Ylodch – Under A Darkened Sun Chapter 1, Revised, by J. Rokusson

This is an interesting submission, not only in itself but for what the author says about it in the author’s note. It’s not a first draft; it’s been revised with care and attention to prior critiques. There are things it’s explicitly trying to do, and questions for the readers of the earlier draft.

I like a good author’s note. It’s a great guide to the author’s intentions, and it gives this Resident Editor some directions to take in reading the submission. Here, I’m coming in as a cold reader. I haven’t seen the first draft. All I know is what I see here.

While it’s both fun and educational to compare drafts and discuss changes, if the work is going to be published, the only person who counts is the cold reader. The person who buys the book, who doesn’t know the characters or the story. If the author or the world are familiar, there may be preconceptions and expectations. But it’s still a new book, going off in new directions.

There are some intriguing things going on here. I love the imaginary unfriend—it’s a great concept, with lots of potential as the story unfolds. I get that there’s some portal fantasy going on here, and some sorcery, and for sure some swords. Or a sword. As far as I can tell, there may also be elements of impaired memory, either absent or tampered with in some way, so that what Azran knows or thinks he knows will shift from one moment to the next.

That’s an ambitious thing to do. It demands a great deal of the author’s craft, and expects a lot of the reader as well. It certainly can be done—I’m reminded somewhat of Gene Wolfe’s Latro in Soldier of the Mist and its sequel. But it’s not easy.

As the novel goes through further rounds of revision, I have a few thoughts.

First, I don’t mind a prologue, so put me on the Pro side of that argument. Labeling an introductory chapter a prologue can be useful in that it tells the reader that this is a separate section of the narrative. It generally takes place in the past, before the time of the main plot. It may address different issues, and it will set up essential backstory. The reader will expect a shift between the prologue and the first chapter, probably in time and possibly in setting or characters as well.

I get the idea of mystery. We don’t want to be told everything at once. We like to pick up just enough to keep us turning the pages, but not so much that it bogs everything down.

At the same time, we have to have enough clarity to understand what is happening in each individual scene. Mystery is good. Confusion, not so much. It’s a delicate balance.

In this draft, Azran is pursuing an agenda set for him by an unspecified they. He has orders (which seem to shift, as does his memory); he’s following them as closely as he’s able. Something happened yesterday—we get multiple references to this prior set of events.

What this ended up doing was make me wonder why the novel starts here. Why doesn’t it begin the day before? That’s when the precipitating events seem to have happened.

There must be a reason why it’s a mystery, but as the draft is written, it’s not clear what this reason is. The repetition of they and orders and yesterday needs more polish. Each reference should illuminate a little more, add a bit of new information to what we already know. There’s some of that in the draft, but it’s still more confusing than clear.

One thing that is getting in the way of clarity is the prose. The novel is still very much in the structural phase, still figuring out how best to construct its story and develop its characters; I would tend to suggest not getting too deep into a line edit at this stage. But a couple of stylistic changes might help make the story more comprehensible to the reader.

There’s some gorgeous imagery here, but there’s also a fair bit of awkward phrasing and “if one word is good, six is even better.”

The mountain looming above him: It’s clear what the mountain is doing. No need to explain.

With the gate materialised, his orders reclaimed a sense of impending realism: I’m not sure realism means what it wants to mean here. The passive constructions, the abstract concepts, move us away from the character and slow down the action.

A similar thing happens here: the earthy smell associated with underground caves became prevalent.

And here: High on her back, wings reached towards the ceiling, and her posture suggested she moved halfway from a crouch towards leaping into the air.

Think about how to tighten, shorten, transform from passive and abstract to active and concrete. Try to avoid suggested and seemed. Commit to it; make it definite. Think immediate and direct and active.

The tendency toward the passive and the prolix insulates the reader from the character, and filters away the sense of direct experience. We’re told the story from a remove, rather than living it with him. The words get in the way of the story, and the character’s emotions flatten out. It becomes harder for us to feel what he’s feeling—and when that happens, it’s also harder to keep turning the pages. We have to care, even if we dislike him. We have to want to know what happens next, and what he’s going to do about it.

Azran’s actions play into this as well. When he dropped his knapsack without seeming to care what happened to it, I wondered why he would do that. Is he under a spell? Why doesn’t he worry about losing his supplies? What makes him trust this strange place enough to dump his belongings? Not wanting the added discomfort seems like an odd and insufficient reason.

I’m not sure why he doesn’t know what he’s carrying, or why he hasn’t looked in the box or discovered the note. Wouldn’t he have made sure he’s properly prepared before he goes on the quest? If not, why is it essential that he only discover important information while he’s in the middle of his adventure? Again, it needs to be clearer (even if some mystery still remains) who has sent him here and why. Can we get a glimpse of them? A line or two flashing back to the giving of the orders? Something about how those orders, and the means of their being conveyed, may shift magically as he tries to carry them out?

It is clear that reality shifts as Azran moves through it. Some, he’s doing himself. The rest is being done to him, and apparently it’s part of the plot—presumably to be revealed as the novel goes on. But tighter, more focused prose and closer attention to the meanings of words will help readers as they try to follow what’s happening. Give them more clarity from line to line, and they’ll embrace the mystery. They’ll want to know what it all means, and where it’s going.

— Judith Tarr

Diaries Of A Space Princess by Nora Schinnerl

I like the idea of this submission. It’s a nice riff on the fairy tale of the princess in the tower. Shifting it out into space and setting it in a high-tech future has the potential for some interesting and enjoyable storytelling.

The chapter as written needs some rethinking in order to work as a story. The author’s note describes it as an epistolary novel, but that is not actually what it is. An epistolary novel is an exchange of letters between two or more characters. If this were an epistolary novel, we would be reading letters written by the princess and presumably the king (or the king’s secretary), responding to each other and telling their respective stories in their own words.

The chapter presents as a proposal or detailed synopsis, a description of the story that the author wants to tell. The character exists at a remove. We’re not living the story with her; we’re being told the story by someone else.

The third-person narration could work if there were some clarification as to why the princess needs to tell her story in that way. What is she hoping to accomplish by filtering her experiences? How does the third person work in a way that first person can’t? Is she telling her story right now, or is she telling it in retrospect—as an older person looking back on what happened to her in the tower? Are her experiences too painful to tell directly? If so, we should have a hint of that, a suggestion that something is going to go wrong.

We should also be seeing more description of setting and background, and more telling of story. The diary should record dialogue and frame scenes, rather than presenting them in synopsis or summary. Even though the device of the diary presumes that we’re reading about events after the fact, we can (and should) still have some sense of direct and lived experience.

There’s another thing to think about, too. If the intended audience is young—and since the princess is eleven years old, by the rule of thumb for kids’ books, the readership would be a few years younger, say around seven or eight—if the storytelling is too indirect, young readers won’t stay with it. They’ll expect a diary to be told by the person who’s writing it, the “I” of first person. They’ll also want to know why they should want to read it. What is the story about? What does the protagonist want? What is she doing to get it? What factors are helping her, and what factors are getting in her way? What obstacles does she have to overcome in order to do what she needs to do?

I think young readers would also ask why she doesn’t have a friend, and if that’s the case, why she isn’t looking for one. She does try to turn the Blue Fairy into a kind of magical sidekick, but it seems strange that she’s so totally alone. Why can’t a robot be her friend? Enc is a possibility, but it needs to engage with her more, and have more of a personality. Or she needs to figure out how to make it develop one.

The princess reads young for eleven. An eleven-year-old is a late tween, within sight of her teens. She may already be having her period, and she may be starting to be interested in having a partner, though she probably won’t be thinking in sexual terms yet. Even if she isn’t interested, she probably will have some thoughts about it, even if they’re still the younger child’s “Eeeeuuuwww ick.”

It might help to read more widely in the middle-grade genre, to see how eleven-year-old characters are portrayed. How do they talk? What do they talk about? How do they feel about various things, especially school, parents, and peers?

Pay attention to the way the books are written, too. Voice is very important in writing for younger readers. By that I mean prose style, choice of words, the way the narrator describes the world and the people in it. The reader should be able to hear the character talking, especially in a diary. They should feel that they’re right there with the character, thinking what she’s thinking, feeling what she’s feeling.

Study how published works in this genre tell their stories. How do they introduce their characters and settings? How do they set up the structure of the plot, and how do they move it forward from scene to scene?

Pacing is extremely important in writing for younger readers. Attention spans are shorter than older readers’. The progression of the plot should be clear and it should also be clear what the story is about, where the action comes from and where it’s headed.

In this chapter, I think shifting to first person would be a good first step. Then, opening up the synopsis into scenes with action and interaction. Write out dialogue. Give the king a voice; let him speak, and the princess will record what he said. Do the same for the mechanical inhabitants of the tower, and maybe think about giving them different ways of talking, different personalities and different voices.

Make sure we know there’s a direction to the plot. She’s in the tower, her father has shut her up there for Reasons. Maybe she could set about discovering what those reasons are. Can she start to become less submissive to her father’s wishes? Could she miss her past life more clearly? What about friends and family? Would she want to communicate with them? Would she understand why she can’t—for that matter, why can’t she? Why isn’t anyone else here with her? Why does she have to be alone? What danger is so great that no other human being can either be with her or know where she is?

There’s a lot to work with here. It begins by opening up the narrative and thinking through where it needs to go and how it needs to be told. Once that starts to happen, the story and its characters will start to come alive.

— Judith Tarr

House of Sugar, House of Flesh by Lyndsey E. Gilbert

Polish Resistant by Robyn Hamilton

“Polish Resistant” caught my eye this month by focusing on a small and hugely practical corner of spacebound futures: what we wear, and how the physical changes low gravity puts into bodies would affect that. It’s a neat, focused story that integrates a lot of big ideas well. However, it’s somewhat underplaying its closing act, and this month I’d like to talk about how what we let make an impact spotlights what matters in stories.

The real star in “Polish Resistant” is how it handles its idea work. This is a deeply focused—I won’t say small, but focused—story: it runs everything through the question of how fashion works in space, what those costs are, and why it happens. Textile production is an aspect of science fiction that doesn’t often get deep attention; the obvious thought that “Polish Resistant” puts into those practicalities is an effective hook.

The story’s also skillful in growing that hook into a sustainable picture of its world. Even though the immediate setting of “Polish Resistant” is a pretty small space—Talia’s workshop and other parts of Magda’s textile operation—it finds a lot of ways to grow that setting off the page, just through the ideas built into Fay’s dyeing job. We never leave the shop, but we see Earth’s environmental regulations, interplanetary disease concerns, the expense of spaceflight, low-gravity effects on human bodies, a ruthless social media-based economy, and automated labour all have measurable impacts on the action of the story.

It’s the impacts that deserve the attention here. What makes those background details feel round and real—moreso than just mentioning that these things happen—is the fact that they have consequences. Each one of those ideas about how the world of “Polish Resistant” works intersects with each other, produces secondary effects, and changes the choices people make in the story itself.

Talia’s not just stuck in a demanding piecework system for no reason; it’s because of the cost of spaceflight. She’s not working with recyclable castoffs and richer planets’ dirty work for effect (although it’s a tidy evocation of the ways Western used clothes are dumped on other countries here and now); it’s because of the environmental regulations.  Even though they’re happening off-camera, so to speak, those aspects of this world affect how people move within the space of the story.

“Polish Resistant” also manages to integrate its characterization in the same accreting, detail-oriented way. Fay’s flair for social performance—every kind of social performance—immediately makes it plain why Talia dislikes her. The little ways Fay deflects discussion of the ways she’s exploiting Magda, Talia, and Rich, the ways she constantly repaints herself as a benefactor, are extremely telling—and they’re very effective characterization, especially when they’re set up against the more blunt, obvious ways Magda’s exploiting her staff and gets increasingly competitive through the visit.

We learn who Talia is almost as a reflection of these two characters: all the ways they are and she’s not. It’s interesting that Talia does custom: quietly meeting everyday personal needs versus the prestige and performance of Fay’s design career. It’s interesting that she thinks of her client as “the tall boy”—a design problem—but that not knowing how to make him happy with the work is destroying her schedule. “The tall boy’s jumpsuit” turns into a kind of chorus, seaming through the entire story.

The author’s notes are worried that Talia’s problem is too small to be interesting, but I think its smallness—and persistence—up against the grand gestures Magda and Fay make is exactly what makes it interesting. She’s stuck on just getting things done for known human people, and doing them well. It underlines her very real commitment to the people wearing her clothes.

I think the gap to still be filled in “Polish Resistant” happens, however, when that comparison falls away: between when Fay buys out Talia’s contract and her decision to open a shop of her own. It’s been made plain throughout the piece that Talia’s not interested in what Fay’s offering, so there’s no realistic source of interest or conflict there; I’d have been shocked if she did act the ways Fay—and Magda—expect. But to me, as a reader, it feels like there’s a missing piece between the closure of what they think she wants to do and what she actually wants to do, and that ending comes as a surprise; one where I’m not sure it’s telegraphed enough to be satisfying. And I think it’s because of this emphasis on outside forces, obligations, and who Talia’s not that we haven’t gotten any real picture of who Talia is.

The emphasis Talia puts on comparing herself to Fay throughout “Polish Resistant” spotlights a different part of the story: if Talia’s a failed version of Fay or as someone doing a different thing well. She hasn’t been finishing things on time, true—and it’s implied this was a problem in the past—but we don’t get a sense of why that’s something that’s plagued her through her career, in the same way we get a sense of why Fay took her job to Magda’s shop. Yes, Talia’s been persistently putting off the end of that jumpsuit all story long, but there’s no information as to the conditions that made this true, and what we see on the page doesn’t help us. Talia actively pushes away her deadline problems; the major emotion around them is trying not to think about them. Every interruption and distraction she faces on the page is about Fay, and Fay’s visit is temporary. Finishing should be no problem, once she’s gone.

However, the question of finishing things on time rushes to the centre of the story at the end: Magda raises it at the end as the major, real barrier to Talia having her own shop. And it turns out readers haven’t had the chance to get that same insight into Talia’s prior shops, her failures, her process. The ending as written feels less like a door satisfyingly closing than one that we didn’t know was a door in the first place.

So I’d suggest thinking about ways to construct Talia’s deadline problems more substantially—with the same attention the garment work process got in “Polish Resistant”. Build a more tangible question around that personal character arc, and readers can feel the satisfaction of it being resolved.

Thanks for the read, and best of luck!

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

Growing Thorns 1 by Elizabeth Porco

Ros And The Dragons by Robyn Wescombe 

The author’s note on this submission talks about some of the issues readers found in the earlier version, and especially the question of exposition. Exposition is an essential tool in the writer’s box, but it can be complicated to figure out when, where, and how much to include in the story. I like the way the author approaches earlier critiques, and their attitude overall to drafts and revision. It’s a voyage of exploration, and a learning experience, always, even for a very experienced writer.

Exposition is about making sure the reader knows what they need to know in order to understand the story. It enhances the action and helps to explain how and why characters act and feel the way they do. Too much and the story bogs down. Too little and the reader is missing essential information.

The writer walks a narrow line down the middle. I like to define that line, when I’m writing, by asking questions. These questions can apply to other aspects of the story as well, including the number of characters in the scene.

1. Does this (expository bit, character, description, plot element, etc.) need to be in this exact place at this exact time? Is it essential for the movement of the plot? Can the plot move forward without it? Does the plot slow down or stop because of it?

2. What happens if I leave it out? Does the story still make sense?

3. Can I shift this piece of information to another part of the story? Will it work better there? Is it absolutely essential that this information appear here?

4. Does it need to be in the story at all? Have I provided enough information that the reader can extrapolate the rest?

5. Am I trusting my own skills? Am I trusting the reader to get my point?

These and other questions can help a writer choose when and how to convey information. It’s an art to keep the story moving while providing enough enhancement to make it both rich and satisfying, but not so much that it clogs the works. A good part of that art is knowing which information to convey—what to leave in, and what to leave out.

In this chapter, because it’s the first chapter, it’s even more important to get the balance right. The introduction of each character, with description and backstory, slows down the action and distracts from the main theme, which is House’s gender reveal and what the dragons do to disrupt it. We need to know a few things—what House is, what the party is about, and why it’s such a big deal that dragons have shown up—but count me on team Too Many Characters.

It’s not that there are a lot of people in the scene. It’s a party. There’s a crowd. But as a reader, I don’t need to know in detail who each person is. I don’t need the round of introductions. What I need to know is that are a bunch of people here and suddenly there’s a pair of party crashers.

It’s about need-to-know. Essential information. Right here, right now, I only need to meet the main players. Ros, House, the dragons. One or two others to give me a sense of the rest of the crowd.

The rest can wait for a later scene. Then we might get a quick line or so of “Oh, yeah, Bob was at the gender reveal, he knows what’s up, now it’s his turn to move things forward.” We’ll have time to get to know them, and to see how they fit into the story as a whole. For now, it’s enough to know they’re there. We’ll trust the story, and the author, to give us more when the time comes.

— Judith Tarr

Our Days Are Numbered These Days by Jim McDougall

There’s something about images of people–videos, movies, photos, and paintings–that can be very disturbing.  “Our Days Are Numbered These Days” builds on the disturbing potential of images to provide some creepy moments.  When Craig realizes that something like an old home movie is somehow playing on the boarded-up window of a deserted house, that’s quite strange and disturbing.  The moment when this “movie” starts playing on his phone is super creepy and really disturbed me (in the best possible way).  For me, that’s the strongest moment in the story.  A man in the “movie” seems to appear in reality, which is another disturbing moment.

The story offers some other powerful moments that don’t involve images of people.  Craig finds the calendar with the current date circled and only blank paper after that date.  That feels very fresh to me and horrific.  And then Craig discovers his phone is stuck on that date.  There’s a lot in this story to enjoy, but I do think it could be strengthened in several ways.

I had a hard time believing the reactions of Craig and Angela, so I wasn’t able to relate to them or care about them very much.  That weakened the horror.  My first difficulty occurs when Craig wants to go over to the abandoned house to investigate the light.  To me, it seems like Craig and Angela should think the light is most likely caused by people using the house to sell drugs or engage in some other illegal activity, or by homeless people using it for shelter.  Either way, I would expect Craig and Angela to anticipate the people in the house would not welcome anyone snooping around and that danger might result. But neither one of them anticipates danger.  If Craig is supposed to already be drawn by the light, that’s not clear now.

Once Craig and Angela get to the boarded-up window and start seeing the movie images, there reactions again are hard for me to believe.  They are concerned with what’s happening in the movie, when the movie was made, and the fact that the burgers look tasty.  I think they ought to be concerned with how they are seeing images when there is clearly no projector around, an idea that would be followed in short order by freaking out and probably running away.  I think the story is trying to suggest that they are mesmerized by the images, but that doesn’t come through.  I don’t feel the images or the light drawing them in.  For me, the story would be stronger if Craig were fighting the influence of the light, so we could feel an internal conflict between the attraction and his knowledge that this is strange/wrong and should be resisted.  When Craig thinks, “This was getting really crazy now,” I’m thinking he should have thought this much earlier in the story.

Another element that could be strengthened is the plot.  I think it works pretty well up until Angela disappears and Craig finds the calendar.  After that, the suspense and fear seems to drain out of the story as Craig easily flees the house, and we learn he’s been detained by the police and this is a letter to the inspector.  It feels as if we’re promised a story about Craig and Angela and this landmark of the house, but what we end up with is Craig’s plea for the police inspector to solve his problem. That’s not a satisfying delivery on the promise.  It feels like I’m reading one story up until he flees the house, and then I’m reading a totally different story.  For me, delivering on the promise means continuing the story of Craig, Angela, and the house until it’s resolved in some way.  Craig might struggle to find Angela in the house.  For example, maybe he sees her in the movie on his phone, and in the movie, she’s in the backyard.  So he goes into the backyard to try to find her, but she’s not there.  And in the movie she goes into the basement, so he goes into the basement, but she’s not there.  But he might find some other disturbing things in the basement or get trapped there.  Maybe the door opens when it’s past midnight.  The day resets (because it’s the last day on the calendar), and the movie/supernatural won’t appear again until dusk on this day.  He wouldn’t know this, but he could search around, and then weird stuff would start happening at dusk. This could happen a couple times with things getting worse each time.  Maybe he has to write something on the calendar to resolve the situation.  That might be “Join the party,” which might get him into the movie with Angela.  Or it might be “Marry Angela,” which might get Angela released, or “Stop the murder.” Maybe Angela would provide clues while in the movie, or maybe she can send texts on his phone.  There’s a lot of potential here; it’s a matter of figuring out what the story is about and how best to fully realize that.

I wonder why Angela is taken into the movie and Craig isn’t.  It seems like perhaps Craig closes his eyes to the light and Angela doesn’t.  But Craig was the one eager to investigate the light, so it seems odd or counterintuitive that he’s the one who resists it.  If Angela is unhappy in her life, and that’s what leads her to open her eyes and be taken into the movie, I think that needs to be established up front, before they see the light at the house.  Whatever the story is about, I think it reflects or relates to a relationship problem between Craig and Angela, and that needs to be set up at the beginning, get worse when Angela is taken, and then get resolved along with the conflict between Craig and the movie/supernatural at the end.  For example, if Angela wants to be part of a committed relationship and Craig doesn’t, then perhaps the desire for a strong bond and belonging is what appeals to her about the movie, which shows a family gathering, and what leads to her being pulled into it.  Craig’s desire to avoid commitment may have caused him to remain outside the movie.  Craig resolving his issue one way or another could lead to him resolving the issue with the movie/supernatural.

One final element I want to mention is description.  I’m confused a number of times about what’s happening because the description is not clear for me.  For example, the house is described as being “silhouetted in the amber glow of the lights up on the freeway.”  But they are on the street where the house is; they are on the same level.  The lights are above.  Something is silhouetted, at least in my mind, when the light is on the far side of the object.  That means the light needs to be behind the house to silhouette it, not above the house.  This may seem picky, but as I read I’m trying to form images, and I couldn’t form this one.  Another example occurs when Craig has first reached the window and sees the light:  “Its brilliance completely obscured the boards over the window.”  Previously, the light has been described as if it is leaking out from cracks between the boards.  So when I get to this sentence, I still think it’s leaking out from within the house.  It’s not clear to me that the light seems to be coming from outside the house.  It took me a while to understand and be able to visualize what was happening, which made it less scary.

I hope my comments are helpful.  I really enjoyed the disturbing elements in this story.  It was nice to read more of your work.

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