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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Judith Tarr

She Doth Teach The Stars To Sing by Sam Pisciotta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for the read, and best of luck!

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

Omega Paradox Alpha: Prometheus Chapter 1 by David Beltran

The Space Between, Chapter 1 by M. Kung

–Judith Tarr

Lost Leaves by Charlotte Haley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch out for slack phrasing. For example:

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

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

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

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

–Judith Tarr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for the read, and best of luck!

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

Cageborn by Jamie Boyd

–Judith Tarr