O | The Online Writing Workshop for SF, F & H Newsletter, August 2003
W | http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
W | Become a better writer!
| - - CONTENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
- Workshop News:
Another member goes pro!
Join us in Toronto
Ohio face-to-face workshop
Copycat workshop
OWW novels e-published by Del Rey
"Submit or die" challenge
September writing challenge
Newsletter challenge!
Market information
Membership payment information
- Editors' Choices for July submissions
- Reviewer Honor Roll
- Publication Announcements
- Workshop Statistics
- Feedback
| - - WORKSHOP NEWS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
ANOTHER MEMBER GOES PRO!
We received this e-mail from Sarah Prineas just last week: "I was
accepted for active membership in SFWA today :) All the qualifying
stories were workshopped extensively, so thanks to all readers then
and now and a massive thanks to the workshop, which made it possible
for me to become a writer."
SFWA (http://www.sfwa.org) is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America, a (now) international professional organization for
writers that provides contract advice and help with publishers and
foreign rights, as well as sponsoring the Nebula Awards. Writers must
publish at least three stories or one novel in a select list of
professional markets to qualify.
Congratulations to Sarah on joining the other workshoppers who reached
this milestone in sales, whether they've joined SFWA or not.
JOIN US IN TORONTO
Over thirty workshop members will be attending the 2003 World Science
Fiction Convention, TorCon 3 (http://www.torcon3.com) later this
month, including workshop admin and go-to guy Charles Coleman Finlay,
mailing list sage and everyone's uncle James Stevens-Arce, and
novelist alum Karin Lowachee. Both Charlie and Karin are up for a
variety of awards that will be presented at the con, including the
Hugo, Aurora, Sidewise, and John W. Campbell Award for best new
writer.
TorCon takes place the last weekend in August. The workshop has
requested space for an OWW reunion session. It's not on the program
yet, but should be when you arrive. Come to that or come to Charlie,
Jim, or Karin's kaffeklatsches to meet other workshop members. Other
workshoppers on the program include Elizabeth Glover and Melinda
Kimberley. We look forward to seeing you there!
LAST CHANCE FOR FACE-TO-FACE WORKSHOP IN OHIO
OWW administrator and sometime resident editor Charles Coleman Finlay
(yes, that's the same clown we mentioned a paragraph or two back) will
be instructing the Writers' Workshop at Context XVI in Columbus, Ohio,
on October 3-5, 2003. The workshop costs $60 but that includes a full
membership to the convention. The deadline for sign-up is August 31.
Registration forms and full details are available at:
http://www.contextcon.com/contexthome.htm
COPYCAT WORKSHOP PROBLEM
In late July many of our members received an invitation to join a
copycat workshop called "WriteWorkshop" which is a pretty blatant copy
of OWW's look and feel, with the same navigation structure, wording of
navigation buttons and some Web page content, the copyright line, and
even the same slogan. It appears that the person who put it together
is a workshop member who hand-collected e-mail addresses from the
workshop's member directory as part of his direct e-mail effort.
We want to assure all our members that we have no affiliation with
WriteWorkshop, that we did not provide e-mail addresses for any
mailing, and that we are investigating options for action. As a
general warning, we'd like to remind everyone to make sure that their
connection is secure before giving out PayPal or credit card
information to any Web site.
OWW NOVEL CONTEST WINNERS PUBLISHED BY DEL REY
Have you checked out the Del Rey e-books published by your fellow OWW
authors yet? If not, why not?
TAINTED GARDEN by Jeff Stanley: What if an alien world was alive?
What if it had secrets it wanted to keep from the people who lived
there? This is high-concept SF -- more than just another
first-contact novel.
(http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0345459105&view=excerpt)
STONE MAIDEN by Anne Aquirre: A deconstructionist look at fantasy,
filled with real, sympathetic characters.
(http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0345457676&view=excerpt)
THAGOTH by Michael McClung: The greater the good there is, the
greater the evil that will rise to oppose it. But the heroes will
have to conquer internal demons before they can defeat the external
ones. A fantasy about the human heart at war.
(http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0345459113&view=excerpt)
Check out the future of publishing by buying these e-books for just
$2.99, or read the free excerpts online and see what your fellow
workshoppers are doing to attract attention.
"SUBMIT OR DIE" CHALLENGE
The current challenge is still underway. To encourage each other to
submit work for publication, mailing list members periodically issue a
"Submit or Die" challenge with prizes for the most rejections, the
first pro sale, and so on. Feel free to join the challenge. Rules and
prizes are posted at: http://www.thermeon.net/checkered/SOD.html
SEPTEMBER WRITING CHALLENGE
One word: superheroes. But keep in mind that they have to be original
-- the workshop's rules about submissions prohibit use of any licensed
characters or worlds, and that would include those from comic books
and graphic novels. (Hoo Boy would be a good anti-superhero for those
original workshoppers who remember his insidious presence!)
For more complete information on the monthly writing challenges,
visit: http://www.thermeon.net/checkered/Challenge.html
NEWSLETTER CHALLENGE!
We'll give away a free book -- your choice of the hardcover of Cecilia
Dart-Thorton's LADY OF THE SORROWS or a first edition of Arthur C.
Clarke's ISLANDS IN THE SKY -- to the first person to e-mail us at
support@onlinewritingworkshop.com identifying the new feature added to
one of the newsletter's regular sections this month. Happy hunting!
MARKET INFORMATION
Workshop resident editor Jeanne Cavelos tells us that she is editing a
new anthology, THE MANY FACES OF VAN HELSING. It will include original
short stories from both new and established writers. All will be about
Van Helsing, the vampire hunter from Bram Stoker's DRACULA. Jeanne
says, "I'd be happy to consider submissions from workshop members."
The deadline for submissions is September 15. The guidelines are on
Jeanne's Web site: http://www.sff.net/people/jcavelos/guide.htp
Member Rabe Phillips plans an anthology of stories called DARKER THAN
TIN, BRIGHTER THAN SIN to raise funds for the workshop's scholarship
fund. We'll let you know more when he has the guidelines posted.
Member Maria Tatham is currently reading submissions for _Mythic
Circle_, the Mythopoeic Society's short fiction and poetry annual.
It's a hardcopy magazine, paying in a copy, and posting fiction/author
on the the Mythopoeic Society's Web site (http://www.mythsoc.org).
She'd love to see submissions from workshop members.
MEMBERSHIP PAYMENT INFORMATION
How to pay: In the U.S., you can pay by PayPal or send us a check or
money order. Outside of the U.S., you can pay via PayPal (though
international memberships incur a small set-up fee); pay via Kagi
(www.kagi.com--easier for non-U.S. people); send us a check in U.S.
dollars drawn on a U.S. bank (many banks can do this for you for a
fee); or send us an international money order (available at some banks
and some post offices). If none of those options work for you, you
can send us U.S. dollars through the mail if you choose, or contact us
about barter if you have interesting goods to barter (not services).
Scholarship fund and gift memberships: you can give a gift membership
for another member; just send us a payment by whatever method you
like, noting who the membership is for and specifying whether the gift
is anonymous or not. We will acknowledge receipt to you and the
member. Or you can donate to our scholarship fund, which we use to
fully or partially cover the costs of an initial paying membership for
certain active, review-contributing members whose situations do not
allow them to pay the full membership fee themselves.
Bonus payments: The workshop costs only 94 cents per week, but we know
that many members feel that it's worth much more to them. So here's
your chance to award us with a bonus on top of your membership fee.
For example, is the workshop worth five dollars a month to you? Award
us a $11 bonus along with your $49 membership fee. 25% of any bonus
payments we receive will go to our support staff, sort of like a tip
for good personal service. The rest will be tucked away to lengthen
the shoestring that is our budget and keep us running!
For more information:
Payments: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/memberships.shtml
Bonus payments and information about our company:
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/bonuspayments.shtml
Price comparisons:
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/memberships_comparison.shtml
| - - EDITORS' CHOICES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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 -- SF, F, horror,
and short stories -- receive a detailed review, meant to be educational
for others as well as the author.
Reviews are written by our Resident Editors, award-winning authors and
instructors like Jeanne Cavelos, James Patrick Kelly, and Kelly Link,
and by experienced science-fiction and fantasy editor Jenni
Smith-Gaynor. The last four months of Editors' Choices and their
editorial reviews are archived on the workshop. Go to the "Read,
Rate, Review" page and click on "Editors' Choices" in the Submission
Selector.
Congratulations to this month's Editors' Choice authors!
Editor's Choice, Fantasy Chapter/Partial Chapter:
A FIRE IN THE PLAIN, Chapter 2 by Damien Perrotin
Damien Perrotin packs a lot of information into a very short chapter.
The opening paragraph tells us that a competing religion was wiped
out, that its followers were either executed or forced to worship the
victor's goddess, and this goddess is a demanding and powerful deity.
It's a compelling introduction that does a good job showing us details
about the world. Nicely done.
Because this story is being told from the first-person point of view,
the entire plot's tone is biased by the narrator's life. This makes
for a great novel's voice, but there are several pieces of information
that need to be clarified -- it's just too subtle to have any impact,
yet it feels as if Perrotin meant it to be part of the story's
foundation.
"I inwardly smiled. aulo -- older sister. Hearing this title warmed my
heart up. I was so rarely granted it, even though I was theoretically
entitled to." It's unclear why the narrator was "theoretically
entitled" to being called "older sister" by a slave. The relationship
between the slave girl, Fale, and the narrator -- who is never named
in this chapter -- is ambiguous. Ali (named in the third chapter;
hopefully identified in the first) enjoys being called "older sister"
by the slave, but is annoyed and feels slighted by Fale's words. The
slave had spoken before permission was granted, but the slave/mistress
relationship is unclear. Perhaps there was more information of how
this society views its slaves in the first chapter; a clarifying
sentence here will help us understand the meaning the social taboos or
etiquette.
Later, Ali admires the girl's foreign beauty: "She was beautiful, and
more than that, despite her muddy clogs and her ragged tunic. Her
features had a queenly delicacy and her skin, albeit blackened by
smoke and dirt, an almost translucent quality. Her eyes shone like two
jade stones, making the emerald of my dubbing ring almost drab in
comparison. The most puzzling, however, was her hair. It was the color
of amber and cascaded down her shoulder like a river of copper." This
description seems a bit melodramatic for the narrator who had
"wrestled" her way out of an orphanage. The description of her hair
seems incongruous to the "smoke and dirt" blackening Fale's skin
(which seems unearthly if it's still translucent beneath the grime --
if Fale is not supernatural, the description seems odd). If the
intention is to show that Fale's beauty is unusual for a girl from the
steppes (possibly hinting at a new plot thread to come), Ali's almost
fawning admiration seems a bit out of place and overdone. However, if
the intention is to lay the foundation for a romance between Fale and
Ali, the descriptive words Ali uses are convincing. Whatever is meant
by this description, be aware of word choices, especially when using
the first-person point of view.
"I was a monist's daughter, but this did not give her any right to
contest my demands. No slave could. No commoner could. I had not
wrestled my way out of the orphanage to bear such a slight." Here, Ali
shows a bit of self-defense, a bit of a chip on the shoulder; there
are further examples of this, which makes for a multi-dimensional
heroine. She is at odds with herself and those around her, yet she is
being relied upon to accomplish a great task. This is a great view of
Ali's character, but it's still unclear how her social rank is
different from her fellow sister, Ni Malefa, who is a disowned queen's
daughter. This points to a need for clarification of the entire social
structure (some information might have been introduced in the first
chapter, which was not available). Ali is perhaps a commoner, an
orphan rescued and raised to be a warrior against the monists?
(Although, in the first paragraph, the monists were defeated 15 years
ago.) If Ni Malefa was disowned, where is she placed on the social
ladder; how does it affect Ali's position? There's apparently some
distinction between being a queen's daughter and not being from a
royal family no matter that they are both part of this Order, but it's
unclear.
There is mention of Ni Malefa's facial tattoos, "When I command a
castle, who will care whether I have been born from a queen or a sow?
I thought, gazing at the convoluted family tattoos which decorated her
cheeks. ...The Order had given me a family of sort, but it could not
give me a blazon. Even on the Grand Master's throne, my cheeks would
remain virgin." This is good information, but too subtle to really
describe the society. By fleshing this out, we will see the social
structure, which feels complex and interesting. With a better
understanding of the society, we'll also be able to sympathize with
the character, understand the major conflict, and feel more immersed
in the world.
A nice bit of writing with lots of information packed into a brief
chapter. By giving us more details and fleshing out some of the social
structure, the chapter will fill out. Be aware of word choices when
using the first person point of view; over-romanticized use may create
the wrong impression of a character. This is an interesting world with
an intriguing main character, a story sure to be compelling as the
chapters unfold.
--Jenni Smith-Gaynor
Former editor, Del Rey Books
Editor's Choice, SF Chapter/Partial Chapter:
CALL IT A GIFT, Chapter 3 by Christiana Ellis
This chapter has many virtues. The characters come alive on the page
both by what they say and what they do. Mrs. Mitchell is particularly
strong and when Mr. Mitchell chides her for antagonizing doctors, it
suggests not only the family's entire history with the medical
profession but also the dynamic of their marriage. Deft! Although
the writer has a tendency to pad description, in general the narrative
flows well. The hospital situation Ginny finds herself in is
intrinsically interesting and the writer explores that situation with
a sure hand.
I noticed a couple of stylistic tics. One is that the writer too
often goes beyond the limited third-person point of view. That is,
Ginny intuits what other characters are thinking by how they look or
what they're doing. Now, writers do this all the time, but the
technique should be used sparingly. Consider:
"The doctor seemed to realize this as well and his cheeks flushed. To
cover, he looked back down to fiddle with his pad, looking very much
as though he wished he had pages to flip through." And "The doctor
stepped forward, his face approximating contrition." And "The doctor,
she knew, might genuinely care about her well-being, but she could see
the glitter of medical journals in his eyes. Even in the faces of her
boyfriend, her parents, she saw a curiosity that didn't lend itself to
a quick discharge and return to normal life."
I must say that I _liked_ the bit about the glitter of medical journals.
It could be that the mysterious mass in Ginny's brain will turn out to
give her the gift of telepathy -- but failing that, watch out for pushing
the POV too far!
Another stylistic tic is that the writer occasionally steps on some
marvelous description. Consider:
"The doctor stood there fuming. His face turned red and the tendons of his
jaw stood out against his neck."
The writer tells us three different ways that the doctor is angry.
The best line is that about the tendons of his jaw, but this vivid
writing is undercut by what comes before. Similarly, "'We're just
worried about you,' said her father. He smoothed a few flyaway strands
of her hair with gentle fingers."
The fact that his fingers were gentle -- wait, can fingers be gentle?
-- is certainly implied by the strong image of smoothing the flyaway
strands of hair. This is an absolutely splendid sense impression, at
once visual and tactile, that deserves to stand on its own.
One concern I have is that Ginny is a weak character in the first
three chapters. By weak, I don't mean uninteresting. She is
troubled in a complex way and her fears would seem to be justified.
But it's hard to build an entire novel around someone who has things
done to her, as opposed to doing things for herself. Consider, for
example, the scene with the nurse. She is a spear-carrier who is in
the chapter primarily to introduce some of the cool medical tech of
this future. The writer is at pains to make her sympathetic; thus she
is "bright-eyed," "pleasant" and ever-smiling. The narrative makes it
clear that she poses no threat to Ginny. At the end of her brief
moment on the page, the nurse tells her, "You need to cut yourself
some slack." This is provocative, no? Yet "Ginny opened her mouth to
respond, but found nothing to say." If Ginny said either "I know," or
"I can't," or even "What are you talking about?" it would be a signal
that there are reserves Ginny can draw upon.
However, a classic plot strategy is to have a weak character find some
inner strength that helps her become her true self. The writer is
early in her novel and is totally justified in piling yet more woe
upon Ginny's shoulders. But readers will anticipate that at some
point the protagonist will rise up and carry her burden, as do we all.
Overall, this chapter works nicely.
--James Patrick Kelly
Author of STRANGE BUT NOT A STRANGER and THINK LIKE A DINOSAUR
http://www.jimkelly.net
Runner Up, Short Story: "Visle Bearer" by Ray Lacina
Read Kelly Link's Resident Editor review in the workshop!
Editor's Choice, Short Story: "Still Life in Green Chair" by Pam McNew
This is an odd, well-written story which reminded me of surrealist
work by writers like Carol Emshwiller, Alan De Niro, and a lot of the
McSweeney crowd. I enjoyed it a great deal because I never knew
exactly what was going to happen next. The pleasures of reading it,
besides the general strength of the prose, were the points where the
story meanders off into improbable debates and odd asides, such as the
description of the bats who plague the hair of the town matrons, and
the conversation in which the narrator's mother informs her that they
are adopting a child.
I should also say, straight away, that because of its oddness, this is
a difficult story to critique. The farther off from the center a
writer writes, the more it becomes the case that the writer will have
to learn to solve his or her own problems. (This is true of all
stories and all writers, by the way -- it's just that it becomes
apparent quickly when a writer is doing something especially
different.) I can only point out places where this story could be
stronger, or where the writer ought to make things even stranger and
richer. I'm thrilled that so many writers this month set out to break
Turkey City Lexicon rules. Some of the stories that I've been happiest
while writing (and even after finishing them) were written because I
wanted to figure out how to break rules. The only thing is that you
have to figure out why the rules are there in the first place, and
then how to deliberately break them in interesting ways. Rules of
writing are just tools of writing, like other tools. You can use them
by following them (you should also understand why you're following
them, when you follow them) or by not following them.
After reading it through a few times, I have a few basic questions
about this story. First of all, why is this woman a watcher and an
eavesdropper (a very Emshwillerian kind of protagonist)? She also
tells us that she's a writer and the lover of a married man. I think
that that writer detail may be a misstep -- there's no emotional
investment in making the narrator a writer, the way that having a
married lover makes her interesting, pathetic, misguided, vulnerable,
etc. Again, I'm not sure that her friends should be artists. It might
be more interesting if they had all met in a therapy group for the
lovers of married men, or some even odder conjunction. Consider
increasing the level of strangeness around her affair in the same way
that her conversation with her mother becomes more and more loopy. By
the end of the story, it might be good if the reader knew how the
narrator and her lover had met. Hopefully it would involve bats and
hair. It might also be a good idea if the narrator begins to imagine
and elaborate on the trip that her lover is taking with his wife. The
reader will begin to be involved with the story on an emotional level.
Reading a story like this one is like watching the Flying Brothers
Karamazov juggle. We want to see the writer throw things up in the air
-- more and more and stranger and stranger things as the story goes on
-- until at the end, everything is up in the air all at once, so that
you have some kind of spectacular, fast-moving, glorious potential for
catastrophe. What I'm trying to say is that this story tries to make
itself neat and tidy at the end when we should have bats and wives
_and_ car thieves and mothers making phone calls. Throw it all up in
the air. I know that the green chair is the starting point for the
story, but I don't think it should be the ending place. Now that
you've got the story going, I think you should probably take out some
of the chair. The description below is absolutely beautiful:
"In front of the window, I give Chair a whirl. Spinning supple leather
dyed green, green, green. It's green like white grapes or a Granny
Smith apple peel. It's green like the heart of an unripened tomato or
a new leaf of fresh lettuce plucked from a shady garden the second
month of spring. It's green like envy and need or the first bitter
bite of possession. I love how very green it is."
But I wouldn't linger too much longer on the chair. Parents and bats
and lovers are more interesting.
On the sentence level, most of the prose and description is engaging.
This story has a strong, quirky narrative voice. Be careful, however,
not to let the prose become too quirky, too cute. For example, the
narrator says of Camille: "It's as though her life is a secret garden
and I'm climbing up the closest gnarly oak to peer over its wall at
her." "Gnarly" may be a bit too much. The simile of the secret garden
is good - you want the reader to linger on that whole image, rather
than just the oak. And I'm always distracted by too-decorative verbs,
such as when ice "tinkles" in a glass. It just never seems like an
important enough detail to deserve such a noticeable verb.
Make your details as specific as possible -- when the narrator says
that her lover is going to bring her back perfume made from the musk
of "some animal," you're missing an opportunity to digress in an
interesting way. You can go off on a riff about a particular animal,
or you can even describe the way that the narrator's lover smells, or
tell us that the narrator is allergic to all perfumes, but she likes
sneezing and feeling lightheaded, so she uses them anyway.
And finally, it strikes the wrong note when the narrator refers to her
"upstairs fag neighbor". As an adjective, "fag" here is mean-sounding
and flippant -- more like the usual kind of binocular-wielding,
disapproving neighborhood spy than this narrator seems to be.
Go ahead and make this story even stranger and more emotionally
complicated than it already is. Your next difficulty, of course, is
figuring out where to send it!
--Kelly Link
Editor of TRAMPOLINE, available from Small Beer Press
http://www.kellylink.net/
Editor's Choice, Horror:
DISINTEGRATION Chapter 3, "Closedown" by Meredith L. Patterson
Meredith, I haven't read your previous chapters, so you should take
that into account as you read my critique. The voice in this chapter
is strong and consistent, drawing me quickly into this situation of a
ghost trying to figure out how he died. The missing memory seems like
a good mystery, and you're setting up a number of clues here.
You have some nice moments of description; I wish you described things
more. My favorite part was where Daniel condemned all the tenants'
DVDs--I was laughing. The idea of giving the ghost story a facelift
by adding contemporary elements like e-mail, clubbing, drugs, and a
cynical, foul-mouthed tone is a good one, but I don't feel that this
combination is working as well as it should be yet. In particular,
the plot is not developing in a strong, compelling way. I'm not
feeling a lot of suspense or tension.
As I've discussed in previous critiques, in each scene of a story,
some important value should flip for the main character of that scene.
He might go from love to hate, from trust to distrust, from fear to
confidence, etc. When you have letters or e-mails, as you do,
generally, each letter should create such a flip. When you have a
scene without such a flip, it means that nothing of significance has
changed for the main character, and thus that the scene is static and
weak. It also usually indicates that a scene is mainly giving
exposition (background information). While exposition is necessary in
almost every story, you shouldn't have a scene that is totally made up
of exposition and doesn't create a change for the character.
When I look at this chapter, I see many e-mails that don't create a
change for Daniel. In the places where something does change, it is
not clearly part of a causal chain (meaning, it's not caused by
previous events), and so feels manipulated by the author. You want
your plot to create the illusion that these events are happening
without interference from the author, and that the characters are
acting without interference, so the reader can fall into the story.
One important ingredient to create this illusion is to make your plot
a strong causal chain -- the events in the story are like a row of
dominoes, with one knocking over the next, which knocks over the next,
and so on. Let's look at the main things that change for Daniel in
this chapter:
(1) Daniel realizes he should try to leave the apartment--p. 5
(2) The tenants leave so he can't leave the apartment--p. 5
(3) Daniel meets Cassie--p. 9
(4) Daniel learns that Mute has not discovered anything in
talking to Keiser--p. 11
(page numbers are from my printer when I printed this out)
The first three are the things that interest me most as I'm reading.
I'm hungry for details of the way in which Daniel is interacting with
his environment, and any time you give me any little bit, that grabs
my interest. I want to know how much he can rattle the windows, and
if he can rattle them, why he can't open or break them. And I want to
know if he's actually pressing the keys on the computer, and if he's
pressing the buttons on the remote and opening DVD cases, and if he
is, then why he can't open a door. You have to establish the rules
your ghosts follow, and you need to do it quickly and convincingly, so
I can feel as if you're playing fair, and so I can experience what
it's like to be a ghost, which is one of the main pleasures I expect
from a story like this. Right now, you're rushing over all this stuff
as if it's of no interest to you, which creates frustration for me.
What I think happened in this chapter is that you fell into a couple
of the major traps of first person POV: talkiness and an overly
internal story. I think that you really like your voice, and that you
became overly involved in it and just let it say whatever it wanted.
If you look at the list above, you can see that the e-mails (which in
essence are alternating first person POVs), do not change anything
significant for the main character, except for the second-to-last one
where Mute reports she's failed to get anything useful from Keiser.
Although the e-mails offer exposition and allow the characters to
sound clever, that isn't enough to justify their presence in the
story. They aren't raising the tension and advancing the story in a
powerful way. If you look at one of the first epistolary horror
novels, DRACULA, you'll see that each letter and each diary entry
changes something of significance for the main character of that
scene. My advice is to cut by half the number of e-mails you have in
this chapter, and to restructure the remaining ones so that some value
of significance flips in each one. Cut the exposition to the bare
minimum necessary for us to understand the story, and cut any
unnecessary talkiness (you give us a lot of details about chalk and
plywood that aren't significant to his point, which is that he has no
close friends except Genny. If you showed us his desperation to
connect with Genny, that would make your point much more strongly than
this plywood anecdote. And to be honest, I don't care about Mute yet,
so I don't care about her Zed story). The voice can come out strongly
and still remain focused on what's important to the story.
While you are cutting back on the e-mails, I'd suggest you expand the
non-e-mail portions of the story. Right now, these feel
underdeveloped, and they are where most of your plot development
occurs (the narrative scenes are only on p. 5 and pp. 9-10--just where
three out of four elements on the above list occur). These are the
most interesting parts. As I mentioned above, these elements lack a
strong cause/effect linkage. I don't know why Daniel realizes he
should try leaving the apartment when he does. I'm wondering why he
doesn't want to leave at the end of the first e-mail. There also isn't
any clear cause for the tenants leaving--that seems manipulated by the
author to keep the character in the apartment. There also isn't a
strong cause for Cassie appearing. She appears because of Daniel's
pounding, but I don't know why he's pounding now and not earlier. If
you give us a clear cause for #1, then #3 will solve itself. But I
think he ought to be pounding and trying to get out in Chapter 1,
which I'll discuss below.
The transitions between the e-mails and the narrative sections are
abrupt and jarring. I think that if you set the e-mails within the
narrative (i.e., he sits down and types something, and receives a
response) rather than dropping them outside the narrative, the story
would flow better and it would all seem unified.
Another important reason suspense is lacking is because I don't feel a
strong desire from your main character. The main character in a story
needs to want something very badly and struggle to achieve his goal.
That helps us feel sympathy for the character and also helps involve
us in the story -- we want to know whether or not he'll get what he
wants. I don't feel any strong desire in Daniel. His desire to leave
the apartment seems a whim, and I don't know why it's so important to
him to discover how he died. What difference does it make? It seems,
from your synopsis, that his earlier goal was to reach Genny. I think
that could work very well, but I don't see any evidence of it in this
chapter. If he wants to reach her, then why hasn't he tried to get
out of the apartment to see her, or why hasn't he tried to call and
communicate through voice, music, tapping, synthesizer, or any other
method? He generally seems happy to sleep late and write e-mails, and
that doesn't make for a character I can root for.
I haven't mentioned the fourth plot point, and that's because it
didn't have a strong impact on me. If finding out how he died is
important to him, then I need to feel that from him more. He
shouldn't need to be prompted by Mute to give the details of his daily
life and suggest places and people she might visit to find out the
truth. He should be overloading her with thoughts about how he might
have died, and people to question, and information to get. Since he
doesn't really seem to care, and doesn't seem to have any strong
feeling about whether Kaiser can offer useful information or not, when
I learn that Kaiser didn't help any it's not a big deal. If Daniel
had huge hopes for what Kaiser might say, and then Kaiser wouldn't
answer, or gave un-useful answers, then I'd feel much more upset.
I've stayed focused mainly on plot in this critique because that's the
area I feel needs your attention -- you have some strong writing and
interesting characters. I think this could develop into a fresh,
exciting novel. I hope my comments are helpful.
--Jeanne Cavelos
http://www.odysseyworkshop.org/
| - - REVIEWER HONOR ROLL - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
The Reviewer Honor Roll area of the workshop recognizes members who
have given useful, insightful reviews. After all, that's what makes
the workshop go, so we want to give great reviewers a little
well-earned recognition!
If you got a really useful review and would like to add the reviewer
to the Reviewer Honor Roll, just use our online honor-roll nomination
form -- log in and link to it from the bottom of the Reviewer Honor
Roll page at http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/honorroll.shtml.
Your nomination will appear on the first day of the next calendar
month.
The Honor Roll will show all August nominations beginning Sept 1.
Some advance highlights from the August honor roll:
Reviewer: Brenda Guest
Submission: Chapter 25 - Like Breathing - crit for crit by Susan Jett
Submitted by: Susan Jett
Nominator's Comments: Brenda's reviews always focus on the big picture
-- what's believable, what seems rushed, what works. After reading
her thoughts I'm ready to jump back in and address the things she had
issues with. A second draft -- post-Brenda -- always makes better
sense than did the first one. Thanks Brenda, both for sticking with
this monster-novel and for consistently getting me back on track!
Reviewer: Lawrence Payne
Submission: The Hand of Shadows--Chapter 2&3 by Andrew Ahn
Submitted by: Andrew Ahn
Nominator's Comments: Of all the critiques I have gotten on a story
that is near and dear to my heart (being my first novel) Lawrence has
gone out of his way to be kind, reassuring and yet hitting the
nitpicks with helpful suggestions (and never commands) that I need to
hear to improve this rough story. I truly appreciate his effort and
his experience.
Reviewers nominated to the honor roll during July include (in no particular
order and excluding notation of multiple nominations): cathy freeze, Jenni
McKinney, sally van rooden, A.M. Muffaz, jim giammatteo, Laurie Sandra
Davis, Heidi Anderson, Jen Oberlander, Ian Tregillis, Annemarie Jameson, kit
davis, Robert Evans, Bill Schindler, JW wrenn, Kim Purdue, Heidi Anderson,
Kenneth Rapp, Jaime Voss, Sherry Thompson, Kirsten Faisal, Michael Goodwin,
Carlos Jiminez-Cortes, Michael Staton, Helen Mazarakis, elizabeth hull, Mike
Farrell, Ian Morrison, Cynthia Cloughly, Mark Alger, Larry West, Mel Melcer,
Mike Farrell, Celeste Masinter, Melissa Richards, Linda Dicmanis, Kathryn
Allen, Robert Haynes, Holly McDowell, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Holly McDowell.
We congratulate them all for their excellent reviews. All nominations
received in July can be still found until September 1 at:
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/honorroll.shtml
| - - PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
We can't announce them if you don't let us know! So drop Charlie a
line at support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com whenever you have good
news to share.
Sales and Publications:
Gregory Banks writes us: "My novelette, 'Kachina Dawn,' which
unfortunately I never had the opportunity to workshop at OWW, has been
published by StoneGarden.net (http://www.stonegarden.net/) as an
e-book on sale now:
(http://www.stonegarden.net/product_info.php?products_id=151)."
Congratulations!
To boldly go where no workshopper has ever gone before: Elizabeth Bear
has been solicited by the editor of _Nowa Fantastyka_, Poland's
professional SF magazine, for Polish language reprint rights to "Ice,"
her very-first-ever workshopped story, which appeared in the March
2003 issue of _Ideomancer_. She says that "it was workshopped twice
and critted (and enormously improved) by Dena Landon, Kathryn Allen,
Tony Valiulis, Hannah Wolf Bowen, Ruth Nestvold, Larry West, Penelope
Hardy, Heather Williams, and Stella Evans--and possibly some persons
whose names have been lost to the mists of history." Then she added
something about Cossack-dancing that we probably shouldn't print in
the interest of international good will.
John Borneman's short story "A Wall of Brass" has been accepted for
Issue 11 of _Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine_. This is the
second story in his Brass Man series; the first one, "The Brass Man,"
was published by _ASIM_ in Issue 2 last year. John send his "thanks to
the OWW and my most excellent reviewers! You may begin patting
yourselves on the back."
Charles Coleman Finlay's short story "The Smackdown Outside Dedham"
will appear in _H. P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror_. He confesses:
"I workshopped this first as 'Out of Space' and was out of luck in
selling it, but then I rewrote it with the crits in mind and
workshopped it again as 'Smackdown in the North Woods' and finally
made enough changes to it to get it right. Thanks to everyone who read
the different versions."
Hey! Didn't we post this contest info in the newsletter? Darren Moore
won Second Place in the Slamdance Film Festival's
(http://www.slamdance.com/) 2003 SLAM FI Short Story Contest for his
story "Path to F'dar." In a giddy loss of grammar skills, he exclaimed
"it was critiqued a long time ago in OWW, thanks all! me so pumped..."
We understand.
Check out Ruth Nestvold's name on the cover of the September
_Asimov's_: http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0310/tableofcontents.shtml.
Sweet! You can read a portion of her story, "Looking Through Lace," as
well.
Lisa von Biela informs us that her story "Hunting with the Boys" is
now up on _The Swamp_ (http://www.the-swamp.net). She says it was
"workshopped here first, of course! Thanks to all my critters!"
| - - WORKSHOP STATISTICS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Number of members as of 8/20: 687 paying, 111 trial
Number of submissions currently online: 719
Percent of submissions with 3 or more reviews: 77.1%
Percent of submissions with zero reviews: 3.1%
Number of submissions in July: 553
Number of reviews in July: 2601
Ratio of reviews/submissions in July: 4.70
Estimated average word count per review in July: 649.9 (Wow!)
Number of submissions in Aug to date: 363
Number of reviews in Aug to date: 1692
Ratio of reviews/submissions in Aug to date: 4.66
Estimated average word count per review in Aug to date: 667.2 (WOW!)
Total number of under-reviewed submissions: 43 (5.9% of total subs)
Number over 3 days old with 0 reviews: 5
Number over 1 week old with under 2 reviews: 14
Number over 2 weeks old with under 3 reviews: 24
| - - FEEDBACK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
TIPS APPRECIATED
Got a helpful tip for your fellow members? A trick or hint for
submitting or reviewing, for what to put in your author's comments,
for getting good reviews, or for formatting or titling your
submission? Share it with us and we'll publish it in the next
newsletter. Just send it to support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com and
we'll do the rest.
Until next month -- Just write!
The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
| - - Copyright 2003 Online Writing Workshops, LLC - - - - - - - - -|
Visit our newsletter page to subscribe!
[an error occurred while processing this directive]