Writers of fiction inhabit all places; NHS is no exception.

Undiscovered talent is in abundance here, even beyond our fairly small Writer’s Club. Two of these aspring authors, Alex Fahrenkrug and Bobby Lee, shared some thoughts on their creative processes and inspirations. Both are authors of science fiction and fantasy who enjoy writing on subjects that are impossible to experience in reality. For example, Bobby said that he enjoys playing “with ideations outside of human possibility.”

These writers are ambitious not only in the concepts of their stories, but in the length of them.

Alex says he tends to “go for bigger books,” and that his work is “never really finished,” which is a part of what has prevented him from trying to get anything published.

Bobby spent five months on a document detailing the backstory for one singular character of his.

In contrast, Alex is interested in alternative storytelling techniques besides standard prose – he runs lengthy campaigns in tabletop games (ex. Dungeons and Dragons), and he claims that summaries of these campaigns can be as long as some published works.

Though high-concept science fiction and fantasy may seem like a fairly flat and impersonal genre, both writers cite internal and personal struggles among the things that inspire them. Bobby said that his fiction is heavily inspired by the idea that almost everybody lies a bit in day-to-day life, that  “people will put on a brave face throughout the day and act like how they want to be.” He writes characters with multiple sides to them, who act completely differently in different situations and around certain characters.

These two writers, despite the big-idea science-fictional trappings of their stories, focus on characters and people above anything else, because what really matters above all else in writing is the people being written about.