“Kings of Snow” caught my eye this month with how much it accomplishes in a very few words: three distinct personalities, a fully realized world caught between ending and rebirth, odds, stakes, catharsis, and a tinge, small but real, of hope.  This month, I’d like to talk about how retellings seat themselves in the readers’ context, and balancing on the fine line between didacticism and making art that speaks for something.

Overall, “Kings of Snow” does great craft work: the empty landscape, literally white as the page, is populated not just with descriptions of what Gas sees, but overlaid with memories that both jump out crisply and juxtapose with what’s described now to create a sense of time, loss, and texture.  That juxtaposition echoes in the story’s metaphors, too: the implied sameness-and-yet-contrast of phrases like “Today the snow is thick as tar” takes another white, blank feature—snow—and compares it to something that is practically its opposite (black, viscous, hot) but does so using a feature that is comparable, and it works: it’s a tiny cognitive dissonance that works.

These are smaller examples, nesting-doll-style, of the larger work the story is doing: taking the story of the Three Kings, changing the protagonists to the kings instead of Mary and the child, flipping a hot climate to a cold one, and turning every trope of that story to practically its opposite—except the story’s core. Again, it’s a tiny cognitive dissonance, and it works.

Why?

“Kings of Snow” starts with a definite advantage: It’s an update of a very well-known Christian story, and just like with a fairytale retelling, when we remix or update an old story, we have all the foundations that old story has built in our readers’ minds to lean on. We’ve talked in previous months about the difference between worldbuilding to construct a whole new universe, versus worldbuilding to evoke deep-seated tropes that are already there. “Kings of Snow” goes the evocation route just by virtue of being a retelling, and that gives readers a huge amount of information without ever having to put that information on the page.  The result is the tightly-packed, information-dense degree of content—and yet the clear, spare prose—you get when reading poetry, and the creation of two distinct hooks: first, the game of guessing which story this is (and the quickly paid off satisfaction of feeling that familiar click) and second, the question of why this story, here.

There was a concern from the author that as a holiday story, “Kings of Snow” might be overly predictable, and I want to address that question by suggesting that in a retelling, predictable is less a sign of failure than a tool we, as writers, use.  More than any other kind of short fiction, retellings are all about context—about what we seat around that familiar click—and less knowing what plot events are going to happen than what they mean in a new frame.

One of the primary advantages to writing a retelling, even though magazines are full of them, is the instant layering it lets us build into a story. As we’ve discussed in previous reviews, there’s generally a big push for the original in SFF, but tropes are a tool: using a familiar story lets us basically skip the establishment of the plot itself and use the advancement of the story not to introduce information, but to comment on information that readers already have from every other story on this topic. It’s a capacity for creating instant depth: the draw of the story becomes less three older characters trudging to a birth through difficult terrain, but what everything associated with the story of the Three Kings means in this particular snowy, post-apocalyptic age—and what that could mean for us now.  In religious/scriptural terms (since we’re in a Christian story), that’s an act of interpretation and application, and it lets us as writers say things that are poignant and personal if handled well.

And in “Kings of Snow” it is, I think, handled quite well.  Its mix of supporting details takes those familiar tropes and builds in, quickly, complexity.  It’s good to truly feel Gas, Bart, and Mel’s age in the difficulty of the journey, and there’s a unique task accomplished by their bickering: cast in the role of three wise elders—knowing from the original story that they are all supposed to be wise—their disagreements about the path to take, provisions, gifts, and the world both define them as characters and create a worldview that’s less about who’s right or wrong than the way people negotiate three different sets of knowledge about the world and how to make the journey.  There’s a beautiful thing being said here about different wisdoms.

That thought about how different wisdoms combine is part of what makes “Kings of Snow” feel inspiring, not didactic, despite functionally bringing the story to a halt to deliver a lecture on present circumstances.  That paragraph of backstory, on how the world ended up this way, works precisely because of how it balances the context of the post-apocalyptic Québecois setting with the retold story, and some very specific word choices that widen the scope from a lecture on how to be into a unifying sense of shared mistakes.

“Kings of Snow” defuses its condemnation in a few key ways.  Immediately following those rich jerks by not just “poor jerks”, but “us poor jerks” builds in a tone of exhausted complicity.  It’s a note of fatigue, rather than blame.  That balancing of conflict with resignation continues as the paragraph builds out the conflict into Mel’s my-people-told-you-so—which puts Gas and the people he’s angry at together, in one group, again—and then defuses that with her own complicity, and the snowmobile.  Once Gas being the descendant of slaves is brought in, this one paragraph starts to billow out into the bones of a much more complex system—not a simple equation of who’s to blame, but structures which everyone participated in, in different ways, and which brought everyone down.

I was left with the overwhelming sense that everyone contributed; everyone’s hands are dirty; everyone was part of this failure.  And most importantly, that everyone is still in this together, trudging through the snow, continually bickering about how to assign blame.  I was left with the sense of a society.

It’s that recognition on Gas’s part that “now we’re all trudging together” that, I think, makes this multilayered, difficult, vital paragraph work—and answered satisfyingly, for me, the question of why this story now?  Why this story told in this particular way?  Why would I, asked if this story is predicatable, say that even if it were, that doesn’t matter?

Retellings are about context, and the thing “Kings of Snow” doesn’t change is the story’s core. Marie is, even though we never meet her, bringing a child into the world in a dark time, and isn’t moving from where she is, because the whales are coming back, and she’s going to be there to usher that rebirth in.  Marie, is trying. And her community is showing up to bring her gifts and witness, even if they think what she’s doing with the whales is dangerous and stupid, because she has hope.

Which is why it’s an excellent stroke of detail to make the gift is a piece of soapstone: something part of several northern cultures, and of a value that’s not immediate, but long-term.  It’s a beautifully appropriate gift, thematically speaking: a metaphor for a child, or a new world; a gift that screams potential, yet to be shaped; a gift that will, with good work and luck, become beautiful. That’s a necessary story for many readers right now, and an important repositioning of the narrative of the three kings: one of people from an older world doing a physically and emotionally difficult journey, because at the end is hope.

In most of the English-speaking world, which is where the bulk of our audience is, we’re in fairly desperate political times for people all across the spectrum of belief.  I’m personally expecting an upsurge in art that has a message.  We write what we’re living, breathing, and feeling every day, and when political and social upheaval is what we’re living, fiction organized around a message is going to show up more and more.

“Kings of Snow” does this job very well, in a short space, using techniques that make a lot of the standard pitfalls of fiction actually work in its favour. I think it’s ready to place with a market.

Best of luck with this piece, and thank you for it.

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

First of all, a standard disclaimer:

There is no wrong way to write a draft, especially a first draft. However the words need to get from your mind to the page, that’s how they have to do it. The time to worry about everything else comes later in the process.

When you’re concentrating on getting the words down, pretty much anything goes. There’s no pressing need to worry about what exactly those words are until it’s time for the final polish. At that point however, it pays to understand your own process, whether you draft in quick sketches and fill in later, or put in all the things and then pare and prune until the outlines of the story are perfectly clear.

Here I think there’s a tendency toward the latter process, but also a desire to be totally clear on the level of words and sentences, to spell out in detail exactly what’s going on and why. As I read, I got a sense that the author wants very much for me to understand what each word and sentence means. There’s a bit of playfulness, too, and an occasional fillip of metaphor or lovingly crafted simile.

The chapter has a nice straightforward story line. Even without reading the earlier chapters or the summary the author has provided, I can mostly tell who’s who. I don’t wonder about what’s happening at any given point, and at the end I can see where the plot is going.

That same impulse toward clarity extends to the prose. Words and actions and concepts are modified and modified again with additional details. For example:

• Catey nodded in reply…
• Gianna only nodded gloomily in reply.
• Catey dictated a reply to her that wetted the house mistress’s eyes as she wrote it onto a parchment with an ink quill.
• Everyone was puzzled but they didn’t argue with the inspector, and followed Mistress Gianna as she led them to a room upstairs.

While it’s a laudable thing to try for minimal ambiguity in one’s prose, past a certain point the prose risks becoming redundant. The same general ideas repeat, sometimes in multiple forms, as if the author doesn’t quite trust the reader to get what she’s trying to say.

In the first two examples, Catey and Giana are responding affirmatively to comments made by other characters. We don’t need to be told in so many words that they’re responding (or replying—this word is an author favorite). Just the nod is enough. It tells the reader all she needs to know.

In the third example, we have an interesting combination of too much and not quite enough. “Dictated” implies that Catey is speaking and Gianna is writing the words down. The detail of the parchment establishes a bit of worldbuilding—we’re in a society that uses cured animal skin rather than paper, and the presence of a quill reinforces the sense of a preindustrial past. But ink seems redundant. I think most fantasy readers would know that when a person writes with a quill, the person is using ink. No need to specify; the author can trust the reader to pick up the implication.

There’s another layer here, too. Is it essential to the plot in this particular instance for the reader to know what writing materials Gianna is using? Does it move the story forward at this exact point? Can we get all the information we need, right here and now, if we’re simply told Gianna is writing what Catey dictates?

At the same time, the rest of the sentence made me stop and squint and try to figure out exactly what the author is trying to do. “Wetted” isn’t quite the word for Gianna’s emotional (and physical) reaction. I feel as if I need a different term, and maybe more than one word, in order to get a proper sense of what’s happening to her.

The final example combines concise writing in the first half and redundancy in the second. What we most need to know is that she leads everybody upstairs. It’s not essential to the story, right at this point, to know into what kind of space she leads them. “She led them upstairs” gets the job done and lets us keep our focus on what’s happening downstairs.

In writing, clarity and focus are not necessarily the same thing. A writer can keep adding details to clarify what she’s talking about, but focused writing zeroes in on a much smaller number of essential details. These are the details that can’t be left out, that the reader must have in order to understand what’s happening. Everything else is gravy–nice to have, enhances the flavor, but a little goes a long way.

Choosing just the right word helps, too. Sometimes we want to shake things up, try a different way of saying what we’re trying to say, enjoy a bit of figurative language. That can work well, but as always, we have to be sure the word really means what we want it to mean. We also have to make sure that when we pause to develop an image, that development serves a purpose. The image has a reason to be there: it advances the story, develops the character, enhances the setting.

It’s all about telling the story in the clearest and strongest and most effective way possible. Vivid and believable characters, well-crafted dialogue, fully realized world and setting, all begin with the choice of words. Both the words we do use, and the ones that, as we prune and polish, we choose to leave out.

I call that “Narrative Economy.” Every word has a role to play, and each one earns its keep.

–Judith Tarr

I like the bones of this. It’s got slam-bang space ­action, gengineered monkeys, and a great last line. It really does echo the Heinlein “juveniles,” in a potentially great way.

Three things jump out at me in this draft. I believe they’re all fixable, though one might need some changes in the worldbuilding.

1. There-Was-Itis

This is the last thing to worry about in revision, when the big-ticket items have been dealt with and it’s time to get down to the sentence level, but it’s the first thing a reader notices. So I’m putting it here. It’s especially important in a short story, where every word has to count.

The prose is full of passive constructions and extra words, especially forms of the verb “to be.” Here’s the first sentence:

The explosion in the ship’s air plant was a dead giveaway that something was seriously wrong.

The story literally opens with a bang, but the sentence is passive, and though it’s short by word count, it feels leisurely and low on tension. We’re missing a viewpoint. Who’s telling the story? How do they know there’s an explosion? Where are they, and what are they experiencing—physically and emotionally?

A shift to active voice and an actual, physical point of view would help the reader get straight into the story and sympathizing with the protagonist from the first word. Likewise, as the story goes on, count the number of “was” constructions, and especially “there was.” Can you replace every one of them with an active construction?

I am by no means allergic to the verb “to be,” and I believe this verb, and the passive voice in general, has a definite place in a well-crafted narrative. But a little goes a long way. Especially in action scenes, the more active the prose itself is, the more effective the action tends to be.

That’s why I’m suggesting a full-on carpet-bombing of “there was” constructions here. Get rid of it all, then see how it reads. You can always put a few back in where it’s most effective, or where the pacing needs a breather.

2. Infodumpage

Science fiction has had a long love affair with exposition. Golden Age SF especially adores its big chunks of worldbuilding, just as cozy mysteries love to gather all the suspects in the library for a final explication of the sleuth’s investigation. This story has a Golden-Age feel, and a high percentage of pauses in the narrative while we learn about this particular world.

The problem is that this is a short story, which means there’s much less available space for background details than there would be in a longer piece. If this were the first chapter of a novel, or even a novella, the chunks of exposition would have more room to expand, but at this length, they crowd out other key elements of story: characterization, physical and emotional setting, action and plot movement.

I would suggest pulling out all the expository chunks and choosing from each the one or two (or at most three) absolutely essential details—details without which the story can’t go forward, or the characterization can’t work, or the setting doesn’t make sense. Be ruthless. As with passive verbs, you can always put a few (a very few) back in if they absolutely can’t be missed.

Then, once you’ve done triage on the details, think about how many of them can transform from exposition into action—from tell into show. I love the monkeys. Can you show them doing their thing, give a detail or two of Carmen interacting with them, bring us in close and let us see how they work and why? You may actually find that the word count drops, even while the story’s effectiveness rises. That’s the key to really strong short fiction: making every word count.

3. The Gender Thing

Big props to this story for going there with a female protagonist. That’s both timely and Heinleinian, and it has great potential for making this story work on both levels.

I do, however, have questions about the draft as written.

In 1957, an all-male spaceforce was default. The idea that a female could play with the boys was quite radical, and the narrative might indeed focus on the girly aspects: hair, makeup, and all like that. And she would very probably sit down and keep quiet and assume a subordinate role, above and beyond actual factors of rank or seniority. Because that’s how women had to roll.

It is, however, 2017. Women have been going into space for several decades now, and the US astronaut program is aiming for gender parity. Military forces worldwide are on that same trajectory—not just in the US.

My question therefore is, if your future has taken women’s roles back to 1957, why? What happened? How did an apparently American-based culture regress to this extent—and what has now happened to change that, so that Carmen is allowed to serve as sole female in an all-male crew?

It’s not so much that you need more infodumps, as that there needs to be an underlying sense of how we get from where we are now to where Carmen is. The reason for that, in terms of the story, is that in a world that strongly dominated by males, a woman cannot simply decide she wants to go into space. The barriers to her doing so will be all but insurmountable, and she will have to fight every step of the way to even get near a ship, let alone be allowed to serve as crew on one.

Research the history of women in NASA (start with Hidden Figures—book and film), but also in the Navy and submarine corps, and the history of women in combat. This will give you some context. It will also give you some insight into Carmen’s state of mind and the state of mind of her fellow crewmen.

Or, you might take another direction and open up the world to greater gender parity, so that the ship has a mixed crew and Carmen’s relatively casual decision to go into space makes sense. Then she’s subordinate because she’s the new kid on board. Not because of her gender.

I suspect the latter may be less complicated in terms of rethinking and revision, because the story right now is about the overall crisis with the pirates and the personal crisis with Carmen and her uncle. If you get into gender politics, you’ll change the story from the bottom up, especially if the pirates have gender parity (or a facsimile thereof) and the space force is Patriarchy Central.

I definitely think this aspect of the story needs some rethinking. It sounds from your comments that Carmen is insisting you tell her story. But which story it is, and how she tells it, is up to you (and, of course, Carmen).

Best of luck to you, Carmen, and the space pirates.

–Judith Tarr

“Burning Season” caught my eye this month with its fascinating linguistic worldbuilding: a city where cultural purge is the norm, which isn’t even sure if it believes its own myths anymore—and one we see through a protagonist who has been a collaborator, and has very little to believe in as well.  It’s a story that’s doing some adept, fascinating work, but also feels like it has yet to fully inhabit its concept. So this month, I’d like to discuss why finding the right size for a story matters, and what it means, on a pure craft level, to commit to the stories we’re telling.

“Burning Season” already stands apart just by nature of its subject matter: sociolinguistic speculative elements are a lot more common in science fiction than in fantasy, and while the idea of an ever-colonized city isn’t a new one in fantasy, focusing a story on the ground-level experience of the people who live there—the writing and rewriting of culture and customs that would mean for them, and how it shapes them—is, just by existing, an excellently interesting piece of trope pushback.

As is casting Saman as a collaborator—one who isn’t faking being casual about their relationship with Kiroga or their attitude to politics.  As well as subverting the idea of the vulnerability-free, passionate hero, Saman’s hesitation and flaws and going along to get along are a highly effective way to make Rashid feel real as a colonized city.  Saman’s own internal colonization resonates well with the constant presence of violence in the streets, and combines with the deft use of a few other details—how Saman and the other characters handle that sense of language, code-switching and cross-communicating across a whole spectrum of social language taboos; the history people don’t actually want to talk about; and the way characters are believeably non-fluent in a language—to bring Rashid off the page and make it feel real.  The small touches of ambiguous futures throughout the piece—Borlena’s perhaps-daughter, where Liral is now—and the drumbeat repetition of I don’t know the story combine with that trope pushback to tell readers this isn’t the usual fare.

Though it’s got my attention with what it’s not, I think “Burning Season” could come out much more strongly on the page with what it is.  The author’s mentioned being unsure if this can work as a short piece or needs to be expanded, and I’d argue there’s an intersection of both needs here—as a short piece, it would be more effective trimmed shorter to make sure it delivers a clear and effective narrative, but in terms of plot, “Burning Season” ends just as the story is getting started.

Either way, I’d suggest trimming the piece down as a first move.  Making sure it has the same amount of words as story helps eliminate the feeling of drag that shows up throughout the piece, and will help make that expand-prose-or-contract-plot decision from much firmer ground.

That tightening to get the gaps and air bubbles out is a lens that can be applied in a few ways; the sentence level is the most obvious.  For example, the very first sentence is a good candidate for a quick tightening.  Consider the difference between the current opening line:

“It started with something foolish, as most things like to be known as tragedies usually do.”

–and a tighter, leaner version:

“It started with something foolish, as most tragedies do.”

What’s been taken out is mostly qualifying, hesitation, and hedging. “Most” and “usually” qualify the same Not All Tragedies idea in the same way; there’s no reason to say the things that might maybe be known as tragedies where one word will do—yes, tragedies, that’s what we’re talking about here.

This isn’t a flinch that’s consistent throughout “Burning Season”; the second paragraph, “It was burning season in Rashid. Again,” is a beautifully authoritative sentence, and sets a huge amount of tone and reader expectation in seven little words.  The description of Slaughterhouse is absolutely evocative.  The single gunshot is left on the page like a stain and its aftermath allowed to bloom in a way that has real impact.  Just as I’d suggest finding those moments that are hesitating, repeating themselves, hedging, and clearing them up, I’d suggest finding the moments of clear, confident, evocative prose and making sure they have the space to shine.

On a more macro level, I’d suggest looking at every interaction and scene and seeing how it’s either building the argument or taking the narrative forward—and trimming if it’s not working to a goal.  For example, I’d suggest shortening the opening interaction with Borlena.  As an establishing shot, the initial paragraphs do the trick quite nicely of telling us what the omniloquists are and do; what the conversation with Borlena seems to underline most, right now, is a roguish, Bogartesque, I-stick-my-neck-out-for-nobody protagonist.  That’s an archetype that’s worn enough around the edges that it’s sticking out harshly against the rather innovative worldbuilding: it feels as if it’s gotten less quality thought than the world itself.

As a side note, there are a few other aspects of “Burning Season” that could perhaps use more evidence on the page of careful thought.  The explanation of the city layout is the most notable example, which—forgive me—reminds me a bit of a game of SimCity (industrial zone right up next to residential zone!), and created some disconnect from the story for this reader: With the wonderful linguistic layering of Rashid telling me this is not what conquest looks like and Saman’s messy history telling me this is not what living through war looks like, having a very basic approach to what city planning looks like grates against the sense of realism that the story’s already established.  Every other aspect of this piece has embraced complexity; when a craft element doesn’t, “Burning Season” falls down for me as a reader.

Which brings me back to the author’s question: To refine as a workable short story, or to expand “Burning Season” into something larger?

Ultimately, I think that decision lies in the answer to a simple question—one that works best when asked after refining a piece into its most effective shape.  What is “Burning Season” meant to get across, and in short story format, is it getting that across as well as it could?

While stories evolve on the page—and that’s a good thing!—we start off a piece with something we want to communicate.  Writing is, always, at its heart, communication.  When considering whether to expand or contract a piece, the most useful way of reframing that question is to ask which toolset—short story, novella, or more—will get that crucial something across to readers in the most effective way.

Ultimately, everything we work with is a tool; what we—and our work—have to say for ourselves is what makes our stories come alive.  So I’d advise asking what “Burning Season” has to say with its complexity and ambiguity—without flinching, without shorthands, being utterly itself—and picking the form that will make it the clearest version of itself.

Best of luck!

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

It’s interesting coming into a novel and a series near the end. Characters who would be old friends to readers of the whole series are strangers. I’ll miss references that would resonate to readers familiar with the whole story, and also miss repetitions and echoes that, if I were editing the entire series, I might flag with, “Do we need to see this again?” At the same time, I get the flavor of the story, and a sense of the characters. It’s a taste of the larger dish.

The summary tells me of a dense and complex story with a large cast of characters and a great deal of adventure both triumphant and tragic. I think bits got elided or condensed—I’m not quite clear on whose body is being returned to whose parents, for example. Not an uncommon issue with a big, expansive story and a short, concise summary. If the author were writing a synopsis for submission, this would want a bit of clarification.

The actual chapter caught my eye because of the questions asked about the draft. I like clear, detailed questions, and specific needs and wants from authors. They’re helpful to the editor coming in cold and pondering a small portion of a large work.

The questions point me toward the author’s intentions in writing the chapter. Words that jumped out at me were telling/showing, dialogue, vivid/energetic, and believable. Good aims and goals for any story, but especially for YA/MG, for which distinctive voice and clear, fast-moving storytelling are definite assets.

The chapter consists primarily of characters talking to one another about events that have happened or will happen elsewhere. There’s movement and action but it’s a bit buried in dialogue, until the final scene, when Marc gets pulled away into the (portentously italicized) Arch of Time. That’s the chapter I find myself wanting to read. What’s here seems mostly to be transitional. Major things have happened and will happen. Here in the middle, characters are telling each other about the past and setting up for the future.

I do get a sense of how the characters relate to one another, what they are to each other—longtime friends and comrades in arms, so to speak. The scene blocking in the beginning is a bit out of order: we see where Larry and Tycho are rather late in the scene, and the storm, which turns out to be important, is also introduced late, which undercuts its significance, at least for me as a reader; I might be missing some setup in the previous chapter.

Scene blocking is important. Making sure the reader gets the sense of who, what, where, when, etc., so that she can visualize the scene as it unfolds, and so that she can get a sense of which details are essential to move the plot forward. If she has to backtrack while she reads, she loses momentum, and so, accordingly, does the story.

It’s an easy fix in revision, but definitely something to keep in mind. I also felt a distinct difference between the first scene and the scenes that followed—almost as if they belonged to a different story. This may be a thing; it may be how the story tells itself in the series. Here it felt like a change in voice, and a change in the way the story is being told.

The leading questions about Dr. Jake have an air of “As you know, Bob” about them. I found myself wondering why these questions are being asked here, and why, if they’re crucial to the story, Dr. Jake isn’t there to ask them himself. If they’re not crucial, do they need to be here? There’s quite a bit happening, and quite a bit about to happen. Do these extra details provide essential information for the next round of action?

I felt too that the dialogue went on a bit. I like Larry’s writer-frantic-ness, and the idea that he’s translating their experiences into fiction. It’s very meta. But maybe a little less-is-more would make the scene move faster and the plot advance more quickly (and smoothly) toward the next scene.

My question as a cold reader, too, would be: Is there a scene like this every time they stop for a breather in between time-zips? After five volumes, is this information already known to all the characters? If so, is it necessary again here? Is there a more concise way to get key, new information across, while reminding readers of essential background?

In the second scene I had a similar reaction. Do we need to know Marc’s hair color by this point? If it changes every time he changes the past, that might be worth a quick pointer. Otherwise, in terms of narrative economy, we probably don’t need the detail at this particular point. We may not need the detail about his shirt, either, unless it’s significant to the plot (different school colors in different timelines?).

And again, with Tycho, have they wondered about his intelligence earlier? If so, is it crucial to the plot right here, to go over it again? If not, why does it dawn on them now in particular? Will we be getting a story development within the next handful of scenes, in which Tycho’s intelligence becomes a plot-mover?

Fire hydrants by the way are a pretty old-fashioned joke for a modern kid to make. Is this significant to Larry’s history and character?

As they’re running with Larry, I think the dialogue could be pruned and the jokes toned down a bit. They’re yukking and expositioning when they might be more focused on getting where they need to go, and I’m missing the sense of danger and urgency. There’s lots of telling, lots of “we know X but you don’t so we’ll tell you all about it while we’re running.” That stretches my belief a bit, since mostly when people are hurrying to get somewhere, they’re focused on that rather than on relaying information.

Also, breathing.

Does the reader of the whole series need the whole summary, or can a quick handful of lines do the job? “They filled Larry in while they ran, taking turns to breathe and talk,” or something similar. And a highlight or two to give the proper flavor of the conversation.

Overall I like the energy, love the details of the story even where, as a cold reader, I found them confusing—maybe a reader of the whole would not need quite so much summary and exposition—and I do find the characters lively and bouncy, though as I’ve said, some trimming and pruning would help keep the scenes and characters moving. Pare down, focus on essential details; if it’s worth telling what someone said offstage, maybe it’s worth showing the scene in which that character speaks.

But as I’ve noted, that the cold reader observing what she sees. Some of these issues may be resolved elsewhere, and there may not be a particular need to fix them here. It’s all about how the parts fit into the whole.

–Judith Tarr

I was stopped this month by “The Hardened Shell” and its quiet sense of process: the rhythm of sanding, measuring, paint.  It’s rare that we see stories about the people our usual stories leave at home—Shire stories—and I’ve always had a personal soft spot for them: for looking at the heroic act of survival in the difficult times SFF fiction often writes about.  So this month, I’d like to talk about the intense power and range of the character-focused story: What absolutely powerful work we can do in a piece light on plot and light on action.

Former workshopper Hannah Wolf Bowen pointed out, many years ago, that building conflict into a story doesn’t necessarily mean chronicling the moment something changes itself; that there’s just as much power in the moment a character realizes, finally, that something has changed: those small-yet-monumental moments when someone turns a corner, reaches out, or discovers they’re more than they thought they were all along.

“The Hardened Shell” absolutely embodies that emotional power: Slight and to-the-point, it leads delicately to the point where Shelby and Buzz realizes there’s no magic bullet solution to their lives–and that Buzz needs to–and can–step up to work alongside Shelby to create that solution themselves.

“The Hardened Shell” does an admirable amount of work in just 1.400 words.  The world and stakes are sketched out in quick, concrete, evocative details; “The Hardened Shell” does good work with small things.  Shelby’s world is largely implied, and to great effect: the temperature readings and sunscreen juxtaposed with falling leaves evoke a whole world baked by global warming, and her simple, active choice to not check the news implies a whole set of horrors that are probably more effective for not being spelled out.  The mix of futuristic technology being used in an everyday, casual way and the way Shelby and Buzz scrounge for the basics of living, repurposing materials from dumps and ruins and relying on solar panels, beautifully sets out a future that is not at all evenly distributed.

Those details do double their weight in work when read on the symbolic and thematic level.  The central symbol—a new door, repurposed from an old one, which will be good “with a little effort”—is a nice summation of the core of the story itself, and sets up a fantastic visual resonance.  The constant attention to water tank leaks and solar panels, sunscreen against the hostile outdoor environment, sets up a fantastic resonance with the crew of the Adiona’s situation in space: metred resources, a dangerous solar flare, an empty void outside.  Earth becomes Shelby and Buzz’s spaceship, one facing equal and sympathetic pressures to the Adiona, in just a few details and sentences.

We’ve talked before about archetypes and tropes as shorthands, and how tapping into them can do a great deal of work in a short space. “The Hardened Shell” does great work here, too: Buzz being “not great with the manual stuff” and Shelby being the technical one is a great undermining of a gendered trope–one that makes readers see this isn’t just archetypes–while simultaneously touching the archetype of the slightly dissolute little brother, and thus still feeling familiar and stable to readers.

There’s also work being done on the archetype of what kind of story this is, overall. As a rebuttal to the school of science fiction convinced that space travel will solve Earth’s problems, “The Hardened Shell” is elegant and yet quite kind.  “Everything, their home included, had once been abandoned as battered and hopelessly imperfect,” it says, and yet there they are, and they are fixing what they can.  What could be an intensely sad story is quietly transfigured into a beautiful sliver of practical, realistic hope.

I’ve mentioned that “The Hardened Shell” is a great example of a character-focused story, and it’s the character work that makes the story effective and not just flat. There’s a consistent arc to Shelby’s emotional life through these 1,400 words–enterprise, frustration, resignation, despair, and then a lift–that feels organic and natural: the cycle of a human person’s feelings.  There’s also a deep understanding of emotional labour–of the very difference that showing up and trying and supporting each other makes–that makes that cycle feel meaningful.  “The Hardened Shell” matters, in terms of arc, because it’s showing it understands how support matters to people.  It’s only because Shelby’s moment of despair is so vivid—set up well by how diligently she’s committed up ’til then to carry on, and how abruptly that desire to make do fails—that the moment when Buzz shows up for her can feel overwhelming with relief, and gratitude, and hope.

The piece is still occasionally a touch too on the nose, and I suspect that’s less a problem of didacticism than one of wanting to use all of one’s worldbuilding work in a story that’s come down to only 1,400 words.  Buzz’s comment about towing groceries on his bicycle stood out a touch; on the other hand, the reason Chang’s illness is so catastrophic could perhaps use a touch more fleshing out.  It’s a fact dropped in immediately before its effect is supposed to hit readers, and especially in acronym diagnosis, it’s robbed of appropriate impact by that suddenness.  A little more build to the what–and why–of Adiona’s catastrophe could really expand that moment to its full potential.

This is a simple piece, plot-wise: Brother shows up for his sister in a time of need.  And yet, it’s an immensely powerful reminder that whatever the circumstances, one can pick up, make do, and do our best for each other, facing down uncertain futures, with no hope of a magic-bullet solution.

I very much look forward to seeing it find a home.

“Purity, Redux” caught my eye this month because of its stark setting, its unusual protagonist–a wounded caregiver–and its muted, unflinching view of disease and wellness.  It’s a piece with a great deal of potential, and one with, unfortunately, perhaps a little way yet to go.  So this month I’d like to look at the tool of implication in fiction–how “Purity, Redux” uses it well, where that same tool falters, and the structural background work it requires from us to make it effective.

“Purity, Redux” makes a strong first impression.  The Leak is well-named: It brings up all sorts of body horror images–and lets readers fill in their own worst thing from their imagination.  But that horrifying potential is reinforced thoroughly by Ada’s reactions to The Leak, and how she expects other doctors and staff to react.  Characters’ reactions within a story are often a reader’s most useful subtextual guide to how they’re supposed to react, and the unified–and overwhelming–horror with which Ada treats The Leak is our strongest signal to take it seriously, and that Cybele’s reaction truly is exceptional.

That lurking menace pairs well with evocative language like “took the wind out of your lungs,” which resonates with the snowy, remote mountain setting, or the vividness of Ada’s memories of land mines and fire.  The amount that’s unsaid in “Purity, Redux” is most effective there: it hints at pain, topics Ada would do anything to avoid, and depth in character-building.  It also cues readers to pay attention to those silences, and underlines that what’s important in this piece is in what’s not being said.

However, it’s peeking into those silences that opens up questions–not all of which are being answered or even satisfactorily implied.  Why is the Withering a secret?  What percentage is there in keeping it under wraps, and what are they afraid will happen if people know about mortality?  By the time the idea of the Pures comes in, I’m already not sure why they’re necessary, or what they’re for; what deeper conflict is happening in this society that’s spurring a conflict between people who are pro-death and people against it?  Since the conflict only appears when it’s plot-necessary, it’s hard to be invested in revelations about something I didn’t know, until then, existed.

Most importantly, though: Why don’t Ada and her colleagues die?  The question of their immortality is lurking under the entirety of “Purity, Redux”, and it’s the biggest missing piece there is in the story.  While immortality would be normal to Ada, to readers it’s not, and there’s an obvious question, whenever we introduce a speculative element on which a story hinges, of how, what, and why–not to request a technical document on the worldbuilding in this piece, but to have a logical, coherent sense of causality: Why this world is not our own, and how it got from ours to this.

There’s a sense that “Purity, Redux” is structured to avoid those questions.  The episodic nature of the piece makes it harder to connect with Ada, Cybele, and the Director than it potentially could be, and means that the most impactful and conflict-laden scenes in “Purity, Redux”–Cybele’s escape, the interrogation by the guards, the Director actually tightening security, what Cybele stole and why those records are left in the church, not taken with her–are left off the page, and only referred to later.  In a sense, most of “Purity, Redux” takes place in flashback or avoidance, off the page–and that somewhat weakens the impact of those events, and the piece as a whole.

I’ve mentioned before that fiction worldbuilding is a bit like an iceberg: It’s the 90% you don’t see that makes the 10% you do see work at all.  For “Purity, Redux” I’d suggest that some more attention could be paid to that structural 90% of the iceberg.  Even if it’s not told on the page, a knowledge of the whys and whats of this world, implied and left like bread crumbs, could make the entirety of the story more credible, fleshed out, and impactful.  Even if Ada is not aware of her immortality being abnormal, it’s very plausible to have her report accurate details, accurate contradictions that the readers can put together, knowing what we know, without her making those connections in her own POV.

Attention to this point might help solve the greatest weakness in “Purity, Redux”: its reliance on a twist ending. The Withering being nothing more than natural death is hard to feel anything about for me as a reader, with all those questions unanswered: instead of shock or satisfaction, I’m just left wondering about those whats and whys.

To suggest a general direction, I’d point out that for readers like us, for whom natural death as a concept is not a shock or horror but a fact of life which we’ll all face, it’s particularly tricky to make that an impactful revelation. It’s important, as writers, to remember that while we work within the world of our stories–and work with the perspectives and values of the characters we create–we also have to work to bridge those values with the context of our readers, as close as we can. Revelations, in fiction, are meaningful because the author’s guided us into why they’re meaningful, provided through that same tool of implication mixed with outright textual statements.

So all that being said, I suspect a draft that pays some real attention to the undercarriage of this story, and this world, to sort out the fundamental questions which drive “Purity, Redux” might go a long way to making its revelation of what Ada’s facing meaningful, impactful, and satisfying–and extending the skill with which its worldbuilding around The Withering and the Leaks is constructed into the rest of the piece.

Best of luck!

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