By Way Of Madness Chapter One by A.S. Walker

There’s an interesting story taking shape here. The body in the wagon, the hints of complicated politics, the sense that this world is probably more drimdark than noblebright, all come through in this opening chapter. There’s also a sense that we’re settling in for the length and depth of an epic fantasy. The pacing is leisurely, with frequent pauses for description, backstory, ruminations on this subject or that.

Not every novel needs to begin with a bang, literal or otherwise. Epic fantasy in particular takes its time, travels down sometimes lengthy byways, explores the world in detail. The reader knows they’re settling in for a long read. It’s an immersive experience.

With that in mind, I’m going to comment not so much on the pacing as on the ways in which the prose tends to slow it down. Some of what we see here may work later in the narrative, when the reader knows the characters better and is more invested in the minutiae of the story. At the beginning, the prose may want to be a little more economical, with fewer repeated facts and phrases.

We may for example want to move more quickly from road to city, and then from gatekeeper to magistrate. Shorter conversations with less repetition. More concise descriptions, and less backstory—retaining details that are directly relevant to the context, but saving the rest for later.

One thing that may help with this is to note how often we’re tagged with Ryndal’s viewpoint. We’re constantly reminded that he’s thinking, reflecting, noticing, seeing, feeling, reacting. Each reminder sets up a barrier between the reader and the protagonist, distancing the reader from Ryndal’s experience.

It might be worth removing the tags and seeing how the narrative works without them. We may need some of them, but the story may come through more clearly without the rest. We’ll be right there with Ryndal, rather than standing apart from the action and being told what he’s thinking and seeing and feeling.

We don’t want to gallop madly from scene to scene. That’s not how epic fantasy works. But the scenes can move ahead more smoothly, and the pacing can be less leisurely, without losing the essential character of the genre.

My other observation about this chapter is more logistical. Ryndal has a horse and a wagon. The connection between the two isn’t as clear as it might be. Ryndal appears to be riding the horse, which is possible when a horse is hitched to a vehicle, but I’m not getting a clear sense that the vehicle is hitched to the horse. In places it reads as if Ryndal is riding the horse and pulling the wagon himself.

Presumably that’s an issue of clarity in the prose. I’m supposing that in fact the wagon is hitched to the horse and Ryndal is riding the horse. If that’s the case, is he not sitting in the wagon and driving the horse because it’s too close to the stench of the corpse?

A few notes here. Horses and corpses don’t mix well—horses get spooky around dead things, which means it can be very hard to get them to go near a corpse, let alone be harnessed to a vehicle containing one. The horse must be very well trained to drive, or Ryndal may have found some way to deaden its sense of smell, an ointment or herb or similar. Or both, since even well-trained horses don’t always manage to overcome instinct.

If the horse is Ryndal’s riding horse and has been drafted to pull the wagon, it’s worth noting that horses have to be trained separately to ride or drive. Riding horses can freak completely out when hitched to a wagon. Add a corpse and you’ve got a pretty conclusive No Go. Or, more precisely, Go Very Very Fast Very Very Far Away From Rattly Reeky Chasey Thing. And Never Come Back.

Conversely, if the horse is trained to drive, it may not necessarily be trained to carry a rider. Pulling a cart is a different skill than carrying a live weight. The equipment is also different, with different attachments, locations, and purposes. Driving in particular requires a fairly complex harness, and the wagon is attached to this by means of a shaft or shafts. You can’t simply tie the wagon to the horse’s saddle or bridle.

Horses can be trained to both ride and drive, and often are, but it’s something to keep in mind. Contrary to what we see in movies, if a horse isn’t trained to do a particular thing, it’s not as simple as hitching it up to the cart or jumping on its back. There’s a process, and the horse has definite opinions as to how it will go.

As long as we’re on horses, don’t forget: A horse is not a motor vehicle. It’s a live animal. It needs frequent stops, considerable and regular amounts of feed and water, and rest, which in a city will mean a stable of some kind. It can’t be left standing for hours or days without consequences to its fitness or soundness. It also has a mind of its own, and may wander off if left unattended. And, as I noted above, if it takes sufficient exception to its surroundings, it will leave at speed. Often going through and possibly obliterating anything in its way, including people, other animals, walls, doors, fences, market stalls…

Best of luck with the novel, and happy writing!

— Judith Tarr

SSlam by Noel Gonzales

— Judith Tarr

Night Eyes/A Cozy Fire by Tony Valiulis

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

The Dreamer-Chapter 7: My Partner In Investigation by Kristen Welsh

— Judith Tarr

The New Shah (Prologue) by Griffin Ayaz

I love the combination of ancient history and science fiction. It is not easy to do, and it’s even harder to do well. The writer needs to have a solid grasp of both the historical background and the tropes and traditions of science fiction.

This submission, so far, works for me on both levels. It’s well written, though in the line-edit stage I might suggest that the synonyms be pared down considerably in favor of the characters’ names, their pronouns where possible to avoid confusion, and just one or two alternative phrases. It’s confusing and rather distracting to try to keep track of multiple epithets for each character.

As brief as the prologue is, it does a good job of establishing the relationship between the princes. We quickly come to sympathize with Vidarna and despise Pashata, and we get a quick but compelling glimpse of the Shah as well. Through the references to Vidarna’s later self and the examples of friction with his father, we can see a hint of conflict that may move the plot of the novel proper. Is Vidarna now truly free? Will people finally see which of the princes was the true villain? Or will Vidarna be accused of orchestrating his brother’s murder, and have to suffer even worse consequences than he did when Pashata was alive?

I like it when I can ask questions like this. It means the story is set up well enough to capture my imagination. It makes me want to find out what will happen next.

The overall atmosphere of the prologue feels more historical than science-fictional to me. Certain details point to the novel’s genre: the packbeasts in their lack of specificity (rather than mules or camels or another terrestrial species), and the glow-lily, and of course the Immortal. I wonder if there might be one or two more hints of the alien in among the familiar, plants or animals, foods or fragrances, that aren’t the ones we know. Maybe even a reference to a weapon that signals far future albeit low tech, or a form of technology that’s distinctly not ancient Persian.

I also wonder if there might be more sense of agency in what the Immortal does. Can Vadarna predict where it will emerge, or can he do something to provoke it (voluntarily or otherwise) that then (voluntarily or otherwise) causes Pashata to fall into its maw? I like ambiguity, but I think there might be just a little more here to clarify the truth about what’s happened.

The creature makes me think of Dune with its equally destructive, similarly divine native life, which the Fremen can manipulate for their own purposes. If the parallel is intentional, it might be useful to make the Immortal similarly controllable as well.

Overall, as I said, this prologue works for me. I would definitely read on.

–Judith Tarr

The Dark Of Night by Tyler Burns

Atmosphere is an important component of horror, giving a story an emotional tone that colors everything that happens.  This story, through its setting, situation, and descriptions, succeeds in conveying an atmosphere of barrenness, isolation, darkness, and doom.  The atmosphere contributes to the emotion and suspense of the story, since it makes me feel as if the characters don’t have a chance, and I want to keep reading to find out what happens to them.  The story also employs a classic motif in which those who eat the flesh of someone or something are destined to die.   That provides a causal chain to the plot, a chain of cause and effect, so it doesn’t seem as if the characters are being attacked randomly or because the author wants it to happen.

Here are some thoughts about how the story might be strengthened.

Blaze, the first-person narrator, explains to Sawyer that he encountered the beast, shot off its tail, and then served it for dinner.  But this information comes fairly late in the story, too late to have much effect, though it has been tormenting Blaze throughout.  Coming late in the story, it seems more like an excuse for the beast’s attack rather than a cause for the attack.  And we feel fairly distant from Blaze because he’s very concerned with what he did, and we don’t know what that was for a long time.  It would be better earlier in the piece.

Before I go into that more, I’d like to discuss another element.  Blaze has strong, unspoken affection for Sawyer, and Sawyer feels the same.  In the middle part of the story, Sawyer shares his feelings with Blaze and they consummate their relationship.  There’s not much tension in this portion of the story.  Sawyer says, feels, and does exactly what Blaze has been hoping for.  It could add tension to the story if Sawyer was reluctant.  Perhaps Sawyer had been acting more friendly toward Blaze as Blaze has taken on the cooking duties and worked to create some delicious, hearty meals (as it has been said, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach).  Since they ran out of meat a few days before, Sawyer might have been withdrawing and talking about moving to the city alone.  So when Blaze shoots the tail off the beast, he decides to serve it for dinner in the hope of winning Sawyer over.  This would add some suspense to their relationship and put more at stake when Blaze confesses what he’s done.

In this case, perhaps the story begins with burying Wyatt’s body, and then Blaze and Sawyer return to the cabin, and Blaze serves the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner (of the beast’s tail), and Sawyer says how good it is, and there probably won’t be such good food in the city, and Blaze, knowing this is his last chance and forcing himself to speak, says he could go with Sawyer and cook for him and take care of his needs.  So this might be portrayed a little more as Blaze seducing Sawyer.  This would make Blaze a more active protagonist, struggling to achieve his goal, rather than having Sawyer’s love handed to him with no effort.  This would also give Blaze a stronger motivation for cooking and serving the tail, this key action that leads to their deaths.

Another element that could be strengthened is the first-person voice.  Voice is an important and often overlooked element of story, and it’s extremely prominent in first person.  First person subjective feels like the narrator talking to us, telling us his story.  Because of that, the voice needs to sound like this particular character’s authentic speech.  This can help reveal the character and the world.  In this story, the voice feels inconsistent, shifting fairly often.  At times, Blaze sounds like a cowboy in the old West.  At other times, he sounds like a British man from several centuries ago.  At other times, the voice sounds somewhat Lovecraftian.  Voice can be a slippery thing.  Finding good examples of the voice you’re trying for can help.  For example, if you’re going for an old West feeling, you could find a collection of letters written by people living in the old West, type some of those into your computer five times to get the word choices and phrasings into your mind.  Then you can try to take some of the sentences and change the content to connect to your story while retaining the sentence structures.  Then eventually you can try to write a paragraph from your story in this voice.  You might also find the book Voice by James Scott Bell useful.

There are also some unclear, awkward, or overwritten sentences that take me out of the story.  A study of strong prose could help.  A good way to do this is to find a story by someone else that you think is written really well, written in a way that you would like to write.  Pick a good paragraph and type it into your computer five times.  Then try to type it in without looking at the original.  Compare the two and see what you changed or left out.  Then try again.  Do the same thing with stories by other writers, so you’re feeding yourself really strong prose in a variety of styles.  I would also recommend the book Description by Monica Wood.

Thanks for sharing your campfire story.  I hope these comments are helpful.

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

Accidental Uplift by Green FitzYellow

Welcome to SFF Online Workshop! It’s a great group, with some very experienced critiquers. I hope you’ll find your experience enjoyable as well as useful.

I like the concept of the submission, and appreciate the challenge of writing multiple Rashomon-style viewpoints to build a fuller picture. It’s working for me so far, no problems keeping up with the action, and the characters are clearly enough delineated that I don’t the changes of viewpoint confusing.

I especially like Luna. She makes sense to me as a cat. The way she views the world, the use of sensory imagery, the focus on the wrongness of her human’s smell, are all nicely done. The use of present tense works well here; I would recommend sticking to it in the scene.

Verb tenses tend to wobble throughout the submission. Mostly it’s something to address during line edits, to make sure the narrative moves along consistently. Luna’s scene however (and any subsequent scenes in which she may appear) could gain just a little extra oomph if she sees the world as a perpetual now, versus humans who tell their stories in more conventional past tense.

One thing I would like to suggest in general is to frame the dialogue a little more clearly. Conversations have a way of cutting loose from the narrative, a phenomenon that is sometimes called “floating heads.” Passages of unsupported dialogue can work well in small doses: rapid back-and-forth, no stage business, no reaction shots, just the words of the exchange. At greater length however, the reader’s eye may start skipping, and they’ll lose track of who’s saying what.

Breaking up the dialogue with bits of action or reaction can help. So can plain old “said.” Don’t be afraid of the word. It’s nice and neutral and it does its job. Trying to vary it with “answered” or “responded” or similar options may actually bump the reader out of the story.

Make sure all the dialogue is actually there, too. I noted several instances of summary rather than speech: instead of characters interacting, the story slips into synopsis. Give these bits a little space. Let the characters speak directly. As long it’s concise and to the point, it will be just a bit more sharp and immediate.

And finally, a note on punctuation. The exclamation point is a very strong symbol. It hits the reader in the eye. It yells, I’m! Making! A! Point! Here!

Of all the punctuation marks, the exclamation point is the one that works best if used most sparingly. Save it for major emphasis. Mostly that will appear in dialogue, when characters are literally yelling.

In narrative, it’s almost never necessary to amp the volume that high. Trust your craft; let your words convey the emphasis. If they’re the right words, put together in the right way, they won’t need that extra smack upside the head. The reader will pick up what they need to pick up.

Best of luck with the rest of the story, and happy revising!

— Judith Tarr

Uncanny Six by K.A. Tutin

Stories with numbers in their titles have an amazing power to create anticipation, curiosity, and suspense in readers.  Whether it’s Thirteen Ghosts, The Hateful Eight, The Three Faces of Eve, or “The Three Little Pigs,” we want to keep reading or watching until we’ve explored the full number of items counted in the title.   The same is true of “Uncanny Six.”  The title makes me want to keep reading to learn about all six of “uncanny.”  The first sentence adds to the curiosity and suspense generated by the title, establishing that the uncanny six are children who vanished.  This generates several questions:  What happened to the children?  Why were they taken?  In what ways are they uncanny?  Who is responsible?

Stories that begin by raising a clear and compelling question (or questions) create a strong need in us to keep reading to find the answers.  Mystery stories often draw us in by raising a compelling question.  Horror stories also often have a mystery component and draw us in with a question.  “The Boogeyman” by Stephen King is one example.

“Uncanny Six” drew me in with the title and opening, and then sprinkled hints of answers throughout the story, keeping me reading until the end.  The story offered several surprises along the way:  the narrator is revealed to be the collective first-person point of view of the Uncanny Six, and the answer to the mystery we receive turns out to be one of several, none of which is true.  All of these elements kept me intellectually engaged throughout the story.

Here are some thoughts about how the story might be strengthened.

While I keep reading throughout to find out about the six, I don’t receive as much of the pleasures I’d hoped the story would provide.  I’m expecting a progression in which each of the six provides either more clues about what’s going on or a different type of experience that allows me to see the situation in a new way.  While the details do progress a bit, they are fairly similar for the various children and don’t really seem like clues because they don’t combine to provide the answers to the questions I had at the start.  We find out that when a child vanishes, the other missing children briefly appear, and a nauseating smell and a puddle of water are left behind.  That’s strange and a bit creepy, but it’s not too frightening or disturbing.  The distant point of view means I don’t really know or care about the individual children, so the circumstances of their disappearance have to generate all the emotion and horror in the story.  The details given don’t lead to clear answers about who is responsible, why the children were taken, or what happened to them.  Horror stories sometimes don’t provide clear answers about what has happened, but if they don’t, they usually need to provide a resonant, compelling issue or question that will linger in readers’ minds.  It’s quite challenging to create an ending that resonates with us long after we finish reading it.  I’m not feeling that sort of resonance at the end of this story yet.  We learn of Mister, who is apparently behind the abductions, and the story offers multiple possibilities about who Mister is and why Mister did this, but for me, these possibilities didn’t create a resonant, disturbing question stayed with me after the story was over.  Since I didn’t really care about the children, and the details weren’t especially disturbing for me, I wasn’t very concerned about Mister.

I think there are opportunities in the story to provide more disturbing details, involve readers more, and create stronger resonance.  I would love to get a compelling, horrifying account of how the children were changed, or of how the repeating cycle affected their lives and the lives of their loved ones.  The children, on their return, are quiet and like water and amphibians, which is interesting, but as a reader who has read a fair amount of horror, I’m wanting and expecting more.  Do they look at their parents differently?  Can they remember their parents and their previous life?  Can they still read and speak?  I don’t need to know everything about them in their changed state, but I need some significant details that together paint a very disturbing picture.

I’m not sure I understand what the repeating cycle is.  I think it’s that the children are abducted and returned and abducted and returned over and over.  If so, I think that is by far the most disturbing thing in the story and should be shown more vividly, along with the consequences of that.  For a parent to see her child grow more distant and strange with every reappearance, for a transformation to be more fully realized each time, for more people to be abducted with each cycle, and for the world to change with them could be chilling.

Another area that might be more disturbing and horrifying is the point of view.  We find out near the end that the point of view of the story is the collective first-person perspective of the six children.  Revealing the POV late in a story can provide powerful surprise and a complete reframing of the story in the readers’ minds, which can be exciting and disturbing.  A very exciting reveal using a first-person collective POV is in the novel The Perfect Wife by J. P. Delaney.  In this case, I was excited to find myself in the POV of the children, but when I thought back over the story, it didn’t seem like it had been told by the children.  It spoke of the events in a distant way, not the way the children–even if transformed–would relate the events.  For a revelation like this to be effective, clues need to be planted throughout the text that readers don’t recognize as clues.  They just feel like some odd bits.  But once they get to the revelation, they can think back over the story and realize that those weird aspects of the POV actually make perfect sense now that they know the children are telling the story.  I’m not feeling that yet.  Those odd bits could also make the story seem more disturbing, because the narrative voice is not conveying things in the way a person would normally relate these events.  The POV could relate things in a strange way, and once we got to the revelation that the POV was that of the children, not only would it make sense, it would reveal something more about the transformation of the children and how they had changed.

Finally, I think the style could be strengthened.  Awkward sentences and inappropriate word choices often made me stumble and forced me to re-read sentences to try to understand them.  For example, this sentence tripped me up in several ways:  “Three months later of the same year, another child, a twelve-year-old, Thomas Bigsby, or Tommy as he preferred, was shy and introverted and rarely left his home unless in the company of his parents.”  The initial phrase has unnecessary words and could convey the same information more clearly with “Three months later.”  I think the sentence is meant to convey that three months later Tommy was abducted.  But instead, it says that three months later Tommy was shy and rarely left home.  I think if Tommy was shy, he wasn’t just shy three months after the first abduction.  I think he was shy for an extended period of time.  So it seems like the author lost track of the purpose of the sentence between the beginning and the end.  I realize this is an early draft, but the awkward sentences made it hard to become immersed in the story.

This story definitely pulls me in and keeps me reading to the end.  I hope my comments are helpful.

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

Grayson Chapter 7 by Daniel A.

— Judith Tarr

Brightgloam by Peter S. Drang

This is fun. I like the way it embraces its weirdness—the colors, the shapes and distortions, the synesthesia. There’s an off-the-wall sweetness about the meet-cute and the way the two characters mirror each other’s transformations.

I have some questions about how it all works. Is there any sense of the physical shift? Do people have to adjust to the changes in their bodies? Balance would change, movement would be different. Viewpoints—what happens to vision when both eyes are on the same side? Obviously in a short-short, you won’t want to go into detail, but maybe a line or so, a quick sketch of the feel as well as the smell and taste and sound and sight?

I’m not quite convinced by the beginning of their meeting. It seems as if there needs to be just a hair more to her invitation. A glance, a turn of the head. Some indication as to why she does it. Is it the fact that they’re mirror twins? That she’s looking for a perfect moment, and she believes he’s the perfect one to share it with? Even if it’s pure impulse, it feels as if we need more of a sense of that.

Same applies to the parting. He gets distracted, but why is that a dealbreaker? Is she that strongly opposed to any variation on The Question? If so, why does she agree to meet him again tomorrow? Why not try again today? Why not do a reboot right then and there? What makes it essential that they wait? Can they even trust that the world will be the same, or that they won’t be transformed out of all recognition?

None of this needs a lot of wordage. A line or a phrase would do it. Just a touch of clarity, to make it all shine brighter.