“The Earthly Garden” caught my attention this month with its slow feeling of the uncanny and interestingly unconventional narrative. I did find myself tangled, though, in the amount of plot elements left to subtext—while finding other uses of that same tool deeply, deeply effective. So this month, I’d like to discuss the kind of vagueness that lets readers fill in the gaps versus the kind of vagueness that prevents them from doing so, and how to make sure we’re providing the variety that lets readers into the story.

“The Earthly Garden” sets a scene and web of relationships quickly and with real ease: a mother who accepts her kid despite not really noticing him in many ways, a child who’s stranger than we think. There are real beautiful details here that pull more than their weight in illuminating the characters—I especially liked the architectural plans for houses that break all the rules, and the throwaway line in Part 2 about how Jeremy does in fact like all the beers.

That’s paired with some smart structural instincts: “The Earthly Garden” takes its story about a living triptych and renders it in a literal triptych: three points of view, three sections, each daisy-chaining readers through the narrative. There’s a huge amount of resonance built up just with that narrative choice, and that resonance pays off when the triptych is actually revealed and symbols recognized from earlier in the story.

However, clarity is a core issue in “The Earthly Garden”—the one that I think needs the most attention if this piece is going to reach its full potential.

I don’t think it’s required of us, especially in a piece that’s supposed to have the air of awe and mystery, to completely nail down on the page precisely what has happened here. However, there are tangible ways in which readers frequently pick up on whether the plot action and thematics have been thought through in a story, and the major driver of that effect is consistency: even if the real narrative is obscured or not visible to readers, do all the characters—and the world of the story—act and react in a way that is consistent to that narrative? Or, to use an example: even if the road we’re walking on is invisible because it’s covered in snow, is everyone in the area walking along the same straight line?

I’m not certain everyone in “The Earthly Garden” is walking the same straight line—or if so, they’re walking it lightly enough that the footprints are difficult to pick up in the snow. Certain connections are implied very lightly, and aren’t quite making it to the page. For example, the connection between Stephan’s “I hear a drink makes me real entertaining” comment in Part 1 and the party when he gets the idea for the triptych and all his friends disappear feels somewhat half-emerged; it could be pointing in any of three or four directions, and which direction it points in matters for our understanding of the triptych and what happens to Audrey by the end.

Likewise, the same issue is arising with the goosebumps on Stephan’s forearm in Part 2 and what they prefigure, the undulation the Part 3 narrator looks away from and what that might mean for that character, that relationship, and the story itself, and even the question of whether Audrey is Stephan’s daughter. The hair being similar is a clue, but perhaps not enough of one, and we can’t pull the information from who the narrator of Part 3 might be. Stephan’s girlfriend is mentioned as a character off the page in Part 2, but we never meet here, never have a name or characteristics to recognize (or not!) in Part 3, never have a hint that there’s a child in the picture. It becomes a guessing game, which in the third act of a story presents more of an obstacle for readers than an intriguing mystery.

The image at the end—the coat, and the hair—is powerful, but it feels as if it cuts off somewhat abruptly; as if the pieces that would have made it fully meaningful haven’t quite come together or are too obscured to click. The ultimate consequence of the vague air of “The Earthly Garden” is that its final symbol is never quite set up; a moment that should be full of meaning isn’t quite meaningful, even though I can feel the ghost of the significance that should be there.

There’s another tangible consequence that may be emerging. I’m left unsure whether Stephan’s childhood behaviours are meant to evoke autism symptoms—specifically the echolalia and hair-rubbing, which I read as a stim—and if so, if they’re meant to be deliberately tied to Stephan’s overclocked brain, resulting genius, and loneliness.  If so, I’d be very careful about using that depiction—it’s a depiction with consequences, and clarity is especially important when depicting people in ways that could be harmful. There’s a lot of good reading out there about why the Magical Neurodiverse Person archetype is damaging to the very real, human people who are neurodiverse; I’d recommend starting with Ada Hoffmann’s Autistic Book Party reviews.

While the implication or absence of certain kinds of information can be a tool to pull readers into deeper engagement with a story—the puzzles we solve ourselves are always more compelling than the answers spelled out for us—it’s worth considering which aspects of a story we want to single out for use as puzzles. I’ve found it worthwhile to model a story as a person, standing on the edge of a cliff: which aspects of the story are the leg that’s on firm, clear ground, and which ones are the leg that’s over thin air? Without the leg on the ground—half the story clearly spelled out, regardless of which audience this is aimed at—it’s very easy for a piece to lose its balance.

My main suggestion, therefore, would be to do some serious thinking about the architecture of “The Earthly Garden”: what’s made clear to readers, and what’s obscured—and what goal clarifying or obscuring each piece of information serves. Depending on what the reveal of the piece is supposed to be, it’s plausible to create a road (snow-covered or not!) toward that reveal by clarifying the information that makes people wander off that road toward other theories of what the story is about and pointing the obscured clues in the story in the same direction, so that readers can follow them to the logical conclusion.

This is careful structural work, and will likely take time; I’d caution to not be discouraged if it takes a few drafts and tries to achieve the best effect.

Otherwise, on the prose level, I’d suggest looking at hedge words. There are a lot of sentences that are being diluted by the little markers of uncertainty: I suppose, like, sort of. While there’s a real use for these in demarcating the voice of a narrator who’s less certain, or more apologetic, about putting forward an opinion from a character who isn’t, they seemed to be showing up consistently throughout the piece and not as a voice tool. I’d suggest pruning those words back—or, more interestingly, making them a marker of one of those voices, and using them to distinguish one of the story’s three narrators.

“The Earthly Garden” has a lot going for it: an evocative and intriguing atmosphere, an unconventional narrative, a structure that mirrors its thematics and plot elements well, and prose that complements its quiet with observant and evocative turns of phrase. With a little more consideration, deliberation, and work on its specificity—ensuring that the uncertainties it creates are places for readers to connect with, rather than be unsure about—this piece can really shine.

Best of luck!

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

I love the title of this piece, and the concept is lovely. I like the protagonist, too, and her relationship with the AI which has clearly achieved sentience (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).

But of course I have questions. Editors always have questions. It’s a flaw in our character.

The main question I keep coming back to is the difference between the pacing of a novel and that of a short story. Every word in a novel has to count, just as in a shorter work, but a novel allows more space: more digressions, more characters and subplots, a more leisurely progression of events from opening to conclusion. A short story on the other hand needs to be compact and tightly focused. Fewer characters (though many more can be left to implication), far fewer scenes and events, and a fairly narrow range of ideas. A story will generally try to hone in on a single idea, and the structure and pacing of the story revolves around that idea.

In “The Sea Above,” the idea is clear: a world in ecological collapse, in which humanity has been forced to take to the sea, and a character who dreams of trees. This has the resonance of a poem, and at under 6000 words, aims at the focus of a short story.

The pacing however is closer to that of a novel. Vale begins with a reflection on her dream of green things, segues into elements of worldbuilding—where she is, how she happens to be unable to leave her own room–which allows the introduction of Xavier. There is more worldbuilding as she gets ready to go out, we meet the AI which has more or less named itself Hans, then Xavier and Vale, conversing on various topics, make their way through an essentially unpopulated space to the morning work meeting.

The pacing is leisurely. Conversation repeats itself as Vale tells Xavier what Hans has said to her, or explains why she’s saying a particular thing to Hans. We follow the characters step by step, until they arrive in a populated space, where we’re told everyone is in some form of turmoil. Vale and Xavier speculate as to the cause of that turmoil, then tell each other how they’re going to learn what it’s really about.

At this point, Hans speaks to Vale, and Xavier makes it clear he’s been spoken to as well; then there’s a public announcement. They’ve been summoned to a briefing, which is described in detail, point for point, with commentary on various personalities including Silva, with whom Vale is not friends. There has been an earthquake, and buildings have collapsed.

This both is and is not a crisis. Vale is part of one of the teams sent out to survey the damage, but the tone is calm and there’s no sense of urgency. At the end of the scene, Vale pauses to drink in the scenery, and to explain to Hans what she’s doing and why. And then the story jumps ahead several weeks during which Vale tells us she’s had panic attacks, but the tone remains low-key.

In this new section, after weeks of doing the same thing day after day, with more collapses and ongoing crises, Vale and Xavier discuss her idea of scanning an area of cliffs for signs of further collapse. They agree it’s a good idea. Turns out command agrees, too. They take a novice diver with them, as they did in the previous scene, and there’s discussion of turning the expedition into a hunt for food.

Suddenly they encounter a school of fish. The novice wanders off into the school, just as predators attack. With the help of Hans, Vale and Xavier barely escape, to find themselves trapped in a cave. Vale panics, Hans talks her through it, she finds a way out—and finds her dream: land, and green.

The end is lovely, and circles nicely back around to the beginning. What’s in between tends to work in triads: actions, interactions, and worldbuilding details are presented in threes. For example, Hans will speak to Vale, Vale will tell Xavier what it said, then Xavier will say he’s heard the same thing. Likewise, a thing will happen, Vale and Xavier will speculate as to why, then we’ll be told what happened and why. In the final scene, Hans tells Vale what’s going on, Vale repeats the data with her own emotional overlay, then Hans tries to soothe and calm her.

The pacing, with its triple loops and its use of dialogue and speech as exposition, as well as the time-frame of weeks and the downplaying of the extent of the crisis, feels more novel-like than short-story-like. I love details of worldbuilding, and love the sense of there being a fully realized world beneath the framework of the story, but when the story is short, I look for a clear line from beginning to end: the sense that the story is aiming at a single, distinct point.

What seems to be happening here is a focus on precise details of worldbuilding and character development, but those details tend to wander away from the point, which is that the earthquakes and collapses must be related in some way to the reemergence of land. The land that Vale finds has been above water for some time, long enough to grow trees—which means the immediate crisis in the underwater city is actually of considerable duration. I find myself looking for a clearer sense of a precipitating event, some more distinct and focused line of storytelling that takes us from Vale’s dream to its fulfillment.

I also feel as if the plotting could be more focused and streamlined. For example, both dives involve the same mix of people (and an AI): Vale, Xavier, a novice, and Hans. What if those dives were combined? Do they both need to exist, or can they take place in a single scene that establishes the job the characters are doing, runs them into the fish and the squid, and ends up in the open air? That way, the story is tighter and the point comes through more clearly, with plenty of worldbuilding, action, and personal stakes.

The story can move along more quickly in general. At the beginning, do Vale and Xavier need to take so long to get to the central gathering point? Can this scene be much shorter while conveying the same essential information? When they arrive at the briefing, might this be condensed and focused so that we get a clearer sense of how the earthquakes are increasing in number and the city is in real danger? Can Vale’s dive be shown to be more crucial, with higher stakes? It can begin as routine–or as routine as scanning for actual and potential disaster can be (and is anyone thinking about how to fix things?)–but then it can, and in story terms should, evolve into anything but.

While we’re talking about condensing and tightening, is Silva an essential character? When he was introduced, I thought he would play a role in the story, serve as an antagonist, or as a catalyst for an event that drives the story forward. I would expect that, for example, he would do something to drive the divers toward the squid, or be the wandering character who gets lost, but in searching for him, Vale and company find the cave and the land.

That’s the difference between a novel and a short story, right there. Every character in a short piece has to earn his keep. If he’s introduced, he has a role to play. In a novel he might be a peripheral annoyance, an ongoing irritant, but at this length, with the number of words devoted to him, the expectation is that he’ll be a driver of the story in some significant way.

I like this story a great deal, and find the setting memorable and compelling. If the plotting can clarify and focus itself, and the repetitions of details and actions be pared down, I think it will be really strong, powerful and moving.

–Judith Tarr

This is my first experience of Bucklepunk, which I didn’t even realize was a thing, and I’m intrigued. Now I want to know all about it. What’s the tipping point from our own timeline? How does the concept of electricity develop so early? What about–?

So here we have the first chapter of a 45-chapter Bucklepunk novel. I’m caught up enough in it that I want to read on. I do agree with the author’s comment that switching viewpoints is a good thing, but it might get too rigid, and possibly confusing, if it happens with every chapter. A more flexible structure might work better: either a main story line as told by Abigail (or another central protagonist) with others chiming in as indicated, or a fairly freeform switching of narrators according to the needs of the story.

However that turns out, this first chapter manages to establish two strong characters. Abigail womans the viewpoint camera, of course, but Susannah has plenty to do and say. It’s a good start.

I have some questions about the draft, both larger issues and down to the sentence level. First, going back to the author’s note: I get a basic picture of the relationship between the two characters, and the overall emotional arc they transcribe in the chapter, but I think it needs more.

It’s an opening chapter, of course, with 44 more to go; it’s a snippet, therefore, and not an entire, fully developed construct. But it’s still possible to get a sense of who these people are and where they’re headed in relation to each other.

I’m rather taken with the absolute deadpan of Susannah’s reaction to the dead cat—it’s a very kid thing, to be utterly without sentimentality—but at the same time, there’s a bit of flatness in the emotional landscape overall. I keep looking for more resonance, more depth in how they feel about each other. It’s not that we need the prose to turn purple or the emotions to go over the top; it’s just that I’d like to get a clearer view of what’s happening below the surface of what they do and say. Abigail has a tendency to dismiss things that ought to really bother her: “at least they were out of town, so no one could see;” the devastation isn’t such a big deal after all, because Abigail doesn’t have a carriage, and anyway, nobody ever visits. It feels as if all of this is rationalization, and undercuts the extent of the damage as well as her reactions to it.

That bit of flatness extends through the chapter. As I said, Susannah’s deadpan about the cat—her fascination with the forms and consequences of its death—is convincing, but there’s another layer or two that might be worked in, about how they’ve lost the demon on whom at least some of their magic depends.

This is a crisis on many levels. I think we could see a few more of those levels, and Abigail could be more deeply perturbed than she is. She starts off by saying it’s “just a cat,” but in fact it’s a great deal more than that. Is she trying to keep Susannah from panicking, is she in denial herself, or…?

In this context, Susannah’s lack of emotion could be developed as a defense mechanism. She clearly loves animals and has named the squirrel. Did she name the cat? If not, why not? Was she afraid of it? Did she hate it because there was a demon in it? What underlies her actions as she fiddles with the corpse?

It doesn’t need to be much. A line would do it, if it’s the right line. Just enough to convey that there’s more to what she does and says than meets the eye.

Abigail as the viewpoint character allows more penetration into her thought processes, but she could go a little deeper, too. More complexity, more layers and levels of feeling (or lack thereof).

I was a bit puzzled as to why she’s as awkward as she is when she attempts to summon the demon to a new body. It seems that she doesn’t totally understand how the demon/familiar connection works, she’s not completely capable of sensing when the demon enters the body, and her command of the basics—including the wand—isn’t what one might expect of an experienced and capable witch.

Is Abigail meant to be this way? Is her lack of competence deliberate? Is she basically an amateur playing at spells and powers that she doesn’t truly understand, and is this a key plot point? Or are her failures more deep and disturbing, in that she’s actually a master but her skills are failing her? I think it could be clearer where she stands on these issues, even if the author would like to leave questions and mysteries for later chapters.

These are larger concepts that might be resolved as the story proceeds, but there are smaller aspects of technique and phrasing that show up right here in the draft. The author’s note asks whether the setting works. Overall I think it does. We get the storm, the devastation, the general layout of the property.

Sentence by sentence however, I think the chapter might work better if the elements of setting, the order of description and the specifics of detail were reorganized a bit. The fixation on the familiar almost makes sense, but as Abigail takes stock, she jumps around from place to place and from element to element. A smoother pan of the viewpoint-camera, and a better sense of priorities (from most to least awful, or vice versa depending on the effect desired), would make the overall picture more effective and affecting.

A good and up-front example of this happens at the very beginning. The organization of actions and ideas doesn’t quite flow. First we have a flashback to Abigail telling Susannah to stay in the shed—without further reference, and with no reprimand for disobedience. Then we have Susannah coming out of the shed, and we’re told that’s where they both spent the night. It might make more sense to spell that out in the opening, and also clarify where Abigail is, so we have the scene blocked right up front—and if it is crucial that Abigail forbade Susannah to come outside, then Abigail will address that at this point. Then the conversation can proceed, with Susannah continuing to be willful and Abigail investigating the dead cat.

In fact I wonder whether Susannah’s question about the smell should be the first line. It’s a Rule in some quarters not to begin a novel or chapter with a line of dialogue, but this line is sharp, pointed, and begs the reader to keep going to find out the answer. Susannah asks about the smell as she comes out of the shed where they spent the night, perhaps Abigail shoots her a Look for not doing as she’s told, but the lost familiar so preoccupies her that she doesn’t have room in her head for anything else right now (though later may be an entirely different proposition).

One last thing that might help the reader to understand the stakes and the difficulty here: what exactly does the familiar do, that makes its loss such a catastrophe? Is there one thing that Abigail absolutely needs, that only the familiar can provide? I like the idea that Abigail has provided cover by making familiars a fad, it’s clever and wicked and tells me a great deal about Abigail, but I’d like to understand what a familiar is. Then I’ll be that much clearer about what’s going on and why it matters.

Best of luck with this. It’s a lot of fun, and I’ll be interested to see how the story unfolds.

–Judith Tarr