October 2022 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my October 2022 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (that links to where they are first mentioned, but there’s often further discussion). Also, as usual, this post is long, so the rest is below the cut…

(Also, I’ve hurt my arm, so this is even less tidied than usual.)

A few of the themes emerging (and re-emerging) this month include:

• what keeps the shorter short stories short
• the structuring power of voice
• the posture of a story’s action
• some attempts at distilling alternative three-mood-shapes into one story description
• hope and the post-apocalyptic road trip
• the weighting and power of easily-recognisable story-shapes
• specificity and particulars vs what a reader brings
• where long short stories stop being short stories
• third mood vs final note
• where grief-and-cooking stories stop being about cooking

And I wrote about Rites and Rituals and Short-Story Structure drawing from previous posts (and see previously: Purgatorial Stories).

Background and related posts:

• What the project is:
  • See Story Shapes — Three-Mood Stories for detail.
  • How I select these stories — this month’s stories are taken from a few sources, mostly Alex Brown’s must-reads on Tor.com, Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Fantasy vol. 1 (here is the table of contents with links to the notes) and This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders).
• What the dot-points below each story title are:
  • Each dot point is one possible three-mood shape — one way of reading the shape of the story.
  • I use “mood” very broadly.
  • Very often I am working my way back to well-known maxims from first principles — this is me studying story structure in real time.
  • The tiny descriptions of each story are notes to jog my own memory.
• Previous posts are under the short story reading notes category. Here are the links to individual previous months:
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022

And so, to begin…

• “The Sorcerer’s Test” — Stephanie Feldman (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a dissatisfied woman takes a job cleaning for a sorcerer) 3,411
  • the more things change — frustration — momentum
  • stagnation — pressure — ejection
  • exchange — isolate — confront
  • determined — domestic — enchantment
  • learn — routine — new
  • dissatisfied — aggravated — door

Distilled further:

• grating against constraints, not going far enough away, getting a second chance

This is sort of the opposite approach to the stories I discussed last week/month which compress a common story-shape, and then go beyond it. The frustration/break-free often comes at the very beginning or the very end of a story, but here the whole story puts the pressure on that mundane trapped-ness (even in the midst of wonders).

And I really like that not-going-far-enough-away kind of mezzanine interim. It’s another facet or perhaps a flipside of those more mature coming-of-age story shape — the ones where yet more responsibility must be taken.

• “Megaton Comics Proudly Presents: Cap and Mia, Episode One: “Captain Comeback Saves the Day!”” — Carlos Hernandez and CSE Cooney (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — the perfect neglected housewife of a superhero has a secret of her own) 3,469
  • cosy — performative — cosy
  • dissatisfied — risk — control
  • designer — design — the weave
  • prelude — example — pattern
  • fantasy — limits — reality

You could also say it’s (semi- but not entirely lightheartedly):

• threat — threat — threat

where what is being threatened and the degree to which it is a threat (and can be opposed) shifts from one section to the next:

• what seems to be threatened (late 1940s fantasy of domesticity) — actual threats (uncontrolled weaponry/performative heroism) — unthreatened threat (the comfortable, self-amused, vast power)

Hernandez and Cooney do gargantuan, unimaginably powerful…. not *cosiness* but unsettling comfort rather well. See “A Minnow, or Perhaps a Colossal Squid” (here in the February notes).

An echo between the shapes of these stories is in this take on “A Minnow…”. It is sort of the reverse of the shape of “Megaton Comics…” but in both cases there is a central example of the world. In “Megaton…” it’s the big action set-piece.

world as it is — specific instance — consequences (delight)

• “A Hole in the Light” — Annalee Newitz (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — in a universe slowly dissolving, the protagonist seeks understanding and purpose in an academic city) 4,865
  • untethered — anchoring — home
  • grief — hold two things — transfer
  • loss — exploration — purpose
  • consciously begin — wrestle — consciously decide
  • leave — translate — garden

A very gently/scholarly-paced story, but not passive — the initial grief is told in the outward movement of the character, the intellectual journey is not dramatic but it is active and deliberate, and the changes accepted are weighed and valued with frank thoughtfulness.

If I try to distill that list of story shapes into one, it could be:

• being changed by grief, make changes — learn and understand and find the states between which to move — cultivate a place and purpose.

(I’ve mentioned previously that I find the faceted lists more useful, but it’s also interesting to unify them.)

Compare the shape to that of Feldman’s “The Sorcerer’s Test” (two stories back). They aren’t mirrors, but there is grappling with change and departure and constraints. Newitz’s deals with getting far enough away, and reckoning with constraints.

“A Hole in the Light” is also an interesting take on the coming-to-terms-with-grief story, which tend to be not exactly passive, but certainly very centred on grief, with actions taken to tend to or attempt to resolve that loss.

That loss and resistance remains throughout this story, and a bigger and equally unstoppable loss looms distantly over it. Yet the story follows the character’s focus on study and entering communities.

• “Clockwork Bayani” — EK Gonzales (Strange Horizons, 2022 — a woman in Manila, in a gathering revolution, raises a mechanical doll) 4,375
  • want — hold — release
  • absence — absence — absence
  • reach — reach — reach
  • accept gift — accept independence — accept consequences
  • joy — worry — anxiety

It’s not so much a story of selflessness as of not acting selfishly. Which, if you read it as being in conversation with certain famous stories about living puppets/automata (as has been pointed out in some reviews), is a big difference.

And those three repeated shapes (absence, reaching, accepting) braid together. You could condense them into one idea (reaching endlessly towards something you know you can never keep). But the gears shift as the story leans on the idea:

• wanting a thing and being given it, but knowing there are forces in opposition — loving a person and holding them close even while they assert their independence — watching from afar and hoping against hope, and building anew but in the memory of loss

It’s an interestingly paced story — not passive but in that sort of chronicling mode: watching a character watch a character, but *feeling* intensely the whole time, and actively choosing not to take action to prevent their independence.

I’ve been finding it helpful lately not to think about a CHARACTER being passive/active, but to ask whether a CHARACTERISTIC is being passive/active.

• “Every Atom Belonging to Me as Good Belongs to You” — Endria Isa Richardson (Nightmare Magazine, 2022 — after society collapses and the natures of humanity change, a woman and her adopted son trek towards safety) 5,344
  • exhaustion/surviving — exhaustion/surviving — exhaustion/surviving
  • trudge — feed — potential
  • arrive — dream — wake
  • drag — hold — open
  • shepherd — protect — support

That exhausted perseverance shape is very strong — shifts in hope and relationship and understanding of the world modulate it but definitely happen beneath that caked layer of dirt and blood. It models a particular post-apocalyptic mode, in which by the end there might be hope, fragile as ash, but so delicate there’s a risk it could blow away or already be gone.

Some versions end in hope, however temporary or muted. Others in disillusion. This ends before the outcome is known — or rather, the outcome is that hope is still held, and is progressed towards.

It’s an effect created by the combination of travel (this story takes place mostly in/approaching/departing one location, but it is a temporary stop on a long road) and a primary mood of exhaustion beyond fear. That persistence of momentum, however worn down, implies hope. And the story brushes against that, creating the charge.

Compare Avra Margariti’s “Wives at the End of the World” (see here in the April notes), which dips into bleakness in the middle, but is otherwise about resolutely sustained good-humour. That survival-of-the-human-spirit underscores the lack of wider hope.

I’m having thoughts about what road-trip stories can do. A few more, and I’ll have to start a list — the purposeful trip, the necessary trip, the idle trip, the trapped trip, the time-lapse trip…

But this stop-along-the-way constructions (arrive/events/depart) is very effective at creating the effect of an endless journey. The focus on the single location/incident also limits the explicit worldbuilding necessary, while doing a great deal of worldbuilding by implication.

• “In His Father’s Footsteps” — Kalem Murray (This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders), 2022 — a boy reluctantly going crabbing with his father doubts warnings about danger on the way) reasonably short
  • annoyed — unsettling — terror
  • twitchy — shaken — rash
  • warned — ‘fooled’ — dismissive
  • story — fear — taken
  • trick — trick — boom
  • connection — connection — connection

There’s an effective sort of inverted fool-me-twice/cry-wolf story-shape here, in which a character is warned and while doubting almost believes twice, then overcomes their fear and promptly discovers it was justified. (A lovely little shape for that fireside/jumpscare variety of tale, incidentally.)

And also this persistence, throughout, of two characters (a father and son) reaching out to each other and it being awkward and uncomfortable and annoying and misinterpreted. But they keep trying. This gives the story its hope at the end. But it also contrasts with the presence of the third thing, which is also reaching…

That persistence through awkwardness, both uncomfortable and hopeful, contrasts with Emily Hope’s “Bite” (see here in the September notes).

Although “Bite” also depicts a teacher/mentor and student relationship, it is fraught with power-plays, and things characters can’t overcome. In “In His Father’s Footsteps”, the characters are trying to break down the miscommunications.

• “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” — John Chu (Uncanny Magazine, 2022 — as a new superhero fascinates and enrages a city, a weightlifting actor meets a striking bodybuilder at the gym) 9,886
  • suspect — know — support
  • awkward — cautious — familiar
  • help — hold ground — fight for it
  • embarrassed — understanding — charmed
  • alarmed — pursued — reassured

Terrible things are happening, but this is a very charming story, and although it isn’t particularly short, it feels effortlessly both local and expansive.

This comes, partly, from the many things going on, which are interconnected but so specific they never feel like Themes(tm): the superhero story, injustice and racism, the life of a working actor, bodybuilding, confidence, friendship, affection, a willing & amused negotiation of awkwardness…

At any point, most of those feel pushed to the back of the story’s focus, in a laconic way. And none of those elements pushes forward to become the overarching story shape — few of them change dramatically. But the arrangement and composition of them in a life does.

It’s a fascinating study in how to deal with specificity and particulars — sometimes the advice “be specific” just enhances clarity of detail. In this case, it’s more like increasing resolution on an aerial photo, so that you can fall into an expanding story.

It is, in its way, an “only more sure of all I thought was true” story. The structure progresses through the daily emotion and effort, distress and joy of that.

• “Quintessence” — Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran) — a mountain mine is isolated for the winter, and as disease spreads, a miner tries to save his brother-in-law) 14,804
  • solitary (in a crowd) — partnership (unwilling) — team (unlikely)
  • crime — concealment — consequences
  • rash — alarmed — determined
  • desperation — frantic — narrowing
  • attempt — mysteries — revelation
  • problem 1 — problem 2 — problem 3
  • assume — understand — act

This is a long short story (over 14k), and while it’s quite possible to break it into three moods, it’s really teetering on the edge of being a novelette/novella in structure. The three moods are less condensed, and begin to clearly separate out into sub-moods.

It reminded me (not in story but in analytical experience) of reading Veronica Schanoes’ “Burning Girls” without immediately realising it was a novella — see notes on that here in January. That is, the three overarching moods are there, but it’s easy to break each of those into a strong sub-progression of moods.

Here is a single quick sub-breakdown:

1. frustration — powerlessness — action
2. complicity — co-option — powerlessness
3. scrabble — fail — chance

There you can see a sense of persisting in spite of powerlessness and guilt, which pervades the story but doesn’t surface as clearly in the three-moods reading.

Returning to my initial set of three-mood shapes for “Quintessence”, here’s an attempt to compress them into one shape:

• acting rashly and irremediably on a solitary assumption — thrown into an unwilling partnership and new mystery — forced by narrowing circumstances into a group resolution of a crisis

That description highlights the vigour of the story, the pushing and pulling of interests and degrees of information.

It’s a useful illustration of a structural difference between something that feels like a long short story vs something that reads like a short novella (ette?).

• “Brickomancer” — Tobias Buckell (Shoggoths in Traffic, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — forces of gentrification and police threaten the protagonist’s attempts to reinforce protective graffiti-sigils) reasonably short
  • aggravation — fear — hope
  • parts — stakes — whole
  • friction — opposition — smoothing
  • skirmish — the war — temporary relief
  • immediate — long view — for now

The structure is split, so the moment in which the story happens (interrupted painting –> cops –> community stepping in) is cut more or less in two. Between those halves is inserted the backstory and broader context.

As a result, there’s a nested approach to time:

(present immediate (personal past (long view) personal past) present progressing)

It’s not quite that clinical. But the centring of those pasts means they don’t feel typically flashback-y. At the same time, that split present contains and compresses the story (and therefore the wordcount) to quite a small moment, however vast the context.

So “Brickomancer” is an interesting example of a way to build deeper context/time into a small story; or of a way to compress a big idea into a short format.

Also, that centred flashback/past is in the context of the main character’s rising alarm — it explains and enlarges the stakes, while also suggesting and linking in the cast of characters (community) who are about to appear.

If I condense those sets of three-moods, you could describe the story as:

• all the moving parts are introduced in an immediate distressing skirmish — the distress/opposition is shown to be part of a larger, higher-stakes, alarming conflict — but in the present there is relief and hope for now

• “The Fox’s Daughter” — Richard Parks (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — the narrator’s staid life is complicated when he is asked to supervise an old friend’s wild fox daughter) 4,945
  • hesitation — aggravation — apprehension
  • caution — alarm — doubt
  • taking counsel — taking measures — waiting

This story illustrates the difference between the third MOOD and the final NOTE — it ends on a tone of mild realisation/humouring aloofness rather than dread, but most of the last third is the main character worrying about what the final escalation will be. But that final tiny revelation underscores (and relies for its effectiveness on) that mood of apprehension.

• “Drunkard’s Walk” — James Enge (F&SF, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — the wandering Morlock Ambrosius stumbles across a town trapped in magic gone wrong) mid-length
  • arrival — puzzle — solve
  • oddness — investigation — narrowing
  • avoid — confront — take steps
  • keep distance — drawn in — partnership

This is — fairly explicitly and gleefully — a Certain Type of Story. A stranger (magical vs gunslinging, but you can see the relationship between the genres) comes to town, deals with a problem, and leaves again, evading emotional entanglements.

Interestingly, that standard shape is not the way the moods are divided up — the eventual departure is foreshadowed (the effect of it deepened by the mentoring relationship that begins), but it only takes up a few lines, and is bound up in solving the problem

See also comments on the previous story (“The Fox’s Daughter”, above) re the difference between final mood and final note — the final note needn’t be the same but usually adds intensity. So, here, the solution of one problem is underscored by the refusal to see something else as a problem, and/or the evolution of a partnership/teaching relationship is ruled off by the abrupt departure of the mentor — not undercut, incidentally; changes have been made.

But also: strong classic mood-structures for a strong classic story shape, which leaves plenty of room for fun with the specifics of the magic and attempts to deal with it, and description and hints of the world.

• “Three Tales from the Blue Library” — Sofia Samatar (Conjunctions:76, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — three tiny tales, of dubious advice from a hermit, a child with a disturbing illness, and a woman who brings or is the daylight) relatively short
  If read as one story:
  • so it was — so it might be — so it is
  • used — undermined — inevitable
  • dedication — apprehension — neglect
  • folly — folly — folly
  • who benefits — veneer — ephemerality

And although it’s three tales, it does feel like one object, even if that object is (as implied by the title and the final interjection) an extract from something larger which must be imagined.

But viewed as three separate tales, those could be seen as:

• “The Children of Paradise”
  • desperate times — desperate measures — unable to escape
  • bad choices — worse advice — consequences
  • folly — effort of folly — how the profits fall
  • love — obsession — loss
• “The Little Child with the Unfortunate Condition”
  • measures — successes — doubts
  • brisk — suspicion — apprehension
  • determined optimism — supported optimism — eroded foundations
• “The Little Day-Mother”
  • afternoon — evening — night
  • delight — dismissal — consequences
  • joy — work — loss
  • sing — worry — whimper

Each story is complete in itself, but fable-weighted in a way that implies a lesson or observation about humanity/reality. Leaning the stories against each other links those implied observations (those patterns of effort, folly, loss) across the stories, before winding them all up with the final wry, ironic external observation that “Our subject here is not eternity. It is daylight.”, followed by a decidedly Audenesque linking of the mundane with eternity.

(Note to self to consider this story vs list and stacked-vignette story shapes.)

• “Breath of the Dragon King” — Allison King (Fantasy Magazine, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — a child born just before the year of the dragon is raised by her parents to be the leader of that year’s cohort) 993
  • lies — tricks — truths
  • words — sleight — engineering
  • be set in motion — strive — take action
  • be A — try to be B — become

This could have been a fairly straightforward “fake it till you make it” story shape (want to be A, try to be A, become A) or a “make your own path” (forced to be A, explore, discover you’ve become B).

But this story charts a course between those — finding a way to blend A and B, or combining all the reasons and lessons to become C.

Another shape for this story:

• directed — complying — guiding

because you can see the shift from child to (young) adult — not so much evading control but assuming a degree of responsibility for others

The last Allison King story I read was “The Many Taste Grooves of the Chang Family” (see here in the July notes), which also has a lovely take on intergenerational dynamics — neither perfect nor aggressively conflicted, but with a fluidity of worry and care, amusement and responsibility.

• “The Piper” — Karen Joy Fowler (F&SF, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — when war carries off the young men of a small town, one of them looks for a story to make sense of the choices he makes) reasonable length
  • the world as it was to be — the story that changed in — in need of a tale
  • peace — foment — reluctance
  • still/local — cross-country — through time
  • cut off — drawn out — pulled home
  • tales — call — action
  • resist change — change forced — push back

Looking at the story this way emphasises the *movement* of it, although it isn’t strictly an action-heavy story. If anything, it’s about big actions almost but ultimately NOT taken. Yet it’s a story of gentle movement, then grand gestures, then big decisions. But also of stillness, then being carried forward, then swimming back against the current.

As a retelling, it’s a setup FOR a telling — putting pieces in place that only come together into a retelling of a specific tale if the reader puts the title and the scattered and disconnected motifs together (as the last lines indicate the protagonist is going to) while functioning as its own largely unrelated tale, if the reader does not know the source story.

• “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” — Isabel Yap (Never Have I Ever, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — a part-time witch, full-time tech startup employee, navigates his first office crush) long
  • attraction — anxiety — reconstitution
  • resist — caution — yield
  • crush — dazzle — brave face
  • (grimly) content — bewitched — (consciously) miserable
  • disconcerted — tentative — redressing

Neither the story as a whole nor its final end note is miserable at all — it’s a very gentle romantic story. But it leans into the discomforting nature of intense emotions (crush, romance, assumption).

It’s also very much a short story in shape, in spite of being a long one in word count. Compare it to Andrew Dykstal’s “Quintessence” (above), also in The Year’s Best, which at nearly 15,000 words was a good 5 pages shorter.

“Quintessence” was beginning to break out of the form of a short story, tilting into a different shape more common to longer works. It could be fit into 3 moods, but it was a restless fit. It was a compressed novelette/novella.

“A Spell for Foolish Hearts”, by contrast, is definitely a (very long) short story in shape: a langorous cat-lounge of a story, yes, but a clear, simple shape of tentative attraction and reasonable misinterpretation allowed to expand with benevolent, soft indulgence

And with that I’ve made notes on all the stories in Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Fantasy vol. 1 (except mine). Here’s the table of contents with links to my notes.

• “Myth This” — Lisa Fuller (This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders), 2022 — a woman camping with her children tries to stop them straying into dangerous territory) mid-length
  • afraid (for own) — afraid (oneself) — afraid (for others)
  • alert — alarmed — alert
  • angry — proud — regretful
  • caution — wait — watch
  • scold — comfort — acknowledge
  • approach — emerge — boundary
  • naive — deliberate — knowledge

“Myth This” is immediately after Kalem Murray’s “In His Father’s Footsteps” in the anthology (see notes above). That story deals with some of the same themes (children being shown country by their parents, teenagers resisting parental hints, degrees of communication, doubt of ‘myths’, etc)

But as well as being from the point of view of the parent rather than the child, “Myth This” takes a different approach to the slow dawning of truth — the narrator’s doubt is never shaken, the truth becomes apparent very early, and it is a story of fearful alertness.

The way both treat communication is interesting — neither outright punishment by the story for insufficient disclosure, nor imposition of idealised communication. But both contain (at points before the end) a movement towards more mature relationships as children grow up.

• “Family is Never Far Away” — Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — when family recipes call up ghosts, a fearful narrator tries to find out why her mother doesn’t appear) 3,167
  • alarm — determination — clasp
  • recoil — pursue — hold
  • hear — realise — connect
  • glimpse — investigate — pursue

This begins very much as a grief-and-cooking story — see previously Short Stories — Rites and Rituals and Structure. However, it shifts slightly away from the usual more embedded use. The food/ghost linkage is there throughout, but it is not quite as central a point as I’ve tended to see lately. It ultimately functions as a tool of the story rather than as the centre of it.

So you could more easily imagine a version of this story story using something else (clothing, handwriting, etc) other than cooking to establish that connection. Perhaps because the memories being accessed are not primarily the narrator’s — it shifts the sensory load of the story. The sensory aspect of the cooking adds texture to the story while not itself being the main point of it. This is a very subtle difference, but I’ve run aground on food-in-stories before now, so it’s a distinction I’m interested in.

Here’s a post about issues I was having with food-in-fantasy in early 2020 (it’s not about food-and-death stories, which I’ve seen many more of recently, along with what feels like but may not be an increase in stories about processing loss): Food as Magic and Other Quibbles.

In this case, I’d probably class the object/memory magic of “Family is Never Far Away” slightly closer to Anna Martino’s “Haja Hoje” (here in the April notes) than to Elizabeth Bear’s “The Part You Throw Away” (here in the September notes), although the latter has food & ghosts & similar themes.

Something else notable about “Family is Never Far Away” is the way the *posture* of movement changes through the story:

\ -> | -> /

It goes from leaning away (alarm or recoil) to straightening up or moving forward (determination, pursue, investigate) to really leaning in (clasp, hold, pursue).

• “Trinity’s Dragon” — Holly Lyn Walrath (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a spacefaring veterinarian deals with an unexpected dragon) 3,362
  • wonder — determination — wonder
  • surprise — frustration — care
  • observation — considerations — methodical
  • connection — purpose — skill/competence

If I consolidate those options, I get:

• Surprised wondrous contact — determination in the face of overthought considerations — applying one’s skills to wonder.

It’s straightforward but gentle person-acting-with-competence story shape, and avoiding the actions or inactions that remove wonder from the world.

• “So, You Married Your Arch Nemesis… Again” — Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Lightspeed Magazine, 2022 — as a podcaster attempts to interview one half of an (ex-) famous superpowered couple, the patterns across stories and genres begin to unravel) 6,644
  • offence — recurrence — beyond bearing
  • resist — momentum — change
  • pattern — cumulative — break through
  • needled — frustration — blaze
  • so it is — so it always is — need it be?

Interesting reading this so soon after Hernandez and Cooney’s “Megaton Comics Proudly Presents: Cap and Mia, Episode One: “Captain Comeback Saves the Day!”” (see notes above) — also about superpowered nemeses and controlling scripts and mixed formats.

But the points of the stories are very different, and some of the shapes are almost inverted!

• “Jacaranda Street” — Jasmin McGaughey (Overland, 2019, This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders, 2022 — after Jacaranda Street is resurfaced, nearby residents begin to see disappearing visions…) 1,444
  • unusual — usual — inevitable
  • accept — wish — refuse
  • push in — realise — push back
  • one (two) — three (four) — two
  • oddity — cause — consequences
  • resolve—argue—dissolve

This is a very short story, which resists over-explaining and yet is very clear, in a manner that toys with the boundary between Weird Fiction and tales-of-the-strange. It falls into the latter, but only by a hair’s-breadth.

I also like how it pushes what could have been “situation — decision point — right choice” (or even “situation — decision point — right choice” ) that bit further, so that the apparent right choice also has consequences, tipping the balance further than expected.

There’s something interesting with the balance of the cast in this small a story, too — not just the external figures, but the narrator’s apparently primary role as provider of transport, the vigour between partner and cousin, the shimmering-in and -out of the cousin… And the constellation and weights of meanings and relationships and housing styles pulled into such a short story merely through the particular set-up of this household.

• “Wanderlust” — LP Kindred (Anathema Magazine, 2022 — a fling with a harmonicist turns into something more… but there is something inexplicable about this new lover) 3,975
  • resist — accept — cling
  • found — unbend — frantic
  • approached — pursued — effort returned
  • dally — commit — endure

Again (although this is a very different story and type of movement from Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s “Family is Never Far Away”, above), the posture of the main character is distinct:

\ -> | -> /

That is: leaning away (slightly aloof) — unbending — holding/reaching

In “Family is Never Far Away” that shape represents someone startled into action, and if not driving events then at least acting with them. Here, it is someone gradually changed by circumstances (the actions of another), being acted upon until they can be stirred to action.

I don’t know where these posture-of-action notes are going yet, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Another note re “Wanderlust” is, in spite of being an acted-upon story, the main character isn’t passive. There’s resistance, aloof coyness, self-awareness, decisions…

• “WE” — Phoenix Alexander (The Deadlands, 2022 — a robotic ornithischian flock proclaims its nature and purpose) 851
• proclaim — proclaim — proclaim
• declare — witness — rejoice
• work — watch — welcome
• collective — individuals — individuals together
• earnest — mourn — raise up
• existence — death — life

As Alex Brown points out over on Tor.com, “This story feels almost like a poem, but there is a story structure within the visually fascinating layout”.

That layout is less an originating structure (the way a formal poetic structure might be, guiding the voice and shape of the story) than a function of the structuring VOICE of this piece — a wildly declarative plural first-person voice.

In nothing else except the vigour of that voice, it reminds me of the (first-person singular) vigour of Lavery’s “I Am The Horrible Goose That Lives In The Town“. I have made notes on that story for teaching, but don’t seem to have posted them here, but I did mention it when discussing voice after reading Veronica Schanoes’ “Rats”, here in the January notes.

Back to “WE” — that proclamatory voice and mode supports and shapes the story, its tone and rhythm, sentence and paragraph structure, to the extent that it comes close to being a defining mood.

But that triumphant declarative voice still shifts and modulates as the focus (both the depth/breadth of it and its subject) shifts, from the joy of purposeful existence, to witnessing and kindly mourning (and knowing the power of that), to elevating and welcoming and naming.

Also: first person plural isn’t super common, but it can be a lot of fun. See e.g. the wives and the search dogs in Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife, and the extremely variable and subjective (allegedly) first person plural of E Nesbit’s The Story of the Treasure Seekers (the first two paragraphs will give you an idea, there!).

It can be as (or more) vigorous as some second-person stories, but tends to be a smidge less aggressive, if only as a function of its extreme self-sufficiency (and frequent self-satisfaction).

• “The Woman Who Married the Minotaur” — Angela Slatter (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a woman on holiday meets the Minotaur, and their life together unfolds) 1,067
  • meet — life — age
  • one->two — many — two->one
  • encounters — blendings — borders
  • make ordinary — mundane — return magic
  • accept — coexist — release

It’s a very reflected shape: one character meeting another, adding more, then gradually subtracting. Magic being made ordinary and then restored to a sense of wonder. People emerging from myth and then dissolving back into it.

It’s a tidily small story shape — not so much a loop as a single wave form, walking a story up and walking it back. Stories that keep escalating have the potential to keep expanding, but this tucks its ends back in, and is very final and closed. (Well, the plot is closed, but the world in which such things could happen…?)

To the extent it is the story of a life (and it starts with the main character already an established adult), the majority of that life is again compressed into the central third, with the bookend moments filling the beginning and end.

And to the extent it is a retelling (or extension, or redeployment), it does not remove ‘the story you thought you knew’ so much as it massages it into passing as part of the everyday, before letting it billow back out into enchantment.

Incidentally, Angela Slatter writes and teaches about short (and very short) story structure. She touches on that briefly in posts such as Competitions, Crafting Through Critiquing, and the Short Story: Some Notes, but I’m hoping some of her more in-depth advice will be available soon — and her many short stories are themselves a masterclass. You can keep an eye on what she’s doing here: angelaslatter.com/blog.

• “Banquet of the Shooting Stars” — AD Sui (Etherea Magazine, 2022 — a child climbs onto the roof to wish on a shooting star) quite short
  • hope — disconcerting — loss
  • want — process — receive
  • cling — imbibe — cut adrift
  • child — dealings — adult

A very small story, and one which could have been outright about consequences and/or being careful what you wish for, etc. But by keeping it merely to the incident and the result, without commentary, the story is kept small, & the weighting of choices left (mostly) to the reader

It is interesting seeing the structural choices that keep stories very short, where shapes are completed or cut, where details are omitted or left to be supplied by the reader — as well as comparing those to tiny stories which decide to provide a disproportionate amount of worldbuilding and subplots! E.g. “Recipe” by Tina Zhu (see here in the September notes).

It’s interesting comparing the emotions of Zhu’s “Recipe” to those of Sui’s “Banquet of the Shooting Stars” and Slatter’s “The Woman Who Married the Minotaur” (a little above). The stories which keep the obvious surface world-building minimal have restrained moods, while “Recipe” is vigorous. Causation vs correlation, etc, etc, and this is a very small sample. But it’s something I’ll keep an eye on.

Anyway, to “Banquet of the Shooting Stars” — it’s very much a story built around the central (titular) image, beautiful and eerie and ambiguous in its meaning and morality. That last is relevant, because the story shape is that of a Lesson. Or perhaps a metaphor. Or an allegory. It carries the weight of those story types. But which one, and the precise meaning (is this loss or wonder, punishment or life?) is left to what the reader brings.

All stories read in this post (with internal links to the first place they’re discussed)

• “The Sorcerer’s Test” — Stephanie Feldman (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a dissatisfied woman takes a job cleaning for a sorcerer) 3,411
• “Megaton Comics Proudly Presents: Cap and Mia, Episode One: “Captain Comeback Saves the Day!”” — Carlos Hernandez and CSE Cooney (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — the perfect neglected housewife of a superhero has a secret of her own) 3,469
• “A Hole in the Light” — Annalee Newitz (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — in a universe slowly dissolving, the protagonist seeks understanding and purpose in an academic city) 4,865
• “Clockwork Bayani” — EK Gonzales (Strange Horizons, 2022 — a woman in Manila, in a gathering revolution, raises a mechanical doll) 4,375
• “Every Atom Belonging to Me as Good Belongs to You” — Endria Isa Richardson (Nightmare Magazine, 2022 — after society collapses and the natures of humanity change, a woman and her adopted son trek towards safety) 5,344
• “In His Father’s Footsteps” — Kalem Murray (This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders), 2022 — a boy reluctantly going crabbing with his father doubts warnings about danger on the way) reasonably short
• “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” — John Chu (Uncanny Magazine, 2022 — as a new superhero fascinates and enrages a city, a weightlifting actor meets a striking bodybuilder at the gym) 9,886
• “Quintessence” — Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran) — a mountain mine is isolated for the winter, and as disease spreads, a miner tries to save his brother-in-law) 14,804
• “Brickomancer” — Tobias Buckell (Shoggoths in Traffic, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran) — forces of gentrification and police threaten the protagonist’s attempts to reinforce protective graffiti-sigils) reasonably short
• “The Fox’s Daughter” — Richard Parks (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — the narrator’s staid life is complicated when he is asked to supervise an old friend’s wild fox daughter) 4,945
• “Drunkard’s Walk” — James Enge (F&SF, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — the wandering Morlock Ambrosius stumbles across a town trapped in magic gone wrong) mid-length
• “Three Tales from the Blue Library” — Sofia Samatar (Conjunctions:76, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — three tiny tales, of dubious advice from a hermit, a child with a disturbing illness, and a woman who brings or is the daylight) relatively short
• “Breath of the Dragon King” — Allison King (Fantasy Magazine, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — a child born just before the year of the dragon is raised by her parents to be the leader of that year’s cohort) 993
• “The Piper” — Karen Joy Fowler (F&SF, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — when war carries off the young men of a small town, one of them looks for a story to make sense of the choices he makes) reasonable length
• “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” — Isabel Yap (Never Have I Ever, 2021; Year’s Best Fantasy (ed. Paula Guran), 2022 — a part-time witch, full-time tech startup employee, navigates his first office crush) long
• “Myth This” — Lisa Fuller (This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders), 2022 — a woman camping with her children tries to stop them straying into dangerous territory) mid-length
• “Family is Never Far Away” — Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — when family recipes call up ghosts, a fearful narrator tries to find out why her mother doesn’t appear) 3,167
• “Trinity’s Dragon” — Holly Lyn Walrath (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a spacefaring veterinarian deals with an unexpected dragon) 3,362
• “So, You Married Your Arch Nemesis… Again” — Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Lightspeed Magazine, 2022 — as a podcaster attempts to interview one half of an (ex-) famous superpowered couple, the patterns across stories and genres begin to unravel) 6,644
• “Jacaranda Street” — Jasmin McGaughey (Overland, 2019, This All Come Back Now (ed. Mykaela Saunders, 2022 — after Jacaranda Street is resurfaced, nearby residents begin to see disappearing visions…) 1,444
• “Wanderlust” — LP Kindred (Anathema Magazine, 2022 — a fling with a harmonicist turns into something more… but there is something inexplicable about this new lover) 3,975
• “WE” — Phoenix Alexander (The Deadlands, 2022 — a robotic ornithischian flock proclaims its nature and purpose) 851
• “The Woman Who Married the Minotaur” — Angela Slatter (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a woman on holiday meets the Minotaur, and their life together unfolds) 1,067
• “Banquet of the Shooting Stars” — AD Sui (Etherea Magazine, 2022 — a child climbs onto the roof to wish on a shooting star) fairly short