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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What in all of creation was going on?

How could she leave him now?

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

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

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

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

For example,

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

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

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

A heartbeat contracted within his ear canals

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

At the corners of her eyes the crevices carved deeper in

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

And in the same sentence,

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

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

Sometimes images could be toned down, as well.

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

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

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

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

–Judith Tarr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two things stood out for me as I read.

1. Plotting and Structure

The opening is fairly brisk and dives right into the action, though the prose could be tighter. On that, see observation number 2. The second half stops the action for a lengthy session of expository dialogue, in which we get the backstory in detai, though a character who is developed enough to be interesting, but who seems to exist primarily to convey information the protagonist needs before she can move on. Another character shows up in the midst of this; her arrival seems rather random, and it doesn’t seem to tie in with the exposition.

Though the author’s note does not specify, I got the impression that the novel is a sequel and that this chapter is designed to fill in the new reader on the events of the previous volume. Whether or not that impression is accurate, the chapter puts the plot on hold while Jude is filled in on what’s happened since the last time she was conscious. There’s a lot of information, a lot of offstage action, and a lot of people and places and politics and events that the reader has to process before the story moves on.

Conveying the information in dialogue, with character quirks and bits of stage business—cooking, eating, exchanging introductions, stopping for the arrival and departure of a third party—is meant to frame the exposition in active and interesting ways. Dialogue is active, we’re taught in writing classes, and characters talking is a kind of action. It’s alive. It’s people interacting.

A character telling another character all the things that have happened over a period of months, even with the tellee asking questions and getting answers, is a technique I call “offstaging.” Action happens offstage. Characters talk about it onstage. It sets up a barrier between the reader and the action.

If this is a sequel and Jude (as well as the reader coming to the series for the first time) does need to know all of it before she can make the next set of choices that move the plot, there may be other ways to convey the information. In a world in which magic works, she might experience the flashbacks as visions—removing the filter of Abe’s narration. She might actively seek out the different sets of information through some form of scrying, library-trawling, googling. Abe might give her hints and clues which she has to decipher more gradually, which in turn will reduce the number of names and conflicts and events that the reader has to process at this early stage in the narrative.

If this is the first volume of a series, there’s at least a novel’s worth of backstory in Abe’s exposition. It might be conveyed through the narrative, revealed as each piece of information is directly relevant to Jude’s actions and interactions. Breaking up the exposition will help the story to move ahead more quickly, and give Jude more room to reveal her personality, her wants and needs, her history and trauma.

One thing that may help the pacing and give the narrative more room to move is my second observation:

2. Tightening the Prose

The narrative voice gets a good start on signaling Urban Fantasy and establishing Jude as the tough-gal protagonist with a nice turn of wit. The opening action is also a good start. There’s a lot of good potential in the initial setup.

One way to bring that potential even more to the fore is to trim and tuck the prose, make it sharper and clearer, and heighten the tension and suspense through the structure of the sentences. In general, action likes to progress in short, punchy bursts: brief sentences, relatively simple syntax. This doesn’t mean writing in a rapid chop and never slowing down for a longer or more leisurely section of narrative, but there are a few stylistic habits that might be worth rethinking.

“And” splices, for example, connecting separate actions. “But,” “so,” and “then” have the same effect. They weaken the force of the story by stringing actions together rather than letting each one hold its own space.

I swung it at his head, but he dodged, so I flung it instead at the mirror over the sink hard enough to shatter the glass.

Try breaking up the sentence. Remove the conjunctions. Let each action punch on its own—bam, bam, bam. Then at the end, which dribbles off a bit, keep the action going: I flung it at the mirror over the sink. The glass shattered.

Here too, rather than stringing clauses together, try them as separate sentences:

On my way to the door, I slammed my hip against the end of the bed and fell to my hands and knees. The impact made my stomach lurch and I bit my tongue to keep from gagging.

See how removing the and splices changes the way the actions come across. If you keep the first and, try breaking up the second sentence, so that the two separate physical responses take place separately.

Another way to heighten the force of a sentence, particularly in an action scene, is to use active constructions. Gerunds—words that end in ing—slow and soften the action. They dangle off the edge of a sentence, weakening its force. A series of gerunds can slow down the action, particularly in a series of sentences with the same structure.

I took another breath, shaking my head as if it might loosen that memory and let it slip away. I moved my hands to my head, taking some comfort in running my fingers through my hair. It was longer than I remembered, curling past my shoulders.

Breaking up the clauses, again, can make each piece of the action stronger, more assertive. Varying the sentence structure keeps the reader’s eye and mind engaged, providing a little bit of friction to move the story forward. Replacing gerunds with active verbs can further enhance the effect.

When I’m revising my own prose, one thing I watch out for is a tendency to repeat information. I might try several different ways to say the same thing, then in revision pick the one that works the best for the context.

The flip-flops were uncomfortable, and not quiet. The slap of plastic foam on the pavement grated on my already-fried nerves. No doubt anyone in a three-block radius could hear it and tail me, and running in these things was going to result in an instant face-plant, Faerie powers or not.

These three sentences might condense into one, focusing on the details that want to repeat: the noise and the discomfort of her stolen footwear. One clause for the noise, one for the awkwardness, and then an active bit rather than a potential passive: she tries to run in them, they flap noisily, she starts to stumble, she has to slow down and pull herself together.

Sometimes blocking out a scene for my own use means trying different ways to convey my character’s actions and reactions.

My stomach twisted and I caught myself against a building, the fire in my veins extinguished. I kept my gaze on the sidewalk to fight off the visions of the people I’d already broken. The startling ache behind my eyes meant I couldn’t let those memories come back in detail. I’d never been the type of girl who dissolved into tears on the street and this wasn’t the time to start.

Here I might choose one of these sentences to keep, the one that best sums up what she’s doing and feeling. The rest I’d move to my Outtakes file, to save for later.

In draft, too, it can be tempting to insert a full description of a new character, as a sort of note to self.

She took a few steps into the room. She moved like a dancer. She had flawless brown skin and short, curly hair that started light blue at the roots then faded into a more normal black as it reached her ears. A tiny diamond stud twinkled in one nostril.

In revision, I ask myself which particular detail is directly relevant at this particular point. That’s the one I keep. The rest, again, I put aside. It may come in handy later.

Even if it doesn’t, I’ve given myself a fuller picture of who she is and what she looks like. If I’ve chosen the right detail, the reader will pick up the rest.

Jude has a nice strong voice. Tighter prose and sharper focus, along with some rethinking of how to convey the backstory, will make that voice even clearer. Even in this draft I have some sympathy for her predicament, and I’m curious to see how she sets about getting out of it—or, considering the state of her luck, how she manages to dig herself in even deeper.

–Judith Tarr