“Blindness” by Dimitra Nikolaidu

“Blindness” caught my attention this month with its spare, Eastern European feel and its refreshing take on the beauty-oriented dystopia—its combination of the subtle and the grotesque.  While the core concept is ground that’s been covered in decades of genre fiction, “Blindness” feels hushed, urgent, and entirely fresh.  This month, I’d like to talk about how the small nuances of a piece can entirely make a difference to its reception, and how the perspective of a narrative can matter most.

The first strength “Blindness” has is its worldbuilding and prose. There’s a subtly suggested oppressiveness evoked by a very few details: the flower-faced women, the grey buildings packed close together, Plato’s grandmother’s blindness.  While its spare style is occasionally uneven, there’s great detail work done subtly and mostly by implication: Plato’s two broken fingers, badly healed, imply a great deal more violence simultaneous with illustrating his shuddering desire to forget that violence, and naming the constructed, official face “the bone flower” opens up entire worlds of potential awfulness.  The tone readers are left with is a grey, ominous landscape full of foreboding—and a tension that makes the stakes Plato and his allies are facing feel very immediate and real.

That nuance and subtlety recurs in the mystery’s solution, in the kind of art—homespun, humble, traditionally women’s art—that leads Plato to the key that might topple the regime.  It’s precisely the kinds of art that a regime that privileges certain kinds of beauty would overlook: a tapestry on a wall, a painting in a cave.  It makes the idea that they’ve yet to find that painting plausible, and stacked against a regime that’s made women faceless, it’s a bold statement delivered with a surprisingly soft touch.

The real strength in “Blindness” is seeing all those small details add up into significant plot developments.  Yellow’s betrayal is a surprise that isn’t quite surprising in all the right ways, as Plato’s addled memory combines with enough hints of subtle espionage to make the ways Yellow’s misled him fall into place.  There is perhaps, though, a balance to be struck in the scene where she’s misleading him, however, as Yellow and Plato’s debate on Wilde and beauty and history slows the story down, and perhaps feels a bit too much like an airing of the idea that inspired the story from beyond the fourth wall.  While it sets up her betrayal, and while I think it’s a good choice to create the solid distinction between how blunting the small irony hidden there—that Wilde did not have a wife he’d have cared about—there’s room there to perhaps tighten the scene and pick up the pace, ensuring that the story keeps moving even through the dump of ideas.

Overall, that’s the only point of suggestion I’d have for this piece: integrating its backstory and worldbuilding a little more tidily into the stream of the present-day narrative.  While the state of the Underground and his grandmother’s history with the floods are necessary pieces of the story, the paragraphs in which they’re presented stick out as the story stops to present the necessary data.  Incorporated more subtly, they’ll match the rest of the piece and maintain that organic, coherent feel.

I do want to turn some attention to the matter of which perspective a story is told from.  There’s a comment in a member review on this piece suggesting that Plato would function better as a woman, and that he already reads like a woman, mostly due to his possession and expression of emotions in internal narration. I’d like to take a minute to dispute that suggested point of craft: there’s a great narrative advantage to having Plato function on the outside of the system of facelessness that’s consumed his mother, grandmother, and allies.  “Blindness” would be a very different piece if narrated—and if Plato’s quest was undertaken—from inside that system, without a face, instead of outside it as someone who actualizes as a complete human being, and the major payoff of the story, the moment where he recognizes Manya’s full and complete and beautiful humanity in the portrait with her real face, would be utterly undermined, thus destroying the effectiveness of the story’s ending.

What makes “Blindness” work, really work, is Plato’s inherent recognition of the women in his life as human—a recognition that’s so fundamental he doesn’t even consider it, already understanding that women’s agency isn’t men’s decision—and the shock of empathy when he finds a way to validate that, like a key to a lock.  It is a visceral moment, when the man on the wall becomes a woman.  That moment—and Plato’s grandmother’s continuing disbelief that Manya would ever champion the bone flowers—make it believable to me, as a reader, that Manya-the-symbol could start a revolution, once anyone can recognize the difference between joy on her face and pain.

With that in mind, I’d caution members when giving—and receiving—feedback that one of the major components of characterization is the skill of seeing people as individuals, and writing characters who are individuals; it is always appropriate to be suspicious of feedback which states all members of a group do X, or none of them do.  There is always an individual who is an exception to that conjured rule, and if your character is that individual, it’s more worthwhile to spend one’s character-building time in making their choice to do X coherent and consistent with their full, three-dimensional personality.  Complexity makes for the most effective characterization, so long as those complex traits are recognizable as being part of the same unbroken personality.

Overall, “Blindness” is a stellar example of the way a fairly well-traveled concept—the dystopia based on looks—can be reinvented, reimagined, and delivered entirely new, with intensely worthwhile things to say in an engaging world.  And that’s largely because of who tells that story, despite not being at the centre of it or having the most skin in the game.  It’s Plato’s perspective that made this an interesting, haunted read for me, and it’s his perspective that brings, I think, something new to the subgenre.

Best of luck with the piece, and thanks for the read!

–Leah Bobet
Author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance of Ashes (October 2015)

“The Hummingbirds” by Robert Wooldridge

It’s rare that I connect with work from the same author for two EC months in a row, but “The Hummingbirds” immediately caught and held my attention this month.  There’s a breath-held quality to both halves of the piece that makes Sublime’s awe and the feeling of the hummingbirds infectious, but I’m not entirely sure that this story is delivering, yet, on its promise.  So this month, I’d like to discuss consistency in working to the strengths of a piece, and how it important it is to carry our strongest pieces of craft cohesively through to the end.

“The Hummingbirds” starts with a beautiful, hushed portrait: a girl kneeling in prayer before a robot, religiously convinced it will rise.  It’s a magnificent scene, trading both on that elegant juxtaposition of genres and excellent voice work that makes great use of an oral storytelling cadence and a refrain—it will rise—that evokes folktales and preaching equally.  The cornerstone of the first scene, though, is its immediate tactility: fine-pointed dust on fine-pointed knees, temperature, light through boards, breath, sound.  The author’s proven adept at using sensory detail, and “Hummingbirds” takes advantage of this strength with the prohibition against looking at George’s ATS.  With ears and smells and implication alone, those few paragraphs build up a slight narrative suspense and pay it off in a way that feels natural—and makes the awakening of the ATS feel significant and profound.

That same skill is deployed into the second scene, as the same kind of casually thoughtful detail as how tightly sprung the ATS is, and George’s preference for older models gives a round, real organicness to his side of the story, and welds Sublime’s fantasy-style tropes and George’s SF-style tropes together in a way that doesn’t make them feel separate or disjunct.

However, that’s a strength that’s not pulled all the way through the piece, with the same careful attention, and there are multiple places that shows as “Hummingbirds” continues to its conclusion.

The first major issue that merits attention in “Hummingbirds” is pacing.  While there are many stretches where the fairly unadorned dialogue works, or where narrating over information is a good strategy, there are spots in “Hummingbirds” where that dialogue could use context, another beat, or a slight transition into a new scene—or where it might be more effective to break up that information dump and provide the information in real time.  The end of the second scene is a prime example of both, as the information crucial to George’s mission arrives divorced of any emotional or character context, and then the dialogue around Sublime’s appointment as guide falls flat for me, left without context, body language, or transitions.  In a piece with fairly careful attention to detail elsewhere, the lack of it sticks out significantly here.

That carefully-evoked worldbuilding is also missed as the story goes on.  I do have an appreciation for the way “Hummingbirds” subverts the trope of “no one ever said she was beautiful”, but an equal request to be mindful of how the story portrays Sublime’s desire to dress more sexually.  It’s presuming she’s dressing to be found sexual by someone else, and there’s an entire worldview about women and men that suggests that is not just untrue 99% of the time, but troubling.  It also brings up issues of practical worldbuilding: If Sublime can work her will to make things true, then why wouldn’t someone just have called her pretty, or presented her with more revealing clothes?  This seems to be code for “I am a teenage girl”—but a piece of code that forgets teenage girls are people.

I’m also a little surprised that George, given his job, is so undiplomatic with Villareal and so judgmental about the colony’s culture.  With colonies across space, and an Earth that doesn’t acknowledge rank, there must be some notion of cultural drift and how politeness mechanisms can differ even in smaller, local regions.  As a technician/soldier in a support role, who might be deployed anywhere, his aggression and dismissal seem deeply counterproductive, if not an outright attempt to manufacture conflict that never quite pays off, and diminished my engagement with the piece.

It’s odd to see that base attitude toward religion internalized in Sublime’s worldview, as well.  If religious faith is how she lives, and she knows it gets things done in her world, why would George’s question about doctors insult her, why would she need his approval, and why would she feel as if there’s anything to prove?

Ultimately, though, the main issue that merits attention for me is that in the second half, “Hummingbirds” gets a little lost: The discrepancies in the worldbuilding, versus how we’re being told the monster was caused and how it can be solved, add up until what the story says is happening and what I as a reader can see happening are two very different things.  As above, the revelation that the entire problem is Sublime working her will on reality isn’t quite set up, and there’s no reason dispatching the troll should cause her to stop believing things, just…perhaps be a little more responsible about what she believes.  If anything, the power of her faith has been confirmed.

Ultimately, this leaves me unsure as to what to do with “Hummingbirds”.  While the worldbuilding and craft are evocative, it’s perhaps not saying what it thinks it’s saying, and the core concept—each event leading to each—could perhaps use some attention, so they form into a cohesive picture that leaves something learned or experienced for the reader as well as Sublime and George.

Best of luck with the piece!

–Leah Bobet

Author of Above (2012) and An Inheritance of Ashes (October 2015)

Code of Warriors and Dragons (Chapter 1) by Kit Davis

This looks like a solid setup for an interesting, character-driven epic fantasy, that I expect will focus on the relationship between human and dragon, apprentice and teacher, and make those relationships the narrative engine of the rest of the work. As opening chapters go, this one has some classic first-draft, trying-to-get-into-the-story-while-figuring-it-out markers that are useful to address.

There’s a truism about opening paragraphs in first drafts: most of them can be cut, or substantially trimmed. So, let’s look at your opening paragraphs:

 The booted feet marching down the corridor awakened Tristan long before the castle guard reached his chambers. His heart took up the beat of the precisioned cadence thudding towards him. He flung back his covers and rolled out of bed.

Tristan’s young squire reached the door just as a weighted knock landed on its heavy oak exterior. Wide-eyed, the boy looked at Tristan.

Tristan nodded, giving his squire permission to open the door. The boy used both hands to pull back the locking bolt and heaved the door open. Tristan jerked on tousers and a tunic.

There’s a lot of excessive verbiage here cluttering up the work you’re trying to do. Why is it important to start with disembodied booted feet? Why spend all these words describing Tristan’s heartbeat in tandem with booted feet? (Listen to a heartbeat and listen to the sound of someone walking briskly down a hallway: unless this castle guard is blithely skipping down the corridors, these are not similar cadences.) If you want to show that Tristan’s a light sleeper who lives in a castle and has a squire, you can do that more effectively in fewer words, like this:

 Tristan woke to the thud of a castle guard’s booted feet in the corridor. His squire was already up and moving towards the door; Tristan nodded at him to open it while he jerked on trousers and a tunic.

What’s missing from my digestion of your paragraphs is a sense of why Tristan would respond to the sound of a castle guard in the corridor as an indication of danger, but that’s something easily added in; maybe the outside guards never come inside unless something serious is happening. Maybe Tristan hears armour clanking down the hall instead of boots. Either way, you want to move through these mechanical details as quickly as possible  in order to get to the character stuff which I can tell is where this story’s heart will be.

What I see you doing, in the opening as well as throughout the body of this chapter, is trying to pack as much information as possible into every sentence in order to bring the reader into your world: you want to get the world-building info-dump stuff out of the way so that you can move on to the chewier, more satisfying character drama. This is a laudable goal, but you’ll get there a lot more effectively by curating the information you’re giving you’re reader.

It may be useful to ask, what does your reader need to know? Then let the answers guide the way that you write the chapter. I think your readers need to know the following:

•  Tristan’s character, outlook, motivation
• This is a Western Europe Medievalish world with dragon-riders
• A dragon and rider have vanished
• A dragon has chosen Tristan to be a rider

We don’t get a whole lot of who Tristan is and what he wants; we can see that he’s dutiful, prompt when summoned, and disbelieving of the fact that he’s been chosen to be a rider, but these facts would be more effective if you establish his age and desire to be a rider earlier on (assuming he does want to be a rider). I think you can sacrifice some of the speed and urgency of your opening in order to spend a little more time inside Tristan’s head to get a sense of his motivation.

Overall, I think slowing the speed of events while tightening up the language you use to narrate them will give you the space you need to carefully build up the fantasy world around the core of dragon/rider dynamic that I look forward to reading more about.

Final Course by Gary Buller

When Aristotle advised starting in the middle of things, I’m not sure this is exactly what he had in mind, but “Final Course” begins in the middle of a horrific meal with participants forced to eat course after course of bugs, snakes, and other disgusting items.

The story throws us right into this situation and allows us to gradually figure out what’s going on:  four men captured and forced to eat or die for the entertainment of an audience on the dark web.  This is an interesting, high-stakes, and fun situation, Survivor gone bad.  Stakes are raised as Sam’s companions fall one by one and we realize there can be only one winner.  Obstacles grow worse as the courses become more difficult to eat.  My favorite part occurs when the master of ceremonies comes out and addresses the audience.

I think there are several ways the story could be improved, though.  Before Sam looks at his friends and fellow captives, all I know is that Sam is chained up and being served bugs.  I don’t know who Sam is, and I don’t know what’s at stake, so aside from mild curiosity, I’m not really involved in the story. As far as I know, he could be a murderer who deserves to eat bugs.  Or he could have chosen to participate.  I don’t know.  When he looks at his friends in the third scene, and all are chained, and one has been shot, then I understand that Sam’s life and his friends’ lives are at stake.  While I still don’t know them well, I can care more.  So I would suggest moving this from the third scene into the second scene.  For me, two instances in the first two scenes of bug eating by a character I don’t know for reasons I don’t know made me lose interest.  Once I saw his friends and understood more, I became more interested.

As the existence of his friends is withheld for the first two scenes, other information that Sam, the viewpoint character, knows is withheld.  This makes me feel manipulated and kind of cheated as a reader, since I’m in Sam’s head, but I don’t know what he knows.  I’m also thrown out of the story each time a new item appears.  For example, about 3/4ths of the way through the story we’re told there’s an LED clock on the table where Sam is sitting.  After that, we learn there’s the blinking red light from a video camera.  For me, the revelation of the situation (that he must eat each course within the time limit to stay alive, and people are watching via the dark web and betting on the results) is interesting, but isn’t enough to sustain the entire story.  I think the story would be stronger if we completely understood the situation by the 50% mark–by you revealing all of these things more quickly–and then the rest of the story could show Sam desperately trying to survive the situation.

I may be missing something, but I don’t understand how Sam wins the competition.  Sam’s friend, Daz, warns Sam not to talk, saying they could both be shot, but that doesn’t make sense to me.  Why would they be shot for talking?  Talking would make the event more entertaining, I would think.  No one has prohibited speaking, as far as I know.  In the next paragraph, “there was a single metallic click.”  I don’t know what this is.  It doesn’t sound like a gunshot.  If it is a gunshot, I would think Sam would look at Daz to see whether he is dead or not.  Or he would at least hear Daz’s head hitting the table, or his body falling, or something.  So I don’t interpret this as Daz being shot.  If anyone should be shot, it seems like it should be Sam, since he spoke first.  So if Daz is shot, that seems random, manipulated by the author, rather than happening for any strong reason.

I understand that the final course involves Sam eating a body part from Daz, but if Daz is alive, why is his body part cut off rather than Sam’s?  Cutting off Daz’s body part kills Daz, I believe, which makes Sam the winner by default–he doesn’t seem to earn the win.  Did Daz fail to eat the previous course?  We didn’t see that.  Were body parts cut off of both Sam and Daz?  I don’t think so.  So for me, the key part of the plot seems jumped over, and it seems Sam didn’t have to do anything especially good, bad, clever, or foolish to win.  That means the climax and ending lack significance.  I don’t know why he won.

I think we need to see Sam being more active and making a difficult decision, so Sam isn’t just acted upon by others but is making choices–or at least one choice, that shows us something about Sam and how this affects him.  My suggestion about what to do with the second half of the story, after you’ve revealed the situation, is to have Sam try several things to get out of his situation.  He could first try appealing to the master of ceremonies.  Once he knows people are watching, he could appeal to those watching, tell them something about himself to prove he doesn’t deserve to die.  Then he could threaten them, tell them his brother works for the CIA and will hunt them down.  He could try to get the nail holding the spider onto the plate and use it to attack a plate-carrier or to pick the lock on his cuffs.  When that fails, he might consider killing himself with it.  Finally he realizes this won’t go on forever.  It will only go on until there’s one person left, the winner.  So now he realizes he has to beat Daz.  He might start saying things to Daz to throw Daz off.  He might claim he’s having an affair with Daz’s wife, that Daz’s wife has contempt for him, or whatever.  When he says the one thing that would hurt Daz most, Daz might yell back at him, and that would cause him to fail to eat the item by the time limit, and Daz would be shot.  Then Sam would have to eat the final course, and then the ending as you have it could happen.  But what Sam did to win, and the way he feels about what he did, will provide the story with meaning that it currently lacks.

I’d just like to mention a few other things quickly.  The story tells quite a bit, and often showing would be more vivid and effective.  One particular area of telling is with emotions, using emotional labels like “terrifying,” “panic,” surprised,” “disgust,” “terror,” “horrible.”  Usually it’s more effective to show emotions through actions, dialogue, thoughts, and other methods.  The story also has quite a few run-on sentence, which cause me to stumble each time I read one.

I think you’ve set up a very interesting situation here in which we can see Sam driven to extremes.  I hope my comments are helpful.

–Jeanne Cavelos
Editor, author, director of Odyssey