Editing My Science Fiction-Part 3

Original Post: 18 June 2012
Posted Here: 4 December 2017

Once I’ve worked my way through my Edit List, my story is ready for what may seem to be the worst—and what can certainly be the most dangerous—part of editing: the critique. I hand over my precious work to someone (I hate to use the word, critic, because this seems to have such a negative connotation, though it is the proper word) to read, to evaluate, to make corrections, and to suggest changes. I’m supposed to let someone shoot holes in my baby? Yes. Actually, I should have already done the things listed below. The mechanical parts of editing discussed in Parts 1 and 2 of this series are just that: the mechanical part of writing. The purpose of the critique is to look for the creative parts and help the writer evaluate how successful the creative effort has been. So even though no one wants to hear “you should have done this instead of that,” paying attention to a good critique can make the story better.

Critiques can include the reporting of typos and grammatical errors, but these should not be its main content. Following is a list of things that might be considered in a critique:

1. Markets are looking for a “story” vs. a “slice of life.”

According to Wikipedia, a Slice of Life is “A storytelling technique that presents a seemingly arbitrary sample of a character’s life, which often lacks a coherent plot, conflict, or ending. The story may have little plot progress and little character development, and often has no exposition, conflict, or denouement, with an open ending.” However, I am sure that I’ve read SF “stories” that fit the Slice of Life category. Several were in a “Years Best” anthology for 2008 that I picked up a while ago.

Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog, says this about the Story: Stories “begin with a character who has a problem.  He may solve the problem happily, or fail. But the story is the telling of how he struggles with the problem, nothing more. And nothing less.”

2. Show, Don’t Tell

Action vs. exposition. Exposition, which is to be avoided when possible, is the providing of information by describing the characters, plot, scene, etc. to the reader vs. Action, where the reader learns by observing what is happening. For example, “Tom was walking around the carnival” (exposition) vs. “Tom listened to the music of the carousel as he stepped through the line of people waiting to get on the Ferris wheel” (action.) Science fiction can contain scenes, characters and devices completely unknown to the reader, so the writer has to be careful about how this information is presented. In SF, sometimes a bit of exposition can’t be avoided. Just don’t overdo it.

The Info dump is a form of exposition in which the writer tells all about how something works because it is unfamiliar or new to the reader. For example, if I take time out from the story to tell you how a thixotropic lock functions, that’s an info dump.

“As you know Bob,…” is a form of info dump which the writer has tried to hide by placing it into dialog. For example, Carson said, “As you know Bob, you were in suspended animation for 30 years so we could save food and energy while our starship travelled at 99.99% of light speed from Earth to Waxon.” Bob certainly knows this, so there is no need for Carson to tell him—except to make sure that you know it, too. Right or wrong, it still gets into print!

RUE: Resist the Urge to Explain was Kathy Kitts’ 2011 Short Fiction Workshop description of Showing followed by an explanation (an info dump) of what we had just seen.

3. Tension/Conflict

Hurt your protagonist, make life difficult for her, provide setbacks, don’t let the protagonist easily overcome all obstacles. Everybody at the Short Fiction Workshop thought that Pierre Bordeaux, in my short story, The Tartian Egg, would have been a stronger character if he hadn’t been the suave, James Bond type.

4. Pacing: sentence length

Short sentences increase tension, as for a lot of action or a rapidly changing situation. Longer, more complicated sentences are better for slow paced sections or in exposition..

5. Active vs. Passive

A character must be active, not passive. The character must be involved in solving the problem, must be present for the solution, and must be responsible for the solution.

Sentence construction should also be active voice, not passive voice: “Juozas fired the laser pistol” or “Juozas fired.” vs. The laser pistol was fired by Juozas” or “The laser pistol was fired.” In active voice the subject acts upon something else. In the passive voice the subject is acted upon by something else.

6. Point of View (POV)—Who it is that tells the story?

The most common POV is 3rd Person–the narrator is not a character in the story and characters are referred to as “he” or “she.” 3rd Person comes in a couple of flavors.

3rd Person Limited is probably the most used of these flavors: The narrator knows only what one of the characters sees, feels or thinks.

Some writers use 3rd Person Omniscient: The narrator knows everything about everyone. The problem here is that the reader may feel that the POV is 3rd Person Limited, since it is most common, and then become confused as the point of view seems to change from one character to another.

Many stories are written in 1st person: One of the characters is the narrator. This can be used effectively, but severely limits what the narrator can know about what other characters are doing.

Watch out for changes in POV, especially in 3rd Person Limited, which may be obvious or subtle switches from 3rd Person Limited to 3rd Person Omniscient. Changes in point of view may make it more difficult to follow what is going on. In a short story, point of view should remain constant. In a novel, point of view can change from chapter to chapter.

An example of an obvious change in POV: We are seeing over the shoulder of one character, then over the shoulder of another: “Tom thought the engine sounded strange. Bob wondered why Tom was so concerned.”

A subtle change of  point of view: “Tom was tired of listening to his bossy brother. He told Bob to get out. Bob slammed the door behind him. Out in the hall, he turned back, almost came back in, then walked slowly away.” Tom can’t know what Bob is doing once out of the room.

According to some folks at the Short Fiction Workshop, a lot of “internal monologue” with 3rd Person POV can give the illusion that the POV has changed to 1st person, especially if the thoughts are not accompanied by a tag. For instance, compare Someone is coming! with “Someone is coming!” John thought. Speaking of thoughts, never write something like “Someone is coming,” John thought to himself—unless John is telepathic and could have been “speaking” to another character.

7. No unused fire extinguishers or guns

If something is named in order to draw attention to it, it should have some specific use in the story. The difference between something which is just part of the scenery vs. something which needs to be used can be quite subtle. If Pierre throws a pistol into the brush because he doesn’t carry any weapon other than a knife, the pistol should make an appearance later in the story. Otherwise, why not just omit this part of the story and get on with it?

8. Don’t overuse adjectives and adverbs

Try to choose better, more descriptive, nouns and verbs. Keep “show, not tell” in mind when using adjectives and adverbs.

9. Could be—not should be—changed

Critics (and you) can always find something that could be changed in your story. It is, after all, fiction, and a story might be developed in many different ways. However, just because something could be changed does not mean that that part of the story should or must be changed.

This last item gets us into what I said earlier about critiques—they are sometimes the most dangerous part of editing. I think I’ll save a discussion of the dangers of critiques for the next and last part of this series.

Keep reading/keep writing – Jack