Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of the best fantasy & science fiction writers alive today. What's crazy is that he's kept quality so high while writing ~5 books per year, and this interview is about how he does it. One guy on Reddit said: “Probably the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy author interview I’ve ever seen. Gives great insight into how Adrian Tchaikovsky approaches his novels." Timestamps: 0:35 How to plan a novel 2:27 The two types of outlining 7:07 What makes for a good idea? 8:09 Dragons 14:07 Building good characters 20:02 World building 25:09 A guide to science fiction 33:46 Fantasy vs. science fiction 36:38 How magic works in Sci-Fi 42:04 Writing good fight scenes 50:15 Avoiding writing ruts 59:07 How to improve your writing 1:03:07 Writing a good ending I've shared the full conversation with Adrian Tchaikovsky below. If you'd rather watch it on YouTube, or listen on Apple / Spotify, check out the reply tweets.

"In a fantasy or science fiction story, you can get away with one big lie. You can include one thing that's convenient for the author in order to make the plot work. In Children of Time, the question is 'what if a species of a spider developed a society, civilization, and technology. But the big lie is literally that there is a nanovirus is assisting the uplift of the spiders, and the lie is the amount of time that'll take. Because of the nanovirus, that happens in tens of thousands of years rather than hundreds of millions of years, which you would need by evolution. People need to read a book and think 'that's a thing that could happen.' It gives your book a weight and gravity that it would not have if it was magic talking spiders. So in order to support your One Big Lie, everything else needs to be true." — Adrian Tchaikovsky