O | The Online Writing Workshop for SF & F Newsletter, September 2002 W | http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com W | Become a better writer! | - - CONTENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | - Workshop News: New Help For Under-reviewed Submissions Worldcon Report OWW T-shirts Submission opportunity Membership Payment Information - Editors' Choices for September submissions - Reviewer Honor Roll - Publication Announcements - Workshop Statistics | - - WORKSHOP NEWS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | NEW HELP FOR UNDER-REVIEWED SUBMISSIONS In an effort to draw more attention to submissions that need reviews, we've added a new workshop enhancement. Under-reviewed submissions now pop up automatically at the top of the "Read, Rate, Review" page. Members who review them by clicking the links will get an extra review point. All submissions more than three days old with zero reviews, more than one week old with only one review, or more than two weeks old with only two reviews go into the rotation. Our goal is to see every submission get at least three reviews within two weeks. We'll be keeping a close eye on submissions over the next couple months to see if this helps spread the reviews around to everyone. Let us know what you think of this feature at support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com WORLDCON REPORT Was it really Dystopian SF or a gathering of OWW members? It can't possibly be both--there's nothing dystopian about workshoppers having fun together! Thanks to James Stevens-Arce, and despite the wrong title in the program and a scheduling conflict with early member/published author Karin Lowachee's reading, the workshop had its third annual members' gathering at this year's Worldcon in San Jose--a chance for members to meet in person, to renew old acquaintances, and to wear their new workshop T-shirts. Jaime Voss's photos of the gathering can be seen at the Serendip (http://www.digitalphotosystem.com/Tales/BannerPage9.htm) under the "World Con Pictures" link. (Special thanks to Mike Blumer for putting them up. You might want to check out the second annual Serendip Writing Contest while you're there.) OWW T-SHIRTS The new T-shirts sold out fast! Anyone who ordered one of them but hasn't sent in his/her payment yet should do so soon. We're holding on to just enough to fill all the pre-orders. If you've sent in payment and haven't received your shirt, or if you're not sure how to pay, email us at support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com for an answer. Those of you thinking about ordering shirts the next time we have them made can see them at: http://www.onlinewritingworkshop.com/art/newlogo.html SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITY Following the success of Issue One of the Alternate Species Print Magazine, Alternate Species is making a call for submissions to be printed in Issue Two. The ASmag is a quarterly SF,F&H magazine and the Autumn issue should therefore be going to press in October. For a chance to be considered for publication, send your story to asmag@alternatespecies.com. http://www.alternatespecies.com. 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 77 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 a dollar a week to you? Award us a $12 bonus along with your 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: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/bonuspayments.shtml 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. One submission in each of three categories--SF, F, and short stories--is given 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 Kelly Link and Nalo Hopkinson, or occasionally other writing pros. Close contenders for EC will be listed here as runners-up but won't get a review. The last four months of Editors' Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop. To view them, go to the "Read, Rate, Review" page and click on "Editors' Choices" in the Submission Selector. Congratulations to this month's Editors' Choice authors! Runners Up, Fantasy Chapter/Partial Chapter: THE PENITENT FAIR, Ch. 16 by Kirsten Faisal THE SONG OF RHIANNON Ch. 4, Part Two by Gareth Davies Editor's Choice, Fantasy Chapter/Partial Chapter: LOST DOG 3 - HEAVILY REVISED by Ilona Gordon I had a difficult time choosing a fantasy chapter this month; there were many that had potential. Finally, I chose LOST DOG 3 by Ilona Gordon. It's not a uniformly strong chapter, but I think there's a kernel of a fascinating idea here, which needs more work to bring it out. The chapter begins to come alive with the introduction of the Pack; shapeshifters who, for some reason have to battle "bloodlust" and who use the strict organization of the Pack to keep their violence at bay. The first thing the description did was to make me wonder why the Pack's bloodlust is a problem to them; a wolf doesn't have a problem with hunting and killing for meat. What creatures do Pack members hunt? Humans, perhaps? (Solely humans, or is it just that we're easy pickings?) And if humans, do Pack members perhaps retain enough humanity themselves that they feel guilty about hunting fellow humans? As a reader, I'd want to start meeting members of the Pack pretty quickly. Think about what use each element of a chapter has. You begin the chapter with a surreal dream sequence; how does it serve your plot? What new information does it give us about your character or the situation? Fantasy stories are already asking readers to suspend a lot of disbelief, and the writer has to work hard to keep the implausible feeling plausible. As readers in an unfamiliar fantasy world, we're depending on the author to reveal the rules of the world to us, so that we can begin to have some sense of what is and isn't possible. But in a dream, anything is possible. I often find that when you add dream sequences to an already fantastical story, the further level of abstraction can dilute the plausibility you've worked so hard to build. Writer Samuel Delany has said, "Everything in a science fiction story should be repeated." It's one of the ways you begin to build connections among events and ideas in your story to weave a satisfying whole. A little later on in this chapter, there's a scene where your character saves the life of a hornet that's entered the house. You spend enough time on this that it seems significant to a reader. What function does it serve in your story? Will the hornet, or the idea of saving the lives of small creatures, or even the idea of random acts of kindness, return in your story? Watch your verb tenses. "I felt kind of hurt that he didn't tell me." Wrong tense. It should be, "he hadn't told me." Here, too: "I could claim that a profitable gig came my way." It should be, "had come my way." You're avoiding the past pluperfect for some reason, and it's messing around with the flow of time in your story. For most of this chapter, the writing is spare and hard-boiled. The sentences are short and the description sparse. All too much so, I'd say. Look at the following sentences: "A hornet flew into the kitchen. I reached for a flyswatter and smacked the hornet in mid-air. It fell to the floor and crawled around. I hit it again, then again. It kept crawling. The stubborn insect refused to die. This persistence begged to be rewarded." It's so hardboiled that it's almost comic. A hornet flew in the window; what did it look like? How did it fly? Did it make a noise? You could afford to personalize your character a lot more, to give us more of a sense of her inner and outer world. This doesn't make her seem tough, just oblivious. Yet I do see the contrast for which you're aiming. When she hears some news which affects her emotions strongly, your writing style shifts quite noticeably. There's more variety in sentence length, and the pace becomes slower and the descriptions more lyrical: "The world halted. I skidded through its stillness, frightened and off-balance. My throat ached. I could hear my heart beating in my chest. "How?" My voice was very calm." The contrast is striking, but you could afford to inject a little more of the lyricism in the passage above into other sections of your writing. "The world halted. I skidded through its stillness, frightened and off-balance" is lovely. It's evocative. It grabs my attention where paragraph after paragraph of terse emotionlessness won't. I like the taxonomy of the Pack at which you're hinting with "Homo Sapiens Panthera Onca veraecrusis--the Texas werejaguar." Now, back to the tense problem. That whole flashback scene with Greg is in the wrong tense. It's written as though it's happening in the protagonist's present, not her past. Though I do see your dilemma; if you'd written the whole scene in the compound past as it should have been, it'd quickly have become really clunky. One way to get around that is to do what you did with the dream sequence; offset the sequence from the rest of the text by putting it in italics, so that you can write it in a tense that flows. Yet it's too long a passage for that. I think the real problem is that this scene shouldn't happen in flashback at all; it should come in an earlier chapter. Then, when your character hears that Greg is dead and remembers the last time she saw him, you only need to give us one or two phrases to conjure up a passage that we've already read. The long description of the Pack that you felt was unwieldy can be improved by simply breaking it up into two sentences. So: a chapter that shows promise, but that hampers itself with scenes that don't seem to further the narrative, and with writing that feels too sparse. Some of the elements of the world feel intriguing, but I'd want more from this story before I'd read on. --Nalo Hopkinson http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/ Editor's Choice, SF Chapter/Partial Chapter: THE HORSES OF ACHILLES, Chapter 9 by Marguerite Reed I very much enjoyed reading this chapter. This is one of the things I like about good science fiction--when it takes an alien world, setting, and situation, and makes readers feel as though they're right there, and that they're living in the heads and skins of the characters. It's writing that dares to be embodied, instead of being only about neat stuff blowing up real good. That feeling of embodiment is accomplished with phrases such as "turning in a wide, shallow bank like the curve of a lover's arm;" a sensual, evocative description of something quite technical--the flight of an aircraft. Brava. I liked that you began an SF chapter with a quotation from a fairy tale. And the excerpt that you chose to quote does a good job of creating an atmosphere of apprehension and dread. Lovely little piece of world-building: "The air held the resonance of a just-damped 'ud string." It tells you that this is a place where music is important, and where it's still played on instruments, rather than through digitally-created sounds. It tells you that there is something peculiar, perhaps unsettling, about the air of this part of the planet, and hints that unsettling stuff will happen here. There's some gorgeous descriptive writing here, too: "The sky blushed rose at the northern horizon, demurred to amethyst and then to sapphire above us. To the south ships of indigo cumulonimbus sailed, crimson at their pendulous keels." Watch though, that beautiful description doesn't slow and overwhelm the narrative. Lovely and picturesque as they are, those two sentences are a little unwieldy. And that unwieldiness holds all through this chapter. You've a tendency to use unfamiliar, polysyllabic words, and to overwrite. I'm not suggesting at all that you dumb down your prose--that would be a crime. This is your style, it's your voice, and it has power. Yet it could stand to be more spare in parts. A passage crammed full of four- and five- syllable words can be lovely, but too many of them in a row can become laborious. I think that "quadriceps" is always in the plural, but check with someone who knows for sure. You might want to say, "I tucked my leg up *behind me,* just to make it more clear what her quad stretch looks like to people who don't know the technique. Not quite clear what you mean here: "I didn't have to invite courtesy to join us." Do you mean something like, "there didn't need to be niceties between us"? Then you say, "But how often courtesy is simply a matter of survival." Might you mean it the other way around; that survival often depends on being courteous? Xiang says that she doesn't like the taste of olive oil, but the Beast urges her to drink some anyway, with the words, "don't deny yourself." But if Xiang is speaking the truth, she's not denying herself; she's choosing not to drink something that she doesn't like. Or do you mean us to understand that she's only being polite because there aren't enough glasses to go around? If so, you need to clarify. I'm not sure how you would; having Xiang give a brief, longing look at one of the glasses of olive oil seems out of character for her. I enjoyed the interplay and contrast between the constant calculation that's going on in the commander's head, and the way that she deliberately makes her outward behavior chummy and appealing (except with the Beast). And I like the way that you have the commander remind us every so often that she intends to be dead by the end of this trip. The whole thing is nuanced and well-handled. A bit of unconscious humor here, at least for me: "Kilometer after kilometer of grasses, like enough to certain earth forms that (uneasily) we called them poaceae." With "like enough to certain earth forms," you set us up for a familiar word, but then hit us with the last word of the phrase, namely: "poaceae." Huh? I suspect that only a handful of your readers will recognize the word. I have to say, I wriggled with joy at the sentence, "I watched the VeeTOL rise in a ifrit of wind and leaves." It was the word "ifrit," used in a matter-of-fact way and without explanation! Confusing: "He put a hand to Xiang's elbow and whispered in her ear. 'If you can excuse us for a nano?'" You've written this as though Bearce is saying this to Xiang, but it's the commander who he's asking to move herself out of earshot. This was a hugely satisfying read, and I absolutely would continue on. --Nalo Hopkinson http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/ Short Stories: The workshop continues to produce, each month, a number of interesting stories. I particularly enjoyed the following: "Always Greener on the Other Side" by Jeremy Yoder "The Dragon's Sweetmeat" by Sarah Prineas "Red Jade Wind" by Kenneth Woods "Patterns" by Mel Mercer "Jumper9" by Derek R. Molata "The *fox, Estydetective -- The Legend of the Lost Eaties" by Vonne Anton "Witches Who Eat Children" by Joel Walsh "Blinding the Seasons" by Celia Marsh "The Far Side of the Moon" by Ruth Nestvold "Maia" by J. T. Slane "The Society of Vegetarian Cannibals" by A. M. Muffaz Runner Up, Short Story: "Predictability" by Ben Searle This was an enjoyable sketch of a story, which managed to be both satirical and gently optimistic. The beginning is slow (while the odor-ranking question is a great start, the subsequent background info dump drags) and the very last paragraph a bit too easy. However, the interaction/interview between Keith and Sandra is wonderful. The love story, at the end, is fabulous, as a story twist, and also satisfyingly science fiction, since it hasn't happened yet. The detail about the supervisor, who will have some explaining to do for problems with an underling who was never hired--also wonderful. Perhaps the best way to stage this story would be as a partial transcript of a dialogue-only interview (complete with the interviewer's notes--you could still work in some of test, the rankings, and also information about Keith's previous, failed job applications--best if he's been working with Ace all this time.) As written now, a lot of the good, funny conversation is cluttered with deadwood speech tags and description--shy glances, information that Keith's eyes are green (who cares?) and his hands are slender (again, in this kind of story, who cares?). While the details about Sandra Hollander, a representative of a company that calculates the effects of the smallest details, seem pertinent, even they slow the story down. One more thing: don't try to make this process new for Keith. It should be something that he's familiar with, and accepts as part of normal life. This kind of satire works best when everyone in the story accepts that the way things happen is just the way the world works. --Kelly Link http://www.kellylink.net/ Editor's Choice, Short Story: "The Navel of the Universe" by Andre Oosterman This is an eerie, plainly-told story, written with good attention to details and setting. The framework of the story, that a pharmaceutical company would send its scientists around the world to look into "magical" cures, seems entirely believable (although you need a better name for the company than Geriatrics International). What is necessary now is to go back and flesh out the characters, Wayan especially and to a lesser extent Donald: their histories, their quirks of personality, and their relationships with others (and each other). The author has made a good start, at the beginning, with the fake Rolex that Wayan's nephew Ralph desires, and the story of his childhood: "My foster parents are good people. They love me a lot, especially the white protestant part of me." Now you just have to continue to write that amount of detail into the story. Character propels story--Wayan has come back to Bali, and you might consider a two-step journey, so that while Donald goes to a hotel to sleep, Wayan goes to find the orphanage where he spent a period of his life. Maybe he doesn't find it--but at the moment this story goes from Point A (the arrival at the airport) to Z (eternal life/death underneath Mount Agung) without enough detours or complications. Stories, like life, should have a certain number of complications. As for Donald, he might as well be an imaginary friend of the narrator. He never speaks a line of dialogue--go through and make him an actual part of the story. Give Donald and Wayan a real, working relationship. At present, the only point of the story in which Donald does something necessary is when he offers Wayan a cigarette--that ineffectual gesture of friendship feels right. But the story needs more than a single cigarette. Most importantly, give Donald and Wayan some conversational dialogue. This works greatly to your advantage in staging a lot of the story. At the moment, we jump from scene to scene somewhat awkwardly, as the narrator tells us what is about to happen, or summarizes something that has apparently already been decided. There should be a discussion of the meeting with the authorities, and, later on, more conversation as Donald and Wayan prepare to go down into the cave. Beware of statements like "We felt humbled." Wayan and Donald are two different people: this is a first-person narration. It's a good detail to explore, but do it by having Wayan look at Donald's face, seeing awe there. In the same way, consider building up the presence of the stray dogs in the story. You mention them twice: they bark in the night, and they stay away from the cave. It would heighten the eeriness and the otherworldliness of the story if you also showed us the dogs trailing behind at certain points in the story. What I remember from Bali is that if you turned and dropped your hand to the ground, as if you were about to pick up a stone to throw, the dogs would scatter (they knew the gesture so well) and then come back. Once Wayan and Donald have entered the cave, the story moves a bit too quickly towards the end. The two men become separated too quickly, and Wayan takes off his sarong, apparently (is he now walking through the cave in his boxer shorts?), and although there is a nice description of a lizard sitting perfectly still, in a way that prefigures the narrator's fate, there's no description of the corpses--this is such an odd scene, and it deserves a bit more attention. "The first of the corpses" should instead be a description of a very particular, individual body. But the ending should have some emotional resonance as well as tying up plot points. For one thing, the watch that Wayan is wearing should probably be the Rolex that he bought for his nephew (we need to know a bit more about Wayan's family, remember, and hopefully you've added enough before this point, to make them seem real), so that we have a real sense of the life he has left outside the cave. One thing to consider: Wayan, although he has very little memory of it, spent the first part of his life in Trunyan--so he has seen Puser Jagat, Mount Agung, and the burial ground. It might be nice if seeing them again brings back some fragments of childhood memories. Putting on the sarong to go into the cave is awkward, but after all, he's worn them before--again, you can stage at least some of these ironies, and memories, in conversation with Donald. One minor fix at the beginning: Donald joins Wayan in Singapore, a "short hop from here." It should be a short hop from "Bali," instead. Tell us where we are, right up front. --Kelly Link http://www.kellylink.net/ | - - 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! (Some months we also award a prize to a special reviewer.) 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. This month's Reviewer MVP is M. Thomas, who has done many, many reviews for the workshop (two of them nominated in September). We will send her the latest issue of _Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet_, an occasional 'zine published by Gavin Grant and our Resident Editor Kelly Link, featuring not only a story by member Amber van Dyk and one by previous member Steven Bratman, but also poetry by member and OWW Third Brain Charles Coleman Finlay. Congratulations, M.! The Honor Roll will show all September nominations beginning October 1. Some advance highlights from the September honor roll: Reviewer: nick butterworth Submission: Of Two Bloods: Chapter Three by Sonya M. Sipes Submitted by: Sonya M. Sipes Nominator's Comments: Nick is great! He always seems to probe a little deeper than a casual glance, and so I think, intuitively understands what I am trying to do with the story. He praises as well as nit-picks, but is generous with both, and words his nit-picks in such a way that I find myself nodding in agreement. Four stars! Reviewer: Bonnie Freeman Submission: Twog Chapter 10 Part 1 by Keong_L Submitted by: Keong L Nominator's Comments: I'm nominating Bonnie's review because of the significant and eye-opening comments she made on how the elements in the sub may work on a novel-wide scale. The review made me think about what it means to have a likeable heroes and villains, and how they are missing from my story. While I may have intended to create an anti-hero lead character and somewhat ambiguous villains, I wonder if that's wise if it means that the reader will have difficulty getting emotionally attached to the characters (as pointed out by Bonnie.) All nominations received in August can be still found through September 30 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. Awards: Dylan Krider's short story "Eating, Drinking, Walking," which was an Editor's Choice in June 1999, recently won the Grand Prize in the Writers of the Future Contest! It will be in Vol. XVIII in bookstores this September. More information about Dylan can be found at http://www.dylanottokrider.com. Matt Mansfield's story "Enter Thomas" won a writing-challenge contest at the e-zine _Deep Magic_ (http://www.deepmagic.amberlin.com), and was one of three entries selected for the September issue. Mikal Trimm's short story "Parchment" won First Place in the _Distant Worlds_ short-story competition (http://www.distantworlds.net). He writes: "It feels funny to get a phone call late in the evening telling you you've won. That human contact makes you feel like a game-show contestant, really." He thanks everyone who reviewed the story, but especially Nancy Proctor for her out-of-workshop detailed crits. Sales and Publications: John Borneman has sold his flash science fiction story "The Long Dark Hallway of Desire" to Flashquake (http://www.flashquake.org). It was selected as one of their Fall 2002 Editor's Picks. And his SF/Humor series "Dr. Susan Lee Research Notes" has been sold to _Andromenda Spaceways Inflight Magazine_ (http://www.andromedaspaceways.com) for their fifth issue (scheduled to appear in early 2003). Wendy Delmater sold her short story "Passenger Side" to the TO DIE FOR anthology. Charles Coleman Finlay sold two short stories to anthologies: "Roadkill" to IDEOMANCER UNBOUND and "Fading Quayle, Dancing Quayle" to THE BOOK OF MORE FLESH. Both stories were workshopped in several drafts and much improved because of their reviews. He says thanks again to all his reviewers. Steve Hallberg's short story "Captain Atomic's Last Case", a runner-up EC on the workshop nearly two years ago, was recently published at "SBD's Science Fiction and Fantasy Site" (http://www.motordoc.net/sf&f/stories.htm). Mark Reeder and his co-author Ron Meyer signed a contract with Publish America for Book One of their _Crystal Sword_ series, A DARK kNIGHT FOR THE KING. Mark writes: "After participating almost a year in the workshop, I went through the book and rewrote several portions of it with the workshop commentaries in mind. I then submitted the first chapter to the workshop and received more great input." He's now working on sequels. In addition to his contest win at _Distant Worlds_, Mikal Trimm sold a story "To Hunger For Your Kiss" to the new print zine _SAY..._ which is published by The Fortress of Words and edited by Christopher Rowe. It will debut at the World Fantasy Convention. His workshopped story "Lily and the Dutchman" will appear in the new webzine _The Twin Cities Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy_ (http://www.tcmsff.com). He also sold a poem to _NFG_ (http://nfg.ca). | - - WORKSHOP STATISTICS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | Number of members as of 9/20: 587 paying, 119 trial Number of submissions currently online: 693 Percent of submissions with 3 or more reviews: 62% Percent of submissions with zero reviews: 3.2% Number of submissions in August: 524 Number of reviews in August: 2285 Ratio of reviews/submissions in August: 4.36 Estimated average word count per review in August: 552 Number of submissions in September to date: 328 Number of reviews in September to date: 1418 Ratio of reviews/submissions in September to date: 4.32 Estimated average word count per review in September to date: 522 | - - FEEDBACK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions for future focus groups. We'll be announcing those sometime in the next few months. See you next month! The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com | - - Copyright 2002 Online Writing Workshops, LLC - - - - - - - - -|
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