With my wife taking off from work this week I’m a bit behind on my own work. And what time I do have to myself I want to use to focus on plotting and planning of a few stories. I have some hopes of getting several more tales done before the year is out, but I’m really focused on finishing an entry for the Writers of the Future.
There’s not a whole lot to show at this point of the week, unfortunately. I mean, I did get two stories finished, but they’re so short they can’t be considered much of an accomplishment. Not for a whole week’s worth of effort, in any event.
On the Premises is wrapping up Mini-Contest #24 today. They wanted a story no shorter than 20 words and no longer than 40 words. And of those words, exactly one had to be the word “refrigerator.” A single instance of a single refrigerator. I managed to come up with two stories concerning refrigerators and fantastical elements, but could only send in one. After some deliberation, I chose one and sent it off. We should get results back from that in a week. Several other members of the Writers of the Future forum submitted as well, so it will be neat to see how many – if any – of us make it into the prize or honorable mention categories. I would be ecstatic with either designation, as recognition is its own reward.
I have to admit I’ve started growing fonder of attempting flash and micro fiction. I haven’t been keeping up with my December plan of writing a flash fiction piece each week, but I really do want to get back into it again. It’s a manageable goal, even with some of the other demands I’ve placed on myself. And regardless of manageability, it’s good experience. You learn something every time you complete a piece of fiction, provided you have an open mind willing to accept either criticism from others (Readers, editors, etc) or criticism from yourself. I’ve read several books and articles on the art of fiction writing (From novels to shorts) and have discovered new things about stories I’ve previously written. I now know why certain stories did not make it past the slush gates, and what’s better: I now know how to fix them, if I’m of a mind to. The problem is having so many new ideas pressing that I now understand why a lot of well-established writers simply trunk stories that did not make the cut.
Anyway, that is all for this week. Next week will probably involve a lot less writing as well. My wife is taking the week off from work, but I won’t be sitting idle the entire time. Even if I don’t write any prose, there will be brainstorming and outlining going on. My goal is to get at least four stories outlined, and to make headway into the re-outlining of the first Wendigo novel.
This week’s post will focus on “Harmonious Bedlam.” It is a fantasy short story about a baker who has to take up the sword to defend her home. It was published in Episode 5 of Fictionvale just this past Monday, December 1st. You can find it at both Fictionvale.com and at Amazon.
The short story began as a submission for Crossed Genres’ music-themed issue released earlier this year. I’m not much of a musician myself, but I know how certain kinds and pieces of music affect me emotionally. Some get me really pumped up, while others can bring me down into the depths of despair. So, since I couldn’t really describe music in professional terms I thought I would focus on the emotional impact music can have on individuals and groups of people.
“Harmonious Bedlam” was not chosen for Crossed Genres, but it did make it down into the final selection. I received a personal rejection from guest editor Daniel Jose Older, who really is a musician. While it was sad to see the story rejected, it was cool to get a bit of feedback on it.
So, I shopped the story around a bit more and received a little bit more feedback, but still nothing but rejections. Such is the way of a lot of stories I write, so it didn’t surprise me too much. Well, then came Fictionvale’s fantasy/mystery mash-up issue. I had actually intended to get a fantasy/mystery mash-up story written (Still have plans to write it, in fact), but couldn’t get it done in time. I had a couple of days left until the deadline, and I wanted to send something in that I thought editor Venessa Giunta would like. I looked at a couple of stories I’d written in previous months, but none of them really worked for me. Then I came back across “Harmonious Bedlam” and thought, “This is the one.” I fired it off, and a month after the submissions window closed I received word of an acceptance!
Looking back on it, that was almost the easy part. I say almost because I know competition is fierce with any submissions window, and I do not mean to diminish that in any way. It’s a great honor whenever a story gets accepted and there are a finite number of spots available. Still, I will say that the real work began with the editing phase. I thought I was prepared for it with the work Miss Giunta and I did on “Mechanicis Solis,” but I was wrong! So wrong…
Before we get to that, let’s look at some of the revisions I made on my own. We’re going to look at the first two pages of the story, which will include all of the first scene and the opening paragraphs of the second.
Here we go. Scene one, rough draft:
The Fourteen were frightened.
The melody flowing out of Tower Hall was testament to that: a pair of fast, irregular drumbeats joined by the random trills of several flutes. It set Matthias’s teeth on edge and caused his heart to flutter.
The baker closed the shutters to his kitchen window and immediately missed the cool pre-dawn air that wafting through Southron Plaza. He had been working the ovens since just past second bell and the stone walls practically glowed from the heat they had absorbed over the last few hours.
Matthias returned to the counter where several balls of dough waited and began shaping them into loaves. With the music from the Fourteen muted behind wooden shutters his heart began to assume a more sedate tempo. He breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the gods he was not a native to Sanctum.
For those born and raised in the walled city the eternal aria of the Fourteen Minstrels was their lifeblood. From the womb to the grave the melody was in their ears, their minds, their souls, impressing the will of the Fourteen upon them to the point that it influenced their everyday actions.
In normal times the streets of Sanctum were filled with the sound of harp and lute, music that soothed the soul and instilled a sense of peace in the listeners.
These were not normal times.
The sudden clash of cymbals startled Matthias, and he was filled with a sense of looming danger. He dropped the half-shaped loaf and reached for his side, for the sword that was no longer belted there. He balled his hand into a fist and rested it on the counter. He closed his eyes and willed the fearful compulsion to pass.
Cymbals clashed again. Matthias felt a flash of fear, but it did not overwhelm him as before. He opened his eyes and looked to the shuttered window. Something terrible either had already occurred, or the Fourteen feared it would occur soon.
Matthias returned to his work. Whatever the situation, the baker knew the men on the walls would need strength to face it. A soldier fought better on a full stomach, and so he would do his part to insure the defenders were well fed.
It was the least he could do for the besieged city he had come to call home.
#
Matthias stood on the southron wall walk, alongside the silent ranks of the city’s defenders. An air of trepidation hung over the assembled city watch and militia as they looked out over the barbarian encampment, the camp of the mighty Silver Horde.
“I do not like this,” he heard Watch Captain Gared say. Several men murmured their agreement.
Matthias gave his friend a sharp look. He agreed with the sentiment, but it did little good for a commander to voice such concerns openly.
As always, let’s look at the first line. “The Fourteen were frightened.” Fourteen? Who are they? Why are they frightened? Why is “Fourteen” capitalized? Is it merely a title, or is it hinting that there is something more going on? Good first lines are something I struggle with once I’ve entered the revision and editing phase, but I’d like to think I’m getting better at it. “The Fourteen were frightened” offers up enough to raise questions and hopefully interest the reader into continuing on to learn more. And I do not leave them hanging for very long. Within the first short scene we know who the Fourteen are (Even if we don’t entirely know “what” they are) and why they’re frightened. We also can see what they are capable of: the music they play is heard all throughout the city of Sanctum and affects the actions, moods, and thoughts of its inhabitants. It even has an effect on the protagonist, who is revealed to be a foreign citizen.
Ok, now to the protagonist. We have Matthias, the baker. It’s obvious he’s a bit more than a baker, since in the eighth paragraph (“The sudden clash of cymbals”) he reaches for a sword that is no longer belted there. So, he was either a soldier at one point in his life, or he was just in the habit of carrying a sword but no longer does for some reason. I suppose we could assume he might still carry a sword, just not while he is baking, but the phrase “no longer” has a note of finality to it that would lead me to believe this is referring to a much wider span of time. He used to carry a sword as a matter of habit, but he no longer does it. Why? He seems able to get around without difficulty, so he’s not disabled. He quickly reached for the weapon that wasn’t there, so it doesn’t seem like he has any moral reasons as to why he wouldn’t carry one. So, there’s a question there that will have be answered later in the story(*).
(* Note: When a question is raised in a story, it’s ok if it takes awhile for the answer to come. But, the answer must come. If I mention “The Fourteen were frightened” as the opening line and then never address the who, the what, and the why of the Fourteen at all throughout the story, then it’s a false hook. I’ve sucked in the reader with the promise of answering questions about the Fourteen, and then I fail to deliver. That will result in people throwing your story across the room, and we don’t want that. [Kindles ain’t cheap, you know. {Oh no, parenthesis within brackets! Make it stop!}]
Lastly we learn without a doubt that the city is under siege, and that Matthias is working so hard in order to provide a treat for the city’s defenders.
That moves us right into the second scene, where Matthias is making his bread deliveries. In that opening paragraph we learn that the city is not defended by a standing army, but instead by city watchmen (Police) and militia (Citizen soldiers). This is obviously a city that has known peace for a long time if it has no permanent garrison to protect it. Maybe the walls were enough until now. Maybe they’re in a location that’s hard to assault. Whatever the reason, the city was once peaceful but now it is not, and they are not prepared for it.
This lack of readiness is illustrated by the “air of trepidation” looming over the assembled men and women, and it is personified by Watch Captain Gared, the second named character of the story. As the enemy approaches the city under what is possibly a flag of truce he voices his suspicions. “I do not like this.” This only worsens the mood of those around him, something that Matthias picks up on. That Matthias knows a leader shouldn’t say such things where the men can hear it is another hint that he is more than a baker.
All right, let’s move on to the submission that I sent to Fictionvale back in June. You will likely notice one change right away:
The Fourteen were frightened.
The melody flowing out of Tower Hall was testament to that: a pair of fast, irregular drumbeats joined by the random trills of several flutes. It set Mina’s teeth on edge and caused her heart to flutter.
Mina closed the shutters to her kitchen window and immediately missed the cool pre-dawn air wafting through Southron Plaza. She had been working the ovens since just past second bell and the stone walls radiated with heat.
Mina returned to the counter where several balls of dough waited and began shaping them into loaves. With the music from the Fourteen muted behind wooden shutters her heart began to assume a more sedate tempo. She breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the gods she was not a native to Sanctum.
For those born and raised in the walled city the eternal aria of the Fourteen Minstrels was their lifeblood. From the womb to the grave the melody was in their ears, their minds, their souls, impressing the will of the Fourteen upon them to the point that it influenced all actions.
In normal times the streets of Sanctum were filled with the sound of harp and lute, music that soothed the soul and instilled a sense of peace in the listeners.
The sudden clash of cymbals startled Mina, and she was filled with a sense of looming danger. She dropped the half-shaped loaf and reached for her side, for the sword that was no longer belted there. She closed her eyes and willed the fearful compulsion to pass.
Cymbals clashed again. Mina felt a flash of fear, but it did not overwhelm her as before. She opened her eyes and looked to the closed window. Something terrible either had already occurred, or the Fourteen feared it would occur soon.
Mina returned to her work. Whatever the situation, the baker knew the men and women on the walls would need strength to face it. A soldier fought better on a full stomach, and so she would do her part to insure the defenders were well fed.
It was the least she could do for the besieged city she had come to call home.
#
Mina stood on the southron wall walk, alongside the silent ranks of the city’s defenders. A light dusting of snow covered the crenellations, the thin layer beginning to glisten as the wan light of the sun melted it. A cold breeze snapped at the pennons affixed at regular intervals along the wall. Mina drew her cloak more tightly about her, and was thankful for its warmth.
An air of trepidation hung over the assembled city watch and militia as they looked out over the barbarian encampment, the camp of the mighty Silver Horde. Mina and the others watched as a group of enemy horsemen approached the city. The lead rider carried a rolled white banner.
“I do not like this,” Watch Captain Reed said.
Mina gave her friend a sharp look. She agreed with the sentiment, but it did little good for a commander to voice such concerns openly.
Matthias has disappeared! And in his place we have Mina, a female baker who also reaches for a sword that is not there. So, the baker who is more than a baker is now a baker who is more than a baker and also a woman. Why is that? Why the switch? Well, it was actually for a few reasons that may or may not be shallow, but I’ll list them here:
So, why the protagonist? Why not just add in a couple of token females or change one of the other characters to a female? I didn’t want to add any new characters because it’s a short story. In a novel you can get away with more supporting cast members, but in a short story characters need to be consolidated as much as possible. I didn’t want to just throw in some walk-on roles to fill some arbitrary male-to-female ratio. Besides, quotas are insulting to everyone involved.
I also thought this would be a good way to further explore the emotional aspects of the story. Correct or incorrect, women are seen by many as being more emotional than their male counterparts. Much of this story is about how music affects people emotionally and how it can stir them to the point of heroic feats, or drag them down into a paralyzed depression. As the story progresses you will see how badly it affects Watch Captain Reed, young watchman Dewon, and scores of other unnamed characters, both male and female. The only person who is successfully fighting against it is the protagonist, and it is up to the protagonist to bring everyone else around.
So, now we can kill two birds with one stone. I get to write about a female protagonist, and we get to break some stereotypes at the same time. It’s win-win, right?
Well, now it’s time for Fictionvale to step in and help me edit the story into a virtually unrecognizable tale. From simple line edits to eliminate use of weak, passive verbs to whole scene rewrites, this story had a lot work done on it. In the end a new character was introduced: the leader of the attacking army. In other words, the lead antagonist.
Scene two changed a lot. Even the opening paragraphs are different, as you’ll see here. Scene one did not change much, so we’ll leave that alone:
Mina closed the gatehouse’s upper door and checked the wide wall walk for ice. The walkway had been swept clear of the glistening snow that dusted the battlements on either side of her. Salt crystals crunched beneath her boots as she took one slow step, and then another. Around her, defenders in blue uniforms trod as carefully as she did.
Pennons affixed at regular intervals along the battlements snapped in the cold breeze. With one hand, Mina drew her fur cloak tight about her shoulders to ward off the sudden chill. She shivered. The wintry weather always got to her after hours of baking.
In her other hand she held a large sack filled with bread. She pressed this against her chest and relished the warmth that radiated through the fabric. She had given several similar bags to the quartermaster to distribute, but she liked to deliver some of them directly to the defenders on the wall.
An air of trepidation hung over the assembled city watch and militia as Mina walked amongst them. Armed men and women accepted the small loaves with murmured gratitude, but their attention was elsewhere.
Even her old friend, Watch Captain Reed, had little to say to her. “Just put the bread in my pouch.” He placed a brass spyglass to his eye.
Reed had lost weight over the past fortnight, and he was a thin man to begin with. Mina opened the indicated pouch and dropped two loaves inside. A commander needed to eat in order to function. He grunted his thanks.
His spyglass swiveled to the left and right. Mina stepped up to the parapet and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The enemy camp lay below, in fields once filled with golden wheat. The wheat was gone, harvested two months ago and stored away in one of Sanctum’s granaries. In its place were hundreds of tents fashioned of animal hide. Countless men draped in multicolored furs and armor gathered around giant bonfires. From this distance they appeared as ants, but there was no mistaking their identity.
The Silver Horde—the undefeated army of barbarians and scourge on all civilized peoples.
So, why the change? The original opening to the scene did a well-enough job of introducing Reed (Who was originally Gared, by the way) and the mood of the city defenders and the attackers below, so on so forth. Why add more detail?
There are a few reasons. One was to more firmly ground the reader into the world, so the setting is described in much more detail. It also allows us to get more into Mina’s head. We see how the cold affects her, how she has to tread carefully or she’ll slip and fall with all the ice on the walkway. We also get a better idea of how the morning bread deliveries are a habit of hers. She mentions it in her thoughts, but the way Reed automatically reacts to her presence without ever really looking at her is also a telling sign.
We better see just how tense the men and women of the militia and watch are in this. All we had before was “An air of trepidation.” Now we have an air of trepidation plus their attention being elsewhere in spite of being presented with hot food on a cold day. We see Reed looking through his spyglass down into the field below, and through Mina’s eyes we see what he’s studying in much greater detail than we would have in the original scene.
The paragraph following “The Silver Horde” will give us Mina’s emotional reaction to their presence, as well as how she handles it as opposed to those around her. But, I will reveal no more in this post. I hope this post has been illuminating to my fellow writers, and has been interesting to the readers. If you want to see how Mina’s story ends, check out Episode 5 of Fictionvale! “Harmonious Bedlam” is there along with nine other great tales of fantasy, mystery, or somewhere in-between. Check them out at Fictionvale.com and at Amazon.
Fictionvale Episode 5: Of Magic and Mayhem comes out today. My short story “Harmonious Bedlam” is featured in there along with nine other tales of fantasy, mystery, or something in-between.
“Harmonious Bedlam” follows the life of a soldier-turned-baker who must turn herself into a soldier again if she is to protect the life she has built in a new land. For a sneak peak at the story itself, check back here on Wednesday. “Harmonious Bedlam” will be the focus of this week’s “Drafty Wednesdays” post. I haven’t decided yet if we’ll look at just the first scene, or if we will dive a bit into scene two, as well. It won’t be more than a couple of pages, though, but I hope you will enjoy the breakdown of it. Further, I hope it will be enough to entice you to pick up a copy of Fictionvale! For those of you who write, please consider contributing to the magazine. I have worked with editor Venessa Giunta on two stories now (Soon to be three), and the experience has been both enlightening and fun. I’ve come out of both editing phases a better writer, and I hope the same will occur with this third time.
Fictionvale Episode 5 can be found both at Fictionvale.com and at Amazon.
Well, Friday certainly got here quicker than it should have. Holiday weeks tend to make that happen, especially when Thanksgiving got celebrated over two days. We went over to visit blood family on Thursday, and then earlier tonight we had church family over to our house for food, fellowship, and Farscape. So, I am already off the mark for this week on my plan announced last Friday.
Even if I’m off the mark, I’m still hitting somewhat center mass. I’ve written a rough and revised draft of a flash fiction piece set in the Soulweaver universe. It is a short piece featuring an apprentice fire mage sent out on an emergency assignment to one of the city’s busiest craft workshops: one of their ovens has gone out, and it’s up to her to get it started again. The problem is she’s a little frightened of ovens. She has good reason, but it’s still interfering with her job.
First proposed line for the fiery flash fiction story: “The glassworks smelled like cooked meat.”
The short story I had planned for this week still hasn’t entered the rough draft phase, but it’s fleshed out to the point that pen is itching to touch paper. We’re moving out of the realm of fire and into the realm of ice. This story is set in the Wendigo universe and follows a young female Jarl as she tries to establish her place as ruler. A bad drought affects her land, and starvation could occur if the crops do not grow. Worse, her people will not be able to afford to purchase food from merchants because she has suspended all raiding activities against her land’s richest neighbor. Her authority will be greatly tested as a result of these two factors.
First proposed line for the frozen short story: “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”
Circumstances kept me from posting a Drafty Wednesday last week, but we’ve got one this week. We’re going to look at a flash fiction piece I’m still shopping around, a present-day apocalyptic fantasy piece titled “Blue Pearls.” Think nukes and mermaids, but not nukes riding mermaids. Or mermaids riding nukes. Not quite sure how that last one would work, but it sounds like the beginnings of a badass premise to me.
Since it is a flash fiction piece I can’t put up a whole lot of it, or even an entire scene. So, I’ll only include the first couple of paragraphs to give you a feel for the story. Here is how it was written originally, when it was still code-named “Fallout Ariel” on my computer.
Rough Draft:
She brought me pearls.
That was the first thing I noticed. Never mind that we were thirty meters underwater on the floor of Ago Bay and she wore no protective suit or breathing mask. And never mind that her skin and eyes were the color of the sea around us. All I saw at first were the thumb-sized orbs gathered in her slender hands.
The second thing I noticed was she was not human, though her body above the waist was convincing enough: a well-toned stomach leading to a chest adorned with small, firm breasts that connected to a slender neck containing gill slits on either side. Almond-shaped eyes the color of the sea stared into my helmet, and a small smile stretched her lips in a pretty way.
We’re 129 words into a tale than can’t be longer than 1,000 words in length by most people’s flash fiction standards. And all of it is description, some of it necessary (Such as location and showing that at least one of the characters isn’t human) but a lot of it fluff that might be allowed in a short story but is impossible to include in a flash fiction piece. Even in a longer piece, though, the opening paragraphs should carry a bit more action. The first line isn’t bad in and of itself, since it does refer to an action. It could also do a fair job of raising questions in the reader’s mind: Who is she? Why is she bringing the narrator pearls? Probably not the most earth-shattering of premise questions, but it’ll do the job.
But, hey, my rough drafts tend to be verbose. I just finished the rough draft for a flash fiction piece last night that came in at around 1,500 words. The rough draft of “Fallout Ariel” was around 1,200 words, if I’m not mistaken. The revised draft is usually where some of this trimming takes place. I look over the rough draft, compare it with my original outline for the story and see what aspects of the writing enhance the story and what aspects add nothing. I used to be surprised by how much could be cut away from a story and actually improve on it, and in a way I still am surprised by it. It’s one of the reasons I’ve come to enjoy the editing process.
Enough rambling. Let’s get on with the next revised draft, shall we? At this point the story is still called “Fallout Ariel,” although after this the new name “Blue Pearls” will take hold. Is that important? Well, you’ll have to read the story whenever it reaches a final destination.
1st Revised Draft:
The Mermaid brought me pearls today.
We were thirty meters down on the seabed. The sun burned bright over Ago Bay that morning, allowing me to see the shiny, thumb-sized orbs in her webbed hands. Almond-shaped eyes the color of the sea gazed at me through my helmet’s glass, and a small smile stretched her lips in a pretty way.
I wanted her. She always swam away whenever I reached out with a gloved hand. But, today she brought me pearls.
I reached for them. I reached for her.
Now we’re getting somewhere. The opening line has been changed to declare that one of the characters is a mermaid. This eliminates the need for some of the description of the original rough draft, but I didn’t like the abruptness of it in the first sentence. It took a bit of the mystery out of it, and ultimately I would change that back. Still, depending on my goals with the story it’s not a bad way to begin.
We’re now down to just one paragraph of description. We know the narrator is underneath a place called Ago Bay, and he is in some kind of a diving suit. We don’t know if he’s in a modern suit or one of those old, brass diving suits that I think are amazing (And not just because of Bioshock’s Big Daddies). We also know what the mermaid looks like, and that the narrator finds her attractive.
In the next paragraph we learn that the narrator has seen the mermaid many times before, something new from the rough draft where it seemed like a first encounter. If I recall in my notes it was their first encounter, but I didn’t think that would work for what happened in the rest of the story. The pair are thrown together shortly after this scene begins, and that just wouldn’t work if they didn’t have at least a little familiarity with one another. So, the idea that they have seen each other before comes into play.
We also learn in just a few words that the mermaid always fled whenever the narrator tried to reach for her. Her natural tendency towards timidity will be tested later on in the story in a powerful way, so it’s important to get this out in the open early on.
Lastly we get a decision on the narrator’s part. The narrator had always scared the mermaid off in earlier encounters, but now the mermaid is offering something. The narrator has a choice: reach out, or don’t. The narrator chooses to reach out not just for the pearls, but for her as well.
All of that in just 99 words. When the original 129 didn’t cover even half of this. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when a little bit of trimming is employed.
This scene was largely unchanged from what I sent out to different publishers. “Blue Pearls” in this form ended up in the final selections for Flash Fiction Online, but did not survive the winnowing process. The editor and staff over there were nice enough to provide me with valuable commentary on what I did wrong and right with the story, and I’ve incorporated many of those suggestions into the final version. I said “wrong and right” for a reason: one always learns better from failings and mistakes than they do from successes. At least, that’s how I work.
One of the things I discovered was I might have trimmed too much out of the beginning. At least a couple of the staff members were not sure why the narrator was under the bay at all, and when I looked through the story I realized some of my hints as to his profession were a little too subtle and vague, to the point that only someone with inside knowledge of the story (i.e. me) would understand. The narrator is a radiation diver, wearing a enclosed, protective suit not unlike the brass suits of yore. He’s there to maintain the radiation netting that’s been strung up across Ago in order to keep irradiated waters from spilling into Ago Bay. Why are the waters irradiated? Well, that’s left up to the reader. It could have to do with Fukushima, or it could have to do with the apocalyptic aspect I threw out there in the description of the story.
Anyway, here is the final version of those opening paragraphs that I’m currently shopping around. Let me know what you think of the added description and how it compares to the rest:
The Mermaid brought me pearls that day.
We were thirty meters down on the seabed. The morning sun burned bright over Ago Bay, allowing me to see the shiny, thumb-sized orbs in her webbed hands. Almond-shaped eyes the color of the sea gazed at me through my helmet’s glass, and a small smile stretched her lips in a pretty way.
She had been watching me for days, following me as I inspected the radiation netting that kept the waters of the bay relatively free of pollutants. She would get close sometimes, as she was at that moment, but she would swim away whenever I reached out with a gloved hand; whenever my desire for her showed.
That last day, though, she brought me pearls.
I reached for them. I reached for her.
For those of you who are curious, Ago Bay is a real place in the Ise-Shima region of Japan. My inspiration for the story came from reading about the pearl diving women from that region. It’s an ancient custom that is still practiced today, though it is a dying art. I wrote another story about a pearl diving village titled “A Ningyo’s Pearls” that I may have to look at in an upcoming Drafty Wednesday, and I’m including the concept in the Soulweaver universe. There’s just something fascinating about the whole concept to me, and it’s been that way ever since I read The Prince of Shadow by Curt Benjamin. In it the main character’s journey begins in a pearl diving village. That part of the story is not more than a hundred pages or so, but it was enough to spark my interest.
On November 28th, while mass riots break out to see who will limp home with that 50″ TV that’s on sale for $99.95, I will start posting up weekly reports on how my writing is going. This will be a little different from the Writing in Public posts, which will begin again December 1st. In those posts I am just giving a basic update on the day’s activities and writing, but with WIPika Fridays I will post up brief excerpts of what I am doing. It will be done in the form of a few sentences or paragraphs of a piece to be submitted, or I will go through some of the things I’ve been brainstorming and how that works for me, or I may show a bit of the outlining process. Or, maybe I will do all three! It depends on the week, and what I think is the most interesting accomplishment for that week.
This will go hand-in-hand with the Bradbury Challenge (Also known as Write 1, Sub 1) that I am also starting Thanksgiving Week. My plan with that is to be a little bit more ambitious and actually Write 2, Sub 2. I want to write a flash fiction story each week, and a full-length short story each week. Will I be able to handle that? Well, we shall see. I am starting this during the holiday season for a reason (And not just so I could rhyme back there). Between November 24th and December 31st there are 38 days, or 5.5 weeks. Let’s be ambitious and say that’s six full weeks. Going by Write 2, Sub 2, that means I should have written and submitted 6 flash fiction stories and 6 short stories. I also want to write a novella-length work and get it out to Writers of the Future. That’s 13 stories in six weeks. If I can manage to do that during the general craziness of the holiday season, then maintaining that pace through 2015 should be a lot easier, barring any family emergencies or illness.
Will it happen? Maybe, maybe not. I know it won’t happen unless I attempt it and maintain a positive attitude while doing it. At the very least I will get more written in the next few weeks than I would have had I not pushed myself.
(*) The name of this section was inspired by 2:30 from the following Sequelitis Video by Egoraptor. Warning: profanity, hilarity, and the tearing down of an iconic video game will ensue!
It’s been a long time coming, but the Once Upon an Apocalypse anthology that my short story “The Little Red Survivalist” is in has finally been released! The book came out in ebook format some time ago, but the paperback came out more recently. Both can be found at Amazon.
The book is basically a retelling of fairy tales with zombies included! The second volume of this series will feature similar fairy tales but with Lovecraftian-style settings and monsters.
Here is the synopsis from Amazon:
Fairy tales are fantastical tales in which anything absolutely anything can happen. Most fairy tales don t involve fairies. Some have morals, some don t. Some are for kids, some aren t. The oldest were told by adults to adults.
Fairy tales are populated by the weird and the bizarre. Elves and dragons, bridge trolls and deep-sea mermaids, sprites and goblins, talking animals and talking trees and sometimes, even fairies. There are no limits to what can be used in a fairy tale, or to what a fairy tale can be about. Once Upon an Apocalypse contains fairy tales about zombies. Or, in some cases, zombie stories with fairies, or even fairy tales in which zombies also appear.
If you ve never read real fairy tales then you might ask: Wait, aren t fairy tales cute stories about talking bunnies and Disney characters? The answer is yes and no.
Not the old ones. If you never read the Brothers Grimm are you in for a shock! The ‘fairy tale ending’ we ve come to know is a far cry from what Jacob and Wilhelm were writing back in early nineteenth century. Things tend to end very, very badly for the characters even the good guys.
Not all of the stories in Once Upon an Apocalypse are scary. Some are hilarious, some are tragic, and some are disturbing. However each contains a spark of real magic that special element separating these stories from others of the horror genre.
In fairy tales absolutely anything can happen. There are no rules and there are few happy endings. These are fairy stories, and they re zombie stories, and they are absolutely magical.
And we mean that in the least-comforting way possible.
Table of Contents:
I am still awaiting my contributor copy, but once it comes in I will dive on in! I’ve heard good things about “The Undead Rose” by Christopher Peruzzi.
If you like horror and fairy tales, I hope you will like them both combined! Pick up a copy at Amazon today.
Before “Mechanicis Solis” found a home in Fictionvale Episode 4 it was an entry for Penumbra’s “gaslamp fantasy” theme back in 2013. The word limit was 3,500, and I had planned for the tale to have eight scenes. That was around 438 words per scene, on average. So, words and sentences were at a premium, as you can see.
Now, when I write rough drafts I try to have as detailed an outline as possible to work with. I stick to the outline loosely, allowing myself to go off on a tangent if I feel it’s needed. After all, we’re not into the editing phase yet. Well, because of this rough drafts tend to be a bit… verbose. That’s not a bad thing by any means, but it can lead to some drastically different versions as we go from draft to draft.
Today we will look at the first scene of “Mechanicis Solis”, from rough draft to final submission draft. The final version came as a result of a lot of hard work from Venessa Giunta, the editor-in-chief at Fictionvale. I can only imagine how much time she put into going over my story with a fine-toothed comb in order to help me make it into the very best story it could be. If you like what you read, be sure to pick up a copy of Episode 4 (At Fictionvale or Amazon)!
Brace yourself for the coming rough draft. It’s terribly written, for a number of reasons:
“Mechanicis Solis”; Scene One; Rough Draft:
When he was five years old Jakob saw his older sister Maia taken away from the house. Men dressed and black and bearing a strange card that gleamed oddly in the morning light of the Mechanical Sun had arrived, telling Jakob’s parents that Maia had to come with them.
Jakob did not understand what happened, only that his sister was gone and would never come back. He had cried as she was escorted down the street, but she had never looked back. She soon disappeared in the morning steamfog generated by the mechanical sun’s enormous hydraulic presses as the bronze shutters opened, letting its light shine down onto the homes and buildings of Urbem Luminare for another day.
The next morning Jakob’s mother was missing, and he feared she, too, had been taken by the strange men in black. He and his father went out into the Lower Burg quarter of Urbem Luminare and looked high and low for her. They returned empty-handed that night. The next few days brought them no satisfaction, either. Jakob noticed his father grow more and more depressed, and he spent more and more of each subsequent night with a bottle in his hand.
Jakob spent his nights crying into his pillow, for Maia and for his mother. He wanted them both back in his life. When the sobs would subside he would look at the card the men had given Jakob’s father. He had not wanted it, so he had told Jakob to safeguard it for him.
The card was made of an iridescent metal which was always warm to the touch, as from the light of the mechanical sun itself. It stayed warm even in the cold that resulted when the mechanical sun’s great light arrays were shuttered for the evening, leaving the city to bask in the permanently wan light of the Shattered Moon and the yellow glow of the city’s many gas-fueled lamps.
Four days after her disappearance a Lower Burg magistrate banged on the door of their brick row-house. “Mechanic! Mechanic Elroy!” he bellowed, so loud that half the neighbors on their densely populated street came out of their homes and shops to see what the fuss was about.
Jakob answered the door, for his father had just woken up from another night of drinking and was in no condition to speak to anyone. When Jakob explained this to the magistrate the plump man became even more irate. He tugged at the lapels of his pin-striped jacket with both hands as if he were restraining himself from throttling the boy right then and there.
“Tell your father, boy,” the magistrate growled, “that we found his wife.”
Hope blossomed in Jakob. “Mother? How is she?”
“Dead.” The lips under the man’s well-trimmed mustache perked up in a twisted semblance of a smile as he watched Jakob stagger back from the news. As if that had not been enough he continued in a loud voice, turning so he could address the neighbors. “We found her body in the Almentary Street Cistern, dead these three days. Three days, bloated and rotting in our water!”
He rounded back on Jakob and, heedless of the tears in his eyes, thrust a finger in his face and said, “Do you know how much effort it will take to drain and clean a cistern as large as-”
“Eight hours to drain and pump the cistern dry,” Jakob’s father, Elroy, said in a sleepy voice. Jakob turned to see Elroy standing next to him. The maester mechanic was still in his bedclothes, and his eyes were bloodshot.
He continued, counting off each step with a finger on his right hand. “Another eight hours to send the scrubber automata down there and let them scour the walls clean. After that there is a four hour soak in a liquid crystalline cleaner, and an hour to drain and flush that dry.”
The magistrate was taken aback by Jakob’s father’s knowledge. “Er, well, yes,” he said in a much calmer voice than he had shown Jakob. “That is about the long and short of it.” He tried to take back the momentum of the argument when he spread his hands and said, “As you can see, that is an expense the community can ill afford-”
“It was scheduled for it, a fortnight from now. It’s the first cleaning it’s had in eighteen years.” Elroy barely stifled a yawn as he added, “I doubt two weeks will make much difference.”
“How dare you talk over me. Who do you think you-”
Jakob’s father interrupted him again. “I’m the one in charge of the design and maintenance of the sewer automata of this lovely part of the Lower Burg, along with other automata-related duties. I know a lot.”
The magistrate continued to bluster. Jakob’s father sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “Jakob, boy, would you show this man the Card you received?”
Jakob obliged, producing the card left for the family when Maia had been taken. When the light of the mechanical sun struck its etched surface the metal glowed like a prism. On one side of the card was an artists’ representation of the mechanical sun, its burnished bronze light shutters unfurled as rays of metal surrounding the sun to both amplify and reflect the artificial lights produced by the ancient device.
The reverse side showed an etching of Urbem Luminare as it would appear at a great distance. The ancient stone wall surrounding the inner city was shown in start detail, but the Lower Burg on the outside of the wall was nowhere to be seen, as if the drawing had come from a time before the Lower Burg existed. Mounted to the wall’ many towers were enormous support pylons which held up a great bronze latticework dome that enveloped the inner city and suspended the mechanical sun high above it.
The magistrate’s eyes widened and he backed away so suddenly he took a misstep down the stairway and rolled down the few steps to the street. He landed in the ever-present muck of the streets of this part of the city, and continued to back away from them on the ground, drenching his black slacks as well as the sleeves and coattails of his jacket.
“Pray, forgive me, master, young sir,” he stammered. He scrambled to his feed and bowed low to them. “Thank you for your noble sacrifice. Long shall it be remembered!”
“Just see to it that my wife gets a decent burial,” Jakob’s father said. He tugged at Jakob’s elbow. “Come on, son. Let’s get inside.”
Jakob let himself be led inside by his father, but he could no take his eyes off of the magistrate. The man had been so arrogant and angry, but now he stood in the mud, his head still bowed and his shoulders shaking visibly.
As the door was closed Jakob looked at the card in his hand. What was so special about this? And what did the magistrate mean by a sacrifice? I would be some time before the young boy would connect the two events: the taking of his older sister and the magistrate’s sudden change of heart.
In the coming days and months their neighbors who had witnessed the exchange treated him and his father differently, almost reverently. Jakob’s father took it in stride and would explain nothing to Jakob. Jakob decided he would learn more, even if he had to do it on his own.
This version of Scene One comes in at 1,247 words. That was bad, especially for a short story with 8 scenes that could only be 3,500 words. In case anyone is wondering, the original rough draft ended up being 4,539 words. Excluding Scene One, the remaining scenes had an average length of about 470 words. Even if I had no word length restrictions, the fact that Scene One is nearly three times longer than the other scenes makes the beginning a bit too front-heavy.
I also want to point out that I did not know much about maintaining a tight viewpoint back in August of 2013 when this was written. The story is written from the third-person omniscient narrator point-of-view, where the narrator knows everything that is going on. It’s distancing, and is not a recommended point-of-view for a modern audience. It’s also not recommended for Fictionvale, as Miss Giunta was quick to point out to me in the editing phase. I’ll get back to this towards the end of the post.
Another thing you will probably notice in this opening scene is a prevalence of “was” (16 instances) and “were” (4 instances) and other passive verbs. That’s bad. If passive verbs can be avoided, they should. Especially with short fiction. In longer works it can be forgiven, but not if it’s overused. Passive verbs can weaken the action and slow the pace of a story down, so if you can think of a way to rewrite a sentence or paragraph so as to reduce the passivity of it, you should. It is well worth the time to go through a story line-by-line and attempt to pare it down. Let’s take a look at one such sentence, and while we’re there we’ll see if we can fix what else is wrong with it:
The card was made of an iridescent metal which was always warm to the touch, as from the light of the mechanical sun itself.
Ouch. That sentence is terrible, and just because of the double “was” in it. There’s also too much going on with it, from talking about the kind of metal to the heat it radiates, to the comparison with it to the mechanical sun. This must be why I ended up cutting all reference to this card from the later drafts. It was subconscious rebellion. Here’s a different – and hopefully better – way to write the same sentence while reducing passivity:
The card glowed with iridescent light, and warmth radiated from its metallic surface.
We’ve eliminated not just one, but both passive verbs in it. We’ve also managed to tighten up the prose and eliminate flowery references that don’t really need to be there in the first place. Now, you’ll notice I’ve only partially described the card here and in the original sentence. In a later paragraph I went into more description of what the card looks like. Why I did that, I don’t know. It’s another one of those things that shouldn’t have happened, but typically does in a rough draft. As you’re writing ideas come to you and – rather than stop and find a proper place to put it – I say keep going. Plant the description or action right there in the middle of the page where your pen last touched paper or your keystroke last touched white, pixelated space. If it means something’s out of place or is redundant, so be it! It will catch your eye when you ready for the second draft, and you can trim it down there.
Ok, let’s move on to the final submission draft (Not the final published version, though Scene One is mostly the same in both places). You will notice that this entire scene has been redone. It is shorter, tighter, but still manages to show what needs to be shown. You’ll also notice that the main character’s name has changed from Jakob to Horace. There’s a reason for that. I’m a sucker for names and the meanings that they have. I try to give my main characters (Be they protagonists, antagonists, or supporting cast) names that reflect their story roles, their personalities, or their abilities. Or, if I’m lucky, all three. One meaning for Horace is “Time Keeper”, and as the story progresses we will see Horace advancing through his life until he achieves (Or fails at. No spoilers!) his end goal.
“Mechanicis Solis”; Scene One; Submission Version:
When he was five Horace’s older sister Lucia was taken away from their terraced house in the Lower Burgs. Horace and his parents had stood in that dirty cobblestone street, shivering in the early morning chill and watching the retreating backs of Lucia and the priest-mechanics who had come for her.
He wept when his sister disappeared from view, her eleven year-old figure swallowed up in the steamfog that flowed from Mechanicis Solis each dawn as its great bronze shutters were opened to reveal enormous magilamps. Those lamps cast warm light over Urbem Luminare and the neighborhoods – like Horace’s – that lay outside the city’s massive wall of stone. “Where are they taking her?” he sobbed.
Something wet struck Horace’s neck, making him look up. His parents stood with heads bowed, tears falling freely from their closed eyes. “She goes to the Sun,” his father told him. “She goes so that it will continue to shine.”
Horace looked towards the city, towards the wrought iron latticework that extended from Urbem Luminare’s ancient wall and rose to a domed ceiling high above the city. At the latticework’s apex rested Mechanicis Solis, the Mechanical Sun, the only source of light left in the world since Sol Caeli fell long ago. The ancient construct of bronze and iron had illuminated Urbem Luminare for centuries and was tended to by the Ordo Equitum Solis, a religious order of priest-mechanics, the same priest-mechanics who had taken Lucia away.
“Come on, son,” his father said, taking his elbow in his hand. “Let us go home.”
Horace let himself be led inside, but he could not take his eyes off the metallic sphere suspended over the city.
This version is 280 words. One reason this is much shorter than the rough draft is I have removed the part of Horace’s (Jakob’s, whoever!) mother going missing, and I will get to that in a second. For now let’s look at what is still in this scene. Most of the fluff from the rough draft has been stripped away and instead we are left with a beginning that does what a beginning is supposed to do. Namely (And in no particular order):
This short beginning accomplishes these critical points far better than the chunkier, clunkier rough draft beginning did.
Ok, back to the whole mother going missing thing. In my submission to Penumbra this matter ended up reduced to a single, descriptive paragraph in Scene Two, when Horace is ten years old:
After Lucia was taken to Mechanicis Solis Horace had become apprenticed to his father, a designer and builder of all sorts of automata used in the Lower Burgs. The two of them were alone now, his mother having committed suicide from the grief of losing her daughter. Since that time Horace’s father was given to black despondency, but he took solace in his work and in Horace’s education.
1,129 words of Snidely Whiplash magistrates, bad poetry about cards and suns, and Jakob washing his pillows and clothes with his tears condensed to 68 non-angsty words. It could be better written, but that’s still a sight better than the super-sized version in the rough draft.
With that said, a boy losing his mother so soon after his sister is a critical event by anyone’s standard, and one that should not be either emphasized poorly (Rough Draft) or understated (Penumbra Submission Draft). So, once I decided to submit it to Fictionvale back and noted the increased word count I set to adding this back in as a scene. Originally Scene Two would be the first time jump, from five years of age to ten years of age. Ten years old became Scene Three, and six years old became Scene Two:
When he was six Horace ran away from home in the dark of night. In one hand the boy carried a knife taken from his mother’s kitchen. This he would need if anyone tried to prevent him from reaching his destination inside the walls of Urbem Luminare itself.
Couple this paragraph with the last sentence of Scene One where Horace is looking up at Mechanicis Solis, and you know what his destination is. This is a boy’s attempt at a rescue operation. At around 300 words in we now know Horace’s goal: free Lucia.
Now, this initial attempt will end in failure on a couple of levels. First, Horace will not make it into Urbem Luminare. The world grows bitterly cold when Mechanicis Solis is shuttered for the night, and if one is not prepared they could easily catch their death. He almost does, and spends a few days in the care of a good Samaritan. This would be our character’s first try/fail cycle in the story, and his hasty planning and poor execution will set the stage for the rest of his life.
Second, his disappearing in the middle of the night leads directly to the suicide of his mother, as we discover at the end of this new scene. Let me repeat that: his poorly planned actions directly cause the death of his mother. How’s that for angst? That adds a lot of emotional tension to the story, and shows Horace (And the reader) that there are grim consequences in this world. This will further reinforce to Horace that this initial try/fail cycle was completely the wrong way to go, and that he must be more methodical and patient if he is to succeed in his plan.
Ok, let’s move into the final, published version of the scene. Miss Giunta at Fictionvale really helped out a lot on this story:
“Mechanicis Solis”; Scene One; Published Version:
When he was five, Horace’s older sister Lucia was taken away from their terraced house in the Lower Burgs. Horace and his parents had stood in the dirty cobblestone street, shivering in the early-morning chill, and watching the retreating backs of Lucia and the priest-mechanics who had come for her.
He wept when his sister disappeared from view, her eleven-year-old figure swallowed up in the steamfog that flowed from Mechanicis Solis each dawn as its great bronze shutters were opened to reveal enormous magilamps. Those lamps cast warm light over Urbem Luminare and the neighborhoods—like Horace’s—that lay outside the city’s massive wall of stone.
“Where are they taking her?” He sobbed.
Horace felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder, and he looked up. His parents stood over him with heads bowed, tears falling freely from their closed eyes.
“She goes to Mechanicis Solis,” his father told him. “She goes so that it will continue to shine.”
Horace looked toward Urbem Luminare, toward the wrought-iron latticework that extended from the ancient wall and rose to a domed ceiling high above the city. At the latticework’s apex rested Mechanicis Solis, the Mechanical Sun, the only source of light left in the world since Sol Caeli fell long ago. The ancient construct of bronze and iron had illuminated Urbem Luminare for centuries and was tended to by the Ordo Equitum Solis, a religious order of priest-mechanics—the same priest-mechanics who had taken Lucia away.
“Come on, son,” his father said, taking Horace’s elbow in his hand. “Let us go.”
Horace let himself be led inside, but he could not take his eyes off the metallic sphere suspended over the city.
Not much has changed in this particular scene, other than a few style changes. Some of the later scenes had more extensive edits that needed to take place, and Miss Giunta was a huge help through it all.
One area that she helped in was the ending. As you can see in just these opening scenes, we’re working with a narrator point-of-view. Someone is writing about this after the events have taken place, and the narrator seems to know everything that is going on. We’re not really getting into any character’s head, at least not for very long. This is distancing, and can turn some readers off. It was one of the things that Miss Giunta wanted changed about the entire story, but she came up with a great idea: why not leave the narrator style the same all the way through the story until the final chapter, when we’re in the so-called “present.” The last scene was never written in the present tense, but it was obvious from the way even my earlier drafts were written that every moment in the story was leading up to this final confrontation. She thought we should bring the point-of-view for the final scene tightly into Horace’s head, so that we could live out his triumph (Or failure) through his eyes and with his feelings. I had to rewrite the last scene pretty extensively, but the story was much more powerful for the effort.
Alas, I can’t show you this with this particular story. If I show you any part of the final scene it will spoil what has happened up to that point. You’ll just have to read it for yourself. Check out Mechanicis Solis and nine other great tales in Episode 4 (Available at Fictionvale or Amazon)!
I’m happy to announce that my steampunk ode to Robocop has been accepted by Fictionvale! I received the news earlier today from Venessa Giunta, the editor-in-chief over at the magazine. “The Lone Blue Strand” will appear in Episode 6, a mashup of steampunk, cyberpunk, dieselpunk, and likely some piratepunk stories and appropriately titled “Pick Your Punk!” It will be the third story of mine to be accepted for the magazine, and the second that could be classified as steampunk, though I suppose the argument could be made that “Mechanicis Solis” (In Episode 4) is of the gaslamp fantasy genre.
Once I get the all-clear from Miss Giunta, I will dedicate one of the upcoming “Drafty Wednesday” postings to the opening scene to this story. As I recall it went through several iterations before it wound up in its final, submitted form. And, if “Mechanicis Solis” and “Harmonious Bedlam” are any indicator, it will go through a whole lot more when the professional editing phase begins!