EMIL IS MY EDITOR: Zivah Avraham

Look at me, I am your editor now.

Introducing 'EMIL IS MY EDITOR'

THE ANTE

You buy an autopsy. You get in line. You get what you need done up. You get it returned. If you want, it doesn’t get posted. If you do, I post it. You rework what you wanted done up, you post it, I post it, we all boost it, your work gets a signal bump, I get paid, you get a professional editor and an in for any future work with me automatically because you saved my family’s ass when we needed saving (or since the crisis is over, you’re helping paying my bills, and I’m hopefully helping you be the best writer you can be.)

THE STAKES

This series came about as a way to help me when my family was at our most desperate. It worked. The community helped in a way they didn’t have to. But now that the emergency is over, it’s just capitalism. The stakes are you upping your game as a writer and my reputation and whether or not my bills get paid. And yeah, I’m working through a backlog.

THE FUTURE

Once a network is in place, we can do things with it. The community coalesced around me without knowing me well in a time of great need. That garners my support of everyone who helped my family until I get my brains blown out (only a semi-likely scenario) I’m BIG on community building and self organizing support networks. I’ve built a few. I’ve started a few. A rising tide lifts all ships. And maybe we can help get the fiction tab out of the swamp Substack has put us in.

FICTION CREATES CULTURE

therefore

FICTION IS CULTURE

and so

WRITERS CREATE CULTURE

And what are we, but writers of fiction?

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I’m currently taking editorial Inquiries. Info at the link. Short stories on simple flat fee basis, and I can squeeze in one more 30-40k word manuscript right now if anyone is interested.

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And if you want 37% off my Substack forever, until May 29th, in honor of my best friend Sarah Sottile, who killed herself two years ago on that date, take advantage of the fact that she’ll never be 40. This isn’t a gimmick. Well, you could say it is, but it’s in memoriam to one of the most dynamic and truly of themself people I have ever known. We are all worse off for her passing. Check on the people closest to you. (If you think this is tasteless, fuck you, she’d laugh over it. She was a hustler to the bone)

Special Thanks

This idea was brought to a slow rolling start from inception by

Tom Schecter, whose debt I wallow in eternally, and organized in full without me even being involved for weeks by him and Zani D, ARC , M.P. Fitzgerald - Graphomania, Nick Winney , E.K. MacPherson (who has sadly disappeared and that worries me), Simpulacra , World of Warfield, and Zivah Avraham.

Thank you all. I’m deep in debt to all of you. And I’ve never not paid a debt and then made more of it.

Cacoethes Scribendi

Nihil Perditi

Love wins/Violence Provides

FUCK IT, WE EDIT

Zivah Avraham

is 4th in line for the treatment. #3 decided to not be public with their autopsy, and I respect that. However Zivah, Zivah I love to work with. She’s a poet and she damn well knows it. Her work overflows with sparkle and polish. I’ve done an autopsy on one of her stories before, a longer one than this, which comes in at 2,153 words, which was absolutely brilliant. Find her poetry below.

OK so right now Substack isn’t letting me make it a pretty embed, but here it is nonetheless.

Now Zivah returns with a tight, albeit by her own admission aged, story. It’s short, it has one axis around which it turns, and it says one thing. As it is, it says that one thing well enough. But the issue is we’re not here to do well enough now are we? I could shit out a coherent story every three hours all week long that was simply well enough, but it wouldn’t be my best work, and it wouldn’t be something that I’d be happy with in the end.

Also, congrats to you for holding onto a piece for ten years Zivah. Not that most of us haven’t, but it’s always nice to dig something out of your own archive and find yourself reinterested in it. Thank you for allowing me to slice it up and weigh its organs.

As I expected from everything I’ve read of Zivah’s the story is tight and controlled at the conceptual level, but I can tell that her voice has grown considerably since she wrote this.

I’m not doing the Google Docs footnotes up down tango, inlines and comments will be in parenthetical italics where appropriate. With a short rundown of some of the more nitty gritty bean counting details at the end.

Zivah has also been kind and brave enough to let me do the edit blind, when she sees this, unlike every other entry so far in this series, it will be her first time seeing it. Thank you for your trust.

THE TEXT

Better Late Than Never (I like a good simple title)

“Rosamund! Rosamund! Come here, I say! Help me with this confounded thing!” (I would start with a stronger first sentence. Starting with dx can be effective, but considering what I know is coming next in the opening, this doesn’t situate me in the story aside from introducing the protagonist by name, Rosamund, and the recurring, “confounded thing.” I’m not saying that you have to start in media res or on action, I’m just saying this isn’t the most interesting opening for a short where you’re doing one thing and economy of words and specificity is quite important.)

“I’m going to damn well change my name Father, one of these days, so help me!” (As with above, so below, this isn’t bad at all, but you could play with the syntax to different effects, as all of these clauses can be rearranged to say the same thing. Or, you could say something entirely different. But I would suggest introducing either some setting, or some action within these first two sentences to start us off.)

Father and daughter engaged in a stand-off, both too frustrated to notice that they mirrored each other exactly, fists clenched and planted on hips, legs wide apart. Neither would move. At least, not until The Confounded Thing emitted an almighty groan and belched a vast cloud of oily, sooty smuts over the pair of them. (This may be your start. It immediately introduces conflict. Consider it at least. But also, there is some glue and clutter along with vague descriptors. Give us some sensory texture and less exposition.)

“Father, look at me! Your Confounded Thing has ruined my outfit! I’ve nothing else to wear!” (I appreciate that in a scene with only two characters you don’t feel the need to give them dx tags. However you could give them some business if you wanted.)

“My dear, I’m sorry, but you know I’m under a deadline. Livermore and Company are depending on me.” Mr Akers stared at his daughter remorsefully. (I’m going to mention it once and then not many times again, the text is heavy on adverbs, and adverbs modifying dx tags. An adverb is almost always a shortcut to avoid the work of sitting down and finding the exact word or exact thing you are getting around saying. I often say it, and I will die on this hill. 99% of the time adverbs are a form of bypassing your own meaning or voice, and they weaken everything around them because they are the simplest shortcuts available to us as authors.)

His daughter wiped her face with the back of her kid gloves, smearing oil over her once perfectly made-up face. Her outfit was ruined, a dress he had indebted himself to Solomon Brothers for an amount that made his stomach knot and roil in fear. The payments to be made were exorbitant, all for naught now. Mr Akers sighed. Nothing was going right. (Close echo of face and face. The outfit doesn’t really matter to me as a reader without at least some sensory detail about how it is ruined, what it looked like, et al. And less is usually more in these situations. You don’t have to go full Ellis, but one precise detail can make or break a sentence or a thought.)

Nothing. (like it)

“I don’t care about Livermore and Company. I care about Henry and about meeting his mother, for goodness sake. Don’t you want me off your hands? Don’t you want me to leave home, marry well, and be free from dirt and grime and your Confounded Thing?” (I’d give her some business here. Overall one thing I’m going to point out at the end is this story is VERY dx heavy.)

Rosamund wished that the damned machine wasn’t polished to such a reflective sheen and that she couldn’t see her only tea dress, now ruined. For a few moments, she had felt beautiful, ladylike even. To be freed from britches, scarred leather aprons and gauntlets had been a blessed relief. It had all been too good to be true. (“to such a reflective sheen” This is one of those instances where I would suggest either rewriting it, or finding a very precise word to put in a sentence to get the EXACT idea across. To steal from a recent personal email with Craig Clevenger. This is the difference between saying “a raging fire” and “an inferno” Precision and economy matters when you’re writing this tight and have one thing to say, and one basic reveal.)

Mr Akers wiped his face and sighed. “Damn it all, Rosamund, I don’t want you off my hands. I just want more for you than this. Your mother — ” (Business, finally, first real sequence of action in the story that I’ve seen. Tighten it up and make it your own. I know your voice, this is not it. It may have been a decade ago, but not now.)

“Mother is dead and buried. She would tell you to hire a Gadget-Wrangler to assist you. There are plenty out there, you know.” (ibid. Also, this seems like it should be heavier, more elegiac somehow, but I can’t put my finger on it.)

Silence reigned, other than the soft sigh of The Confounded Thing as it settled into the sudden awkwardness between father and daughter. (As a poet I’m very shocked that here you wouldn’t take the opportunity to use “rained” instead of “reigned” as wordplay. But that’s just me. Expand this moment one beat longer, or consider the scene structure of the entire story. You’ve created distinct spaces, places, and sequences of events, but they don’t all seem to cohere into actual scenes. And as you’re a poet and I respect how I already know you use white space on a page (one of my favorite things) I’m trying to be generous in my appraisal.)

Mr Akers shook his head. “But they cost money!” (Sensory details on shaking his head.)

“They’re trained. They’re engineers. Father. I am neither of those things,” Rosamund said softly, regretting her outburst, yet keen to push her point home. “Short-term expense for long-term gain. Just find one, and leave me out of it. Please.” (Expand, give business, a detail of scene setting would be good but isn’t entirely necessary unless you want it to be.)

“Rosey, darling, we’re so close, so very, very close! You’ve grown up with The Confounded Thing; it’s part of you!” (The story very much starts off in a classic fairy tale type of staging complete with the father daughter confrontation, the issue of the machine, the missing mother, and their argument in the workshop once she’s ruined her best dress while helping him. Was this intentional? If it is, you can lean into it.)

“Well, I wish it wasn’t,” muttered Rosamund, marching upstairs to change into her funeral attire, the only presentable clothes she now possessed. Of course, they were utterly unsuitable for afternoon tea at Henry’s family seat, surrounded by real ladies. She would look exactly as she was — a misfit. Henry would be mortified, his mother would write her off as unseemly, and that would be The End. Their hopes and dreams dashed by her father’s impossible invention. (There’s no real sensory detail to place aside from workshop and the centralization of the infernal thing to lead us up the stairs. Precision in description. Consider moving this to an active verb construct, or not. I love that she changes into funeral attire, maybe give some visual detail on that, if for no other reason, than it says something about what’s going to happen later on. Whether or not you mean to, you embedded the themes and undertones of this story very well. I’d like to think that you did. And if you didn’t, well, read it again and notice everything that you did that foreshadows the rest of the story effectively, find anything that does the opposite of that, and cut it.)

****

Henry Underwood checked his pocket watch again. Ten minutes until she arrived. Ten minutes until the Auto-Carriage chugged down the sweeping drive and deposited Rosamund into his arms, until she appeared from the billowing steam like an angel descending from the heavens. (Put us in a place. You’re a poet. I expect now you could do much better than reportage and simple exposition.)

Oh, she was such a sweet relief, such a breath of fresh air — tinged with city soot, admittedly — compared to his dull, washed-out country life. He let his dreams soar for a moment and imagined living with her, surrounded by inventors, engines and moving staircases, squinting into the sun to watch another marvellous, impossible Aer-O-Ship take to the skies. (I love most of this, but there is something immediately out of place with it compared to what happens soon after.)

If only Mother would give her blessing. Lady Underwood was as impossible as the Aer-O-Ships themselves. She had paraded an endless stream of vapid debutantes in front of him, and each had been worse than the last. How on earth would she react to Rosamund? (This is interesting but a few examples of vapid debutante, specificity and brevity, economy of words, and precision, would really drive this point home. Also, the paradox at the heart of this story is his performance of wanting his mother to approve of Rosamund, but because she does, very much so, incredibly so actually, he immediately shifts position on how he feels about Rosamund herself, which is left mostly off the page, but could do with a little extrapolation. Not a thousand words or something, just that one perfect sentence or detail to drive it home.)

Henry was jolted from his thoughts by the crunch of pneumatic tyres on gravel and the sight of steam belching from the boiler perched precariously on the Auto-Carriage’s roof. (Thank you for how you’re handling the interiority of this piece. I like this.)

‘Please don’t let her be wearing her top hat, nor the goggles either,’ he thought guiltily (no). He should trust her. She had said Mr Akers had bought her a dress — the Devil knew with what money — and so she would be perfectly… acceptable. (I want more of the minor class drama out of this scene. If he’s going to worry, and suddenly his romanticism of what she is meets the reality of who and what he is, lean into it a little bit and the story will be better off. Rewrite this para.)

“Henry, oh Henry, I’m so… sorry!”

Instead of a vision of heavenly beauty, an avenging angel towered before him dressed entirely in black. In God’s name, what was she thinking? (I love this, now put her as either actually getting out of the automo-bile, or make it apparent that she is in fact taller than this possible short king who could use some physical details himself. This story is very hard driving on the story, but leaves almost all details that make a story truly memorable stylistically in the dust.)

“Rosamund? Are you hurt? Your face!” gulped Henry, swallowing his horror. (I like swallowing his horror, but maybe give him some business to go along with it, recoil, reach out, touch faith.)

“Oh, no, did I miss a bit? Those damned smuts get everywhere!” Rosamund shook her head in frustration and a hairpin pinged to the ground, a curl falling riotously (maybe but please no) over her forehead in response. (Love the shorthand use of smuts. Don’t care if it’s some common usage in the UK, I love it. Cut in response here and consider this sequence of action in total.)

Any other time, Henry might have found it endearing. Not today. He stood, arms folded across his chest, watching as she dug a cracked hand mirror and a suspiciously (Why is it suspiciously grey?! Do better.) grey handkerchief from her bag. She licked the material (might it at this point be described as an already dirty rag, or otherwise) and dabbed at the oil streak on her cheek. (This is more class clashing with reality. His vision is cracking in front of him, he thinks it's because he’s scared his mother will disapprove, really, he has to be the one disapproving and it’s obvious in the text. Subtle, buried just one layer too deep maybe, but obvious if you look.)

“Father had another problem with The Confound — I mean The Transporter. My dress came off worse. I had to change into this. Will I do?” (DX heavy, no movement. Static figures, or a very bland stage play is playing out in miniature with a scene change every few paragraphs. Work on this because I’ve read your better work, but I REALLY like this story.)

“Henry? Henry! Is your young lady here?” A voice floated from the house, imperious, demanding. “What on earth are you doing, keeping us all waiting?” (I like the contradiction between floated and imperious and demanding, good. Maybe add a less abstract sensory detail to it, but otherwise, spot.)

“Coming, Mother!” Henry rushed towards the steps like (this simile in particular annoyed me) a startled deer, leaving Rosamund to make her own way into the house. (He’s already abandoning her.)

She observed her suitor, a whisper of doubt floating in the air like the steam emanating from the departing Auto-Carriage (in the context of the story this simile is too obvious). She sighed and strode towards the house, steeling herself for the ordeal ahead. (Foreshadowing the forthcoming but a little bit too vague for it to really mean something to the reader. Emotional impact is sitting low for the story, as well as the stakes.)

****

“Henry tells me your father is an inventor, my dear. Of what, exactly?” Lady Underwood stared at the unusual creature perched uncomfortably on the edge of the Louis IV chair. She certainly was not Henry’s usual type, as she understood them to be, at any rate. (Set them somewhere. Give me one bit of sensory detail, two, three even. It doesn’t need to be front loaded. As it is we only have her, and though I like the long semi-alliteration of “unusual creature perched uncomfortably on the edge of the Louis IV” it’s not very descriptive of anything Rosamund actually is. In fact, my minds eye has her somewhere between generic Pixar and Classical Disney at the moment, and not in a good way.)

“Many things, Lady Underwood. Sometimes, it’s hard even for me to understand, and I’ve been by his side all my life. At the moment, he’s creating a Transporter for Livermore and Company.” (Very dx heavy)

“Do you mean the Livermores? The inventors of the Aer-O-Ship?” (I’ve started to use some shorthand in the autopsies, for the uninitiated who may be reading “dx” is short for dialogue.)

Henry stared at his mother, almost concealing his shock, but not quite (rewrite dammit). The ladies filling the salon — aunts, cousins, family friends (a detail on any of them?) — leaned forward with great interest. (I mean, we still have no place setting really. Tea room, salon, et al?) Really, this was most unseemly. (Oh so here we go, expand on this just a bit) Women, let alone ladies, had no business being interested in matters of industry, let alone inventions. (Yes, expand upon it even past here, love the class issues and sexism on display though.)

“Why yes! The Transporter is of greater import even than the Aer-O-Ship, wonderful though it is, of course. The Transporter is intended — ” (Who says this? Rosamund? We’ve gone from having some interiority on her, to having none once she hit the house.)

“ — (I’m just going to say this, while they’re versatile as shit, in a 2100 word short, you use 12 em dashes. Consider how to structure interruptions in dx like this specifically) to take us through the middle of the earth, to Australia! Oh! How marvellous! No need to circumnavigate the globe, no need to suffer intolerable seasickness, no need to spend time with people for weeks on end who one really would prefer never to meet again!” (I love this but I want it to be less vaguely stated) Lady Underwood clasped her beringed (I mean, we can give the upper crust something better than beringed. It’s also the only visual we have so far on her and a vague one at that) hands to her chest like a young girl. “Such a torment, not to mention a terrible bore! Tell me, my dear, is this Transporter nearly complete?”

“Oh, er, we, I mean Father, is making a few final checks, and then Livermore and Company will take delivery for testing. I imagine the next few months will see huge progress,” said Rosamund, crossing her fingers in her lap. (Sure fuck didn’t sound nearly ready. Maybe give her some interiority here. Some worry, doubt, I mean, is Rosamund used to being romanticized by upper class boys like this and then derped)

“Can one see it? Today?” (Gimme something to hold onto here, she’s excited but like, just dx isn’t cutting it entirely for me as a reader.)

Rosamund stared at Lady Underwood, momentarily silenced. Had she heard correctly? (I’id give this more attention by about a sentence, and a makeover.)

“Oh, Mother! Really! Mr Akers is terribly busy, I’m not certain that he would welcome interruption at this moment,” protested (you have a lot of modified or unusual dx tags in this story) Henry, his cheeks flushing a most unbecoming (like, unbecoming how? Does he flush weird? Good detail, don’t love the modifier, but it shows his uhm, true colors) shade of red.

Rosamund couldn’t tell if he was scared, embarrassed or both. ‘Embarrassed by what?’ she wondered, another doubt lingering like a ghost in the back of her mind. (Don’t go quoting her interiority now. Give this more purchase. The details as to why aside from his flush and protestation just aren’t there for this to be believable to me.)

“I’m a keen patron of the invention industry, my dear. I would be most interested to see such a lauded device in its developmental stages. Tell me, does your father possess the Voice-O-Matic?” Lady Underwood waved at the object in the corner of the salon, a finer and spotlessly clean version of the one in Mr Akers’ workroom. “You may call him and tell him we will arrive within the hour.” (Nice reveal, but also, wouldn’t her son know that thing was there, wouldn’t he know this about his mother? Is there that large a disconnect between this son and his mom that he doesn’t even fundamentally know who or what she is aside from a woman of society?)

****

Cushioned in the velvet-lined luxury of the finest Auto-Carriage Rosamund had ever seen (details), she glanced at Henry suspiciously (no, please…). He refused to meet her gaze, instead staring sullenly (bypassing) out of the window. As she listened to Lady Underwood share her enthusiasm for the inventions she had supported over the years, Rosamund watched as Henry’s eyes widened and his forehead creased, the furrows seeming to be deeper than the gutters at the edge of the dirty cobbled street. (Love the line, don’t simile it, just have his furrows get that deep, more impact.) As for Henry (this is introducing the sentence, don’t do it here. There are places where I wouldn’t be so programmatic about it, but here I don’t think it works), any romantic ideas he might have conjured up about the life Rosamund lived collapsed like a house of cards as they neared the bowels of the Invention Quarter. Surely they were entering Hell? (We need sensory details, preferably all five)

He had never visited her home before, being perfectly content to meet her in the teahouse where they had first crossed paths. Little did he know (this introduction to the sentence works in a way the one I previously pointed out does not) that she was only there to collect some unwanted stale buns from her waitress cousin. There was no way she could afford to drink a cup of tea there, let alone eat. He had made an assumption, seeing her in her Sunday best, and she had never revealed the truth. (Give a bit more of how they ended up seeking parental approval. This is all very decent, but rewrite the para and expand it, both thematically and in detail. It can also help to conceal the turn that the story ends on by lingering on how Rosamund and him came to be whatever they are, how his illusion was created.)

The filthy, stinking reality of her situation assaulted his sensibilities with each turn of the Auto-Carriage’s wheels, whereas his mother seemed to revel in the noise, the confusion, the sheer energy of the soaring engine houses. Mother and son. Opposite ends of a pendulum’s swing. (Keep the last line, and the first ten words of the para, rewrite the rest.)

“Father! Lady Underwood is here. Father!” Rosamund hooped her hands around her mouth, hooting like an owl, the only sound that Mr Akers would respond to when buried in his work. (And so they arrive at, a place…)

She watched him, crouched over his bench like (metaphor him instead of a simile, works better. “Like” doesn’t make me consider that he may not eventually be a half crippled machinist and tinkerer, absorbed in his work) a question mark, half frustrated, half overwhelmed with love for him. One day, he would be able to rest if he wanted that (always a better word), of course. She suspected he did not. (scientists and engineers never retire, this is true.)

“I’m so sorry, my lady. I become somewhat absorbed at times.” Mr Akers straightened, shoving his goggles to the top of his head, taking Lady Underwood’s silk-covered hands in his own, encased in oily leather gauntlets. “I am utterly delighted to meet you. Please, do come through and meet The Confoun — I mean, The Transporter.” (Expand just a tiny bit, if this were a camera it would be a series of disjointed static shots, and I don’t get the feeling that’s what you wanted out of this story. In other words, less talk more actions. But also, every character herein is totally interesting but intensely carboard in appearance. You don’t have to describe their pores, but it usually does help to give a few details so the reader fills in the rest. (ideally details that you have prescribed for them, but hey, maybe I’m just a manipulative asshole of an author.))

“I would be most delighted, Mr Akers. I am so very grateful you could spare the time for us. I do hope it’s not too much of an imposition?” Lady Underwood smiled girlishly, blossoming under the inventor’s frank gaze. (Love blossoming, but it needs a little bit of a modifier, it’s not exactly sensory, but it is a very good detail)

“Well, I would be lying if I didn’t tell you I’m under a most pressing deadline, but I can never say no to my daughter, and certainly not on such an occasion.” (I like that he pays attention to and cares for his daughter, but we’re still in very vague Disney but not Ghibly territory)

Mr Akers smiled at the well-dressed (too vague) woman, wondering how she would manage to avoid dirtying her expensive-looking taffeta in his workshop. (Opportunity for subtle fabulism, she can’t get dirty, she belongs there.) His daughter had made a rare connection indeed, although he noticed that Rosamund and her young man didn’t seem entirely at ease with one another, standing far apart and avoiding eye contact at all costs. (Please do expand this. Feel free to expand this or be very explicit or precise about it)

“Mr Akers, I know Lord Livermore. I shall report back to him this very evening, and he will extend his deadline, I can guarantee it.” Lady Underwood grasped Mr Akers’ hands firmly, ignoring the oil seeping into her gloves and the clouds of coal dust settling on her skirts. “Take me to The Transporter, I beg you!” (Decent.)

Rosamund smiled fondly (no), watching as her dirt-encrusted father and the silk-clad Lady Underwood stepped across the threshold into the vast engineering room (pinged for being entirely too vague), heading towards the shining Transporter. Something (expand on it) was blossoming between them, and she was glad (glad just sounds wrong here, it’s a flat note. Your prose work is better than this). It was an unusual meeting of minds if ever there was one. (This is hurrying to the end.)

“So, tell me, Mr Akers, do you have a pet name for The Transporter? I have heard that this is common amongst you inventors.” (Very decent)

“We call her The Confounded Thing, Lady Underwood. She has been somewhat demanding throughout, I must confess.” (Still very decent, but static, but also, a detail besides demanding would do wonders. Expand.)

“A trait common to the female of the species, so my late husband was fond of telling me!” Lady Underwood laughed graciously. (Reveal, they’re widow and widower, the flip and turn has already happened, the reader knows by now that you tricker them at the start of the story, but you have to pay them off well.)

The engineer and the fine lady disappeared into a cloud of steam as they walked away, a tinkle of girlish laughter and the low-registered rumble of accompanying mirth rising and fading into the rafters. (I really like this, no further comment.)

Rosamund, hands on hips, turned to Henry. He looked terribly out of place. “Well?” she asked. (This could all be rewritten, from here)

“I have something to tell you, Rosamund,” gulped Henry, shifting his feet in the dirt.

“Never mind, I already know. You can find your way home, I suppose? Your mother will be here for some time. At least she isn’t a snob, even if you are.” (to here)

Henry glowered (precise but is this the word you want?) as Rosamund turned smartly (no) away, following his mother and Mr Akers into the clouds of steam and soot.

“Confounded Thing,” he muttered. (Ba-dum-tiss)

FIN

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Thank you for letting me do all of that. (Why can’t we highlight in this editor, I swear) Anyway, it was written tight but the issue is that there’s no action and there are some bad habits.

FINAL THOUGHTS AND NOTES

I know this isn’t representative of your writing now, but I would very much like to see what the you of today does with this story from yesteryear, considering how we all tend to change views on our own work over time, especially as we fucking age.

There’s an abundance of glue words that you could cut. You have no gerund starts. I’m totally OK with it.

Your story is very dialogue heavy, (33% of the text is dialogue) which means that you should focus on the voices of every character to the point that they’re more live than in this draft. Keep an eye on your dialogue tag usage, unusual dialogue tags are often another bypass. It’s lazy writing. Your most abused are, in order of use, muttered, smiled, laughed, and glowered. And always watch for adverbs attached to dialogue tags because again, what are you really trying to say?

You avoid most passive verb usage (only six instances) But you have seven adverbs in your dialogue. Do you talk like that? You have 27 adverbs outside of dialogue.

Most of the descriptions are generic or vague, and your sensory words line up with sight at the top (33) followed by sound (16) touch (8) taste (5) and smell (3, mind you smell is the most powerful sensory detail marker for associative memory that we have in our arsenal and it is painfully underused. I tell everyone to consider this.) Notice how your sensory details just between sight and sound nearly halve, then halve again, and continue until smell gets only three possible words out of 2,153?

You have 48 close echoes, but most of them are unavoidable, find the ones that are avoidable and slit their throats. But do be careful, you may be overusing know/knew in this piece.

The piece however, is very fucking clean. Your sentence variance is lovely. There’s a cadence to it. (I saw it in bar graph, it’s actually quite pretty, it’s obvious you’re a poet who can do double duty in prose fiction) But 24 sentences start with an introductory word or phrase, and if you abuse one piece of punctuation, it’s definitely the em dash (12 in 2,100 words?) Not that we don’t ALL have a favored piece of punctuation to abuse in any one piece of writing.

Having said this, half of writing a good story is homing in on what you’re trying to say, and you have that down, now your work is how you say it. Are these the words and details you want to shine a light on? And if so, why? If you want to keep the vague but tight nature and structure of the story, what is the intent? What’s hiding in this story that you don’t want to say. I smell something getting hinted at, but it’s deeper than Rosamund and has more to do with the reveal and the end, but I could be trying to give you a wound to cover where you were just being clever.

I would read it once as a reader, then probably never think of it again. Your story about the man and the family whose house he takes over, the plague, I still think about that story. That’s the success of it. Now do that, but with this.

The trick is that by the end of five pages, you’ve usually discovered all the major issues that will cascade through an authors writing stylistically, their hangups and tics, their crutches. People tend to have a small number of things and habits that they repeat over and over again. Rare is the author who has three distinct issues with their prose on page one that completely morph into four different ones by page 100.

Though, I’m sure it can happen.

It can always happen.

And again, thank you to the public and private Emil is My Editor entries so far,

Zivah Avraham

,

M.P. Fitzgerald

, and

Nick Winney

.

And please, if you like any of this, subscribe to both of them and to Zivah’s Substack Poetic License immediately. You won’t be disappointed.

Zivah, I’ve said more than I feel like I need to. I very much hope to see a new draft of this story soon, I’m terribly interested in anything you do with it.

Thank you all for your support.

And, I’ll be your editor any time you want.

But Remember.

Fiction is Culture

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This is the last day for early registration to an upcoming workshop put on by

🫀body fluids🦷 - a lit mag

and myself.

It will hurt, but whatever you bring to this workshop WILL come out the other end of the thresher better.

To find the place to apply, click the picture below.