Science fantasy is an interesting genre. On the one hand it’s science fiction—humans in space for example, exploring strange new worlds. On the other, it has magic, and often magical beings. When it works, it’s a glorious crossover.

This chapter has some promising elements. Energy creatures in the form of mythical beasts, a protagonist with magical healing powers, and humans as adversaries, experimenting with alien species. There’s a lot going on, and a lot of story to set up.

One thing I would suggest for this opening chapter is to shift the focus a little bit, to establish key elements of the worldbuilding up front and to tighten up the action and the characters’ interactions. The opening paragraphs tell us about the urgency Corva feels, and show some of the scenery through which she is racing and some of the creatures that populate it, as well as establishing some of the elements of the magical system. The effect is rather confusing, because there are so many details, but those details don’t completely clarify where we are or why Corva is so desperate to get to Moonelsa.

One alternative would be to skip past the tour and go straight to the nest. The details that I as a reader want to know are the ones that establish genre, location, and a broad sense of what’s going on. I’d like to be clear that we’re on an alien planet, which could be as simple as naming it. The orange sun is a good hint, but I need more; I’m distracted by what seems like earth-style mythical fauna, and would have thought we were in Faerie if I hadn’t had the author’s note on the genre. I think we need to know about the human invaders early on, and to be clearer about what they did to Moonelsa.

Corva’s flight is only really relevant if something happens that affects the plot. Somebody tries to stop her from helping the dragon, or she stumbles across somebody or something who will play a part in the story later—a human drone or scout, maybe. Otherwise, the focus of the chapter is the hatching, and Corva’s arrival there and what happens after that. That’s where the story begins.

The chapter does one thing absolutely right: it ends in such a way that I had to check out Chapter 2 to find out what happened. Good going! And helpful for me because the author’s note there told me about the alien planet and cleared up some questions I had about the humans. I would have liked to have that information in the first chapter.

The author’s note for Chapter 1 asks about characterization. Here I’m going to start with my usual advice in workshopping drafts: Don’t worry about the finer points of the prose until the draft is done. Let the words come in any way that works. Revision is the time for pruning and polish.

So, if the novel is still in progress, set the comments below aside. Save them for later, when it’s time to get down to the word and sentence level.

Characterization has a lot of layers. How characters act, think, and feel, the choices they make, their mistakes, their motivations, are all part of the process. But the foundation of it all is the words, the choices the author makes, the way characters are described, how they talk, what they do—and especially what kinds of things they do or say over and over.

There’s a lot of repetition in this draft, and certain words and concepts repeat over and over. I particularly noticed the variations on shaking, shuddering, and trembling. These words were what I call frequent-flier words. It’s a good idea to run a global search on these, and think about which can be changed into other words and concepts, and which can be disposed of altogether.

The impression I got as I read was that the characters’ shuddering and shaking (and stammering also, which is a form of verbal shakiness) was meant to convey fear and anxiety. Clearly it’s a terrible situation, but it’s not completely clear in the draft how terrible it is, or why both Corva and Moonelsa are so visibly upset. By the end I had a better sense of what was going on, but I would have liked to know a bit more a bit earlier: what happened to Moonelsa and why this hatching is so different from all other hatchings.

Another aspect of this is the way Moonelsa is described as a very powerful being. Corva is in awe of her, and we’re told that Corva’s powers are nowhere near as strong. But Moonelsa herself is so shaky and trembly and timid, so generally ineffectual, that there’s a disconnect between what we’re told about her and what we see.

This is a great opportunity for strengthening the characterization. This mighty magical being has been reduced to a quivering wreck, cut off from her people and denied their support and their rituals. If this is made clearer, and we get more of a sense of how Corva feels about it (and how Moonelsa has changed from what she was before the humans captured her), the scene will be that much stronger. We can see what an appalling thing has been done to Moonelsa, and we’ll understand better how and why Corva is the only person who will (or can?) help her.

Best of luck with this novel. The concept intrigues me and the characters and situations have a lot of potential. I really want to know what happens next, and how Corva is going to deal with the humans who have invaded her world and violated one of its most powerful magical beings.

I’m going to start this Editor’s Choice with a piece of somewhat wicked advice.

You’re in one of the best of all the writing stages: the Thinking Up All Kinds of Cool Stuff stage. It’s wonderful. It’s a blast. Whatever you come up with is great. It’s pure fun.

Don’t stop.

The time to revise is later. Just let the cool stuff flow. Don’t worry about rules or continuity or anything else. This is first draft. The only rule is to do whatever gets the words down on that page. You can worry about all the other stuff later.

Radical, right? But the actual worst thing you can do to a draft that’s humming along is try to apply your editorial brain. If you get stuck or if you really feel it’s stopped making sense, by all means regroup. Run a rules check. Do some rethinking, even rewriting.

But not until then.

Now that I hope I’ve made that clear, here are some thoughts and questions. Don’t act on them now unless they help move the draft forward. Put them aside, save them for the revision stage. Most likely the specific words I’m citing will have changed, but the general point should still apply.

The first thing to think about in revision is the structure of the story, the way the scenes follow one another, the pacing. Does the story move forward consistently? Do the slow parts come when we need a breather? Do the fast parts zoom along? Does every scene absolutely need to be there? Is there anything missing?

Obviously there’s no way to be sure of any of this with just a short chapter to go by, but these are the sorts of questions to ask when it’s time to revise. There are a couple of indicators in the opening chapter, some tricks of technique that may need rethinking. One is a tendency to say the same thing over and over in slightly different ways.

Repetition is a well-known rhetorical device, but like all such devices, a little goes a long way. This paragraph, for example.

It wasn’t a sacred day, or a fasting day, or even a bank holiday. It was a boring November day. He sat is in his dull flat in dreary East Ham. The weather wasn’t of note. Clouds covering everything in gray monotony, like Ajeet’s unwashed clothes blanketed the floor of their shared flat. It seemed like the right day. He remembered that from an American movie, “fire them on Friday”, something like that. He was dying to break the tedium. His crew wouldn’t activate for another two days. He could stream his shows, but it all seemed boring now. Nothing compared to fighting evil with his crew.

On the one hand, the repetition of day has a nice ring to it, kind of Dickensian. It sets a tone. On the other, as the paragraph lengthens, the effect starts to weaken. The progression of thoughts is a bit jumbled. Ideas pop in and then out and then back again.

That is fine in a first draft. Get it all down, get the chapter out the door. But in revision, it’s time to line up the ideas and images and get them moving clearly and coherently, in logical order. If ideas or images repeat, pick the one that works best in context. Save the others for another occasion.

Revision is the time to make sure all the words work the way they’re intended to. Sometimes when we’re writing in the white heat of first draft, we can get ourselves tangled up. We know what we mean, but readers may not.

This is particularly true in science fiction. Some terms are unique to the genre. Some are invented on the spot, or reinvented to fit the world of the story. A passage like this one

Didn’t hurt that they made a good living off scavenging bit wreckage after his crew would detonate data cores. In two days they would onramp a massive code injection.

makes sense to the characters, but especially at the very beginning, it may need some clarification for the reader. It doesn’t need to be a big chunk of exposition, but it might help to think about how to make these concepts clearer. A quick phrase to help clarify and/or explain. Or maybe opening up the sentences, adding a little more, letting the reader see what the terms mean.

Figurative language is a nice way to make a scene or an idea pop, but watch that, too. It needs to be straight on point; to be exactly right. Otherwise it can push the reader out of the moment.

The traditions of his parents and grandparents faith ran through their hearts as deep as ravines

is trying hard to convey the depth of his family’s faith, but ravines might not be quite the right word. As a reader in the US, I see a ravine as a kind of moderate slash in the landscape, deeper and larger than a gully but not quite as spectacular as a canyon. It’s not terribly impressive on a global scale, and I’m not sure about associating it with religious faith.

What other image might resonate here? Something a reader might recognize from a religious text? An image of a sacred place? What about tying it in with the anatomical and psychological aspects of the human heart?

Or, for that matter, just letting the idea shine through on its own. Similes and metaphors can enhance the story, but they can also get in the way. Sometimes it’s more effective to just state the idea plainly, without embellishment.

The question to ask here is, “Am I interrupting the flow? Did I just distract the reader? Did I bump her out of the story?”

This applies to the prose in general as well as to rhetorical flourishes. Make sure all the words are the right words. As Mark Twain famously said, “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”

Here are a couple of examples of words or phrases that might bear some rethinking:

 “Alright. I’ll be there,” he acted in a hurry.

I’m not sure what “acted” means here. It’s not a “said” word. Is he pretending? Acting in the theatrical sense?

The music she liked was chaotic and atmospheric. A reflection of herself in his eyes.

The second sentence is a bit confusing. Is she reflecting herself? Is he seeing her reflected? What does it mean? Can you phrase it more clearly and concisely?

And finally, be particularly careful about pronouns. There’s a tendency to use “he” as a shorthand for the viewpoint character, which gets confusing when he’s interacting with another male character. The reader has to stop and disentangle the pronouns, and try to figure out which he is which. Sometimes it’s best to just name them. My personal rule is to signal a change with the character’s name (or more rarely, some other indicator—the character’s rank or relationship; but I try to be really sparing with that), then “he” is that character until I change the name. No name, no change.

Basically, in revision, look out for anything that makes the reader stop and go, “Whut?” The goal is to keep the story moving, and to keep the reader well and thoroughly engaged. If she does stop to notice what you’re doing, it should be brief and it should be carefully calibrated. Every word earns it keep, and every image is exactly the right one for that particular point in the story.

But again, in the first draft, don’t worry about any of this. Just write. And have fun. That’s what it’s all about.

There’s a tremendous lot of story-stuff going on in this submission. It’s very ambitious, and it has some interesting bits of worldbuilding—the Shades and their colors in particular.

What drew me to select the chapter as an Editor’s Choice was the author’s note about viewpoint. Point of view is one of the most important elements of any work of fiction. Who is telling the story? How are they telling it? Where are they standing, what are they feeling, how are they reacting, how are they interacting with other characters?

Sometimes authors get tangled up in the received wisdom about viewpoint.

Only one point of view per paragraph/scene/chapter.

Never change point of view in a sentence/paragraph/scene.

“Head-hopping” is Bad, Do Not Do.

Always be clear about your viewpoint—tag frequently with words like thought, wondered, and the many variations of looked and saw.

The thing about the rules of writing is that they’re really the Pirates’ Code. Just…guidelines. They exist as guides for writers who are learning their craft. If you follow the rules, you stand a slightly better chance of writing clearly and avoiding confusion.

But—and this is a really big BUT—if you know and understand why the rules exist and what sorts of problems they’re intended to prevent, you can break them. You can have two different viewpoints in the same sentence, you can write an entire scene without ever once having your character look or think or wonder, you can challenge the reader to figure out what you really mean without spelling it out.

If you know what you’re doing. And if you have the skill and craft to pull it off.

And that’s why writing is hard.

The chapter we have here is struggling with the concept of point of view. Part of what’s going on is a tendency to lose focus from sentence to sentence. Paragraphs are packed full of narrative detail, chunks of exposition and large amounts of action crammed into a small space. The line of the story tends to get lost.

Breaking up the action will help, as will cutting way down on the repetition of words and phrases. Pick one key action per paragraph, and one key detail from the background, and see if that helps open up the narrative. It may also make it easier to figure out which character is most effectively positioned to tell that part of the story.

It doesn’t have to be one single character. There are valid narrative reasons to have several viewpoints—Alexander, his wife, the page. Even a demon, for extra points, though again, that requires careful attention to detail. Different “camera angles” provide different insights into what’s going on, and allow us to see different parts of the action.

I think one of the problems here is the tendency to fix on the “view” part of viewpoint. The word “look” is a frequent flier, as are a number of its synonyms, with the occasional variation of “thought” or “wondered.” Note how often these words appear, and think about whether it’s really important to the story, right there and then, for the characters to be doing this particular thing. How else can the reader get a sense of what’s going on? In what other ways can the viewpoint character show that he or she is the one who’s telling us the story?

Think about what he or she can see from where they’re standing. How do they feel about it? What particular words might they use, that tell us who they are and how they relate to the other characters? What other things can they do besides look or watch or see? Do we need to be told they’re doing this, or can we just see what they see?

For the time being I think the “one viewpoint per paragraph” rule might be worth following, to keep things simple. There’s a lot of work to do on focus, on cramming fewer events and details into each paragraph, and on writing action scenes with active words and phrases. Emotions need work as well—more direct experience and less passive voice; make sure to show how the character feels from the inside, rather than telling us that the emotion is felt. The arc of emotion should be smoother, with each action at the right level of intensity.

This is a good example of what tends to happen in the draft:

They screamed in agony, shake their heads in disbelief, and then acquiesce to extinction.

There’s the high note of the agonized scream, dropping steeply down to the headshake, then the passive polysyllables of acquiesce to extinction (with bonus slippage of verb tense). If each phrase has the same general level of diction, the whole becomes much stronger. Something like: “They screamed in agony, tossed their heads in disbelief, then yielded to death.” Not my finest attempt at prose, there, but notice how the words fit together. They’re all short, clear, straightforward, and they take their inspiration from the tone and diction of the opening phrase.

Once the prose is more tightly focused, it may be easier to see how viewpoint works. It’s not the explicit statement that does it—he looked, she watched, they saw—but the way it’s said. The angle from which the character sees each event. The words that show how the character feels about it.

Different words convey different emotions. “She danced” and “she capered” describe approximately the same movement, but the first conveys grace and joy whereas the second has more of a comical aspect. When a character is observing another character, how they relate to that character can tell us a lot: “Her beloved sprang through the gate with sword in hand” versus “the monster lurched into the courtyard with fangs bared.” We don’t need to be told “She looked at him” if it’s clear she’s our viewpoint; we just need to know what he does, as she sees it.

It’s all about trust: trusting one’s craft and trusting one’s reader. Learning how to use just the right words to convey just the right details. Keeping track of who a character is, how they think and feel, and what they can see (and hear and smell and taste) from where they’re standing (or sitting or lying). Living inside the character’s head, experiencing the story as they experience it, and then conveying that experience in a few carefully chosen, precisely appropriate words and phrases.

That’s what viewpoint is. Not just camera angle but the whole spectrum of emotion, action, perception, as experienced by a particular character.

It’s quite possible to shift from one character to another, and if the writer is skillful enough, that shift can be clear from the way the angle changes. A different choice of words, a new take on what’s happening. A sense that this is inevitable; that we have to change viewpoints in order get the most out of this particular part of the story.

In sum, and in general, I’d suggest trying to do more with less in this chapter. Pare down the action, focus on fewer details, and move away from passive voice to more active constructions. Removing the iterations of look will help, as will thinking in a more focused way about how the characters are perceiving what’s happening around and to them. That will make the story stronger and let the reader live it along with the characters.

I’m doing something a bit different with this Editor’s Choice. After I selected it, the author reached out to let me know he had completely rewritten the piece. The revision is here.

That’s the one I’m going to focus on, and that’s the source of the quotations below, though my review (because of the way the system is set up) is tied to the original version.

The revision does one major structural thing I would have recommended if I’d only had the first version to work with: it replaces summary and synopsis (what the author in his note calls “narrative”) with a trio of dramatized scenes. This is a wise decision. It tightens the focus of the story and brings its events and characters to life.

I have questions about the ordering of the scenes in the revision: chronologically, they’re presented as 1 – 3 – 2. We experience the revelation of Milica’s fate along with Kresnik, then we circle back around to his final moments with her before he went away to become his competent and confident adult self. The last line seems meant to pierce us with its irony.

It does, to a degree, but I need more clarity as to what happens when, and why it’s being told in that particular order. Some connection, a segue from the one scene to the next—perhaps a line or phrase that shifts Kresnik from his adult self back to his childhood.

It might help also to have a bit at the beginning of the middle/adult scene which clarifies why he’s come back—something to suggest that there’s more going on in Kresnik’s mind and memory than we’re initially told. At that point in the story we don’t know about that night in the barn, but Kresnik does. If there’s a hint of it in the early part of the scene, we may not pick up on it when we encounter it, but it will resonate when we have the full context.

It’s certainly a powerful story, and the revised version twists the knife in multiple ways: Kresnik’s innocence in the beginning, his mature self facing the consequences of what happened on that terrible day, and the interaction with his sister that shapes and colors his reactions—and ours—to both. Because it’s so powerful, and because the story is so short, the prose needs to be finely tuned and highly polished. It wants to be; it tries for unusual effects and strong images. In both the original and the revised version, it’s not quite there.

One suggestion I would make would be to think about the prevalence of rhetorical questions. It’s part of Kresnik’s thought process, his internal monologue.

What in all of creation was going on?

How could she leave him now?

He’d never make it that far though.  Would he?  Was it stupid to leave?  What if he regretted it?  What if he stayed, and Milica was hurt?  What if she was killed?   

Is it really necessary for him to ask these questions? Does the rest of the narrative convey his thoughts and feelings clearly enough? If not, are there other, more varied, and perhaps more concise ways to do it?

(Sidebar: I’m not an advocate of the death penalty for inserting two spaces after a period or full stop, but it’s gone rather firmly out of fashion. One space is the general rule in this decadent age.)

I’d further suggest paying very close attention to the nuances of words and phrases, and making sure they mean exactly what they need to mean in context. Watch for awkward phrasing, and look out for echoes and repetitions, for slack constructions and tautologies. Every word, every phrase should earn its place in the text, and every one should be just the right one.

For example,

a scowl dug trenches along the corners of the Marm’s thin lips

is vivid and unusual, but a scowl happens in the upper part of the face, the forehead, the eyebrows, and to an extent the eyes. By the time it gets down to the lips it’s a grimace. The choice of words is not quite as precise as it might be, while at the same time the level of detail, the digging of trenches, slows down the movement of the story and focuses it on the image rather than on what’s happening in the scene.

The meanings of words tend to slip, and images get confused or confusing:

A heartbeat contracted within his ear canals

It’s the heart that contracts, rather than its beat, and the heart is located in the chest, not in the ears.

At the corners of her eyes the crevices carved deeper in

It’s not clear what “the crevices” are, or what carves them, or what they signify.

And in the same sentence,

the eyes of his classmates showing an assortment of positions on the spectrum between boredom and interest

mixes the metaphor of eyes, emotions, and positions; it might be simpler and stronger just to say something like, “His classmates’ eyes ran the spectrum from boredom to interest.” Fewer words, more precision. Less confusion of meaning and image.

Sometimes images could be toned down, as well.

The Marm’s mouth fell open and her eyelids shot up, exposing the full circles of her dusky irises.  The tendons of her neck jutted outward like string beneath parchment. 

There’s so much going on here, so many disparate actions, so many similes and metaphors, that the reader loses the thread of the narrative. Think about choosing one of these images, the one that most clearly conveys the emotional impact of the moment, and leaving the rest to implication. If it’s the right image, the reader will pick up the rest.

One last note: the characters SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS. The usual convention for that level of emphasis is the use of italics. Even those are best used sparingly and may not be needed at all.

In general, especially in a story that relies so heavily on figurative language and stylistic flourishes, it can be useful to apply the principle of Less is More. Let the choice of words and the structure of sentences provide the emphasis, assisted by judicious bits of stage business. The story is strong and the characters are memorable. With some work and attention, the prose will take care of the rest.

–Judith Tarr

This opening chapter sends good, solid space-opera signals: the spaceship on the wrong side of the law, the daring raid, the bits of background both technical and political. There’s one female protagonist in an otherwise all-male crew, but other women characters may show up later to even out the gender balance.

A couple of things might help make this a stronger, punchier opening, and they’re both related to the portrayal of the protagonist. The first is the handling of viewpoint, and the second is the art of writing active prose.

When we’re introduced to Zara, we get frequent reminders that she’s our viewpoint character. She stares, wonders, extends her faculties, knows, thinks; her pulse quickens, she’s on edge, she has trouble concentrating, and so on through the chapter. A favorite word crops up here—nervous; it will recur at intervals, and apply to other characters as well as Zara. (We all have a favorite word; when we revise, one of the first things we do is run a global search to see how many times we’ve used it.)

Viewpoint is important in this chapter. One of Zara’s jobs is to monitor other characters when they’re off the ship. She has to juggle multiple sets of sensory input, while also flying the ship and watching out for enemy action.

It’s a challenge for the author as well as the character to keep all of these balls in the air at once. In addition to frequent viewpoint-tagging, we get examples of Zara’s struggles with the level of multitasking she has to do. It’s a big job with a lot of responsibilities.

In revision it might be worth rethinking some of this. First, can some of these jobs be assigned to other members of the crew, or can some of them be done by the ship itself? If the ship is being flown by an AI, that gives Zara more mental room to monitor the mission on the Calypso. (And if the ship doesn’t have an AI or autopilot, that’s an important piece of worldbuilding; we’ll need a hint here as to why.)

Also think about Zara’s competence—her qualifications for the job. Is she performing in accordance with her pay grade? Are her struggles with multiple data inputs appropriate for someone who presumably was hired to do this particular thing?

Note how often she’s taken by surprise during the mission (surprise is another favorite word). If she’s being asked to do a job she’s not trained sufficiently to do, that’s a plot point, as well as a danger to the rest of the crew. Will this be an issue later in the novel? Has she padded her resume, or claimed qualifications she doesn’t have? If so, it might help to clarify this here.

If not, then again it’s rethinking time. What should Zara know if she is qualified to do this job? How should she handle the various responsibilities? If she struggles, what strong, plot-related reason can she have for not being able to do her job?

Zara’s struggles with her job are somewhat similar to the author’s struggles with establishing viewpoint. The frequency of viewpoint tags, especially in the opening paragraphs, not only reminds the reader that Zara is the protagonist, but also injects the author into the narrative. “You know what I mean? You get it? You sure?”

I’d suggest reducing the number of tags. Trust the reader to know who is telling the story. Provide at most one viewpoint word per paragraph, and let the rest happen without the filter of Zara’s senses. They’re still there in the background, but they only need to come to the fore when it’s particularly important to know that she’s doing the thinking and feeling.

In action-adventure fiction, the more immediate the reader’s experience, the more compelling it tends to be. The reader wants to feel as if she’s living the adventure with the characters. If she catches sight of the author behind the curtain, she may lose that feeling, and be thrown out of the story.

Strong, clear, active prose is particularly important in action scenes. Tight writing is key. No excess wordage. Whatever is there has to be there.

When we met Alex and Karl, for example, we get a description of each man. The scene is tense; they’re about to head off on a dangerous mission. But the narrative stops for a pair of visual snapshots. Do we need those particular details in that particular place? What one detail might sum up each character—a contrast, perhaps, between the way each one moves or talks or acts toward Zara? If that detail is relevant right then, it’s memorable. It sets us up for how the two crewmen will handle the mission, and it also helps establish how Zara perceives each of them.

During the mission, sharper, more concise writing will help build tension and enhance the suspense. For example, does Zara need to tell the men what they already know about the timing? Can a brief line of narrative replace the dialogue? Something like: They only had X minutes to get in and out before the AI caught on.

Likewise, do we need Zara’s extended description of what each man is feeling, with its repetitions of nervous and surprise and its passive verb constructions? Can each be condensed into a short sentence, one about how different Alex is inside than she thought, and the other about how accurately she’s always read Karl? It might even be possible to combine the two into one rapid and effective sentence.

Short, strong, active—keep those words in mind during revision. Think too about how much exposition and backstory the scene needs, and whether that, too, might be tightened and condensed and focused. What do we absolutely need to know right here and now in order to understand what’s going on, and what can wait until later in the narrative? Is there one specific detail that contains all the others, and can that be conveyed clearly and simply, with an active verb and minimal repetition of words? That’s the one to keep. The reader will pick up on the rest.