The Writer’s Secret Toolkit

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Great Speculative Fiction Isn’t Magic. It’s Craft. (and you can learn it).

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From Kevin Elliott, author of Lightmaker and speaker at WorldCon, FantasyCon and EasterCon.

Learning to write well is a challenge…

Your world is clear in your mind. But everything goes woolly when you write about it.

Your story needs to explain new technology or magic, but how can you do that without bogging your story down?

The characters aren’t much more than tour guides.

And you can’t see how to fit a gripping story into the intricate world you’ve built.

Our bookshelves are crammed with ‘how-to’ books on creative writing, but most don’t touch fantasy or science fiction.

That’s why I built the ‘Writer’s Secret Toolkit’. This is where I share everything I’ve learned.

Four Ways Forward
Essential resources for your writing journey

Your story deserves the best possible setting

Create five foundation documents to breathe life into your world

Write action scenes your readers will devour

A 5-step template for engineering gripping scenes readers will love

For unforgettable characters

A system to create mesmerising characters to take your reader’s breath away.

START HERE

Show your heart in your writing

Give your stories a voice AI can’t match. A voice to keep your readers turning the page.

Why This Toolkit Exists

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I learnt writing the hard way. Through practice. Yes, I worked through several creative writing books, and took courses, and received professional feedback.

But most of my learning came through trying to write. Going wrong a thousand times, and learning what didn’t work.

I surrounded myself with talented writers. Writers with extraordinary ideas. Worlds nobody had imagined, characters nobody had met, and stories that deserved to exist.

I spoke at WorldCon, FantasyCon, and EasterCon. I ran workshops, and sat in critique groups. I kept learning.

And I kept seeing the same issue.

These writers struggled to get those stories and ideas onto the page.

Not because they lacked talent. But because there wasn’t a one-stop-shop to show how speculative fiction works. The skills they needed were scattered across a hundred different books, and online courses, and a thousand minds.

And only a handful of those sources were wired for science fiction and fantasy.

So I built the toolkit I wished had existed when I started.

Tools that solved the problems I’d seen. Problems like developing characters that work inside our wonderful worlds. Or how to describe your world so it arrives clearly in your reader’s mind.

Every guide in this series distils years of trial and error into a practical system. Something that works for speculative fiction.

Not romance, not thrillers, and not literature.

This isn’t theory.

It’s what I’ve learned, the hard way, from fifteen years of writing and teaching speculative fiction.

What other writers say…


  • Kevin’s feedback has been invaluable throughout my writing process. He is excellent at giving constructive feedback. He has a wonderful ability to see what will make my work sharper.
    Joanna BAgwell
    Oxford Writer
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And when you’re ready to take on more

The Flagship Course covers the A-Z of writing excellent speculative fiction.

Everything you need to write speculative fiction that works. In one place, and without any fluff.


The Blueprints tackle specific problems. The Writer’s Secret Toolkit Course tackles everything else.

This is a complete, structured journey through the craft of speculative fiction. It’s built for writers with a little experience under their belt. Writers who are ready to stop guessing, and start writing with genuine confidence and skill.

It’s not a collection of loosely connected tips.

And it’s not a list of warm and fuzzy platitudes.

It’s a single, coherent course that takes you through every layer of the craft, in the order that makes sense.

  • Characters who feel so real they start making their own decisions
  • Plot structures that work with the specific demands of science fiction and fantasy
  • Worldbuilding that breathes life into your story rather than suffocating it
  • A voice that’s unmistakably yours, on every page
  • Dialogue, action, and scene construction that keep readers turning pages
  • The business of writing. How to finish, revise, and take your work into the world

From the Blog

Craft, reading, writing life, and the honest reality of building stories in speculative fiction.

A few times a month, I write about something that’s on my mind — a craft problem I’ve been working through, a book that stopped me in my tracks, a moment from the Lightmaker sequel that taught me something I didn’t expect. If you’re interested in the reality of writing speculative fiction rather than just the theory, this is where that conversation lives.

Build Better Stories, and Start Today

Join fellow SFF writers and get your free worldbuilding guide, plus a newsletter with craft tips, reading recommendations, and updates delivered to your inbox.

Sign up and receive the SFF Toolkit Checklist.

A free, practical guide to building worlds that feel real, lived-in, and genuinely alive on the page.

No fluff. No filler. Just the questions every speculative fiction writer should ask before their world hits the page. And a few they’d never think to ask on their own.

No spam, ever. Just honest writing talk, a few times a month. Unsubscribe any time.

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