Bobby Harrell sold two stories! “This is older news to me, but I haven’t had a chance to update the Workshop yet. I sold “The Advantage is Decadent and Depraved” to defenestrationism.net on June 14th, 2022 AND a story called Case Race on OWW and now called “Asleep at the Wheel on the Razorwave Grand Prix” will be published later this year in The Back Forty anthology!!! I found out about the second sale on November 21st 2022.”
Double congratulations!
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
One of the most powerful methods of drawing readers into a story is to raise compelling questions. They may be big questions or small ones, as long as they are questions that compel readers to keep reading to find the answers. “A Piece of the Quiet” successfully drew me in and made me want to keep reading with intriguing details that raised compelling questions in my mind.
In this story of a mother and son going on vacation, the first compelling question was raised in the third paragraph, when the mother, who is the first-person narrator, thought, “somehow that made me feel like a better person than I really am.” The story is telling me that the mother is not a good person, which makes me very intrigued. How bad is she? What has she done/what is she going to do that is bad? Compelling questions that make me want to keep reading.
In the next paragraph, the mother and son arrive at the cabin in a clearing in the woods. The mountains “make it look like a giant painting propped up in the background.” This tells me there is something false about the surroundings. What is the true nature of this place? Why is it disguised? Is it a threat? More compelling questions.
A circle of trees surrounds the clearing: “It felt more like a circle of hiding places.” Who or what is hiding?
For me, these thoughts and descriptions that raise questions are the strongest aspect of the story. They drew me in and made me want to read to the end of the story.
Here are some thoughts about how the story might be strengthened.
For me, the answers to the questions don’t provide as much pleasure as the questions themselves. The questions drive me through the story, but the answers leave me somewhat disappointed by the end. The answer to what bad things the mother has done is not fully clear to me. From that opening clause I quoted above, I was expecting the mother to be much stranger and more unreliable than she was. In retrospect, I guess she was feeling bad about not being able to afford a better vacation, or perhaps about fleeing from the creature in the woods instead of fighting for her child, though this is never stated. So this seems like an example of the reader interpreting a statement differently than the author intended, in a way that sets up strong expectations, and then leads to reader disappointment when those expectations aren’t fulfilled.
The other details I quoted above seem to raise questions/expectations the author wants to raise. Those questions are answered: a mysterious creature/force hides in the woods. It is a threat, seemingly killing and absorbing or mimicking the dog and the son, and then tormenting the mother by planting the voices of the dog and the son into her mind.
For me, the answers to the questions and the way those answers are revealed feel kind of familiar. The dog vanishing first; a pale hand with long, bony fingers; the son going after the dog and vanishing; and the mother/survivor being haunted by the evil creature in the woods and the loss of her child—these are elements I’ve encountered before.
Does that mean that no stories can be written with an evil creature in the woods? No. Most stories have some familiar elements in them. The world is full of stories retold and retold. To provide satisfying answers to the questions raised, the author needs to make these familiar elements feel different and fresh. Perhaps the elements are shown through an unusual viewpoint; for example, the story might be told from the dog’s viewpoint. The dog might run into the woods to retrieve the ball to save the boy from the evil the dog detects. The dog might then struggle, after being absorbed by the creature, to stop the creature from absorbing the boy. Once the dog and boy are together inside the creature, the dog might be very happy to be with the boy, and the boy might want to be with his mother, so they might urge the creature to absorb the mother. This leads the creature to pound on the door, but the mother resists, not understanding she has the chance to be with her boy.
Perhaps the creature in the woods is different than what we might expect. Since the mother seems afraid of the woods, perhaps the trees themselves are evil and close in on the cabin until they crush it. Perhaps the mother has been to this cabin before; it’s where she killed and buried the boy’s father. And the boy’s father has turned into this creature, who is reaching out to claim his son.
The characters might be unusual, or the setting (e.g., “woods” on another planet), or the voice/style in which the story is written, or the plot (the mother could absorb the creature in the woods).
The earlier part of the story feels more fresh and different to me (the mountains like a painting, the mother fearing the woods, the mother missing the brick walls of the city and feeling like she’s looking at a wall that’s missing a painting—this painting imagery might be tied together in some way). It could be helpful to think more about those details and see if they might develop through the story in a way that brings that freshness to the later elements.
One other area I want to mention is pacing. Pacing is more important in horror than in any other genre. To build suspense and fear, the pace needs to be slowed down, or dilated, to intensify those sections and trap readers in those moments. The story tells us about time slowing down (e.g., “It felt like an hour passed in the two seconds it took for our dog to jump out of the tangle of branches with the ball in his mouth”) but doesn’t show us time slowing down. To help readers experience this dilation, the moment needs to be described in great detail, so the amount of time it takes readers to read about the events will be longer than the actual time the events took. That’s how you create the feeling of slow motion or a moment being stretched out, or even frozen.
Here’s an example from “Sandkings” by George R. R. Martin, in which the main character, Kress, goes down into his basement to kill an alien creature called a maw, gets scared, and runs back up. Martin’s description of this takes significantly longer to read than mine:
“He had to go down into the wine cellar and use the ax on the maw.
“Resolute, he started down. He got within sight of the door, and stopped.
“It was not a door any more. The walls had been eaten away, so that the hole was twice the size it had been, and round. A pit, that was all. There was no sign that there had ever been a door nailed shut over that black abyss.
“A ghastly, choking, fetid odor seemed to come from below.
“And the walls were wet and bloody and covered with patches of white fungus.
“And worse, it was breathing.
“Kress stood across the room and felt the warm wind wash over him as it exhaled, and he tried not to choke, and when the wind reversed direction, he fled.”
I enjoyed reading your story and remained engaged throughout. I hope my comments are helpful.
–Jeanne Cavelos, editor, author, director of The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
To answer the main question in the author’s note: Oh yes. This works. I really want to know what happens next.
As to why, the first thing that strikes me about the chapter is its voice. The first line is sharp, short, and speaks volumes about the world, the characters, and what’s going to happen in the story. The lines that follow keep the momentum going.
There’s plenty of wit here, and some memorable images. I especially felt the line about the villager most likely to leave one boot stuck in the mud, having suffered exactly that last night while feeding horses.
Voice is important in writing for younger readers. The choice of words, the images, the way things are described, how characters act and talk, all come together to immerse the reader in the story. In this one, we immediately get a sense of who Aiden is, what he’s like, what he wants out of life. Through his eyes, we see the same things about Sorrel. And better yet, for me at least, we get to know Hester the pig.
Writers always pay attention to their human characters—it’s part of the job. Not every writer thinks to do the same for nonhumans. Even fewer of those manage to convey a clear sense of knowing what they’re talking about.
Hester is her own person. Aiden sees her as such, and therefore so do we. She’s at least as much of a fellow sentient to him as Sorrel is, and in some ways she’s more, because he’s the pig boy and she’s his favorite sow.
I have a couple of questions about this draft. I think it could be clearer at the beginning that Aiden has a whole herd of pigs, and that they’re elsewhere. The first half of the chapter refers only to Hester; there’s no mention of pigs, plural, until that point.
Which leads to me ask, why isn’t Hester with the others, and why does she need an enclosure but they don’t? Why isn’t she in the valley marshes, too? Does he plan to leave her in her pen for a month while he’s off with the herd? If he’s worried about her and a wandering boar, what about the other pigs? Why is he comfortable leaving them to do their thing, but Hester needs his personal attention?
There seems to be a contradiction, too. In the morning of the day he spends with Sorrel, he figures he’s got a few days before the herd moves on from the valley swamp. But a few hours later, he tells Sorrel he needs to be done with this expedition today, because he needs to get to the crooked swamp before nightfall. Is he just saying that to get out of having to come back to the truffle spot? If so, it could be clearer.
At the end, Hester gets left behind, and Aiden seems to forget about her. He’s been so focused on her through the rest of the chapter that it seems odd he doesn’t think about her once he’s in the sinkhole. I think he’d be anxious to get back to her, if only because she’s loose out there and he’s spent a good chunk of time repairing her pen to keep her safe from wandering boars. Plus of course she’s his favorite, and she’s all by herself; what will she do without him?
This should be an easy fix in revision, as is the tendency I noted as I read, toward comma splices and run-on sentences. The chapter as a whole works. It’s a great start, and there’s a lot to love about it. I want more!
–Judith Tarr
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
“Pigeon” caught my attention this month with its atmosphere, its finely detailed world, and its potential. While it’s in translation from Dutch—and there are places the translation still does need help from a native English speaker or translator—it has a lot of potential because of its interesting, communal, domestic future world. But there’s also still a lot of work to be done on pacing, structure, and plot. So this month, I’d like to talk about what scene pacing can do for us, and how we find the story within our worldbuilding.
The strength of “Pigeon” is absolutely its worldbuilding. Its future Rotterdam is a fascinating place: a world that’s divided on political and ideological grounds, but not the stereotypical English-language science fiction ones, and grounded in an intricate social structure that quickly makes sense. It’s a very quiet story in some respects—how all these historical forces and social currents affect Brem’s little also_house on one Sunday morning—but one that makes that idea work through careful attention to people’s interactions, body language, and surroundings.
While it has a certain amount of invented terminology, most of it is very easy to understand on first contact: the invisible NihiLibs are absolutely clear (and more than a little funny—and tells readers more than a little about Brem’s politics), and the tek_house, also_house, grow_house, and spirit_house designations are quite clear.
The also_house itself is a cozy mix of mutual aid community-building, old-school survival skills like canning and gardening, diverse experiences, and high-tech know-how. It’s also an interesting blend of rules, restrictions, and freedoms that aren’t always where the genre shortcuts would take you. The most basic way to think about tropes is that they’re the times a story does, for whatever reason, what you expect. The times stories don’t do what a reader expects can be either jarring or delightful, depending on how we handle them, and the ways “Pigeon” combines ideas absolutely didn’t do what I expected. The combination of concrete practicality and elaborate coding skill that makes the explosive pigeons so dangerous—and weird, and intriguing. They’re not all machine or all modified bird; it’s in how the idea of natural world and artificial have been combined, and where.
“Pigeon” leans very heavily on that worldbuilding, though, to the point where other elements of the story—characterization and plot—are still figuring themselves out, and there are more than a few ways to address that situation.
One of the major suggestions I’d make is to rethink the story’s structure. “Pigeon” is organized in timestamps, some of them only minutes apart, and it can create a very choppy, interrupted reading experience. There are scenes in “Pigeon” that I think would benefit from being allowed to flow longer, be combined together, or transition into each other so that they feel more cohesive.
For example, while the first scene break emphasizes the threat of the pigeon, the break between the 7:21 am and 7:24 am timestamps probably doesn’t need to happen—or perhaps that 7:21 am scene isn’t needed at all. It’s not necessarily moving the narrative forward, and shorter scenes—ones that increase tension—don’t do the best work when they’re not building to something specific. The next major piece of action that happens is Karla’s arrival, and connecting some of the scenes that lead up to it would help pace “Pigeon” according to what’s happening in the story—a pace that’ll feel more organic.
Scene pacing is a tool like anything else, and while tying our stories closely to their structures can make us work more creatively to tell a story within those restrictions, they can also take good tools out of our hands. Having a flow of longer and shorter scenes lets the author set a pace that tells readers what’s important here. It also lets us use the length of scenes as a tool—like short and long phrases in music—to keep readers’ attention on the plot. It’s a tool worth having, I think, especially in a story as subtle and atmospheric as “Pigeon”.
Pacing is especially important for “Pigeon,” I think, because the story’s about a certain kind of social cohesion. If the structure of the story isn’t reflecting that idea—if the way the story is told is chopped-up, separated, and atomized—the structure and theme will pull against each other, and readers will feel lost—but might not know why.
Most importantly, it’ll also force “Pigeon” to stop covering over its weakest point: falling into explaining some aspect of its world, and then just interrupting that with the scene break instead of finding a way to integrate its worldbuilding information into the story proper. “Pigeon” spends a lot of time telling readers about its world instead of moving its characters within that world. It’s a technique that gets more and more visible as it’s repeated, and it means “Pigeon” slows down, wanders, and loses steam in the middle—after the pigeon threat is dealt with.
For the same reasons, I’d also suggest creating stronger ties between the different elements of Brem’s Sunday. Brem’s friends, guests, and companions are a community; what connections can “Pigeon” show between them, and not just to Brem? They have relationships that don’t involve him, but as it stands, mostly they interact with Brem—and not each other, or the house by itself. The secondary characters aren’t getting to be people right now.
Building this space into an actual community with those interacts would add some nuance and texture to some of the more generalized character descriptions. For example, Fariq gets pushed into a stereotype a little too easily: “Fariq grew up during the first decades after the crash and lived in a small flat amidst a lot of domestic violence, but despite everything, he has a curious and cheerful personality and boundless energy.” It’s a little more like how a social worker or work manager would talk about a staff member than how someone talks about the people they care about and live with. Being able to see Fariq interact with others, and through others’ eyes, would give him a stronger personality without having to add too much more to the story.
I think those major points will get “Pigeon” to a middle draft—one where the structure is better set, the characters feel more like a community, and what’s important in this plot is clearer. They won’t yet get it to a state where it’s ready to submit to magazines. But sometimes working on our fiction is a process of dealing with the most obvious fixes first, and then seeing where that gets us. I’m pretty sure that once the fundamentals are dealt with, “Pigeon” will emerge into the unique story it is.
Thanks for the read, and best of luck!
–Leah Bobet, author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance of Ashes (2015)
Lyri Ahnam wants everyone to know: “My poem, “Home from the Wizard Wars,” workshopped here on OWW is a Rhysling Award nominee. Woohoo! Thanks to everyone who helped guide my poem to publication.”
Truly excellent, Lyri. Congratulations1
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
The author’s note on this story set me up to expect a bit of confusion and a bit too much by way of themes and story-stuff. This much is true: it’s not a quick skim. It’s a story that needs and rewards a close and careful reading, and a reread or two after that.
What it’s not is jumbled or confused. Two themes come clear for me: climate change and the love between the first-person protagonist and the beloved whom they’re speaking to directly in second person. The Museum of Average Days is both the title and the unifying motif. There’s the world the way it used to be, as preserved by the mysterious “Museums,” and the world as it is now, in which the characters have to live. And, as we discover toward the end, die.
On the first reading I bobbled somewhat at the depth of backstory. The calligraphy class, for example, seemed to pile on top of too many other elements; it felt like a distraction. But on the second read, I picked up the thread of the albatrosses, and saw how the image of the brush strokes both helps to describe the birds, and pulls together the references to albatrosses in the story as a whole—both as a literary reference and as a literal pair of birds who may also be part of a government spy program. They’re the mechanism that transforms romance into tragedy.
The whole story is like that for me. It’s very dense, packed with detail, but all of those details serve the story as a whole. While there’s a lot there, there’s nothing extraneous. Everything contributes. It all moves us forward to the conclusion.
The only thing I would do, really, is a line edit and a copy edit, to make sure all the niggly bits are sorted. It is not an easy story, but it’s not supposed to be. It needs to be what it is: rich, complex, with multiple layers. That’s what makes it so powerful.
–Judith Tarr
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
I like the idea of this chapter very much. I love that it’s set in a non-Western world, with non-Western culture and assumptions. It’s good for the fantasy genre to widen its horizons.
In the later stages of revision, I’d recommend a careful copyedit and a close line edit. Check the grammar and syntax in particular, and make sure words and phrases mean what they’re intended to mean.
At this point, there are a couple of structural issues to think about. The overall line of the plot is clear, but there are a lot of characters speaking and acting. It might help the pacing to combine some of the characters, and focus on one particular story in each scene as Malai passes through the ruined town.
It might help to rethink the order of some of the information as well. The story builds up to the revelation that Malai is a kiarh. That’s a nice bit of tension, a little mystery with a dramatic payoff, but we don’t know enough about what a kiarh is in order to get the full effect. Instead we get a block of exposition right at the climax. The tension dissipates; the moment fizzles.
If we’re given more information earlier, if we know what a kiarh is even if we don’t know that Malai is one, we’ll be ready for the climax when it comes. We’ll get the full effect of the Aha! moment.
Another piece of information that comes in late is the existence of Malai’s former husband. He’s introduced suddenly—with that actual word. It almost reads to me as if the author just came up with him at that moment, to serve that portion of the plot. If he’s introduced much earlier, if he’s part of Malai’s world from the beginning, he’ll be more solidly grounded in the story. He’s a nice foil for Malai; he’ll be an even better one if he’s woven in from the start.
This is a good opening chapter. I’m looking forward to seeing how the novel develops from here.
–Judith Tarr
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
One of the joys of reading fiction with fantastic elements is that it allows us to satisfy desires we can’t satisfy in our lives. According to J. R. R. Tolkien, one of the primordial desires we all share is “to hold communion with other living things.” “Dead and Buried” satisfies this desire by allowing us to experience events as Sadie the dog does. I think one of the strongest elements of the story is the portrayal of Sadie, through her viewpoint, narrative voice, actions, and relationships. The portrayal makes me believe in Sadie as a character and a dog, and gives me a lot of pleasure as I read.
Here are some thoughts about how the story might be strengthened.
The plot, with Sadie protecting her family from a malevolent ghost, has a nice ending, with Mike’s health restored, Sadie being praised and receiving treats, and Sadie happy with herself and her role in the family.
The beginning effectively establishes in subtext that Sadie is a dog, her family is human, and she can see ghosts.
The middle of the story, para. 2-4 of the second scene, feels weak. It establishes Sadie’s problem, the malevolent ghost and it’s negative effect on Mike and the rest of the family; and how Sadie solves the problem, by digging up the man’s bones and re-burying him across the stream. This is a very short amount of space to dedicate to the conflict and rising action. And there isn’t much conflict or rising action. Sofie easily identifies the problem, finds the source of the problem, and solves the problem. Because the problem is solved almost as soon as it’s identified, the story doesn’t really increase obstacles, raise stakes, build suspense, or generate strong emotion. If you want to keep this as flash, there’s almost 400 words you can spend on this. And if you are open to expanding it beyond flash length, you could build these elements even more.
What are some ways to expand these elements? Let’s look at increasing obstacles first. Right now, there really aren’t any obstacles to Sofie solving the problem. Here are some possible obstacles: the family, which has been affected by the ghost, locks up Sofie for barking so she can’t follow the ghost’s scent back to his grave; the family members are so lost that they forget to feed Sofie, so she loses strength; the good ghosts are afraid of the bad ghost and cling to Sofie for comfort, making it hard for her to move; Sofie might not know how to get rid of the bad ghost and might have to try several things before figuring out the solution; and Sofie might not be able to track the bad ghost to its grave. There are a lot more possible obstacles, but I’ll leave it at that. Some of these seem more interesting/relevant than others. In flash length, you might limit the story to one or two obstacles. In a longer story, there could be more.
Looking at stakes, we could put Sofie’s relationship with the family at stake. Under the influence of the bad ghost, they could get very angry with her, tell her they hate her, throw her out and tell her not to come back, drive her to a distant place and throw her out of the car. The lives of the family could be at stake.
Looking at escalations, the bad ghost might draw other bad ghosts to the house. If Sofie is locked up, escaping from the place could cause Sofie to be wounded. Digging up the bones of the bad man could increase the ghost’s power, so it overwhelms Sofie. Rolling in the bones of the bad man could infect Sofie so the ghost can act through her. Escalations can be especially effective if the protagonist tries to solve the problem and fails, and that very attempt to solve the problem makes things worse. Sofie digging up the bones of the bad man and becoming overwhelmed by the ghost is an example of that. Things getting worse can cause us to truly worry for Sofie and feel suspense over what will happen, which can give the story greater emotional impact.
So how do you know which obstacles, escalations, and stakes to include? If you feel happy with your ending, it can often help to look at it closely, and that can provide insights into how to strengthen the rest of the story. In this case, Sofie and Mike bonding at the end is key to generating an emotional ending. But the current ending generates only mild emotion. I’m happy that Sofie is being treated well by Mike, and I smile. But if Sofie’s relationship with Mike seemed to be ruined, if Mike yelled at Sofie and called her a bad dog and chased her and locked her up (all under the influence of the bad ghost), and then Sofie struggled to overcome the bad ghost and triumphed, I would feel much more intense relief and pleasure at seeing Sofie and Mike bonding at the end. That relationship could be brought out more as the heart of the story. So I think one key element we need in the middle is that relationship breaking apart.
Since Sadie is happy with her role in the family at the end, it could be stronger to make her unhappy with her role in the family earlier in the story, to give her a character arc. At the beginning, she might be frustrated that they don’t understand the ghosts are around. And in the middle she might be alarmed that they don’t understand. And then in the end she could feel okay that they don’t understand, because she now has confidence that she can protect them.
Another element in that vein is Sofie’s relationship with the good ghosts. She’s warning the family about them at the beginning. Maybe at the end she’s happy and grateful they are around. This would create a relationship arc between Sofie and the good ghosts. It could also allow you to use the good ghosts more. In my mind, they’re like the gun hanging on the wall that should be relevant to the story’s conflict. Thus, the good ghosts should be involved in the struggle against the bad ghost. So at the beginning, Sofie would distrust the good ghosts and try to warn the family about them. And in the middle, the ghosts could at first serve as an obstacle to Sofie, but ultimately help Sofie put the bad man to rest. And at the end, the good ghosts might be acting in a more friendly, less threatening way, and Sofie would be friendly with them.
I really enjoyed getting to know Sofie and was glad to see her happy at the end. I hope my comments are helpful.
— Jeanne Cavelos, editor, author, director of The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
“Spidersick in San Francisco, 2049” caught me this month with its fast-moving prose: kinetic, descriptive, and anxious. It’s a story that’s already got a lot of life in it, but stylistic elements and worldbuilding that are currently overwhelming the rest. So this month, I’d like to talk about how we immerse ourselves in a complex future world while delivering information in a way readers can digest.
“Spidersick in San Francisco, 2049” serves up an immediate and vivid opening: establishing Atti’s postapocalyptic neighbourhood, her paranoia, and the surveillance she’s living with in one paragraph. The stakes come in quick, but my questions start when it comes time for them—and Atti herself—to be developed.
Atti’s San Francisco has a lot of detail tucked in: the orange glow of forest fires alluded to, but not explicitly mentioned; drones policing unhoused people; coping mechanisms that are wonderfully grounded in the body; a normalized social breakdown so serious Will’s honest smile takes Atti aback. It’s a rich world, one that’s clearly thought about class disparity and how different risk and enforcement look to different people.
However, there’s also a lot of detail that never pays off—what spidersick actually is (and how little the world knows about it versus how little Atti knows), whose drones these are, any of the why of Atti’s situation—and in all the detail, things get lost. Between the spiders and the renamed everything, it takes a great deal of page space to realize that what’s happening here is a nanotech-fueled, nightmare-tinged extended lockdown seen from a child’s perspective, and that the core question we’re asking here is about isolation and trust.
It’s not that “Spidersick” isn’t communicating questions of isolation versus trust. It’s that there’s so many other new concepts going in that those immediate definitions draw so much of readers’ attention that there’s little space left for what the story’s actually about.
There are a few ways to tackle this question: trimming down or reorganizing that concept work, solidifying general pacing and clarity, or restructuring the story overall.
Trimming down the concept/worldbuilding work is the most direct approach. There are a lot of ways word choice is building this storyworld, but there are also places where the terminology or word choice isn’t quite serving the story right now—and it’s a question of balancing out what you get from each idea with the attention budget it costs. Every new term is something readers have to solve, get used to, and metabolize: if only for a few lines. When they don’t add enough—like, for example, “kalladamn,” which just seems to be a fancy way to say “damn”?—it’s extra processing for not enough substance, especially when it’s coming on the heels of a wonner and The Link, two more new concepts in the same line.
Solidifying the general clarity, as a tactic, works to free up more attention from other spaces. If we think about the opening of a story as an attention budgeting question, where points that get allocated to conspicuous style are coming out of establishing person, place, situation, we can look at sentence pacing, word choice, and other decisions through the approach of balancing those budgets. I’d suggest that in the early paragraphs, both style and situation budgets are a little overloaded right now—and simplifying sentences where the ornamentation or style isn’t actively adding something is a solid strategy.
There are a few early places where sentences could be tighter: “just as Atti was readying to continue the search for food,” for example, or “the familiar wetness of sweat under her mask and wherever else her loose clothing touched her skin.” There’s already a lot of ornamentation in this story’s word choice, and that takes resources for readers to take in—especially early in “Spidersick,” when we’re still orienting ourselves to the world.
Likewise, there are spots where the scene-to-scene pacing of “Spidersick” could be tighter—where the ways it’s paced now use attention, but aren’t quite spending it on something that takes the story forward. For example, between the first and second scenes Atti runs from Will—but he catches up to her pretty much immediately. It’s a cliffhanger of tension that doesn’t pay off in any real form in terms of different plot, different character relations—just different backdrops—and just resets our need, as readers, to ground ourselves in the action. Moments like this can be neatly combined or sliced out without actually losing anything that pushes the story forward. Stronger overall pacing helps by highlighting which questions and ideas are actually important here, and making sure readers aren’t misapprehending what’s going on, or expecting something entirely different.
I think a lot of the next draft’s worth of work here will be about managing the style: making it work for the plot and themes of this story instead of draining all the attention. But after that, I think the primary suggestion I’d make for the draft after that would be to focus more on the plot.
Sometimes getting our style work right also shows what the style’s been obscuring, and when the elaborate worldbuilding terms are stripped down? Most of the action of this piece is Atti running, stopping to think, and running again. Random threats occur; she reacts; she gathers herself for the next one, until Will offers her a home and she takes it. We don’t get to know them too well; we don’t see Will as anything but slightly clueless but good, and Atti as much but suspicious and desperate. Who are they as people within this world, and why?
This is a rich, if dark future. There’s a lot to explore in it, if we can keep our thematic questions, our story, and the wholeness of our characters intact in the face of that world.
Thanks for the read, and best of luck!
— Leah Bobet, author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance Of Ashes (2015)
The Editors’ Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. Submissions in four categories — science fiction chapters, fantasy chapters, horror, and short stories — receive a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. This month’s reviews are written by Resident Editors Leah Bobet, Jeanne Cavelos, and Judith Tarr. The last four months of Editors’ Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop.
I like the title of this story, and I like the concept. Bargaining with Death, trying to cheat Death: it’s classic.
As for the luck of the submission draw so far, it’s always good to remember that it is mostly luck. A well-crafted story still has to stand out among a crowd of others, and then it has to hit the editor and the publication just right. The only way to succeed is to keep trying.
I do think it was a good idea to submit the story to the workshop. It’s a good start, but there are a couple of things that might work better with another round of revision.
The author’s note mentions that the story has been edited to bring down the word count. That was well done. I would suggest pruning even further, to tighten and focus the prose.
There’s quite a bit of repetition, information that’s duplicated within sentences and paragraphs and from one scene to the next. Some of it is necessary; the story needs it in order to move forward. Death says, “You’re going to die today.” Austin answers with some version of “Hell, no.” The evolution of his responses from flat refusal to negotiating terms is crucial to the story.
At the same time, this kind of repetition needs to be just right—not too little, not too much. It can be tempting to double and triple down. For example, at the beginning:
That can’t be possible. Because if Death is here, that means Austin is going to die.
Nope. No way. Not true.
Not ever, if he can help it, and especially not today.
It might be more effective to cut this sequence down to a single line, or at most two, and reduce the number of Nope-words to two or three. Get us into the story, and let the Nopes build up over the course of the narrative.
There’s a tendency to say the same thing several times in slightly different ways:
“You’re not a person.” Even though she looks like one. Like a teenaged girl, maybe a year or two older than himself. Like someone on the brink of living her life, about to get out there and experience the world. It makes it easier to think of her that way, like she’s just another teenager, no different than him.
I would cut the four sentences of narrative to one. Focus on one or two details that are directly relevant at this point. Try to vary these from one paragraph to the next.
Watch for repetitions of ideas, phrases, concepts. How impossible the situation is. How she looks—her hair in particular, and her cowl that keeps slipping in the same way, with the same phrasing. If you say it once in the right place, it will resonate through the rest of the story. You won’t need to say it again unless it’s relevant to what’s happening right then and there.
Another thing to watch for is stage business: characters’ actions, their body language, what they do as they speak. I am a fan of well-framed dialogue; I like to see how characters move, how they express themselves in actions as well as words. But, as with repetition, a little goes a long way.
Note how many things Death and Austin do in this paragraph:
“Stop!” His voice echoes off the walls as he turns his back on her, does his business. His hands are shaking, and he has to pause long enough for the adrenalin to fade before he can zip up. She slides off the sink, waits while he washes his hands. She hands him a paper towel, and he mutters, “thanks,” under his breath.
Action piles on action, detail on detail. How much of it do we absolutely need to know? Try cutting the paragraph in half. Focus on one thing Austin does that sums up the rest, and likewise, one thing Death does—I would pick her handing him the paper towel. Is it essential that we know where she’s sitting, that she slides, that she waits? Or can we pick that up by implication, as he shakes and fumbles?
Or here:
Lana has one hand out, and when Austin just stares at her, she wiggles her fingers. He curls his fingers around hers. She’s so much smaller than him, her skin pale against the deep brown of his own. Her touch is warmer than he expects, and she squeezes firmly.
The level of detail is cinematic, but is it necessary? Do we need to be reminded again that she’s smaller than he is? Which of her multiple gestures is most important here? Choose one or two, and let the rest happen in the background. If you’ve chosen well, the reader will pick up on them. That’s the magic of the writer’s craft.
— Judith Tarr