Especially us

It was convenient for you to stay away. You didn’t have to make a decision.

About you?

About us.

Is this just physical?

Unfair. Sure, sex is a sweetness, nectar, connection, feelings.

Guavas.

A minute of sudden fiction shaped out a mini-moment between vulnerable lovers navigating their feelings, fleshing out my novel on the go (character names have changed):

Zed is still as if she has died. Then her words slip out quietly.

“Must you do that? Bring uncertainty to everything?”

“Even you?” asks Bree, doubtful she’s heard right.

“Especially me. It was a convenience for you to stay away. That way, you didn’t have to decide. Anything.”

“About you?”

“About us. Bree, is this just physical for you?”

“It’s unfair of you to ask that. Sure, our sex is a sweetness, nectar from the gods. But, of course, there’s connection and feelings.”

Zed listens with such hunger, clinging to every word as if she were a fish, and it water.

“Feelings? Such as?”

“I mean. I like you a lot,” says Bree. “I really, really like you.”

“And I like guavas. I really, really like them.”

When it’s hard to write full-time without life’s distractions, why wait for a long stretch of crafting at a workstation that might never happen?

Stay prolific

Chunk your project into doable “minis.” Draw on the flexibility and experimentation of sudden fiction, spurts of prose poetry to write on the go.

This approach mostly works when ideas are flowing—what you’re lacking is time. As you draft your creative text through journaling, notes, and scrawl mini-episodes physically or in your mind, each vignette shapes the sum of a whole. You might be astonished to discover how powerful these bursts of creative minis can be.

Later, when you’ve got time, you have all the minis to develop into robust scenes.

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in other awards, including the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick Award, as well as the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.” Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

The post Sudden: Writing on the Go appeared first on SFWA.

The winners for the 2024 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF have been announced.

Best Novel

• WINNER: The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin)

• Polyphemus, Zachary Ashford (DarkLit)
• The Tangled Lands, Glenda Larke (Wizard’s Tower)
• Dream Weaver, Steven Paulsen (IFWG)
• When Dark Roots Hunt, Zena Shapter (MidnightSun)
• Traitor’s Run, Keith Stevenson (coeur de lion)

Best Novella or Novelette

• WINNER: “Bitters”, Kaaron Warren

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Sarah Guan announced via social media that she has left her position as publisher of Erewhon Books. Guan said:

Over my five years at Erewhon, we championed a diverse list of award winners and finalists, bestsellers, and Indie Next picks who garnered rave reviews from national and international media…. While I will dearly miss working with our amazing authors — and will always cheer for their success — I leave ...Read More

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the winners of the 2024 Elgin Awards, presented for the best poetry chapbook and the best full-length poetry book in the speculative genre. The Elgin Awards are named after the founder of SFPA, Suzette Haden Elgin.

Best Full-Length Book

• First Place: The Gravity of Existence, Christina Sng (Interstellar Flight)
• Second Place: Bounded By Eternity, Deborah L. Davitt self-published)

...Read More

Welcome to the October edition of the SFWA Market Report.

Please note: Inclusion of any venue in this report does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA. Those markets included on this list pay at least $0.08/word USD in at least one category of fiction. This compilation is not exhaustive of all publication opportunities that pay our recommended minimum professional rate. Additionally, SFWA adheres to our DEI Policy when making selections for this report. We strongly encourage writers to closely review all contracts and consult our resources on best contract practices.

New Markets

Afrofuturism Short Stories
Dust & Dark
Mmeory (Upcoming)
Our Dust Earth (Upcoming)
Planet Black Joy
Plott Hound Magazine (Upcoming)
Poisoned Soup for the Macabre, Depraved and Insane: Nostalgic Terrors (Upcoming)
Silent Nightmares Anthology: Stories to be Told on the Longest Night of the Year (Upcoming)

Markets Currently Open for Submissions

AE Presents: Unréal
Aliens Among Us (SpeKulative Stories Anthology Series)
Analog Science Fiction & Fact
Apex Magazine
Asimov’s Science Fiction
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Book XI (Recently Opened)
Cast of Wonders (Recently Opened)
Clarkesworld Magazine
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores (Recently Opened)
Crepuscular Magazine
Escape Pod (Recently Opened)
Factor Four Magazine
Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter
Flash Fiction Online (FFO) (Originals) (Recently Opened)
Infinite Worlds
Issues in Earth Science
Metastellar (Originals) (Recently Opened)
Nature: Futures
Never Whistle At Night Anthology Series (Recently Opened)
Reckoning
Samovar
Small Wonders
Solarpunk Magazine (Recently Opened)
Stop Copaganda
Strange Horizons (Recently Opened)
The Cosmic Background
This Way Lies Madness
Train Tales
Uncharted Magazine
Utopia Science Fiction

Markets Recently Closed for Submissions

100-Foot Crow
Achilles (Permanent)
Cursed Morsels Zine
DreamForge Anvil
Gamut Magazine
Morgana le Fay (Permanent)
Orion’s Belt
The Deadlands
The Green Sheaf

Upcoming Market Changes

Afrofuturism Short Stories permanently closes soon.
Apex Monthly Flash Fiction Contest‘s Submission Window begins and ends soon.
Cast of Wonders‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores‘s Submission Window begins and ends soon.
Dust & Dark‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Flash Fiction Online (FFO) (Originals)‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Metastellar (Originals)‘s Submission window ends soon.
Our Dust Earth‘s Submission window begins soon.
PodCastle‘s Submission Window begins soon.
Solarpunk Magazine‘s Submission window ends soon.
The Deadlands‘s Submission Window begins soon.
The Orange & Bee‘s Submission window begins soon.
This Way Lies Madness permanently closes soon.
Utopia Science Fiction‘s “Epic Poetry and Flash Fiction” Theme ends soon.
Utopia Science Fiction‘s “Xeno-Linguistics” Theme begins soon.

The SFWA Market Report is compiled by David Steffen, editor of Diabolical Plots and The Long List Anthology series, and administrator and co-founder of the Submission Grinder.  The acceptances from the July Diabolical Plots submission window have been announced! You can support Diabolical Plots and the Submission Grinder on PayPal or Patreon or by buying books or merch.

The post SFWA Market Report For October appeared first on SFWA.

Placing Steven Erikson’s Manuromancy in the Larger Tradition of Hieromantic Divination: A Socratic Dialogue By Mame Bougouma Diene with Steven Erikson in Conversation

The following real and fictional analysis of (by the grace of God) fictional Manuromancy (the art of divination in feces) is based on Steven Erikson’s novella Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords published by PS Publishing in 2021, the seventh novella in the Bauchelain & Korbal Broach series, spinning off from The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

It is divided into four parts:

I – Introduction.

II – A factual overview of the origins and practices of hieromancy/haruspices.

III – An overview of differing approaches to prophecy and divination in epic fantasy.

IV – A fictional contextualization of manuromancy in relation to hieromancy/haruspices.

I – Introduction

When Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker by slicing a Tauntaun open and emptying its guts, attempting to survive a night in the subglacial plains of Hoth, he missed a prime opportunity to read the future. If only he’d been more versed in the finer points of hieromancy, perhaps he would have saved Luke’s hand in the process. 

Indeed, while many a finer class of societies frown upon the art of divination, perhaps because enough money and you do not so much need to foretell the future as to wish it into existence and/or weather it as the case may be, humanity as a whole, has, over the course of millennia devised ever more jaw-dropping techniques to predict and hopelessly attempt to thwart the wyrd sisters’ nigh karmic hand.

Even the most stubborn of disbelievers will, in a moment of despair, seek solace in the pages of their daily horoscope, in the chicken scratch of a fortune cookie, or while in the thrall of athletic frenzy, in the mental clairvoyance of goats, parrots, octopus, cats, pigs, ants, at least one kangaroo, meerkats, and/or penguins. Either that or unwashed underwear, which while objectively distasteful at least verges on hieromancy or to the point of this here paean, the under appreciated art of manuromancy and its objective equal distastefulness.

Bear with me.

[Steven Erikson: and with me, too. The strangeness of the world before the internet was that nobody really knew just how strange that world was. Imagine entering an outhouse, hungover and smelling of mosquito coils, peering down into the hole (as one does, if only to position oneself properly) and meeting a pair of beady eyes glinting back up at you from the earthy gloom below?

To this day I choose to believe that the woodchuck (or whatever it was) had an alternate route to and from the deep pit, and barring the unthinkable, had acquired a taste for slightly (or egregiously) used toilet paper. Or maybe it was just exploring.

Is it apocryphal the lurid tale of some guy caught lurking at the bottom of an outhouse?  Imagine what your friends and family would think of that? ‘It was only the once, honey, I swear it!’ One presumes the perverse pleasures of the witnessing thereof lean more towards the divine than the divining, but who knows, right?

I like to think the woodchuck, which subsequently disappeared, then didn’t, then did, eventually set off to finer pastures. And if it had a mate, well, lipstick on the collar would surely have elicited a milder reaction upon its fateful return home. Either way, a night in the woodshed for the woodchuck.]

[Mame Bougouma Diene: This reminds me of a scene from The Young Pope, Steve, where Pius XIII surmises that buried under the ice of Greenland, that never quite thaws, there, you may find God.

I am of the belief that God resides not in the infinitely big, but in the infinitely small. That if you dig below the surface of the atom, into the smallest point in the universe, you will find a giant eye, staring back at you, holding the secrets of the universe.

Perhaps that woodchuck was but an avatar of the almighty, his ways, both spiritual and digestive, a mystery to the human mind.

In my days in the Southern Sahara, Northern Niger, in the sandstorm beaten town of Agadez, the millennial trading post known by the Tuareg as the Southern Cross, I had an encounter quite similar to yours. 

Imagine my surprise, upon rising from my daily delivery (or sometimes thrice daily – if lucky – depending on the food I ingested and the cook’s cleanliness) and pulling the flush—only for a left over floater, to my utmost horror, to twist and turn, splashing the bowl with a will to live I could only admire, inducing a fit of prepubescent yelping that I am not ashamed to admit. “Holy shit what did I shit?” Were my exact words, I believe. 

As it turns out it was a gecko, who, residing along the rim of the bowl, was dislodged from its home by the power of the rim jets. I could have flushed harder and sent it down the drain, but mercy guided my hand and, after much tribulation, it made its way back into the rim. 

Needless to say, I never bothered to use that specific toilet again, for it was a house, a home and as I too like to imagine all these years later, much as your fated woodchuck, a humble abode of lizardly love.]

II – Entrails Divination in the Ancient World.

Hieromancy or Haruspicy (also known as Extispicy the latter focused specifically on intestinal divination), in our post-Western understanding of the world, resting upon divining the future in the entrails of, most often, animals, stems from the near east and Marduk’s priests. Predominantly, but not limited to, the liver. As many of our traditions, a Babylonian offshoot through way of Greece and filtered through the dominance of Roman cultural expansion. 

The Latin terms haruspex and haruspicina are from an archaic word, hīra = “entrails, intestines” (cognate with hernia = “protruding viscera” and hira = “empty gut”; PIE *ǵʰer-) and from the root spec- = “to watch, observe”. The Greek ἡπατοσκοπία hēpatoskōpia is from hēpar = “liver” and skop- = “to examine”.1

[Steven Erikson: Mame, any etymological connection of worth between the words ‘excrement’ and ‘increment’? The former (crement?) leaves, as it were, with said exudation emerging in, uh, increments? How does one measure these things, anyway? Breath held, I await, your reply, perhaps by footnote]2

Hieromancy is the preferred term here, I didn’t want the audience (if there is one) to wonder what kind of fish a spicy haru was3, and the suffix “mancy” imbues anything it touches with a veneer of evil gravitas that raises even lowly, if essential, manure to as near the Godhead as gravity will allow.

The practice of hieromancy, as mentioned above, found its origins along the Tigris and Euphrates, that, as most riverine systems do, served as a natural external plumbing system, discharging human and animal refuse into the waters of the would-be Persian Gulf. The details of which (hieromancy, not animal or human refuse) collected in the Bārûtu4, or the “art of the diviner,” a Mesopotamian compendium of the science of haruspicy stretching over around a hundred cuneiform tablets assembled in the Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian period. 

The barūtû is divided into ten “chapters” each dealing with a different aspect of entrails divination, the most relevant to this study, for lack of a better word, the BE ŠÀ.NIGIN in Cuneiform or šumma tirānu in Akkadian, meaning ‘intestines’ in layman’s English, focusing on parts of the sheep other than the liver and lungs, and including the coils or convolutions of the sacrificial animal’s colon and kidneys. The task of the bārû, or diviner, through mystical means lost in the sands that buried the Middle East, is to read the portents of the future in the inner organs of sacrificed beasts. 

The tradition observed by the Hittite as well as the Akkadians and Egyptians found, by way of Persia and Achaemenid conquest, its way into the Mediterranean.

The Greek mid sixth century to the late fourth century BC saw a wave of orientalization ranging from art to sciences5. Walter Burkert described the new movement in Greek art as a revolution: “With bronze reliefs, textiles, seals, and other products, a whole world of eastern images was opened up which the Greeks were only too eager to adopt and adapt in the course of an ‘orientalizing revolution.” The same Walter Burkert has argued that it was migrating seers and healers who transmitted their skills in divination and purification ritual along with elements of their mythological wisdom to the Greeks.

This overlap included the belief that the liver held properties which elevated it above other organs, thus making it central to divination in the classical world of the Greeks and the Romans thereafter.

Augurs6 and haruspices were of such prominence in Rome that all matters political, military, and civil were sanctioned and legitimized by augury and haruspices—to such an extent that Cicero himself considered the Augur (Roman priest) the most important authority in Rome, save presumably for himself. 

As Roman historian Livy put it: “Who does not know that this city was founded only after taking the auspices, that everything in war and in peace, at home and abroad, was done only after taking the auspices?”7

So deep was the belief in the primacy of divination that even Romulus and Remus (Rome’s founding figures) were considered Augurs themselves. Romulus in particular. His sightings outweighing those of his brother Remus, whom he murdered or had murdered. In other words, Remus didn’t see it coming, which he would have, were he the better Augur. 

It is relevant here to distinguish between hieromantic haruspices from augury, divining the future in bird signs; whether the birds he saw flew in groups or alone, what noises they made as they flew, the direction of flight, what kind of birds they were, how many there were, or how they fed, and presumably, how the feed passed. 

Augury took precedence over haruspices. This would seem evident in the semantic choices over the name of priests as augurs. It’s hard not to imagine why, but even assuming that smell had nothing to do with it, it did not bode well for manuromancers, for the exact same reason. One may be respected for talking s@%t, but few are for reading it, regardless of how right they are. Guts and poop being certainly less priestly than, well, birds and poop, as it were. 

Ours is an unjust world, where flight soars while feces sink.

[Steven Erikson: here’s another anecdote to float past you, Mame.  Mongolia, seven hours’ north of Ulaanbaatar.  I had just fled the worst archaeological project I’ve ever experienced, one punctuated by a camp designed to kill every one of us, with tents pitched beneath tall trees that were scorched from the top down, in a valley that was lightning-storm alley; and an outhouse erected above a hole dug into the floodplain not twenty meters from the stream where we got our water.  Oh, and did I mention the goat’s head soup derived from a severed goat’s head left lying on the ground for three days before finding the pot?  This latter detail highlights the state of the following experience:  
You see, none of that compared to my journey back to Ulaanbaatar, when the bus pulled over in the middle of nowhere on the steppe, and we all piled out to set eyes upon a row of a dozen doorless side-by-side-by-side outhouses, the row itself a ten-foot high, forty-foot-long wall, all of it splashed from top to bottom with explosive hues of yellow and brown.  A sight so horrific even the flies avoided it.
This evidence of bowel-violence was something to behold (at a distance), and is it a wonder to note that no-one made use of these totemic monoliths to dysentery, rather, choosing to squat in the open to do their thing?]

[Mame Bougouma Diene: My, my, my, Steve you may have just fingered one of my favorite historical rabbit holes. The Golden Histories and Chinggis Khan posteriority.  
You are aware of the nomadic legend that is Temujin Borjigin’s impossible progeny. There is of course no evidence, hard, soft or liquid with hints of berries, that this is true. Most likely a common haplotype among Turkic populations of the plateau at the time, all complicated by the fact that no DNA can be retrieved, that Jochi was not his son, and that every miserable ass the world around wants to claim some of the Great Khan’s heritage. 
We know not where he is buried, but we may know where he died, in the Liupan Shan in Northwestern China, in a valley imbued with miraculous virtues for reason of medicinal herbs still in abundance today.
If one were to dig deep enough, they may find a fossilized stool and compare it to the fatuous display of undeniable DNA evidence you so specifically reference, it may yet reveal the truth behind the myth.
We still wouldn’t know where the Khan lies, but if we knew what he lay, we may know truth from the lies. How I wish I were there, a lonely blue fly on that wall…]
 

III – Divination and Prophecy in Epic Fantasy

I’m pretty sure we don’t have to do this part, but for the lingering feeling that, as with all things fantasy, it is prophesied. 

There is no such thing as free will in the world of fantasy, only the illusion thereof and the delusions of minor character arcs all believing to be, in any particular order, The Dragon Reborn, The Boy Who Lived, Azor Ahai, or the literal Pawn of Prophecy for crying out loud. 

It almost takes all the fun out of twelve-hundred-page door stoppers, if not for the illusion it creates in the mind of the feeble, yet determined, aforementioned minor characters, who, upon seeing the red comet, interpret it to mean the best for themselves and only themselves.

It is a flaw of human nature that we lack the introspective ability to realize that, while we are most certainly the hero of our own story, most of our stories are not heroic enough to make it into the actual narrative. Most of us would be lucky enough to appear long enough to catch an arrow in the neck. That character slowly liquefying while covered in purulent boils to the amusement of necromancers? That’s not you either. Not that the same thing isn’t happening to you. It’s just happening off camera.

Prophecy serves the same purpose in fantasy as a clue in a murder mystery. Yes, the answer is the brown-haired orphan with a knack for swords, but luckily enough there will be several to pick from, and if the author is clever, the character will be so unlikable as to be dismissed right off the bat, allowing for a both frustrating and fulfilling climax. The uncomfortable strain of pushing through to an inevitable hollow relief. Unless you’re that kind of guy. If so, please keep reading. 

Divination, of course, plays a significant part in the underpinning and progressive unfolding of prophecy, and is present across various novels in many different ways.

• Pyromancy – divination through looking into the flames of a fire for visions of the future is central to George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and exemplified in the TV series Game of Thrones under the influence of priests and priestess of the Red God. 
• Oneiromancy – the reading of dreams to gain insight into the future. Featured multiple times in the Old Testament. A recent example in fantasy can be found in The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt when Geralt seeks information about a haunted house from the oneiromancer, Corinne Tilly.
• Scrying – the act of peering into a reflective medium to detect significant visions or messages. The Mirror of Galadriel is used for scrying. Showing “things that were, things that are, and some things that have not yet come to pass.”8 So is Saruman’s palantír. Or any damn palantír.
• Hematomancy – The ability to gain insight into a question or situation using blood as a conduit. This is used recently in Tony Adeyimi’s Children of Blood and Bone, where a seer uses the ash in her blood with an incantation to see the future combining elements of Spodomancy – divination by examining cinders, soot or ashes. 
• Astro-amathomancy9 – combination of astrology (reading the stars) and amathomancy (divination using dust, sand, silt or the ashes of the recently deceased) the ability to gain insight into the future by use of stardust. Used by the Nanny Ogg and Grannie Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters. 
• Caecomancy10 – combination of caeca (Latin for blind) and mancy (divination), divination powers borne of voluntary blindness. This practice appears in Rebecca Roanhorse’s novel Black Sun. There appears to be historical precedent in Korea during the Joseon period (1392 – 1897 AD) where blind people were attributed divinatory powers.11 

All the above are both strange and fascinating in their own right, but none as much as Steven Erikson’s manuromancy in the Malazan, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella, Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords.

[Steven Erikson:  Among the spattering deluge of advice given to young writers, how often will we hear ‘write what you know’?  As dubious as that advice may be (and it most certainly is), let it not be said that in my life experience, I don’t know shit when I see it.  
Case in point: while conducting an archaeological investigation many years ago, in our search (with shovels) to find the outer walls of Upper Fort Garry in the city of Winnipeg, we found ourselves three meters down in a trench that intersected the old (now mostly vanished) fort’s latrine.  Alas, soil conditions being what they were, the deposit(s) was, until that moment of discovery, anaerobically sealed.  In lay terms, devoid of oxygen and so not subject to organic breakdown, it was as fresh as the day it was dumped (and dumped).
After frantic tests for smallpox and other zombie resurrections, we were cleared to continue digging (No, please, after you), and barring some outbreaks of strange rashes and whatnot among excavators, the subsequent donning of hazmat suits and surgical gloves, things proceeded apace.  Smoothly, even.
Now, you might wonder at the value of persisting our downward dive into stratigraphic layers of you-know-what.  I know I did.  It turns out, however, that the latrine delivered proof of a certain socioeconomic continuity that, if commonsensical, nonetheless underscored myriad assumptions.  How so?  You see, Upper Fort Garry at the time of its occupation (nineteenth century, mostly), was by law a ‘dry’ fortification.  No booze permitted.  Curious, then, that we found innumerable liquor bottles within the slurry soup of feces (along with the newspapers used to wipe derrieres, which, it turned out, were still readable – the newspapers, not the derrieres.  Thus providing additional – if not entirely solid – evidence pointing to the long-standing and long-sitting relationship between the pot and reading material).  The evidence, all gathered, pointed to this being an officer’s latrine.
One might imagine a Master’s thesis at least, emerging, if slowly and with some strain, from this discovery, the central assertion being that what goes for the hoi polloi doesn’t go for the toffs.   Since it was the toffs making up the rules, it’s hardly surprising that they reserved the right to break them.  One supposes the rationalization went something like this: ‘It won’t do well for the Empire’s interests in having our common soldiers drunk on the battlefields! Who knows who they might shoot?  Plastered officers?  Well, that’s par for the course, don’t you know.’  And there you have the history of the British Empire in a nutshell (nutshells? We found those, too).
My point?  Why, divination via human poop is anything but fictional.  And yes, sometimes you just have to write what you know (but the knowing thereof is far from done, as will be seen).
That said, I never did write that thesis.]

[Mame Bougouma Diene: But you just did Steve. 
Somewhere in that underground river of poop you saw the past as clearly as a divinator sees the future (and perhaps found your true calling). 
Think of it as your flavored Water of Life as it were. Spice, Steve, as you must have surmised, is mostly dried larval sandworm excrement marinated in larval sandworm regurgitation. When we are told that history is written on the sands of Arrakis, it is, very much as your aged and matured discovery, written in giant heaps of sandworm feces. The past and the future, all at once, all the same. The same ol’shit in other words, echoing through time. 
From a nonlinear, possibly oblong and pointy, perspective time echoes backwards and forwards, and sometimes marinates in the middle, obfuscating thought, until, much like the treasure trove of turds you uncovered, the not quite metaphorical load, bearing the foundations of Winnipeg if you will, is allowed an outlet into the outhouse of the soul.
That is to say: be it future divination or past defecation, it is a small miracle in and of itself, and is but just another part of history repeating. As a resident of Winnipeg yourself, one might be so lucky as to uncover your latrines, on a dark day of futures passed (haha), where the sky turns brown and know not just the man, but his mind.]

IV – Manuromancy as a Legitimate Form of Divination

The word manuromancy is adapted from Late Latin manuromantia: a loan word from the post-Classical Greek Μανουρομαντεία (manuromanteía), itself a compound of Ancient Greek mανουρο (manure in Latin or “poop”) and μαντεία (manteía, or ‘divination’). The original meaning translated by way of Middle English maynouren, manuren (“to spread poop, fertilize”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman meinourer and Old French manovrer12.

In modern English, it echoes the traditional meaning of animal excrement, especially that of common domestic farm animals and when used as fertilizer—generally speaking, from cows, horses, sheep, pigs and chickens.

Manuromancing13 as a divination technique covers manure writ large, encompassing both animal (bestia-manure) and human excrement (humanure or civis-manure), revealing the polymathic nature of true manuromancy.  

Before we further delve into the daily bowl of prophetic poop that is the Manuromancer’s digested bread, butter and so much more, it is essential we replace the age-old tradition in, as this article portends to do, in the larger tradition of historic and respected hieromancy, albeit with a caveat, and larger divination techniques both modern and ancient. 

While it does not carry the same respect, manuromancy is a form of post-digestive hieromancy, concerned with the finished product of bowel movements, rather than, as in the case of Haruspices, pre-evacuation digested materials. 

In other words, while hieromancy especially in the Mesopotamian tradition of Bārûtu (described above) particularly the BE ŠÀ.NIGIN (Cuneiform), concerns itself with intestinal and colorectal divination, manuromancy represents a continuation along the spectrum, concerning itself with instances of post-rectal, fecal divination.

Hieromancy and manuromancy are thus variations of the same practice. While both disturbing, one, and I leave which for you to decide, is decidedly more disturbing than the other. 

Much as with augurs and haruspices in ancient Rome, manuromancy is not elevated to the revered level of haruspices. Elevation, in the case of manuromancy, being a case of immediate medical concern, as fecal angling (of high importance in conducting precise manuromantic readings) favors a definite downwards turn.

In fact, manuromancy, while perfectly adequate in divination terms, was frowned upon by our Roman forebears as a perverted religious practice. 

The Romans drew a clear line between which beliefs could be elevated to the rank of religion (religio) and what constituted superstition (superstitio) which in the Roman understanding meant a morally perverted religion, unlike our modern definition of irrational belief14.

This applied to manuromancy in relation to haruspices. While the Romans did not doubt the veracity of fecal divination, “shit reading” or merda legens (the derogatory term applied to manuromancy) was relegated to the rank of superstitio. While haruspices read the signs of the Gods in the entrails of animals, manuromancy divined in human fecal matter, both repulsive and personal, constituting thus a perversion of Roman religious tradition. 

Class distinction may have further played a role in the demeaning of manuromancy, considered a practice of the plebe, confined to, and expanding after, the creation of public bathhouses in the 2nd century BC, providing the poor with both elevated sanitary standards and astounding amounts of crap for manuromancers to divine from. Thus thinning the already fine line between nobilis and vulgaris, which the Roman higher echelons couldn’t countenance. 

Unsurprisingly, whiffs of manuromancy are rumored to have flatulated their way through the bowels of history.

Apocryphal though the evidence, it is believed that the tradition of royal fecal examination may have derived from manuromancy, stripped of its higher divination purposes. Although the Tudors’ predictive fetishism leaned towards astronomy15, The Groom of the Stool, manuromancer of his day, was, against very unlikely odds,  an envied and respected position16, that Henry VII elevated, as surely the king shits gold, to the rank of fiscal policy advisor.

Less likely even, though certainly amusing to imagine, Japanese smart toilets may very well be manuromantic offshoots. And finally the cult classic, The Human Centipede, is said to be inspired by the occult practices of a mad manuromancer obsessed with group  divination, in what are wildly believed to be the first known experiences in mass psychology. 

Most of our knowledge of manuromancy comes from the work of butt one man, who, much as the great painters of the Renaissance: Michael-Angelo, Donatello and Raphael, goes only by one name and one name alone, Burok. His work splattered as so many of his readings across various texts, manuscripts, and bathroom stalls, often in conversation with various members of society, speaks to the expansive and accepted nature of manuromancy, cutting across social divides, at least for a time.

Burok while in conversation with a cobbler:

“…The signs from this morning’s dump remained uncertain.”

“Whose dump was it?”

“It was the Mayor’s if you must know. Two floaters and one big one like a brick in the bottom of the bowl. The drift of the floaters was widdershins, but agitated, while the sinker was fast dissolving into a yellowy cloud… representing one of two possibilities. Namely, salvation or doom.”17

Burok on his preference for humanuromancy over manuromancy and why:

Not piles – of shit – anymore, I mean. That’s a secondary discipline, demanding the proper identification of source… Horse, cow, dog, rat. Those are obvious enough to the untrained eye. But what about anteater or sloth?… I prefer the bowl… the human kind….18

Burok in conversation with an unnamed nobleman, or priest of ranking or another:

I mean, the initial blast sprayed in a particular pattern…I gauge the pressure to be a six on the Anal Discharge Scale, maybe even six point five… Color is not consistent, and this is of more interest. In divination terms that is… there are shade gradients to consider, as well as viscosity and hydrodynamic flow measures, which need to be taken into account.19

[Steven Erikson:  Confession time.  Burok’s profession was inspired by a conversation I had once with the wife of a fellow Fantasy author who shall remain unnamed, wherein she described (perhaps in a state of bewildered unease, as if seeking confirmation to her notion of ‘Is that strange?  It seems strange to me.  Is it, though?’) her husband’s habit of product-in-bowl examination every morning, followed by a detailed discourse on the details of said defecation, over (gulp!) breakfast.

An inherited habit, as it turned out, for her father-in-law did (and said) precisely the same thing upon a fateful, revelational visit, underscoring the ritual component to the whole shebang. 

Now, this was a few years ago now, and for the life of me I can’t recall my response to the query. Was it strange? Is it? Well, you tell me. In any case, when plunging my memories, why, nothing rises to the surface. I like to think I said something like, ‘Oh, some might think so, to be sure. Mind you, since fecal examination is now a lucrative component of medical testing, said results surely examined with all the deliberation and precision of an augury, why, the language of prediction must be redolent with divinatory elements. One could say, in fact, that the language of shit is big business these days, with multitudes of labs springing up like mushrooms to serve its needs (at least on paper).

Curious, isn’t it, the things that inspire?

My advice to beginning writers?  Go with the flow, who knows where and when something useful might pop up.]

[Mame Bougouma Diene: Or possibly poop out. 

What is there to add to such potent advice from a master himself, who learned from a master, who learned from his father. Would we all be so lucky to bask in ancestral knowledge, dissolving in the sticky afterglow of redolent wisdom.

While I discourage would-be readers (again if there are any, and if any made it to this point, inching their way down the twisted tunnels of the entrails of the mind, mostly Steve’s to be fair) to take this at face value, for obvious reasons. Yet I would still invite them to ponder upon the eminent conclusion that one can only reach after shaking all material, moral, ethical and tasteful binds.

Summarized as below.]

Whether religio or superstitio, there can be no doubt that in the flickering porta-potty light of Burok’s words, we stand in the presence of a master. Whose attention to his craft borders on artistry, with a sensitivity and tolerance to odors, only few of us will ever attain.

It is both fitting and ironic that Burok couldn’t read the signs of his own demise but for bloated constipation, and while his gift is now lost to a world of internal plumbing, scented toilet paper and compost heaps, the essence, nigh soul of manuromancy, remains every time we rise from the bowl and turn to gaze upon our offering in pride, shame or dare I say, hope for a lighter day.  

Footnotes

1.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex ︎
2. [Mame Bougouma Diene: Not to my knowledge, Steven, no, except that Crement is a cheap form of French sparkling wine that, by and large, tastes much like excrements, but that would be a reverse correlation.] ︎
3. Presumably the spicier the more likely a manuromancer will get fresh readings. ︎
4. Ivan Starr (1992). “Chapters 1 and 2 of the bārûtu”. State Archives of Assyria Bulletin. 6: 45–53. ︎
5.  Walter Burkert, 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Thames and Hudson), p. 51. ︎
6. Beard, et al., volume 1, pp.22-24, 27-28 ︎
7. Livy, VI. 41: auspiciis hanc urbem conditam esse, auspiciis bello ac pace domi militiaeque omnia geri, quis est qui ignoret?   ︎
8. The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter VII: “The Mirror of Galadriel” ︎
9. Created for the needs of this essay. ︎
10. Also created for the needs of this essay. ︎
11.  The History of Blind Diviners in Korea – A Historical Overview of the Changing Perceptions and Organizational Activities of Blind Diviners in Korea – Tintin Appelgren – Stockholm University 2021 ︎
12. This is all, for lack of a better word, utter and complete bulls@%t, from the Latin: Tauri Fecalis ︎
13. Not to be confused with “manure – romancing”, romancing with manure, which is apparently a thing in very private circles in dark corners of the internet. ︎
14. Magic in Merlin’s Realm: A History of Occult Practices in Britain, Dr. Francis Young, Cambridge University Press; New edition (3 Mar. 2022) ︎
15.  “…and aren’t the stars nought but gleaming turds?” Unknown. ︎
16. “The Groom of the Stool had (to our eyes) the most menial tasks; his standing, though, was the highest …” quoted in Patterson, Orlande (1982). Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard UP. p. 330 ︎
17. Burok Densetsu, Book I, Chapter III, Hideoshi Takumaru (1331) ︎
18. Burok Densetsu, Book I, Chapter VII, Hidesohi Takumaru (1331) ︎
19. Burok Densetsu, Book III, Chapter II, Hidesohi Takumaru (1336) ︎

Canadian fan and author FRAN SKENE, 86, died June 17, 2024. Skene was active in Van­couver fandom in the ’70s and ’80s, chairing Westercon 30 in 1977, among other conven­tions, and was a major part of the ‘‘Vancouver in ’84’’ Worldcon bid. She also produced fanzines, and was a guest of honor at numerous conventions. Born December 18, 1937, Skene worked as a librarian. After her retirement, she published ...Read More

Scholar and editor H. BRUCE FRANK­LIN, 90, died May 19, 2024 in El Cerrito CA. He taught one of the first university courses on science fiction literature while he was at Stanford University, and also wrote and edited numerous works of SF interest.

Howard Bruce Franklin was born February 28, 1934 in Brooklyn NY. He worked his way through college, graduating from Amherst College in 1955. He served in ...Read More

Glasgow 2024, the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention, was held August 8-12, 2024 at the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, Scotland. Guests of honor were artist Chris Baker; authors Ken MacLeod, Nnedi Okorafor, and Terri Windling; fan guests of honor Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer; special guests were Samantha Béart, Meganne Christian, Tanya DePass, Catherine Heymans, Tendai Huchu, and Three Black Halflings. Registration provided provisional figures of 7,300 in-per­son ...Read More

The Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the 2024 Dwarf Stars Award winners. The Dwarf Stars honor the best speculative poem of one to ten lines published in the previous year.

• WINNER: “关于树的无数可能”/ “the infinite possibilities of trees,” Xiao Xi, translated by Yilin Wang (Prism International Spring ’23; originally published in 风不止 [The Ceaseless Wind])
• Second Place: “All-Kinds-of-Fears,” Amelia Gorman (Dreams and Nightmares 2/23)
• Third Place: “Nikola

...Read More

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the winners of the 2024 Rhysling Awards for speculative poetry.

Short Poem Category

• First Place: “No One Now Remembers,” Geoffrey A. Landis (Fantasy and Science Fiction 11-12/23)
• Second Place: “Language as a Form of Breath,” Angel Leal (Apparition Lit 10/23)
• Third Place: “The Day We All Died, A Little,” Lisa Timpf (Radon Journal 9/23)
• Honorable Mention: “Let Us Dream,” Myna

...Read More

The finalists for the Endeavour Award have been announced. The award recognizes “a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author or authors and published in the previous year.” The finalists are:

• Bookshops & Bonedust, Travis Baldree (Tor)
• Vampires of El Norte, Isabel Cañas (Berkley)
• Again and Again, Jonathan Evison (Penguin Random House/Dutton)
• Sleep No More, Seanan McGuire (DAW)
• Painted Devils,

...Read More

The 2024 Polari Prize Shortlists have been announced via social media.

Authors and titles of genre interest include Away With Words by Sophie Cameron (Little Tiger), Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher (Wednesday), and Bitterthorn by Kat Dunn (Andersen), all in the Children’s & YA category; and Killing Jericho by William Hussey (Zaffre) in the Book Category.

The prizes are given to writers born or based ...Read More

Murmuration by Elizabeth Pike (self-published) is on the five-title shortlist for the 2024 Kindle Storyteller Award.

The award, launched in 2017, includes a £20,000 prize and “is open to writers publishing in English in any genre, who publish their work through Kindle Direct Publishing” on Amazon.co.uk. There were 20 titles on the “Featured Sci Fi and Fantasy Entries” and the shortlist itself includes titles from categories “Crime, Mystery, and Thrillers” ...Read More

by Nisi Shawl, Somto Ihezue, and Zhui Ning Chang

We’re in this together. That’s what publishing has taught me over the course of decades. That’s what this project, Publishing Taught Me, continues to teach me and all my friends. You, too. All my friends; all my relations.

Publishing is a community endeavor. If we analogize it in mechanical terms, we can say it has lots of moving parts: writers, readers, editors, publishers, marketers, printers.  Reviewers, narrators.  Illustrators.  Interns.  Sellers and librarians, and I may even be forgetting a few more important elements, but my point is, publishing is multiplex as hell: it’s full of clusters of different levels of fractal expressions of itself leading to and from its major, medium, and minor iterations.

So, we really need each other. Every one of us needs to be doing our best in order to make publishing do its best.

That means we can’t just passively accept the status quo—not when that status quo excludes many people. Race-based gatekeeping, gender policing, ableist submission tools, and the like—they’ve simply got to go if we expect our publishing community to flourish.

It’s an accomplishment devoutly to be wished, and something various elements of the enterprise have tried to achieve. Have we succeeded?  Now and then. Here and there.

This anthology is both a good assessment of how well we’ve done making publishing properly inclusive, and an excellent tool for doing so.

I was approached by SFWA for my feedback on this project back in 2022, when it was first proposed to the National Endowment for the Arts. It sounded like such a great idea! The plan was to create an online anthology of essays addressing the experiences of BIPOC authors, editors, etc., as they interacted with current and established publishing practices. The SFWA volunteers and consultants who were the plan’s architects recognized that paying for the work of marginalized authors and editors makes greater participation possible, so an integral part of the plan was to offer the authors professional rates while also compensating the project’s editor and editorial interns.  Win-win! I pronounced myself delighted!

I was even more deeply delighted to learn that SFWA had chosen me to head up the anthology.

Behind the scenes, our work began.  Some of it was pretty boring: schedule checking, protocol setting, calendar clearing, that sort of stuff. Some of it was fun and easy: I named the anthology Publishing Taught Me in honor of the Twitter hashtag #publishingpaidme, one of the means by which certain inequities we wanted to talk about were revealed.

Some of the work was fun and hard. The one task that felt particularly hard to me was hiring my two editorial interns. But I’m incredibly proud of my choices: Somto Ihezue and Zhui Ning Chang. Working with them has been pure pleasure. Their hearts and heads have proven indispensable to making this anthology as wonderful as it is to read, and I’m asking them now to chime in on this introduction.

ZNC:

It has been a joy to work on this with Nisi, Somto, the SFWA team, and all our contributors. In publishing, too often we chase the young and fresh and new, and so I was especially drawn to the idea of an anthology of essays that sought to recognise, celebrate, and reflect on the experiences of those who have been fighting for years for greater equity. To contribute some small part to this endeavor, among such fine colleagues and pillars of our community, was my honor.

The selection and editing process was extremely democratic—I learned a great deal from Nisi’s open, horizontal management of the entire project, and enjoyed bouncing off Somto’s keen eye and precise notes in our collaborative editing.

Some essays, in particular, have stayed with me: Diana M. Pho’s incisive insight into the editor’s role in the publishing process, and the challenges of balancing author care and business demands; Erika Hardison and Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas’s respective recognition of the labor and love poured in by slush readers and book reviewers, to help sustain stories from opposite ends of the spectrum; the contrast of Yoon Ha Lee’s cynicism and Emily Jiang’s faith in where and how our industry and our communities move forward from here.

I hope that, wherever you are on your publishing journey, this anthology will help bring you closer to what you wish to achieve. We can’t wait to read the stories you will tell. So come, step through the door and join us.

Somto:

“Learning is a life-long journey, not a process.”

Among editors, there’s a recurring phrase: Editing is a thankless but rewarding endeavor. There’s something about working meticulously with others, exchanging thoughts and ideas, lending your guidance, and being trusted with the words and stories of authors. It intimately connects you to the work, makes you a part of the story, a part of the journey—and working on the Publishing Taught Me anthology, this connection has been the reward. I will forever be grateful to have been brought aboard this project with Nisi Shawl, Zhui Ning Chang, the SFWA team, and the fantastic and brilliant contributors who trusted us with their words. This was a fulfilling process in many ways; every minute spent with the authors and my fellow editors was enlightening and a learning moment. From Yoon Ha Lee’s work, I learned that our experiences as authors can be valid and instrumental in our storytelling. Still, they shouldn’t be a cage hoisted up by the expectations of the industry and society. In James Beamon’s call to “Take Humor Seriously,” I learned that laughter might not solve the root problem when facing tragedies, but, often, it is the right prescription to know that things will be okay. In Kanishk Tantia’s story snippets, I learned the need for honesty, substance, and authenticity in our storytelling.

Working with Nisi and Zhui Ning was a reminder that we are eternal students. Nisi’s firm and exemplary work ethic, their commitment to care, and their acknowledgment of the weight of words when approaching a text as an editor—all exemplary in every way. On the other page, there was Zhui Ning’s punctuality, enthusiasm, and thoroughness—demanding that authors interrogate every statement and maximize their words and thoughts to their fullest potential.

And to our ever-readers, as you immerse yourself in this anthology, our fervent hope is that you learn with us the many ways we tell our community’s continuing story to each other.

This is the introduction to the Publishing Taught Me: A SFWA Anthology Project. The Publishing Taught Me project is overseen by multiple award-winning editor Nisi Shawl and two editorial interns, Somto Ihezue and Zhui Ning Chang. More information on this series can be found here: Publishing Taught Me: A SFWA Anthology Project – SFWA  

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Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced, including titles and authors of genre interest in multiple categories.

Fiction

• Ghostroots, ’Pemi Aguda (Norton)
• James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)

Nonfiction

• Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie (Random House)

Young People’s Literature

• Buffalo Dreamer, Violet Duncan (Nancy Paulsen)
• The First State of Being, Erin Entrada Kelly (Greenwillow)

Translated Literature

• The Book Censor’s Library,

...Read More

The 22 MacArthur Foundation Fellows have been announced for 2024, including filmmaker Sterlin Harjo of feature Mekko (2015) and TV series Reservation Dogs (2021-2023); Ling Ma, author of Severance (2018) and Bliss Montage (2022); Jason Reynolds, author of the Stuntboy children’s superhero series and YA fantasy Long Way Down (2017); and writer and disability activist Alice Wong, who had an essay in Uncanny’s “Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction!” issue (2018). ...Read More

by John Ryan

Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Playtesting Game Narratives series, curated by SFWA’s Game Writing Committee.

When you hear about narrative in video games, positions such as writers and narrative designers might be the first roles you’ll think of. What people don’t think about is one of the most important roles in the game studio: Quality Assurance, or QA.

I want to talk about what QA does in a video game studio and how this overlooked discipline is an unsung hero of game development. While QA helps multiple departments in a studio, I’m going to focus on narrative for this article and on how game writers can best work with QA.

So how do QA and storytelling work together in a game studio?

This really depends on the studio. If you have a narrative-focused studio, then you’ll likely have some QA personnel (either internal or third party) that will be devoted to spotting narrative issues during their play passes. This isn’t always the case though. There’s a good chance your studio or your team will just have a general QA pool at their disposal. However, with proper context and communication, you can have these generalists help spot narrative issues in your game.

What QA Looks For in a Narrative Pass

From my experience, QA looks for plot inconsistencies, discrepancies in character voice, odd leaps in plot logic or dialogue, and/or missing dialogue (which is also an audio issue, but it’s something that narrative needs to be aware of). Also, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Eagle-eyed testers will also be familiar with your game’s proper nouns: titles, naming conventions, weapon names, and locations. When I was working on Guild Wars 2, both QA and the editing team would double-check map names and even look up if a Charr name in-game matched the rules for naming a Charr character. No detail was too small.

QA doesn’t look for the following during its narrative play pass: level design issues (like traversal issues), missing art assets (hey, where’s the painting I’m supposed to steal?), missing ambient audio or effects, missing character animations, or absent visual effects (like an explosion going off). QA will notice these issues and file bugs to the appropriate teams, however.

A Word of Context for Writers

QA isn’t there to be your servant. It will not be at your beck and call at all times. Depending on the stage of development, QA might be slammed with other requests from other departments. QA has a job to do for the whole studio, not just you in the narrative department.

Whether the studio is narrative-focused or not, the narrative team is responsible for briefing QA on what it should be looking for before it does its play passes. This helps narrative as well as QA. Narrative will get specific feedback about what QA finds, while QA can narrow the scope of its review.

How to Get the Most Out of QA

Be proactive about this. Engage with QA from the start. If you don’t have a dedicated narrative QA team, then give QA detailed guidelines about what your team is looking for and the best way to send feedback to the writers. This is an ever-evolving process, so be ready to constantly communicate new targets to the QA team when necessary.

Speaking of, also tell the QA team about already identified problems. This saves QA from writing bugs it doesn’t need to and saves you the headache of getting multiple bugs for the same issue. And trust me, duplicate bugs are an aggravation you don’t need. I have lost count of all the times I’ve seen developers (dumbass younger me included) seethe with contempt and send QA a bitter note saying (paraphrasing): “Stop sending me this, you moron.”

You want to get ahead of this mindset. You need to see QA as more than a bunch of nitpicking elves who send you bugs that eat at your creative confidence. You need to see all the hard and thankless work QA does in the shadows. Be kind. Why?

The Unsung Heroes

Because QA is often the punching bag of the studio—the most grueling work with low pay and little prestige. Think of it this way: when QA does their job, it isn’t noticed. Compare that to when you have great dialogue, engaging audio, awesome vistas, or kick-ass cut scenes. All those devs can take a bow. Players never see the hard work QA has done to flag all the issues. However, when something blows up or breaks a game, everyone points their fire at QA: “Why wasn’t this obvious bug spotted?”

I’ve also seen QA framed as the pit where talent comes from, not where talent is. At ArenaNet, QA was at one time our farm league, where testers worked their asses off to be noticed and then “promoted” into design, art, audio, programming, or writing. QA was a stepping stone, not seen as a valid career path. As you can imagine, it gave the impression that QA was a place you wanted to cycle out of as fast as possible. The pay sucked and the respect wasn’t there. The older I get, the more I see this as unfair.

QA isn’t disposable. It’s a team vital to making a functioning, immersive game. Give QA the respect it deserves. When you work with them, be clear about what you want them to look for. Be clear about how you want them to give you feedback. And be clear that you appreciate their hard work.

After all, QA is there to help save you from yourself. Honor that.

John Ryan is a veteran game writer/narrative designer who has worked on franchises including Fable, Horizon, Marvel’s Iron Man, Guild Wars, Destiny, Forza, and Lily’s Garden. He’s brought stories to life across multiple genres and platforms, including VR and XR. He is currently working on two unannounced projects but is always looking for the next adventure. He currently lives near Seattle with his wife, two cats, and a growing backlog of games on his Steam account. You can read more about him and his work at his site: johnryanwrites.com.

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