Story Thinking and the Real-world Applications of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writing

In the 21st century, the rapid advance of technology and the existential threat of climate breakdown mean the real world increasingly resembles something out of fiction, filled with ambiguity and uncertainty. Such challenges need imaginative, creative solutions. To find them, teams of experts must pool their knowledge, make new connections, and forge paths forward.

In Story Thinking, award-winning authors Helen Marshall, Kim Wilkins, and Lisa Bennett show how the principles of science fiction and fantasy writing – which speculate about and imagine different futures, people, and worlds - can enrich research in such areas as government policy, technology innovation, and healthcare within universities and various industries. When transferred to research, story thinking as a method can help to build teams with a shared sense of purpose, offer new patterns of thought for improvisation, rapid perspective shifts, worldbuilding, pleasure and playfulness. Split into two parts - conceptualizing story thinking and story thinking as it has been employed in the field - Marshall, Wilkins and Bennett bring together theories of creativity from business, psychology, futures studies, gaming, and medicine among others, with 4 key practices from SFF storytelling – envisioning, engaging, inhabiting, and empathizing. They then provide practical tools for collaborative problem solving alongside case studies of their own successful applications of Story Thinking in various fields, including defense innovation and future scenario modelling with world governments; developing empathy and enhancing well-being in medical education; designing gaming and simulation tools for researchers; and futureproofing digital identity technologies with the UNHCR, the agency responsible for protecting and aiding refugees.

Showing how writing can be adapted for new and exciting contexts, Story Thinking bridges the gap between the humanities and outside fields and lays the foundations for more creative approaches that more deeply engage in the process of making a better future.

Helen Marshall is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Queensland, Australia. She researches genre fiction, modern and medieval publishing cultures, worldbuilding, franchise writing and the application of creative arts methodologies for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ideation. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and her debut novel The Migration was one of The Guardian’s top science fiction books of the year.

Kim Wilkins is a Professor of Writing at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is a recognized expert on creative practice, genre fiction and the publishing industry. She is the author of more than thirty full-length works of fiction and her work is translated into more than twenty languages globally. Her scholarly research centres on creative communities, such as writing groups and fan cultures. She is most recently the author of Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and 21st-Century Book Culture (2022, with Beth Driscoll and Lisa Fletcher).

Lisa Bennett is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Flinders University, Australia, where she researches Viking Age literature, genre fiction and popular culture. Her speculative fiction has won four Aurealis Awards, an Australian National Science Fiction Award and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. She facilitates fantasy and horror fiction workshops for Writers SA, regularly reviews for the ABR and is a recurrent guest on ABC Radio’s ‘Book of the Week’ segment. With Kim Wilkins, she is the author of Writing Bestsellers: Love, Money, and Creative Practice (2021).