Shrinking by Taliyah St. James

“Shrinking” caught my attention this month through its incredible thematic work, its emotional intelligence, and the way it puts a persistent genre trope through the kind of intersectional examination that creates stakes, investment, and impact. So this month, I’d like to talk about how multifaceted takes on a theme and wider context make our characters’ choices meaningful, and why we can get more character connection out of specific, richly-characterized protagonists than more loosely-drawn blanker slates.

The core idea of “Shrinking” is one many genre readers have seen: a dystopian, financially oppressive future where poorer people sell their very feelings to the rich to survive. It’s in the thoughtful, multifaceted, deliberate, and deft execution of that idea—the specific story “Shrinking” builds upon that idea—that it absolutely shines. The thematic idea it’s working with—poverty, what different versions of poverty are on a nuanced and systemic level—is woven through every paragraph.

On the plot level, “Shrinking” is a story about a woman, historically and in terms of class location better off than her partner, who walks to a feelings-selling clinic and chooses her old lifestyle over her relationship. On the barest level of plotting analysis, it’s a straight line. But on the thematic level, that walk and that choice comment on and reflect an infinite, rich, horrific, detailed context—and become more than they are, because of what “Shrinking” loads into that choice.

“Shrinking” is a story about poverty, privilege, and class, and it situates every single character in that framework immediately through the work of little details. So many offhand comments show how Aimee’s more affluent assumptions and habits persist: leaving the water running, resenting the house for not regulating it for her, not remembering the names of her neighbours, the secret-splurge manicures, legitimately not understanding Mrs. Washington’s reaction to her before they all get screened by security and Aimee, light-skinned, walks right through, thinking poverty is not having the latest phone. And bigger ones, too, like Aimee’s family considering her lifestyle a “phase” and the refrain of “it’s expensive to be poor”. Everything builds that context on multiple levels, subtle or explicit; every detail feeds, in a way that feels organic, into the river that is its main thematic idea.

The advice of “show, don’t tell” is a bit of a cliché at this point, and it’s been worked over in many ways, but “Shrinking” does an incredible job at showing—demonstrating—who Aimee is, where she’s from, and how she fits or doesn’t fit her current environment and relationships. It allows readers to pick up on how her actions and attitudes align with what she’s saying—or, more importantly, where they don’t, and lets the author communicate important information about this character, this world, our world through those disjuncts. Aimee doesn’t always understand these gradations, but readers can—which creates a tension and interest in the scenes where she’s just in transit, because the conflict between Aimee’s perspective and the narrative’s is a source of readerly fuel.

But the context widens further: Depicting Aimee as a nuanced, complicated person occupying only one position in the bucket of positions that all qualify as “poor”—and depicting other positions in John and Mrs. Washington—does an incredible amount of narrative work. The conflict that drives the story—her love for John versus the gap between their assumed normals that she isn’t really willing to bridge—is brought through at the same time the story’s thematic core comments on how poverty functions structurally in our world, now, today, at the same time as the worldbuilding avoids didacticism or flattening by showing multiple versions of similarly grouped experiences. And this happens at the same time that every detail contributes to Aimee’s characterization, making her a round, complex person—a very specific person, living a very specific experience.

One of the failure modes of dystopia is, I think, the flat landscape: a simplified world where X is good and Y is bad, and one situation fits all—when life is not ever like that. In reading “Shrinking”, I think this piece is a good example of how, while seeing oneself and one’s own situation in a story can be a good connection point for readers—and lead to the temptation to draw characters who are as assumed-generic as possible so readers can project themselves onto that character—empathy or emotional recoil over another’s specific situation, recognizing not the circumstances that caused it but the feelings of love and trappedness and misunderstanding and resentment that are part of it, can be an even better connector. It hooks readers into the space where, for this person, in this moment, everything is this choice. It illuminates spectacularly for the reader how they feel.

So by the time readers reach the explanation of the procedure—the stereotypically technical explanation, near the end—the action has been weighted with so much social and emotional significance that it’s no longer about what it’s about. How the Shrink works itself becomes a symbol of the conflict Aimee feels between her assumptions and expectations and what is legitimately a real, pure love; it’s the culmination of every piece of context the story has offered us so far about what Aimee and John’s life is, the structural barriers of poverty, race, assumption, social censure, personal shame, desire, and mid-belonging she lives in. It’s not even close to a flat choice. So that explanation—the stereotypical explanation of how the Shrink works—becomes the narrative equivalent of the slow click of a rollercoaster going up the hill, ready to drop.

When it drops like inevitability, the impact is terrific.

There are at least a thousand more words I could write on why “Shrinking” functions so very well, how deftly it handles its material, how the very idea Shrinking hinges upon—of running out of money, so making yourself smaller to fit—rings brutally true and familiar. It’s an incredibly well-crafted piece of work, one I think is ready to go to editors, and I very much look forward to seeing it in print.

Best luck!

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

Stonoshki by Rayne Hall

When I get to the millipede in the third paragraph, and Ahren throws it away and it seems to come back, I’m hooked.   That creates a good mystery–is there something supernatural about the millipedes?–and makes me want to keep reading.  The story also has some nice description of the millipedes.  I can see them vividly, and that helps to make the situation feel immediate and real.  The strange behavior of the millipedes (and centipedes) exists within a fairly normal-seeming context, with the characters and their interactions feeling pretty believable.  That helps the bugs to stand out and makes the Ahren’s situation easy to relate to.  These elements work well to keep me engaged until the end.

That said, once I get to the ending, I’m very disappointed.  By raising the question of whether the bugs are supernatural or not, the story promises me some sort of answer or resolution to this mystery.  Yet no answer is provided.

Instead, the story introduces, right before the end, the discovery of a new lethal centipede species.  Rather than resolving a mystery about millipedes, the story provides information about centipedes.  Rather than resolving the question of the supernatural, the story introduces a scientific discovery.  The story is kind of pulling a bait and switch on us, promising one thing and providing another.  This leaves the story feeling unfocused and the ending feeling unsatisfying.

In addition to shifting its focus, the ending also lacks a strong causal chain.  The bugs seem to behave in a fairly consistent way through most of the story, and then all of a sudden at the end they attack in a swarm.  Why?  Without a why, or even the hint of a why, the bugs seem to attack at the end because the author made them.  That’s not satisfying either.  The reader needs the illusion that events are unfolding on their own, through a chain of cause and effect.  Otherwise, it’s impossible to believe in the story.  Without a why, it’s also hard to make any meaning out of the story.

My suggestion would be to decide what you want to promise readers, and then try to fulfill that promise (in an unexpected way, so readers are surprised but also satisfied).  If the story is promising an answer to the question of possibly supernatural millipedes, then provide that.  And if the situation is going to get much worse (which is exciting), then there needs to be a cause for that.  A why.

So why is Ahren plagued by these bugs, and why does the problem get worse?  Does Ahren himself do something to create and worsen the problem?  Or does Boyana or Willard create this problem for some ulterior motive?  Or does the house hold some secret that causes the problem?

Ahren is attracted to Boyana, despite being engaged to Florrie.  I think the story could develop this more to answer some of these questions.  Perhaps Florrie insists on coming for his birthday, and Ahren gets frustrated trying to get rid of all the millipedes before she arrives.  She comes, and we could feel a lot of suspense as we anticipate an appearance by the millipedes.  But they don’t come.  When Florrie takes a bath in the new bathtub Ahren has put in, a millipede crawls onto her.  She gets upset and tells Ahren she won’t come back until he’s gotten rid of all of them and replaced the bathtub.  Ahren gets more angry.  As he’s pulling out the bathtub, he finds dampness and more millipedes below.  He decides he’s sick of doing everything Florrie wants; he’s going to put in a Bulgarian-style shower, and if she doesn’t like it, maybe he’ll end up with Boyana instead.  He tells Florrie everything is fixed but he won’t send any photos; it’s a surprise.  He stops cleaning up the millipedes.

As this plot heads to some horrific climax (I’m hoping Ahren ends up taking a millipede shower), I think you can see that it has a stronger causal chain.  Ahren starts the story catering to Florrie’s desires, and as she’s not satisfied with his efforts, he becomes frustrated and starts to do unwise things, which have the unintended consequence of worsening the millipede problem.  Unintended consequences are one great way of escalating a situation.

One might see the millipedes, in this sort of scenario, as symbols of his discontent with his life, and as the relationship problems grow, the millipedes become more numerous.

This story has some really nice elements.  If the promise better aligns with what is delivered, and the causal chain is strengthened, it will be quite involving and powerful.  I hope my comments are helpful.

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

Rookie Chapter 1 & 2 by Saffron Bryant

— Judith Tarr

Tripartite Chapter 1 (Revised) by Taliyah St. James

This is a good opening chapter. It starts off peacefully, defining who Kayla is and what she does. Then the pace picks up; we find ourselves in the middle of unfolding action. We can see what’s happening and to whom, and we catch a glimpse of how the plot will proceed from here. The pacing overall is quick, and the end of the chapter pulls us straight into the next.

Structurally, so far, we’re on solid ground. The prose has some work to do.

The first thing I would point to is an issue with characterization as well as style and diction. Kayla’s emotions tend to ramp up to 11, and to do so in repetitive sequences.

She wanted to talk to someone, but she hadn’t made any friends in Philly, no one who she could really talk to, no one she could tell about the hallucinations, no one who would laugh with her about the man outside Dr. Richards’ office, not even someone whom she could tell about Dr. Richards.

This kind of repetition-for-emphasis can be quite effective, but a little goes a long way. Especially when it’s combined with the ongoing internal monologue about her loneliness and her strange visual malfunction, it presses the issue just a little too hard, a little too long.

The same applies to her estrangement from her family. We’re told about it several times, in much the same words each time, with the same structure of estranged/wishes she weren’t/wants to get back in touch/can’t bring herself to.

In each case, judicious pruning and tightening will actually make the emotional arc stronger. Find just the right place for each bit of information, and let it resonate through the rest. If it needs to be brought up again, do so briefly and use different words; develop it a little more, add a touch of new information, so that we move forward even while we’re reminded of what we were told before.

A large part of the art of revision is the ability to position each nugget of information in just the right place. Put it there and it changes and enhances the whole novel. This applies to characterization, plot developments, emotional arcs—all the way down to the placement of words and phrases.

For example we’re told she’s in Philadelphia rather late in the chapter, so that for a moment I thought she lived somewhere else and had just arrived in the city. Then the context told me the novel is set in Philadelphia. If I’d had the information at the beginning, I wouldn’t have had that moment of confusion.

There’s another form of confusion that’s actually an attempt to clarify. Particularly when two characters of the same gender are interacting, rather than get tangled up in the pronouns, the narrative offers synonyms: Marla/the coordinator/the woman, her mom/the elder woman. The problem is that every time we get a new synonym, we have to stop and wonder if we’re being introduced to a new character. As a reader I prefer simple repetition of the character’s name or epithet (her mom, for example)—like said, it’s basically neutral, and it helps me keep track of who’s doing what.

While we’re looking at the use of words and the structure of sentences, I’d also like to suggest paying careful attention to the meanings of specific words, and to the ways they fit together. Sometimes when we’re trying for unusual images or combinations of words, we don’t quite hit the mark. Figurative language needs to be straight on point.

The man with the shadows on his face is almost there, but shadows has a different connotation than the shadowy nubs it’s meant to refer to. Face and forehead are two different kinds of facial space, and shadows have their own heft of meaning apart from the vestigial horns Kayla sees. A simple fix (I do like simple) is to change face to forehead. Or change it to the man with the shadowy horns or a similar variation on the theme.

Tears threatened Kayla’s eyelids is a little bit inside out. The context seems to be that tears are threatening to spill over, but the strong active construction actually shifts the meaning from “she’s almost ready to cry” to “tears from elsewhere assault her eyelids (but not necessarily her eyes),” or even “something is threatening to tear or shred her eyelids.”

A frown that dimpled his cheeks is hard to visualize. A frown is the drawing together of the eyebrows. Lately it’s shifted to, or been expanded to include, the mouth. (I’m old school. I say Nope. But English is a living language, and living things change.) I’m not sure how the cheeks fit into it, and dimples usually appear when a person is smiling. I’d like a clearer sense here of what the character is doing.

think it’s good to push the envelope with style and imagery, but sometimes we (and I include myself in this, for sure) find ourselves in a different word-universe than the one we intended.Then we have to pull back, regroup, and usually simplify.

There’s lots of potential here, and I love the way the chapter ends with a bang and a swoop—on to chapter two! Best of luck, and happy revising.

—Judith Tarr

Hotwire And The Concrete Rainbow by RM Graves

“Hotwire and the Concrete Rainbow” snagged my attention this month with the places it departs quietly from archetype: a round spacebound girl who joins a punk band with a backpack of books, whose core emotion isn’t resentful anger but a kind of grief. It kept it with some deft thematic work, but there’s room to grow here too in order to make this piece shine. So this month, I’d like to talk about pacing and its context: how we can look to each scene and feeling in a story to dictate the pace of the last and next.

As ever with this author, I love the voice in this piece: lines like “the power of keeping your mouth shut in a time of commoditised opinion” and “being the size of two bulls shagging” made me laugh out loud. There’s always a wry sense of humour in this author’s work that makes it move and dance even—especially—when in dark places, and it really fits well with a future punk aesthetic. As does the sheer physical grounding of “Hotwire”: lines like “palms tipped up to the drizzle – to cool the throb of my new stigmata piercings – and my head in the clouds”, the space station as septum piercing, the cables and sharing bodily sensation versus plugging into the void, how deeply Sidney feels music, the difference between being dead and alive—all create a tangible, undeniable theme-and-variation on physicality. What results is a story about the difference between scene and relationship, real and unreal, that’s firmly grounded in the body: the fallibility and modifiability of bodies, fake digital bodies, a craving for the real—and then builds into imposter syndrome and image and how adapting the world to yourself fits into the very notion of space habitats, into experiencing the real.

There’s also an interesting juxtaposition in Sidney’s hurt, defensive attitude toward her parents and how anguished and avoidant she is about hurting them; how anguished and avoidant she is about letting anybody down. She’s a struggling people-pleaser, someone who’s got a significant amount of independence in her day-to-day life (her own flat, no chip), an ache to be noticed, and boundaries that barely exist, and there’s a painful, hopeful aspect to watching her struggle, half self-aware. I’d be tempted to unwind that struggle with a little more subtlety and gradualness. “Who wants me more?” lays that internal conflict out baldly, and I think that tips the story’s hand a little too early. That conflict’s clearly demonstrated further down in the scene, and it’s an interesting emotional hook to spool out longer, more satisfyingly.

Which leads into the core suggestion I have for “Hotwire and the Concrete Rainbow”: an editing pass with an eye to the emotional pacing and line of conflict. The opening, in particular, feels a little emotionally abrupt, and the turn into Jack and Skart’s breakup and Skart’s transition from rejecting Sidney to accepting her again was quick enough that they inspired a little whiplash. I’m not sure where any of those emotions are rooted—that quick-fire rejection/acceptance/belonging—and their suddenness frays my immersion in the world and the story.

There’s a lot of mileage in interesting worldbuilding and narrative voice, but by the time Sidney’s driving the truck to the gig, the cumulative effect of those quick and shallow-feeling turns meant I found myself lightly disengaging; not enough was, for me, escalating, developing, or changing.

These issues are ones that exist specifically in tandem. The emotional turns feel abrupt because the intermediate scenes are moving slower; the intermediate scenes feel slower by contrast with the emotional turns. When we’re reading a story for pacing, we’re reacting less to an objective measurement than the subjective, contextual one the story itself has already set: just like driving a car, fast feels slow if we’ve been going breakneck already, and vice versa. Sometimes the key to correcting a pacing issue isn’t altering the scenes where it itself shows up: it’s adjusting their context.

So with that in mind, I’d suggest taking the problem on as a linked problem, and attacking it from both ends. Specifically, I’d try playing the grounding and physicality up—play to the story’s strengths. The line of patter here carries the piece far, but I think relying on it too strongly might be the root of some of the story’s pacing issues; it’s a narrative style that takes a lot of page space to maintain, and tends to talk around experiences rather than getting directly to the heart of them. Shifting some, but not all, of that weight to visceral physical detail—playing up those thematic connections around embodiment hard—might pop “Hotwire and the Concrete Rainbow” into colour and assist with the pacing issues all at once. The intermediate scenes come out stronger, more vivid, sharper, and shorter by virtue of cutting a little wordcount; the plot turns look calmer and better-paced by comparison. Neither has to change much; they just meet in the middle more effectively.

The second major issue is the ending, and that I’m not sure the question being asked is the one being answered by Sidney’s choice to connect to the void. The conflict set up is very much to do with acceptance, with being seen and love and fake versus real regard, and the answer given feels abruptly decisive, not entirely built up to, and as if it’s solving a different problem than the one posed. Committing to the punk scene might answer the question of where Sidney’s going to sleep tonight, but I’m not sure it solves that hesitation, that people-pleasing, that deep hurt that characterizes her from the very first scene. I didn’t get a sense of solace or progress for that pain, and the ending doesn’t land satisfyingly for me as a result: I feel the echo of the resolution I’m supposed to feel, but just the echo.

So while looking at the pacing, I’d suggest a strong look at aligning the conflict with the solution, and vice versa, in the same fashion: adjust the problem a little, or adjust the solution. As long as they meet in the middle, the average speed will work out.

All in all, there’s a lot of potential here: a truly interesting protagonist I feel for, a fresh-feeling take on space habitat living, a concreteness I can relish and read with my hands. I very much look forward to seeing a new version!

Best of luck!

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