Jerry Sciortino

Beginning with actual historic or scientific happenings, it is fun to take small excerpts and "fictitiously bend" them slightly to provide the main point on or about which a story line is spun. Subplots, whether they be adventurous, romantic, tragic, etc., can be roughed out separately. Here too, real life happenings may provide nuggets to build a setting around. Then, when a few of these separate subplots are roughed out, the fun begins... and you start to weave or braid these threads into a loosely woven tapestry of words. The color, texture and quality of the story is finished by depth of the characters, places and details that will provide "verbal brushstrokes" for the readers to visualize and admire the work.

Not the first story I ever read... but the first story that made me wish that I could create wonderful, extra-worldly fiction? That book would be the fantasy fiction novel, Moon Pool by A. Merritt.