Introduction

Consider how often the works we’ve been studying in the preceding chapters include detailed sets of instructions or steps for how a  particular thing—a creature, a society, a world, a universe, a galaxy–came into being.  For example, in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes the process of creation that Victor Frankenstein follows in order to restore life to dead flesh:

Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me.

In this chapter, we will consider processes for how writing comes into being.  We will begin with a discussion of close reading and annotating a text. Next we will consider how to perform research and generate ideas upon which to write.  From thinking about ideas–our own and those of others–we will then move to drafting, reviewing, revising, and redrafting.  There are as many ways to follow and combine these steps as there are writers; in other words, no two writers follow the same steps or have the same writing process. In this chapter, however, we will focus on some of the main tools available to us as we begin to create first topics for and then drafts of essays about science fiction and fantasy literature.