.comPhoto courtesy Jordan Steranka from unsplash.com

“Start with a line…” Okay. How about…”My emotional development was arrested when I was eighteen and given a life sentence.” Actually, I don’t mean that type of line when I wrote the above title. I meant the modern version of the old campfire game where someone thinks of a sentence to start off a story, the person next to them offers a second sentence to continue the tale, the next person creates a third sentence, and round and ‘round the campfire they go until the story is complete or something like it. It was inevitable that someone would create a new version of this game. Several someones have, actually.

I learned about the new versions of this storytelling method through a friend whose high school and college-age daughters have been writing short stories and novels online in collaboration with like-minded people from all over the world. There are a number of websites dedicated to this purpose. Each has their own rules. One gives a potential contributor a couple of minutes to come up with a sentence with a set word maximum. Another imposes a character limit, in terms of letters, numbers, and spaces (as opposed to, you know, people in the story).  There is at least one that permits contributors to critique each other. I bet that gets interesting. The stories, as one might expect, can meander quite a bit and the quality of the contributions and the ultimate sum of the parts can vary wildly. A number of the finished products actually turn out pretty well, however.

Two of my favorite sites of this nature are Folding Story and Novlet, but there are others to be found if you google “stories collaborative written online” or something similar. My participation has been limited to reading as opposed to contributing (I’ve been too busy watching Love, Death & Robots on Netflix, notwithstanding the warning that it is for mature audiences). It seems likely, however, that these and similar sites would be good places todevelop the ability to craft killer sentences or paragraphs by hitching them to developing stories, get the creative juices flowing during an episode of writer’s block, or even suffer the slings and arrows of peer critique if you are looking for that sort of thing and Facebook happens to be down for the day.

Please take a few minutes, check out the sites I mentioned (or find your own!), and let us know what you think. If you have been a participant on one or more of them and are so inclined please share your experience. Thank you. And enjoy the first Saturday of Spring 2019. Boing!

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Today, please welcome a brave Anonymous Author with a story entitled Freets.

FREETS

By –

ONE

The coffin was nearly ready. Andy Turbett knuckled sweat off his brow and stepped back to get a good look at the lid. It was as fine a piece of wood as he’d ever had on his bench and the work was going well. Hmm, maybe a tiny shave off the side. He reached for a spokeshave just as Ruth came into the barn, toting some colourful paper stuff under her arm. Bright sunshine framed her.

“Andy,” she said, nodding, with her bunchy smile.

“Hello, lass. Come to check up on me, have tha?”

She looked at the side panels and base of the coffin leaning in a corner, waiting to join up with the lid. “Oh, you are getting on fast. I did come to say maybe we won’t need it so soon after all. Not if Dan has it his way.”

Andy blew at the curls of wood that he’d planed off. They joined the rest of the wood debris on the long dirt floor.  “Ah, well. Can’t say I disagree with him there.”

“Grandad needs to die,” Ruth said.

Andy made a non-committal sound. Her husband would never let her do it, and what he said went. Not one to let the wife put her foot out the door first after the wedding, wasn’t Dan. “What’s that paper?” he said, to change the subject.

“Oh, I made a banner to hang in the tea-shop. Tha won’t miss this afternoon, will tha?”

“Nay. Got to wash and change first, I’m sweating like a beast.” He took a pull from the pint-glass of water on the floor. Warm and dusty, but it’d do. “This weather. Got to be a record.”

“That’s what they’re saying.” She watched him. “There’s some houseleek growing by the rocks in the woods, I’m going tomorrow if tha wants me to get -”

“Nay,” he said. “Nay.” God, this little apple-cheek lass scared him sometimes. He took up the spokeshave again.

“Oh, Andy. I do wish tha knew it’s all right if tha treats it with respect.”

“Nay, best to leave ’em alone. I know tha thinks different, being so young and -” There. He should have kept his mouth shut after all; she wasn’t one to take offence, but you never knew, what with her thinking herself as much a daughter of the village as Fiona, his own wife.

~~~~

With TKZ first page critiques, the focus is usually on what’s not working and how to best fix it. Once in a while, a submission comes in that is so good, it’s more useful as an example of how to do things right.

Freets is such a submission.

However, I have to say that title put me off. How many readers know what a freet is? I didn’t. How many will take the time to look it up?

According to Wiktionary.org, freet is:

1. A superstitious notion or belief with respect to any action or event as a good or a bad omen; a superstition. quotations ▼
   • 1824, John Mactaggart, The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, page 263:

If the old “freet” be true “ that those who fall when at the handspake aneath the corpse, will soon be the corpse themsell,” there would soon be a good few corspes; for at these “druken” concerns, the bearers are falling some of them every now and then.

1. A superstitious rite, observance, wont, or practise. quotations ▼
   • 1903, Samual Ferguson, The Fairy Well of Lagnanay:

Oh, sister Ellen, sister sweet, Come with me to the hill I pray, And I will prove that blessed freet!

1. A charm.

Okay, once we understand the meaning, Freets has the components of a great title—identifies a story problem, hints at the conflict, and evokes a wonderfully sinister tone.

However, the obscure meaning is a big negative. Perhaps the author can add a subtitle. A vivid, compelling cover is a must; otherwise, browsing online shoppers may pass it by because of the unfamiliar word. Also, define freets in the book description or jacket copy.

That’s the biggest nit I have with this submission.

At TKZ, we talk a lot about starting with action rather than static weather descriptions, backstory, or a character contemplating her navel. Jim Bell recommends opening a story with a “disturbance,” which doesn’t have to be violent or loud.

This submission avoids those common pitfalls. Each sentence is deliberately crafted and performs multiple functions, drawing the reader deeper into the story. I’m going to examine individual sentences and explore why they work.

Sentence 1 – The coffin was nearly ready.

This quiet, simple, declarative sentence caught my attention immediately. Death is a monumental disturbance yet the matter-of-fact tone sets an understated mood. The implication is that death has already occurred or is imminent. I’m guessing the genre is mystery, suspense, or horror so death is likely to mean murder.

Consider making this first sentence its own paragraph for more dramatic impact. See Kris’s excellent post on paragraphing.

Sentences 2, 3, 4 – Andy Turbett knuckled sweat off his brow and stepped back to get a good look at the lid. It was as fine a piece of wood as he’d ever had on his bench and the work was going well. Hmm, maybe a tiny shave off the side.

Andy’s character is introduced without superficial details about age and appearance but instead drills straight into his values, beliefs, and skills. He is a diligent woodworker who appreciates quality materials, is a perfectionist, and takes pride in his craft. “Knuckled” is a great active, visual verb.

Building a coffin by hand suggests the time period is historical rather than contemporary.

Sentence 5, 6 – He reached for a spokeshave just as Ruth came into the barn, toting some colourful paper stuff under her arm. Bright sunshine framed her.

Spokeshave is clearly a tool of his trade, even though the term was unfamiliar until I looked it up (see illustration). It also confirms a historical period, because he doesn’t reach for, say, a power sander.

Spokeshave – Wikimedia Commons

The spelling of colourful indicates the locale may be the British Isles.

The second character, Ruth, is introduced. Setting details (a barn) and weather (bright sunshine) are also established in an active way rather than as static description. The sun isn’t just shining—it frames Ruth, doing double duty as a weather report and an active verb.

Sentence 7 – “Andy,” she said, nodding, with her bunchy smile.

Bunchy is another unfamiliar word yet it evokes a great visual of a big mouth with lots of teeth. Turns out it’s an adjective, dating back to about 1400 AD, that means protuberant or bulging.

Sentence 8, 9 – “Hello, lass. Come to check up on me, have tha?”

Lass and tha are additional indicators the setting is Great Britain. Tha easily translates to you without stopping the reader. When I looked it up, I found it is Yorkshire dialect.

Sentences 10-13 – She looked at the side panels and base of the coffin leaning in a corner, waiting to join up with the lid. “Oh, you are getting on fast. I did come to say maybe we won’t need it so soon after all. Not if Dan has it his way.”

When Ruth says they might not need the coffin yet if Dan has his way, I’m totally hooked. Who is dying? More important, who is controlling how and when the person dies? Obviously there is more going on than an ordinary death due to natural causes.

Sentences 14-17 – Andy blew at the curls of wood that he’d planed off. They joined the rest of the wood debris on the long dirt floor.  “Ah, well. Can’t say I disagree with him there.”

Again, the author incorporates description into action. Curls of wood is a vivid visual. Long dirt floor reinforces the historical time period.

Andy’s response suggests conflict lurking under the surface of apparent calm.

Sentence 18 – “Grandad needs to die.”

Wham! The author immediately gets to the core of Ruth’s character. She wants her grandfather dead and appears ready to help him along if he doesn’t go willingly, even though her husband disagrees.

Sentence 19 – Andy made a non-committal sound.

Sometimes what’s not said is more revealing than what is said. Andy’s non-response shows that not only does he want to avoid a confrontation with Ruth, but he may be intimidated by this outspoken woman who might be capable of murder.

Sentences 20, 21, 22 – Her husband would never let her do it, and what he said went. Not one to let the wife put her foot out the door first after the wedding, wasn’t Dan. “What’s that paper?” he said, to change the subject.

This statement of opinion reveals more insight into Andy’s beliefs, as well as delivering a glimpse into the relationship between Ruth and her husband, Dan. Not one to let the wife put her foot out the door first after the wedding, wasn’t Dan is an incredibly awkward sentence, yet it sounds authentic to the historical time period. It expresses Andy’s analysis of the marriage in a quaint, archaic way that’s still understandable to contemporary readers.

Sentences 23, 24 – “Oh, I made a banner to hang in the tea-shop. Tha won’t miss this afternoon, will tha?”

Apparently a public meeting is planned about an unspecified topic. Grandad? Or something else? The author is dropping questions like breadcrumbs. The reader will follow the trail to find answers and keep turning the pages.

Ruth adds another slightly veiled threat to Andy that he better show up.

Sentences 25-31 – “Nay. Got to wash and change first, I’m sweating like a beast.” He took a pull from the pint-glass of water on the floor. Warm and dusty, but it’d do. “This weather. Got to be a record.”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

This gives another revelation of Andy’s character as well as amplifying the weather and setting. He works hard and appreciates the small reward of a warm, dusty glass of water.

At the same time, these innocuous sentences show him trying to change the subject to avoid the unease of talking with Ruth. The author makes the setting description do double duty to point out conflict and tension.

Sentences 32, 33 – She watched him. “There’s some houseleek growing by the rocks in the woods, I’m going tomorrow if tha wants me to get -”

Already the reader has the sense that being watched by Ruth makes Andy uncomfortable. I didn’t know what houseleek was but, right away, I suspected poison.

Houseleek – Wikimedia Commons

Turns out it’s a succulent plant, also called hens-and-chicks, that was used medicinally to treat diarrhea, burns, and mouth ulcers. Even so, Ruth’s sinister aura makes the reader wonder how else she plans to use houseleek.

Sentences 34-37 – “Nay,” he said. “Nay.” God, this little apple-cheek lass scared him sometimes. He took up the spokeshave again.

Andy interrupts Ruth and repeats Nay twice for emphasis. Short, punchy sentences mirror his fear. He’s worried enough to pick up a possible weapon. Additionally, the reader learns more about Ruth’s physical appearance.

Sentence 38 – “Oh, Andy. I do wish tha knew it’s all right if tha treats it with respect.”

Ruth chides him while reinforcing the hint that houseleek is potentially toxic if not treated with respect. She’s also trying to reassure him. I can almost hear her next statement: “One little taste won’t hurt tha a bit. Here, try some.”

Sentences 39-42 – “Nay, best to leave ’em alone. I know tha thinks different, being so young and -” There. He should have kept his mouth shut after all; she wasn’t one to take offence, but you never knew, what with her thinking herself as much a daughter of the village as Fiona, his own wife.

Andy challenges Ruth and immediately regrets his statement. Uh-oh, you never knew if Ruth might take offence. The unspoken threat is clear—she may be capable of evil acts. He also appears to think she’s presumptuous, considering herself a daughter of the village as much as his own wife. That indicates Ruth is an outsider, who has brought youthful, possibly dangerous beliefs and omens–freets–to the village.

By now, I’m eager to turn the page…except the submission is over. Drat!

Today’s brave author provided a case study of how to effectively open a novel. Each sentence does double or triple duty—showing description incorporated into action, and revealing character and conflict. There is no pointless meandering.

While we don’t yet know the specifics of time period or locale, carefully chosen details give enough hints without bogging down in exposition. Each sentence builds on the previous one, inexorably marching forward, carrying the reader into a story full of intrigue and promise.

In one page, the author establishes s/he is as skilled in the craft of writing as Andy is in woodworking.

Thank you, Brave Author, for submitting this excellent page. Keep us posted when it’s published.

Just because I was taken by this piece doesn’t mean all readers will be. TKZers, do you have differing opinions or points? How might you handle the story?

By Mark Alpert

After I read an interesting novel, I like to devote some time to thinking about it, contemplating what I liked about the book, what I didn’t like, which characters were the most intriguing, and which plot twists were the most exciting. It’s a useful exercise for a writer. Plus, it’s fun.

This week I finished reading a trilogy of science-fiction novels by Chinese author Liu Cixin: The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End. The novels were published in China between 2008 and 2010, and the English translations came out between 2014 and 2016. The first book in the Three-Body trilogy won the Hugo Award and the third book won the Locus. Former president Barack Obama called the series “wildly imaginative.” (Wow, a blurb from Obama! Very nice.)

I was hooked from the start, because the first chapter was so unusual for a sci-fi novel. It portrayed a scene from the Cultural Revolution, the fanatical anti-intellectual movement that devastated Chinese society during the 1960s and 1970s. Ye Wenjie, a student in Beijing, sees her father, a physics professor, beaten to death in a public square by frenzied Red Guards. Afterward, she’s exiled to the countryside, but soon she’s assigned to work at a military base on a mountaintop where there’s a huge radio antenna. Eventually she realizes that the purpose of this base is to search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

(Warning: there are some spoilers ahead, but this sci-fi trilogy is so packed with inventive surprises that I don’t think revealing a few of them would truly spoil a reader’s enjoyment of the books.)

The intended point of the novel’s first section is that Ye is devastated by her father’s public execution and develops a very low opinion of humanity in general, so low that she becomes actively nihilist. To be honest, the author doesn’t quite succeed in this task of showing the character’s development. Ye comes across as somewhat numbed by the traumatic events of the Cultural Revolution, but I never sensed her secret thoughts, the formation of her new moral philosophy. In retrospect, Liu could’ve done a better job of portraying the mental leap that Ye made, the seeds of the radical actions that she would take later in the book. Perhaps the author didn’t want to tip his hand, telegraph the surprise he’d planned? As all novelists know, this is a tricky balance. You don’t want to give away the store, but at the same time you also need to build a foundation for an upcoming plot twist, to ensure that it doesn’t seem to come out of nowhere.

In any case, the surprise is powerful. The radio antenna at Ye’s base receives a signal while she’s working alone on the night shift, a message from the Centauri star system, which is our solar system’s closest neighbor (about four light-years away). The extraterrestrials — called Trisolarans because the Centauri system consists of three stars gravitationally bound to one another — have detected radio transmissions from Earth, and their first response is a dire warning from a Trisolaran pacifist who knows all too well the aggressive intentions of his fellow aliens. He urges Earthlings not to respond to any radio messages from Trisolaris, because doing so will reveal the exact position of Earth’s solar system. But because of Ye’s disdain for the human species, she responds anyway: Come here! I will help you conquer this world. Our civilization is no longer capable of solving its own problems. We need your force to intervene.

This message puts an epic story in motion. Even for a highly advanced civilization, the task of conquering another star system isn’t easy. It’s extraordinarily difficult to accelerate spacecraft to even a small fraction of the speed of light, so it’ll take the Trisolaran invasion fleet hundreds of years to cross the void between their star system and ours. Most of the Three-Body trilogy focuses on the Earth’s desperate efforts to defend itself, building its own space fleet during the 21^st and 22^nd centuries and concocting various strategies to outsmart the Trisolarans. Those efforts are hindered by a fifth column of traitorous Earthlings who, like Ye Wenjie, believe our planet would be better off under alien control. The motives of the traitors seem perverse, but they’re also strangely familiar. As this week’s events in New Zealand showed, our species has no shortage of deluded fanatics.

The three novels, particularly the first one, have some weaknesses. The quality of the writing isn’t stellar (pun intended), although this might be the result of the translation. Many of the characters aren’t fleshed out; Wang Miao, the main point-of-view character in the first book, is practically a blank. I also didn’t get a good sense of what the Trisolarans are like, which is probably the biggest missed opportunity in the trilogy. The novel’s human characters (and by extension, the reader) learn about Trisolaran culture and biology through a virtual-reality computer game that the traitorous Earthlings play; this game, called Three Body, shows that much of Trisolaran history was shaped by the chaotic movements of the three stars in the Centauri system, which alternately boiled and froze the aliens’ home planet in a wildly random pattern. To mitigate the damage, the aliens tried to learn to predict the orbital movements of their three stars, but they never succeeded; as any physicist can tell you, the Three-Body Problem is notoriously difficult to solve, even with a powerful computer. This dilemma helps to explain why the Trisolarans are so eager to conquer our solar system, which is a stable, orderly paradise compared with theirs.

Unfortunately, this fascinating fictional premise doesn’t apply to the real-life Centauri system, which consists of two sun-like stars (Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B) that orbit their center of gravity in a predictable way, and a much smaller red-dwarf star (Proxima Centauri) that orbits the other two at a great distance, also very predictably. (Because Proxima is so much smaller than A and B and so distant from them, there are no mathematical difficulties in this particular Three-Body Problem.) The chaotic orbital dynamics might apply to a planet orbiting relatively close to A and B, but not to the stars themselves. This error would’ve been very easy to fix, so it’s a shame that it crept into the novels. I noticed a few other mistakes in the trilogy: a stellar explosion in the Centauri system wouldn’t be visible from Earth’s northern hemisphere; twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon, not fifteen; Pluto and its moon Charon are tidally locked with one another, so the moon would appear to be stationary to an observer on Pluto’s surface. (Liu Cixin, if you’re reading this, please allow me to vet your next manuscript. I’m good at spotting these astrophysical errors!)

But Liu’s story is too good to be ruined by a few factual mistakes. The trilogy becomes more and more compelling as the narrative progresses into the 23^rd and 24^th centuries. The human characters discover that the Trisolarans aren’t the only threat they face. In fact, the whole galaxy is packed with technologically superior species competing for the Milky Way’s resources, and most of these extraterrestrials have no qualms at all about exterminating potential rivals. Any emerging civilization must hide its presence; if it sends out too many radio signals, a more advanced species will swiftly destroy the upstarts’ star system. In the Three-Body trilogy, the universe resembles a dark forest in which hunters are lurking everywhere and the prey must stay silent to survive. This fictional scenario is a clever solution to the paradox named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who famously wondered why humans haven’t observed any signs of extraterrestrials in a galaxy that should (statistically at least) be full of them. We haven’t seen any aliens, Liu says, because they’re all hiding.

Here’s another reason why I liked this trilogy: it shows a future human civilization that blends Western and Eastern influences. In Liu’s novels, China and America remain separate nations, but scientists from both countries team up against the Trisolaran threat. Their cultures intermingle too; people born in future centuries have names that combine English words and Mandarin characters. I visited China several years ago to research one of my novels (Extinction), and I came away with the strong hope that America and China can learn to peacefully coexist. We don’t need extraterrestrials to seal our doom; if we’re not careful, we’ll stumble into an apocalypse all by ourselves.

Want to see another weird connection between fiction and real life? My new novel THE COMING STORM was foreshadowed thirty years ago by a conversation I had with a certain New York real-estate mogul who later decided to run for president. Read this for the details.