January 2023 Short Story Reading Post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my January 2023 tweets about short stories. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post (that list links to where they are first mentioned, but there’s often further discussion).

This is fairly short post, but I’ve made up for that with a recent long post on List stories — how they work, what they offer.

Fascinations and encroaching interests this month include:

• how to take parts of a large story in order to make a short one
• how to keep short stories short
• monologues
• shapes that echo themes
• changes in climate change fiction

Background and related posts:

• This project is me studying story structure in real time (and often working my way back to well-known maxims from first principles! See Story Shapes — Three-Mood Stories for detail.
• How I select these stories.
• Each dot point is one possible three-mood shape — one way of reading the shape of the story. I use “mood” very broadly.
• Previous posts are under the short story reading notes category (all the 2022 posts are linked here).

And so, to begin…

• “My Mother’s Love” — Naomi Eselojor (Hexagon Magazine, 2022 — an imposter child-spirit is drawn into the life of the humans it wished to torment) c3,900
  • callous — affected — torn
  • rash — rasher — dealing
  • concealed — known — choosing
  • insinuate — plead — act
  • inhumane — humanised — appreciating

You can see the overall progression in this story from a separate hasty heartlessness, to being drawn into the human sphere (relationally and physically), to becoming enough of a person to act on that — and risk heartbreak.

Not quite a “descent — experience — ascent” story. It’s very closely allied, but emotionally messier. And it’s not quite a biter-bit tale, or a becoming-human tale, as such, although echoes are there, too. But it is very much about love.

(“Messier” in a good way, obviously.)

• “Possession” — Taylor Jones (Reckoning, 2022 — while searching out dangerous fungus, the narrator has an unusual encounter) 3,411
  • peacefully systematic — mild concern — thrilled intrigue
  • reasoning — containing — seeking
  • watching — contacting — connecting
  • methodical — rely on training — out of (bounds — wrong word)

“Possession” is a very gently thrilling take on a common current theme.

In terms of the ‘posture’ of the story/main character, it starts in equilibrium and tentatively tips forward (comfortable — interested — fascinated).

And that “watching — contacting — connecting” shape provides an interesting point of comparison to “My Mother’s Love” (above), which could certainly be viewed through that lens, but with a very different emotional vigour and perspective (and almost a flipped point of view).

And I also like those story-shapes as a variation on a competence-plot. Going from doing exactly what you’re trained, to relying on training to deal with a novel situation, to going beyond into new territory (and how, and why)

• “Observations of a Small Object in Decaying Orbit” — Margaret Dunlap (Apex Magazine, 2022 — a child of reviled revolutionary parents grows up on a starship) 2,867
  • grief — dissociation — escape
  • singled out — hiding — reaching
  • buffeted — memory — straining

The story-shape reflects the title-motif in certain ways — a spiralling, swing-around-and-reach-to-something shape. But it’s more of a mirroring outward progression, the hope of achieving escape velocity rather than tightening inwards.

But it’s also a “run-up — acceleration — leap” shape that builds & contains its own narrative energy.

• “Semley’s Necklace” — Ursula LeGuin (originally published as “The Dowry of Angyar” in 1964, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters,1975 — a noblewoman seeks her lost inheritance, on a world changed by interstellar travel and contact)
  • rocky — fluid — unravelling
  • getting acquainted — playing out — losing clasp
  • desire growing — quest pursued — success(?)
  • gaps — connections — gaps
  • SF — high fantasy — SF
  • consequences — holding true — consequences

A fascinatingly bumpy shape. This story is shaped far less by a meeting of worlds than by the time-delayed clash of narrative modes flowing from that.

That structuring style/value offset is rather different different than the main plot concepts. This keeps the story suspended and off-kilter. The effects of those switches and deliberate mismatches are interesting to consider.

That rocky shape embodies the mismatches in the story.

• “The Mourning Quilt” — Christopher Rowe (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a man hiding his heritage works in a zoo, where the last Carolina Parakeet lives, and meets a travelling entity) 2,703
  • loss — widening loss — holding it all
  • deny — witness — acknowledge
  • contained — recounted — outside
  • endure — confront — intercede

The story starts with spreading pools of grief — a shape it could have continued with. But it turns at the last to look back on itself and all it contains, which gives the story itself (as told /about whom it’s told), a sense of finality additional to the finality it’s about.

And you can see that echoed in the second variation of the shape I’ve listed — a turning-to-look. (Which could be very much a story of a character external to tragedy observing it, but there are several degrees to which the character is already absorbed into the tragedies of this story.)

• “A Kiss With Teeth” — Max Gladstone (Tor.com, 2014 — a vampire, settled to modern life with his wife and child, experiences a resurgence of old urges) 6,833
  • stagnation — yielding — moving
  • grasp — tighten — loosen
  • tempt — incubate — open
  • comply — brood — unleash
  • false — game — earnest
  • role — crack — break

All those versions of the shape are very consistent — an organic (occasionally almost digestive) impaction & loosening — the apparently faithless or untenable situation is part of an ongoing chain reaction moving lives & story along.

• “Curses and Cake” — Sarah Beth Durst (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a baker makes a new life in a town of the cursed; a sneak-thief overtaken by a curse goes on the run) 3,567
  • overset — keeping up — acting
  • satisfaction — disruption — satisfaction
  • distress — confusion — disbelief
  • surviving — preying/ed upon — cake
  • evasion—threatened—protection
  • new start points—converging—uniting

There are two main character stories running through this. One is of equilibrium disturbed and destroyed; the other is of refuge found. However, each story also represents a points along the same larger journey of “disaster — refuge — protect”

That initial fear of one character is definitely present within the initial contentment of the other. So it is not a story where equilibrium/satisfaction is passive.

You could distill those listed variations on the story shape into something like:

• Hard-won peace maintained against awareness of alternative — the consequences of life without that peace & why it is needed — action taken to protect safety and draw those in need into it.

Those paralleled character tracks are example of a way to keep movement/tension in scenes where a goal has already been achieved.

And that technique of taking two slices from a single ongoing pattern and putting them next to each other is a tidy way of containing a larger tale within a short story (while providing characters that resonate with each other).

• “What the Stones Want” — Michelle Muenzler (The Sunday Morning Transport — when the stones command the village, the village listens, no matter what two orphaned sisters want) 3,605
  • exhaustion — dread — determination
  • aftermath — reprise — action
  • worry — realisation — strike

The story shape traces a deep anxiety coming true, and a character finally having to take steps accordingly. But it also picks up in the aftermath of a larger event that precedes the story — something that could have been a dramatic set-piece but instead becomes the setting.

This gives a concentrated, oppressive intensity to the (relatively) smaller events of the story.

It is also another way of fitting a larger tale into a short story. See also the notes on “Curses and Cake”, above.

• “Snake of Light” — Loki Liddle (in This All Come Back Now 2022, originally published in The Griffith Review #72, 2021 — a mysterious individual moves in disguise from one small town to another, preceded by news of violence) 3,936
  • ambiguous — pent-up — release
  • wait — gather — spring
  • reaction — anticipation — action
  • hints — confirmation — payoff
  • lines — rules — game

The story’s structure very much reflects the main character’s actions and nature, accompanied by the gradual reveal/clarification of what is opaque at the beginning. A classic, solid structure that supports a sinuous and gleaming concept.

It could easily have leaned more into that “person comes to town — person deals with things — person leaves town” story shape (a classic equally of Westerns and sword & sorcery), especially given the cyclical themes (and Liddle’s use of this character in various media). And that pattern is absolutely in the story. But the mood is external to that shape — it’s more at-arms-length and predatory.

And the cyclical/predatory shape reflects and supports what (and who) is going on in the story.

• “Your Own Aborigine” — Adam Thompson (This All Come Back Now, 2022; Born Into This, 2021 — three tradesmen react to government requirements for individual sponsorship of indigenous people accessing state-support) quite short
  • balance — glee — sobered
  • places — lines — upshot
  • blokey — pleased — a clue
  • old bickering — new bickering — old bickering

This is quite a short story, and could almost have been a thought experiment or artist’s impression. But unlike those fiction structures, it has a clear (rather than obligatory/workmanlike) story-shape, heightened by the final section.

Often in a story this short, that final nailing-down of a story shape would take the form of a twist. But Thompson turns it into a shying-away (by the characters, not the author). The characters retreat into safe non-discussion.

That story shape also models another way of keeping a story short — it touches a larger world of consequences and possibilities, and then pulls sharply back in.

• “ESCAPE! Auditions: Transcript for Contestant 35” — Mur Lafferty (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — the narrator applies to an interplanetary reality show in order to get away from her more famous dog) 1,463
  • over it — hint of desperation — aggravation
  • definite — supplicating — alarmed
  • chatty — worked-up — focussed
  • allude — recollect — apprehension

The base idea for this story (the narrator’s hyper-intelligent dog) could have driven a story. But there are layers of conceits here — not just the celebrity influencer-dog, but the existence of this show and the use of the audition tape format to contain the story, and on top of those, the narrator’s particular personality and the chatty, anxious voice through which it’s conveyed.

That base idea could have gone in any direction. Each subsequent layer constrains and enhances the author’s choices — not just in terms of plot, but in the overall shape and mood of the story.

So it is an example of using a particular format (audition tape) to contain a tale. But it’s also another example of the possibilities and boundaries (limitations & affordances?) of the monologue-story.

For previous observations on monologue-stories, see John Wiswell’s “Demonic Invasion or Placebo Effect” (see here in the August notes). It is also a recorded monologue, although not so constrained by purpose/genre.

Again, as these are voice-driven stories and formats, you can see personality showing up in the story moods (pompous in the Wiswell, chatty-desperate in the Lafferty)

The nature of the recorded spoken audition format, however, requires fewer stage directions to be incorporated into the text than a found-footage recording.

Again, as noted with Vanessa Fogg’s “Fanfiction for a Grimdark Universe” (see here in the March notes), a monologue-story does keep a lot of the gears and engines visible — ‘shrink-wrapping a story around the narrative musculature’.

And the use of a distinct format — audition tape, here — dictates much of the progression of the story.

Sometimes this is wholly external (a menu, a form), sometimes explained in the story (as here, where the narrator refers to the questions). Here, in “ESCAPE!…”, those questions don’t primarily dictate the story-moods, but they do underpin them.

Some other examples:

• Bogi Takács — “Four Glass Cubes (item description)” (item description) — June notes
• Guan Un — “Rider Reviews for FerrymanCharon” (online reviews and responses) — May notes
• Aimee Picchi — “AITA for Using My Side Hustle to Help My Boyfriend Escape the Clutches of Death?” (Reddit AITA post) — April notes
• Aimee Ogden — “Dissent: A Five-Course Meal (With Suggested Pairings)” (menu) — May notes
• Sarah Turi Boshear — “A Short Story in Seven Looks” (fashion show) — March notes

The imposition of a distinct external format can be gimmicky. Some authors lean into this; others layer it with other meanings, or get metaphorical. But those formats, with their inbuilt size and limitations, also help keep stories short.

I touched on some of these stories in this post on list stories (a subset of this): List stories — how they work, what they offer.

• “We’ll Call Home Tomorrow” — CC Finlay (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a father and daughter living in a struggling station go out as part of a small terraforming team) 3,710
  • preparing — proceeding — (small) breakthrough
  • methodical — getting by — possibilities
  • small community — just four — just two
  • departing — proceeding — getting somewhere
  • difficult — frustration — steps

“We’ll Call Home Tomorrow” involves no grand adventure. There is no great crisis to overcome (although the backdrop is of a crisis), except the intense internal crises of the stages of life and a relationship.

So, while the story takes place on a grand canvas, the story-shapes reflect that small focus (and its narrowing).

This story kept tugging against my experience of Taylor Jones’ “Possession” (earlier in this post).

The backdrops have similarities. The personal stories are different (“We’ll Call Home…” is about parents and children; the relationships in “Possession” are between colleagues and strangers). But in both, there is a particular progression: methodical–>connection.

People know and do their jobs, and as that happens there are tiny interpersonal changes and hopes.

And this suggests that the similarities between the settings aren’t entirely coincidental: Both backgrounds involve world-scale changes that have happened, and that it’s either beyond the characters’ scope to deal with or (if they are trying to deal with it) against which they make little headway.

And the story isn’t about triumph in the face of those odds, or the struggle, or the defeat. It’s about other tales within that — still speculative in one case, purely relational in the other.

Jumping back a bit — it’s interesting, in this light, to read Taylor Jones’ “Possession” alongside Premee Mohamed’s “Seen Small Through Glass” (see here in the February 2022 notes).

The futures they imagine aren’t unrelated, and the mechanics of the central speculative element have similarities. But the vigour and anxieties of the stories are different.

Whereas “We’ll Call Home Tomorrow” probably is more closely tied to Nicasio Andres Reed’s “Babang Luksa” (see here in the February notes) — a change that has taken place, a loss that has happened, a shrinking community, and a question of parent-child relationships.

But where Babang Luksa is heavier on coming to terms with what has changed, “We’ll Call Home Tomorrow” is more about the small new things happening after that.

This is not a field-wide survey by any means. But purely for reasons of various conversations with people who write (and write about) climate fiction, I find myself keeping half an eye on the shifts in those sorts of stories.

ALL THE JANUARY STORIES

• “My Mother’s Love” — Naomi Eselojor (Hexagon Magazine, 2022 — an imposter child-spirit is drawn into the life of the humans it wished to torment) c3,900
• “Possession” — Taylor Jones (Reckoning, 2022 — while searching out dangerous fungus, the narrator has an unusual encounter) 3,411
• “Observations of a Small Object in Decaying Orbit” — Margaret Dunlap (Apex Magazine, 2022 — a child of reviled revolutionary parents grows up on a starship) 2,867
• “Semley’s Necklace” — Ursula LeGuin (originally published as “The Dowry of Angyar” in 1964, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters,1975 — a noblewoman seeks her lost inheritance, on a world changed by interstellar travel and contact)
• “The Mourning Quilt” — Christopher Rowe (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a man hiding his heritage works in a zoo, where the last Carolina Parakeet lives, and meets a travelling entity) 2,703
• “A Kiss With Teeth” — Max Gladstone (Tor.com, 2014 — a vampire, settled to modern life with his wife and child, experiences a resurgence of old urges) 6,833
• “Curses and Cake” — Sarah Beth Durst (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a baker makes a new life in a town of the cursed; a sneak-thief overtaken by a curse goes on the run) 3,567
• “What the Stones Want” — Michelle Muenzler (The Sunday Morning Transport — when the stones command the village, the village listens, no matter what two orphaned sisters want) 3,605
• “Snake of Light” — Loki Liddle (in This All Come Back Now 2022, originally published in The Griffith Review #72, 2021 — a mysterious individual moves in disguise from one small town to another, preceded by news of violence) 3,936
• “Your Own Aborigine” — Adam Thompson (This All Come Back Now, 2022; Born Into This, 2021 — three tradesmen react to government requirements for individual sponsorship of indigenous people accessing state-support) quite short
• “ESCAPE! Auditions: Transcript for Contestant 35” — Mur Lafferty (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — the narrator applies to an interplanetary reality show in order to get away from her more famous dog) 1,463
• “We’ll Call Home Tomorrow” — CC Finlay (The Sunday Morning Transport, 2022 — a father and daughter living in a struggling station go out as part of a small terraforming team) 3,710