The Mongoose Can’t Open The Lock On Its Cage by Kate Orman

I loved the eerie, vaguely Ancient Sumerian world of “The Mongoose Can’t Open the Lock On Its Cage”: a strange, sweet, multidimensional archipelago of three-dimensional towns scattered through a four-dimensional wilderness, and the complications it puts into people’s relationships as they rely on each other. It’s a piece with tons of potential, and a lot already going right on the sentence level, but not yet developed fully in terms of characterization and plot. So this month, I’d like to talk about how we can use poetic tools—assonance, the unexpected word—to worldbuild a genre story, or solve the places it’s not working yet.

First off, “The Mongoose Can’t Open the Lock On Its Cage” starts with what any story envies: a killer first line. “The troupe walked out of hell tied together with rope” is a remarkably effective opening sentence: a combination of simple, direct sentence structure, poetic assonance (three T-sounds that shape the cadence of the words), and a set of words I would never expect in combination—except not in a showy or flashy way. The counterbalance between the simplicity of the structure and the novelty of the words in it, balanced on a stable rhythm to the ear (which is also a good choice for a story about storytelling!) is absolutely perfect. It’s instantly compelling, and instantly sets a tricksterish, surrealist, off-kilter tone.

While it’s a tool that’s more mentioned in the context of poetry—not so much prose!—that use of assonance really does add a great deal, very subtly. “Gunu the guide” reinforces that folkloric feeling in the first paragraph. The implied weirdness and exhaustion in “under a simple sun” is massive, and builds Gunu’s characterization early while feeling—in itself!—like a simple sentence. Ma-az’s almost incantory, odelike “holy Gunu” and “magical Gunu” bring back the sense of an ancient epic—while also making it clear that he’s absolutely sucking up.

All this creates a comfortable unreality that absolutely mirrors the sense of towns scattered through a wilderness-esque expanse of hell that only some neurologies can see. It’s picking up counterbalances in the broader worldbuilding: the normalcy of keeping bees, dealing with workaday corruption and hard-to-get news while the mathematicians watch hell through telescopes. Again, that sense of balance—the odd, fantastical, and the pedestrian—keeps me engaged in Lunizuh Town as a place. It’s neither too strange to emotionally invest in or too routine to pay attention to.

That sense of combined strangeness and the everyday are the major strength of “The Mongoose Can’t Open the Lock On Its Cage”—a poetry strength. It’s evoking the act of seeing wonder in the everyday, like contemporary poets, or finding the emotion in the strange, like speculative ones. So I’m being nudged into reading this piece through poetry-logic, and it’s through poetry-logic that I can see spaces for improvement in the next drafts.

The major suggestions I have for “The Mongoose Can’t Open the Lock On Its Cage” are about the places—both in the plot and in its overall structure—where that sense of balance between the mundane and the strange falters. While the sentence-level balance between big, counterfactual concepts and minimalist prose is fundamentally a good one, there’s places where I think it’s tipping a little too far into minimalism, and the flow of the piece devolves for a while into anecdotes and sketches—and pieces of this story get lost.

On the most basic sentence level, there are missing textures, tastes, and details within this whole world. Once we hit the third scene—Jot seeing Ma-az’s arm—the space they’re inhabiting is becoming more and more sparse on the page. While it’s functional to have Lunizuh Town be a town like any other when compared to hell, where they’ve just been? The spectacle of that missing arm needs something grounding to counterbalance it: a wall texture, the kind of floor, the level of light, the feeling in Gunu or Jot’s own bodies. What is normal about the space in which this scene takes place?

Likewise, there’s missing balance when Ma-az and Gunu are walking through hell. They’re explaining the theory of the worldbuilding, but the world they’re walking through is not rendered in any sensory way—and Gunu can see it. The scene needs grounding, and we have a POV character who can ground us; I think there’s value in fleshing that out.

On a word-choice level, there’s a slightly smaller suggestion: the question of the droplet. In a story full of extremely evocative images and words, it’s not a very defined or concrete term—the word tells me nothing about either the neurological or magical aspects of this ability to traverse hell in the ways that “a simple sun” does. I’d normally not get this micro, but given the way poetry techniques are working in this story, I want to suggest finding a finer word for this idea: something that throws a little light or shadow on what it is, how it works, how Gunu feels about it.

Taken up to the plotting level, the sense of minimalism has most revelations in the story introduced later, as an afterthought, rather than played straight with readers—and the consequences of that knowledge allowed to play out. Things like the theft and the plan to abandon Ma-az don’t quite work as action described in media res, because they don’t have the context built up to make those decisions make sense in retrospect. There’s little prefiguring for the idea that Ma-az’s theft has been discovered and the town doesn’t trust the troupe anymore; they seem to treat them absolutely neutrally, with pretty much standard hospitality. Reading back, I can’t find any signs otherwise that would have tipped off a problem, or shown me the pieces of the problem I didn’t have eyes to see before. There’s too much minimalism, not enough straightforward strangeness, and my faith in the plot suffers for it.

I don’t normally do this, but I would go so far as to suggest rethinking what kind of ending would suit a world that’s built to these specifications. Ultimately, the current draft of “The Mongoose Can’t Open the Lock On Its Cage” is falling into one of the templates described best on Strange Horizons’s “Stories We’ve Seen Too Often” list: a variant of people breaking the rules and getting punished. It’s a fairly standard arc, where the story’s primed me to look for something rich, weird, wild. To abuse the metaphor: it’s the expected word; it doesn’t rhyme with what’s come before. So I will go so far as to say that I think there is a much more interesting story in this place, these characters, these language structures, and these interactions—one that matches closer to what the story itself is telling me to look for here.

“The Mongoose Can’t Open the Lock On Its Cage” is telling me, through its techniques, its structures, the way its people talk, that this is a piece made half of myth and poetry. All the things that work for me as a reader here lean into that sense of the odd and wild, framed by simplicity. I think if the places where the story isn’t quite clicking yet also make that lean—bring themselves into alignment, into rhyme with the rest, as if this was a poem!—something wonderful will happen here.

Best of luck with the piece!

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

Impy by Steve Brady

One effective way of drawing readers into your story is with a series of questions and answers.  “Impy” does this very well.  The first sentence describes the protagonist being awakened by a guard at 4:30 AM.  This makes me wonder, “Why so early?” and “Why a guard?”  In the third sentence, “today is a special day” raises another question in my mind:  “Why is today special?”  These are not earth-shattering questions, but readers don’t need to have earth-shattering questions in their mind to keep reading.  A series of clear, small questions can create curiosity and anticipation that make readers continue to the next sentence.  Those questions are like a trail of breadcrumbs readers are popping in their mouths as they read.

The story also needs to provide answers.  Too many questions without any answers don’t allow readers to swallow those breadcrumbs, and they can get overwhelmed with questions, frustrated, and confused.  If you can both answer a previous question and raise a new question in a sentence, readers will be doubly engaged.  For me, this happened in the second paragraph of “Impy,” with the line, “You can have anything you want for breakfast today.” This reveals that the protagonist is scheduled for execution, and this is his last meal.  This answers two of my previous questions, “Why a guard?” and “Why is today special?”  And it raises two new questions, bigger ones:  “What crime did he commit?” and “Is he actually going to be executed or will he escape it in some way?”  The next paragraph answers the question about his crime; the question about his execution is one that raises suspense and dominates the rest of the story.

There are a few ways in which this technique can go wrong.  Questions can be unclear or too complicated, particularly at the beginning, for readers to understand.  Or questions may be too “in the weeds” for readers to care about them or their answers.  Too many questions may be piled up without answers.  Answers may be unclear or overly complicated.  Or, particularly with the bigger questions, the answers may not be satisfying.

I felt the first scene of this story worked very well, making me feel a lot of curiosity and suspense.  Another “big” question raised in that scene is “Did the protagonist, whose memory is unclear, really kill his son?” The most excitement I felt came when the story prompted the biggest question in the story.  The story is told in second person POV, but almost halfway through, we get this sentence–“You’ve thought you’d finally conquered me before, but I might embarrass you if you let your guard down”—and discover there is a secret “I” lurking in the story. “Who is this I?” I’m dying to know.

For me, the answer to this question is not satisfying, which makes the second scene not as strong as the first.  In the second scene, the protagonist, injected with an experimental drug for his execution, is caught in a dream world while his body is in a coma.  There, he meets the “I” of the story, Impy, who may be an imp, an elf, the devil, a demon, or a part of the protagonist.  The protagonist asks who Impy is, but there is no answer.  The protagonist asks why Impy made him kill his son, but there is no answer.  Impy hints that perhaps there’s some middle ground between “madness” and “haunting.”  While that’s an interesting idea, for me, it’s an idea that needs to be explored through an entire story, so I could see the interactions between the protagonist and Impy and try to figure out for myself whether Impy is a part of the protagonist’s mind or some external force.  As is, this idea is not raised until the end, and I don’t really get to know either the protagonist or Impy, so it’s impossible for me to form an opinion about what Impy is.  The biggest question is basically answered with a question, which is hard to make satisfying.

If the author is interested in exploring this question, then I think the story probably ought to take place earlier in the protagonist’s life, when he is sensing the presence and influence of Impy inside him.

If, instead, the author is interested in showing us the protagonist headed for execution and revealing the presence of Impy near the end, then I think the story needs to provide clear and compelling answers to the questions that have been raised. And in stories that have revelations near the end, it’s important to plant evidence earlier in the story that will support the answer.  For example, in a murder mystery, the murderer is usually revealed near the end, answering our question about who did it, but in addition to that, as we think back over the story, we find that this answer changes how we viewed previous events and provides a better understanding of those events.  I don’t think that’s happening yet.

There are a couple other things I want to briefly mention.  One is that the use of this experimental drug seems coincidental.  The fact that Impy is inside the protagonist has nothing to do with why he was chosen for the drug, so that feels manipulated by the author rather than arising from a strong causal chain of events.

The other thing is that the protagonist seems to know about Impy at the beginning of the second scene, yet in the first scene, there is no mention of Impy in the protagonist’s thoughts.  Whenever readers are getting a character’s thoughts and some important fact that character knows is withheld, that makes readers feel cheated.  I think that aspect of the story needs some more thought.

I enjoyed the first scene a lot and thought questions and answers were handled skillfully there.  I also think the second person POV with the hidden first person works well.  I hope my comments are helpful.  You might enjoy the novel THE PERFECT WIFE by J. P. Delaney.

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

Dragon Ships: Chapter 4 by Ewan O’Doherty

The author’s note on this chapter asks a very good question. How much exposition is too much in fantasy? Does it make a difference what kind of fantasy it is? And, by implication, when can or should the action actually begin?

Death By Flower by angela rose

It’s a challenge to write a complete story in a small number of words.  Writers of flash fiction have many strategies to do so.  They can keep the story small (only a few characters, one setting, one scene, over a short period of time), or they can use fixed forms (such as writing the story as an obituary, recipe, Amazon review, weather report), or they can use other strategies (such as skipping over most of the story and showing only a few key bits, recapitulating [summarizing] much of the story, using conventions readers know).  It’s this last category of techniques that “Death by Flower” uses to convey Karen’s story in such a compressed way.  We successfully follow Karen all the way from her normal life as a ten-year-old through the transformation of her parents into zombie-like creatures and the collapse of society to Karen’s own transformation.  That’s a lot to cover, but the piece successfully conveys all of this by skipping over large chunks of time and focusing on key moments, recapitulating much of the story, and using a pandemic leading to zombies, which are elements readers know that don’t require a lot of explanation or development.  We get a sense of the progression of the pandemic with a few details, such as the failure of the water supply and phone service, and Karen being left behind by the authorities.  The headings establishing the passage of time help to keep us oriented and provide a sense of events moving forward.  All of that works well to clearly convey what happened to Karen and her family, and to imply what happened to the world.

Prickly Rats by Kat Orman

This month, “Prickly Rats” got my attention with its ruined, eerie setting, subtle plot, and mirroring between animals, androids, people as living things who matter in a world that disagrees. It’s trying to do a lot of narrative work in a very short space—about 2,000 words—and so this month, I’d like to talk a bit about how we can build place and character efficiently at very short lengths, and knowing where to best use the page space.

The structure in “Prickly Rats” is already doing that work quite well: within a straightforward narrative style, it sets up space, place, and tone immediately with the boat’s disrepair and Shipwreck Cay’s barrenness. And, notably, just the sheer amount of trash scattered over this whole setting (it’s a very textural setting: full of floating and chewing and desalination). It’s a subtle but excellent visual clue as to the state of Demi’s Australia, and how she and Leo are being regarded: more discards. And it’s a great way to contrast her tenderness to the chickens and care to not step on seabird eggs—and clue us in that that’s meaningful.

As a narrative strategy for shorter pieces, this is smart: knowing which elements of craft we want readers putting their work into—plot and theme, here—and making sure the others are fairly clear and direct, so it’s harder to get sidetracked. There’s a sense of where to use one’s page space built into “Prickly Rats”: being straightforward with the elements that support the point, and giving readers more subtlety with the point, so we engage them more actively.

The end isn’t quite firing yet, however, and I think it’s because there are parts of that plot layer that are still a bit too subtle. However, I think there are ways to add the information “Prickly Rats” needs to work while keeping it compact.

Some narrative moments here do, I think, just need a little more air: The idea that Demi’s normal home is a cage slips right by very easily, considering everything else going on in that paragraph, and it might need a little more support in order to reinforce why she makes her choice, and why this ending should hit emotionally. It’s also pivotal to the metaphor being drawn between her, Leo, the discarded robots, and the animals, which flags it to me as something that shouldn’t just be slid by, and deserves more page space. As a litmus test: This detail is feeding the central theme, so it merits a bit more attention.

Likewise, some of the major plot points do come on a little suddenly: the idea that Leo’s being discarded because he knows something worth blackmail, and Demi’s decision to spare his life. If the blackmail angle is more than speculation on Demi’s part—and the ending implies it is—there might be value in ramping up to that a little, or building a bit of context around that idea to show that there’s cause to jump to that conclusion. I think there’s probably room around his introduction, in terms of what the androids are for, to establish what facts about the world would lead Demi down that road.

As for Demi’s decision to spare Leo: it’s a big moment, and the turning point of the entire piece. I think it’s another place where a little air, a little introspection could help spotlight that point. Again: It’s crucial, so it’s something that would have priority to spread out a little.

It is still somewhat unclear what happens at the end: Whether somehow the lightning in the sky implies that something Leo did wrecked the lighthouse, and Shipwreck Cay itself is sinking. It’s another place a few more words would be welcome, especially given the implication that they’re adrift, and no one is coming.

Of course, building out a little needs to be balanced by some strategies to round out “Prickly Rats” at the same length, and I think that tool can best be used in the supporting layers of craft—the ones that aren’t as crucial to understanding the story, but support its sense of realism.

There are ways I think you could round out this world even at the short length, and one of the most notable I missed was colour. There’s a lot of texture in the description of Shipwreck Cay, a lot of height and motion and utility, but not much colour until the second scene. I think it would take very little page space to pull this island into three dimensions with that kind of visual information: colour, the difference in the light off the sea and the boat and the fur of the rats, what Leo actually looks like.

Likewise, I think there’s space to get some physicality in Demi’s mentions of the heat—especially leading up to her heat exhaustion. It’s 50C, which is terrifically hot; what does that feel like in her body, rather than as an abstract? It’s small information, but information which, again, makes this story-world rounder and more real.

Likewise, her class background; is there a difference between dialects or regional words Leo and Demi use? It’s a subtle way to suggest Leo’s used to blackmail-worthy circles and that Demi is not, without adding words per se, just changing a few of the ones already in use.

I’ll note that these are substitutions because they’re not crucial details: they can take up less space because it’ll matter less if that specific piece of information is missed. But they’ll be picked up by readres in the texture of the story, and contribute to an overall feel of who these people are, and where this place is.

The author’s notes ask if this piece is convincing; I think it’s most of the way there. With a little more clarity on those points that need to breathe—crucial points, like plot and theme—and a few careful, considered layers added with substitution to make this world pop more strongly, there’s no reason it shouldn’t stand out on the page.

Thanks for the read, and best of luck!

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

Murder On Marzanna (prologue + Chapter 1) by Adam G.I. Targill

Every so often with an Editor’s Choice I like to focus on what works in a submission, rather than on what needs work. I think we can learn as much from what’s done right as from what’s not quite there.

It’s challenge enough to write in one genre, and even more so to combine two—in this case, hard SF and murder mysteries. It takes a deft hand and a good grasp of both genres. I like what I’m seeing so far on both fronts.

The best part for me is that the mystery grows out of the science. You can’t have one without the other. The idea of 3-D printing space colonists is one of those things that’s both classic and right up to the minute. I’ve seen variations on it using clones, or data downloads into lab-grown bodies, and of course there’s the Star Trek-style transporter, but this does what science fiction loves to do: it illuminates the future through today’s cutting-edge technology.

That’s why, for me, the exposition works. It answers questions before I can ask them, and clarifies concepts without overwhelming my liberal-arts-major mind with technobabble. The plot keeps moving and the mystery keeps deepening, even while I’m being filled in on essential aspects of worldbuilding. The only quibble I might have is the analogy to a fax machine. That seems antiquated now. Would it even be a thing by the “now” of the novel

One thing that helps a lot is that hard science fiction, as a genre, runs on exposition. I expect it; it’s part of the way the genre works. The same applies to murder mysteries. They’re all about details and procedures. We expect explanations. We want them. That’s how the mystery gets solved—through the accumulation of details that add up to whodunit and why.

I love the balancing act that is Sophia back on Earth, Sophia who gets murdered, and Sophia who has been reprinted from a seven-month-old scan. They’re all the same person, and yet each has a slightly different set of experiences. The fact that the most recent copy on Marzanna is dead is the focus of the mystery—and that’s the beauty of the whole thing. Not only is the victim solving her own murder, the mystery resolves around a flaw in the system. It’s complicated without being confusing, which is what a good mystery needs.

I don’t think the characterization suffers to any great degree. There’s a fair amount of setup, yes, but it’s interesting and it’s essential to understanding what’s going on. The cast of characters is small enough to keep me from bogging down between the worldbuilding and the people inhabiting it. It’s further reduced here; we meet three of the personnel aside from Sophia, and can be sure we’ll meet the rest in later chapters.

For now, it’s enough to have Sophia’s viewpoint. We see that Johann likes to explain things, and I get the impression that Sophia, even when she isn’t just waking up from being reprinted, probably isn’t a science guy. Asha throws a spanner in the works; the relationship Sophia remembers isn’t the one Asha is in, or out of. That’s good friction to keep the wheels of story turning, and it grows out of the main science-fictional element, the technology that allows a character to come back from the dead. Then at the end we meet Junwei, and that’s our opening to the next chapter.

It works in terms of pacing. I want to know the things I’m being told. They build the world around me and give me clues as to how it works. Now I’ve got a handle on that, I’ll expect the characters to show me more of themselves. The mystery will deepen, too, I’m sure, as I learn more about what happened.

It’s a strong start, nicely and confidently written. I would definitely read on.

— Judith Tarr

Shaded by Steph C.

This submission has some great things going for it. The narrative voice is right on point for urban fantasy. It doesn’t read as if I’m coming into the middle of a party where I don’t know anyone–which is always the challenge with the second volume of a series. It does a good job of sketching out the world and the characters, without falling into blocks of exposition. I feel as if I get what’s going on and who these people are, with just enough hints and mystery to keep me reading.

Since this is an all but final draft of a completed ms., I have a couple of thoughts about the prose. The dialogue has a nice snap to it, and there are some good lines. I like the final line a lot. Way to hook me into the next chapter. I want to know more!

Where I think the prose could use more polish is in the pacing and the development of the action. The draft feels a little slow, the tension a little slack; it’s not quite as strong as it might be. Two things might help with that.

First, shorter, sharper sentences, moving briskly along. Wherever a sentence stretches out in clauses connected by as and so and to a lesser extent and and but, try breaking it up. Give each action its own, concise space. See it moves along more quickly and packs just a little more punch.

The other thing I would suggest is to break the gerund habit. Gerunds or participles are all the -ing words that begin sentences or draw them out into strings of clauses. There are a lot of them in this chapter, and they weaken the tension and soften the suspense.

Try replacing them all with active constructions, and as with the conjunctions, breaking up sentences into shorter, punchier pieces. See how that changes the way the story moves. Is the action quicker? Does it sharpen the tension?

With writer-habits and frequent-flyer words, I like to set a challenge. Take them all out, replace them or remove them altogether. Some may need to go back in, and that’s fine. Sometimes we want things to slow down a little, to take a breath before we plunge back into the fight. But in the fight itself, think active; think sharp, short, and to the point. Remember one of my favorite sayings: Less Is More.

Best of luck, and happy revising!

— Judith Tarr