Cold Binary by Kate Ellis

There’s some strong writing in this piece, some lovely images and memorable lines. I like the grittiness of it, the noir undertones of Joss’ life and the worlds she lives in. Character and setting fit together nicely.

I do think the braided timelines need work. The interweaving of past and present has the potential to be really effective, but in this draft, the shifts can be confusing. I had to read and reread to figure out who was doing what and when.

Part of this is a small but mighty prose blip: a tendency toward pronoun confusion. There may be two or more she’s in a clause or sentence, and it’s not always immediately clear which character each identical pronoun refers to. The reader has to stop and untangle the meaning.

Transitions can be a bit complicated as well. When Joss flips from Annie and the bar to the aftermath of the explosion, the flip happens in the same sentence. That actually comes close to working, but as we shift back and forth from the explosion to Alice to the investigation to the aftermath on the station, there’s not always a clear demarcation between each timeline. Characters and events tangle rather than intertwining. It’s sometimes hard to be sure which past or present the narrative is in.

The paragraph about Mathieu Severn is a good example of what I mean here.

They were the motive for Mathieu Severn, just 22. Younger brother of Radke Severn who’d been buried with the others. It was easy enough to whittle down the suspects. Miners rarely came with family. They said their goodbyes, put in their three years, and floated home with fat paychecks to show for cheating spouses and disaffected children. The miners on KM-427 made enough to retire. They were extracting Kyrenium, a rare and priceless substance that could power up an Alcubierre drive without the need of a nearby gas giant. Severn had hacked the blueprints for the tunnel in his datapad, found evidence for Zofia’s cost-cutting. He’d confessed eagerly enough. 

The paragraph segues out of the casualty count for a mining accident. We get Severn’s age and that he had a motive—presumably the dead in the previous paragraph. Next we get a snippet of his relationship to one of the dead, followed by a quick shift to, apparently, Joss’ viewpoint, a bit of exposition about the miners, who they are and why they are and what they’re mining, followed in turn by a shift back to Severn, and finally another shift to the crime and his confession.

It’s all information we need to know, but it’s organized almost randomly. On one hand it does reflect the process of free association, as if we’re following Joss’ thought process point for point. On the other, the shifts and jumps make it hard to keep track of what’s going on from one sentence to the next. By the time we get to the end, we’re far enough from the beginning that we aren’t entirely sure how we got there.

Cleaning up and clarifying the transitions between timelines will help. So will organizing details and actions a little more consistently.

It can be as simple as giving each set of ideas its own paragraph. In the paragraph above, if a new one began with It was easy enough, it would be clear that the train of thought is shifting. Then maybe rethinking the progression from retirement to Kyrenium, and how we get from that to Severn’s hacking and the cost-cutting, and from there to his confession. There are connections missing, links between the concepts, as well as sense of why they follow each other in that particular order. If we have those pieces of story-data, we’ll be able to follow the narrative more easily.

–Judith Tarr

A Cure For Witching, Part One, by Lyndsey E. Gilbert

There’s a lot of good things going on in this chapter. The worldbuilding looks and feels solid. The root of the novel’s conflict seems clear. And the opening line is great.

I might suggest toning down the emotion just a hair, and keep a careful eye on the figurative language. I’m seeing a lot of hearts stuttering in chests in client mss. and published works alike. A lot of chests in general, and hearts doing things in them, with occasional excursions to throats or droppage to other parts of the body. It’s in the Zeitgeist, I think. Favorite words and concepts have a way of spreading across the writersphere.

For the most part the characters are vivid and well drawn. I did wonder if Cloda’s anger might be grounded just a little more strongly in the story. A line or two more. A layer of additional motivation. Just a bit more clarification as to why her reaction is so extreme.

I’d have liked to see more of the bridegroom as well, not physically but as Etain perceives him. She must know what he looks like, and what kind of person he is. Even if she’s in denial, might she feel an undertone of unease, especially when it’s clear something witchy has happened to her? Again, just a bit, a sketch, additional layer of feeling. Then when we meet him at the altar, we’re primed for even more tension than we get in this draft.

One thing that struck me about his living arrangements is that in spite of his rigid asceticism, he has legions of servants. Is this something Etain would pick up on, or does she note the disparity later? It’s almost hypocrisy, but it could have other reasons and ramifications as well. It’s interesting in any case, and striking in context.

All in all I’m intrigued. I would definitely read on. It’s a strong start.

–Judith Tarr

She Doth Teach The Stars To Sing by Sam Pisciotta

My attention was caught by “She Doth Teach the Stars to Sing” this month because of its dreamlike, novel approach to a neurological space-time travel and a somewhat tender approach to the meaningfulness of communication. However, I think this isn’t quite reaching its full potential yet—and mostly because of how it’s handling information for readers. So this month, I’d like to discuss how we arrange our ideas to give them space to grow and reflect off each other.

Initially, the information management in “She Doth Teach the Stars to Sing” is great. The simplicity of the opening line—”Mademoiselle laughs”—is enough to create an effective hook. There’s a lot of work being done in those two words: the sense of narrative motion is started off by dropping readers, in media res, into a reply—and thus implying a story already moving. The slightly antiquated diction evokes older, more formal French literature to me (bolstered later by a few word choices; cervine is an interesting one), which is in and of itself intriguing.

It’s the contrasts that follow that let “She Doth Teach the Stars to Sing” build up the interest of that first line. Each sentence in the first paragraph of the piece partially refutes the assumptions built by the one before: Mademoiselle laughs, but in the second sentence the laugh sounds wrong and heavy; but her eyes are dark and deerlike and that’s something generally connoted as vulnerable, attractive; but they’re wrong in her face; but the flirtation of the eyelashes; but then her expression is a supernova, something with power; but the effect isn’t distance, it’s intimacy.

That constant string of contrasts builds up a sense of the uncanny that’s necessary for this plot and this world, but it also works to draw readers deeper because it keeps moving her from the assumed—big dark eyes mean vulnerability—to the specific. The signal to readers is pay attention; it’s delivered efficiently and in just a few words, and in a structure that creates little problems to solve in readers’ heads. We talk month-to-month about a sense of narrative motion, and this is one of the ways to create that feeling that progress is being made, that the story is moving somewhere: setting up little facts and then visibly developing them into more.

However, once the questions of Keats, Shakespeare, and the narrator’s mother come in, the story starts to feel increasingly crowded and it becomes easier to lose the thread of what’s happening here—and lose the ideas that make this piece interesting.

It might be worth thinking of a short story as a room readers move in: every time we bring something in—a new idea thread—it gets a little fuller and there’s a little less space to move. The trick we’re after is to add our ideas without making it feel cluttered: either by closing off another question or idea or toning it down: otherwise it’s a room full of accent furniture, and the eye doesn’t know where to go, and you’re liable to bump into a chair and bruise your leg.

Short version: Just like in poetry, half the trick of pulling off a lush, idea-rich style is in knowing where to use restraint.

Along those lines (and that very long extended metaphor), I’d suggest exercising a bit more of that early stylistic restraint further down in the piece. There are a lot of ideas introduced early in the first scene that have room to be looked at because the style goes very spare in those paragraphs—and that’s a tool you can use again, in spots where there’s a lot of information. One aspect of the story backs into the wings to let the other one have the spotlight, instead of both crowding it—and splitting the eye. A little variation in the language density will highlight those informational bits for readers’ attention—hey, readers, this bit is important—while giving them a bit of breathing space to move around the idea, assimilate it into their model of the whole story, and keep going.

As it stands right now, phrases like piscine balladry are covering over the fact that the narrator’s space-traveling, and that fall into abstract language only increases for me as a reader the farther we get into the backstory of Yurei 247. By the time I’m supposed to be feeling the impact of its demise, I’ve tangled in the language and that feeling is blunted.

The catch: I feel like once some of the excess language is trimmed and rebalanced out of this piece to give the ideas equal time, some flaws may come visible—and “She Doth Teach the Stars to Sing” will find itself facing another structural revision. There are parts of the characterization and the plot here that are, ultimately, a little slight: the entire action is having a story communicated, and nothing done about it, no realization made for the protagonist that they didn’t already seem to know. Once the distraction of style is balanced out, those issues are going to become more noticeable.

And—that’s a good thing. Because that’s the opportunity for an author to solve them, and build a fundamentally stronger piece with that skill with metaphor and contrast and those very, very interesting ideas.

Thanks for the read, and best of luck!

–Leah Bobet, author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance Of Ashes (2015)

Omega Paradox Alpha: Prometheus Chapter 1 by David Beltran

The Space Between, Chapter 1 by M. Kung

–Judith Tarr

Lost Leaves by Charlotte Haley

This is a powerful and evocative piece. I feel it deeply. My undergraduate senior thesis had a similar theme, and often felt as if it were shaking the world apart. It had a tendency to bleed green ink.

Because the story is so short and so intense, writing tight is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity. This draft has made a strong start. I have a few suggestions to help with revision.

First, a shift from passive to active formulations. Gerunds—words that in end in –ing—have a way of slackening the tension in a sentence. Stirring milk, rounding from the kitchen, returning to the computer, chalking it up, letting out a long sigh—the story is in love with gerunds. Count them all, and think about how to make their individual clauses and sentences stronger, more active. I might almost set a challenge to eliminate them, then see if the story needs them.

Shortening sentences will help, too. Sharpening the focus of each phrase. When clauses connect with and, see if they work better as separate sentences, especially if the clauses refer to different actions or concepts:

The fresh coffee burned her tongue in punishment and she looked around for her energy drink

Grey light streamed into the yellow cave and, slipping on her hood to protect from falling debris, she tried to read the essay’s introduction

—the latter even includes a gerund, which might be replaced with an active construction.

Think about clarity, and the meanings of words. Reticent, traipsing—do they mean what they want to mean here? Are feet compounding earth or pounding it? What does “compounding” mean? Is “wettened” a word? What does “mottled” mean in the context of rain? Is it God’s remonstration or Their remonstrance? I’m not sure what “the slits of his gaze” are—it almost seems as if the slits are his nostrils, but then again, they have to be his eyes, even though they’re mucous-membrane-colored. On the one hand, the small shock of surprise at an unusual word or phrase can be effective in a mood piece, but the reader should be clear on what the author is trying to say.

Make sure details are relevant to their context. Do we need to know that the sweatshirt is a gift? Is it significant that the window is to her left, as we’re told more than once? While it is important to know that Joanie is drowning in a sense of futility, that she expects to fail, do we need to be told that there’s no way she can fix the door, when she proceeds to do so as best she can? Perhaps a moment of near-collapse, a brief flash of can’t, then she pulls herself together and does what she can. Which, in its way, is a metaphor for everything she’s doing or trying to do in the story.

Watch out for slack phrasing. For example:

Joanie wore the 6-day-extension like a participation ribbon torn from the hands of the examiners. The focus loosens after ribbon. The sentence seems to wander into another context.

She was pushing the ideas into holes that were too small, the wrongness of it all beginning to creep up her hands and arms in stiffness. The last two words don’t fit the rest. Are they creeping or stiffening? Which is the closest to the intended meaning?

And finally, watch for repetition, for word and phrase echoes: she went, then she went again; the house falls down in the same way over and over, with much the same phrasing. Pare down the repetitive bits, focus on what’s most important. Keep the goal in mind, the collapse of the house while she clings grimly to her essay, and in the end her surrender to the god of entropy.

One element that I quite like, which might be worth a little more attention, is the way in which her body parts, and adjacent objects, act on their own. Her hands on the keys, her chair not moving. Her laptop undoing her revisions. It feels in these bits as if she’s lost volition; she’s no longer in charge of her own body, let alone her life or her house. A bit sharper focus on that would make the theme stronger and the ending even more effective.

–Judith Tarr

To Assume A Pleasing Shape, Part 1, by Andrea Horlick

“To Assume a Pleasing Shape” caught my eye this month with its deft handling of emotional textures, accomplished prose, and organic-feeling world—and a mystery that keeps building as what looks like a poser artist boy turns ominous. But what works to generate tension for the adult end of the narrative slowly starts to swamp the plot itself. So this month, I’d like to talk about how to approach our work when what’s working on one level of craft in a story is hampering another.

At base, “To Assume a Pleasing Shape” is just a solid, engrossing read—absorbing enough that, even though it runs over 15,000 words, there are very few places that drag. It’s full of great little observational details: Belial’s smell as “moss and burnt things” and Michaela’s mascara in the dim light are specific, unique-feeling ones. Jules’s pervasive lust and grief infiltrate everything; the persistent intrusions of her desire and hesitancy are excellently paced. And Jules’s dry and slightly insecure commentary on Michaela’s art scene friends feels less mean-spirited than true to a mid-thirties struggling writer who’s maybe just too old for scene dynamics.

There’s also a lot of craft going into the sex scenes. Sex can be very challenging to write from a craft perspective—not just an accessibility one—as we walk the line between being too obscure, pandering to what we think readers expect, and embedding it into the overall plot and characterization in a way that feels integrated. “To Assume a Pleasing Shape” does a very strong job of balancing those priorities in some emotionally complex and in one case, violating sexual encounters in a way that feels like genuine arousal on Jules’s part but doesn’t bog the story’s motion down.

But it’s the texture of the sex scenes that, as it builds the sexual side of the narrative tension, deeply muddies the waters on what’s actually happening between Jules, Michaela, and Belial—and how the narrative assumes readers will feel about it.

Jules treats Michaela as an addiction, a nearly-resented vice—every encounter with her is “tinged with a thin wash of regret”; every early thing we see about Michaela makes Mim and Ann-Elizabeth’s concerns feel very valid. Jules has no ability to draw boundaries with Michaela, it makes her miserable, and that seems to be rooted absolutely in sex. There are repeated consent violations that seem to sexually satisfy but emotionally and almost spiritually hurt her.

It goes even farther with Belial: she’s frozen, paralyzed by sexual desire and fear, and he actively renames her to Mine. This is scary territory, but Jules’s reaction to it—weird wonder and a fear that’s deeply sexualized—doesn’t necessarily set off the alarms it should be and clearly point to a supernatural hold or possession, and that’s because of how she’s previously interacted with Michaela. Readers have seen this as in-character for her already; the red flag isn’t red enough, or the last one was a little too red for comparison.

That’s muddied farther by Jules herself. She’s a deeply complicated character: hungry, crushed under her own people-pleasing habits, and surprisingly insecure. As a protagonist in isolation from the context of the story, this works; she’s remarkably believable in her messiness. But especially with Belial’s shapeshifting—or Jules’s ability to see him in other bodies—added into the mix, her very subjective reading on events makes it tricky to tease out where the objectivity underlying “To Assume a Pleasing Shape” should be looked for.

There are hints that start to spread through in the second instalment: Belial knows who Jules is. But as Jules doesn’t seem to recognize what he’s talking about in any way, it’s hard for readers to use those hints; they become a dead end, not a plot thread building, and then they’re obliterated by the spiritual or hallucinated sexual assault that follows and blocked by Jules’s refusal to disclose. The counter-hints—Jules has a biological family, and is implied to be not supernatural herself—also undermine some of the potential directions. Readers get a lot of what she isn’t, but not what she is—so when it turns out to be the key to the ending, I’m left somewhat adrift.

Jules’s transformation into a winged creature (Belial with his wings, possessing her?) pays off the buildup on a certain—and very specific—level: it’s the emotional arc of an orgasm. And for what “To Assume a Pleasing Shape” is doing with sexual content, how it handles need and sublimation and self-denial, that does actually work. It’s the structure of a sexual fantasy, well-executed. But I’m concerned that most of the narrative threads in the piece—the torment of her relationship as Michaela’s half-unwilling muse, the reason Jules experiences attraction as voice-stealing and stifling, and the overlay of what happens narratively during that ending—don’t entirely resolve with it. This is erotic fiction; the erotic half resolves. The fiction part doesn’t yet, and that’s the part that I would suggest needs next draft’s focus.

Some of the core issue might be, I’d suggest, that Belial knows what Jules is—but I, as a reader, don’t. Belial lies; I as a reader don’t have enough external context to tell if his implication she’s more than human, or different, is a lie, and therefore what happened here. Jules’s early jealousy and conviction Michaela and Belial are gaslighting her plants the idea of instability, and can make the ending read as if it’s a Twilight Zone-esque “and then the protagonist loses her mind” (or more literally, “and then the devil”). When read on the plot level specifically, I find myself asking which of the implications here are the important ones, and which I should discard as part of the multiple unreliable perspectives in this piece.

I think it’s worth looking for a way the ending can retain that sexual structure—but also build in plot-level satisfaction, and I think an early key to that might be choosing to be more deliberate about where ambiguity’s placed in “To Assume a Pleasing Shape”. This piece seems to get its narrative energy from ambiguity—the action of almost every arc of conflict is that Jules is not sure what’s going on, and it could be terrible but it could be great. It’s a powerful tool, and I don’t want to suggest changing what’s working. But seeding ambiguity everywhere adds up to an insurmountable barrier when it comes time to resolve an ending—and it’s the everywhere that might be the key here. It might be a worthwhile strategy to not change the approach, but pare it back: consider if the sheer number of sources for ambiguity here are too much of one approach.

If it’s possible to be more strategic about what in Jules’s experience is ambiguous, where to site those conflicts (her relationship with Michaela or her art, her own background or who Belial is), I think it might be possible to both address the author’s-notes stresses about length and clear enough uncertainty to let the actual clues become visible again—and give readers a chance to catch what the story’s throwing without compromising its own subtlety.

I’d also suggest potentially trying to map this piece in terms of conflicts and resolutions. Her attraction to Belial resolves; her question as to Michaela’s loyalty resolves. But there are plot and thematic elements here that don’t—the big one I’d identify is Jules’s self-destructive relationship with lust and desire—and if there are ways to find resolutions for them along the road, that might create a sense of moving satisfaction that also limits the amount of work the ending’s asked to do.

Ultimately this is a question of balance: making this work as dark erotic fantasy and making it work as an underlying narrative, narrative beats breathing in and out, tension and release. It might take a bit of tinkering to get the balance right, but the fundamentals here are more than sound, and I think it’s well on its way to working.

Thanks for the read, and best of luck!

–Leah Bobet, author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance Of Ashes (2015)

Cageborn by Jamie Boyd

–Judith Tarr

To Claim The Amethyst Throne: Prologue & Chapter 1 (Part 1) by Laura Ferriesa

Thulean Tomb 8.8.95 by Ethan Sabatella

I’ve enjoyed found-footage movies, so I was excited to read the piece and see how this would work as a transcript.   The piece conveys complex action pretty clearly, and I get a pretty good sense of the characters Leth, Kaneq, and Holger.  The most exciting part of the story, for me, occurs when the effigy, “resembling a towering shark with multiple mouths,” is introduced.  That gives me a strong feeling of mystery and horror, and creates a Lovecraftian atmosphere.  The mystery and horror grow when we learn of the “Bone-Caster . . . He Whose Blood is Smoke” and when the dark forces start to manifest.   The protesting Inuits and the possessed Kaneq provide additional threats that build suspense.  All of that works well.

I think there are several elements in the story that could be strengthened, though.

Leth is a very passive protagonist.  He does little in the story except film and flee.  That makes me not care as much about him as I might, and it makes me emotionally withdraw from the story, since it seems clear to me that Leth will only survive this story if the author makes that happen; Leth, on his own, will not cause his survival.  While of course the author makes everything in the story happen, readers need the illusion that events are unfolding on their own, without interference from the author.  Readers need to feel that the characters’ actions have consequences.  When Holger climbs up toward the Inuits, it’s clear to me that they aren’t going to let him up.  Yet Leth doesn’t figure that out until it’s too late, and then doesn’t do anything but call to Holger.  Since the process of Holger climbing would be slow, there’s a great opportunity to build suspense and have Leth figure out something to do in the attempt to protect Holger.  Doing some research on this type of expedition and what equipment they would have would provide some possible weapons/tools Leth could use, both here and elsewhere in the story.  Right now, they seem to have no equipment beyond the camera.  For example, perhaps they have a flare gun that Leth could threaten to fire at the Inuits, and ultimately could fire.  The Inuits could be unharmed, but at least Leth would have tried.  (And the Inuits could become angrier, which would increase the threat.)  Or one of the Inuits could fall, hitting Holger and sending him to the bottom.

On a related point, the story would be stronger if Holger didn’t die but was horribly wounded, so Leth and the others couldn’t just forget about him and move ahead with the plot but would want to struggle to get out of the cave as quickly as possible so they could help Holger.  As it is, when they return to the cave, it’s unclear whether their goal is to continue exploration or to escape.  And there doesn’t seem to be much urgency for a while.

The Inuits vanish from the story at this point, which wastes an opportunity to bring them back later.  I was waiting for them to come back at the worst possible moment, which is when they should come back.  One possibility would be to have them kill Leth after he escapes the cave at the end.

Returning to the issue of Leth’s passivity, I think he needs to do more to attempt to combat Kaneq’s possession.  He doesn’t notice her blue eyes the first time, which seems odd.  When it’s clear to me that she’s possessed, Leth is still asking her what’s wrong, which is not convincing.  I think he’d be shaking her and yelling at her to snap out of it and reminding her of what really matters to her.  This could provoke Kaneq to hit him with the scrimshaw; right now, she seems to have no good reason for knocking him out.  He’s not doing anything that matters anyway.  If he was on the verge of getting through to her, if there was a moment where she broke through the possession and told him to run, it would make more sense that the dark powers would reassert their control over her and force her to silence Leth.

Later, after she knocks him out, she orders him to take the camera and he does, and he films as horrible things happen and a member of his team is burned to death.  Instead, he should be acting.  Let him drop the camera, and let the camera capture only glimpses of what happens.  Then Leth could try to save Oskar and the interns.  When the interns fight him, he could guess/realize that the Kaneq is controlling them with the scrimshaw.  He could rip it out of her hand.  In the current version, Leth throws the scrimshaw on the fire, but if it has any effect, that’s unclear to me.  It certainly doesn’t destroy the dark powers.  I don’t know why Kaneq would throw herself on the fire to be with the scrimshaw when the effigy has come to life; I would think she’d want to be with the effigy.  Anyway, a clearer chain of cause and effect with a simpler and more powerful emotional impact could work better.  Perhaps taking the scrimshaw makes Leth possessed and frees Kaneq.  Leth could compel the interns to burn Oskar to death, and Kaneq could try to stop him, and Leth could throw her in the fire.  This would make Leth more active (tragically so) and would make me sympathize more with Kaneq in her death.

It’s disappointing that we don’t see the effigy in action a little more.  We’re told it tramples the interns, but that happens very fast and I don’t really know the interns, so it doesn’t have much impact.  It’s also disappointing that the effigy doesn’t do anything with its cool shark heads.  Perhaps the shark heads could rip the interns apart.  And maybe one could bite off Leth’s arm.  Or if the shark heads are made of smoke, perhaps when they bite you, that part of your body turns to smoke and goes into the effigy.  So pieces of their bodies are going up in smoke, which would be creepy.

Other elements that I think could be strengthened are the format and the narrator.  Formatting this as a screenplay with phrases like “CUT TO” and “INT. BASE CAMP LODGE,” for me, undermines the premise you establish in the first two paragraphs.  I don’t believe the government created a transcript like this.  I think the piece would be more believable if it didn’t contain the screenplay terms and was formatted more like a government transcript.  Getting some actual government transcripts for comparison would be helpful.

I think the piece also needs to address why the government would release this transcript.  This could not only make the piece more believable but could add a second layer to the story.  For example, perhaps the surviving Inuit took the camera after killing Leth and let a local news channel run a few clips of the footage.  Perhaps the government then arrested the Inuit for murder and released the transcript to discredit his claims and the video clips.  In that case, the narrator, the person providing the descriptions of the characters and action, would have an agenda in writing that narration.  He could be trying to explain away any signs of the supernatural and say that the expedition members became hysterical after Holger was killed, or started to hallucinate when exposed to the chemical smoke in the cave.  This would give the government a goal it is trying to achieve, making it essentially yet another force in opposition to Leth and his team.  As is, the narration is pretty objective, making me emotionally distant and minimizing any subtext in the story.  I would be more intellectually involved if I were trying to figure out what really happened, as opposed to what the narrator is telling me happened, and I’d be more emotionally involved if I felt the government was trying to cover up what really killed Leth and his team.

One final point I’d like to mention.  I don’t know why Leth is referred to by his last name, when Kaneq is referred to by her first name.  It would be better to be consistent, since the government is making these choices and probably has a policy about transcripts.

This piece took on a great challenge in telling this story through a found-footage transcript.  It held my interest throughout and painted some vivid and disturbing images.

I hope my comments are helpful.

–Jeanne Cavelos, editor, author, director of The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust