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Editing: How "Near" Was Arranged and Why

I blogged a couple of days ago about arranging stories and my philosophy for such arrangements. I wanted to show those principles in action by looking at the two ToCs for the book Near + Far.

As you may know, the book is divided into two parts, near future stories and far future stories. This allowed us to take advantage of the old Ace double format, where each half is one side of the book. It also meant creating two tables of contents, one for each section.

So here’s the order for the Near section, with some explication:

The collection leads off with the story, “The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each”. The story originally appeared in Clarkesworld, and is one of my favorites, as well as garnering significant critical attention. It’s a story that I knew would be familiar to many of my fans, and perhaps remind them of what they liked about my work, setting them in the proper mood for the rest of the stories. For readers who were new to the work, I knew that this was a good strong start.

The second story is, “Peaches of Immortality,” which originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine as “The Immortality Game.” This is another strong story although it deals with a different theme than Mermaids. Like the first story, it has a somewhat ambiguous (but in this case arguably happy) ending.

“Close Your Eyes,” which originally appeared in Apex Magazine, marks a movement into more slipstreamy stuff and a venture into more experimental realms. It is a slightly odd story in that it toys a little with meta-fiction, talking about narrative conventions, and even ends with two possible endings, inviting the reader to pick the one they prefer. This seemed like a reasonable choice for a third story, in that it let me nudge the reader a little out of their presumed comfort zone.

“Therapy Buddha,” which appeared in a collection called 2020 Visions, ontinues to present some variety in terms of theme. If I had to sum them up so far, Mermaids is about hope and love, Peaches is about the perils of dwelling in the past, Close Your Eyes is about dependency, and this story is about loneliness and the relationships with the inanimate created by such circumstances. Notice that so far there is not a lot of variety in terms of length. While the other side has several flash pieces, this side only has one.

“Ms. Liberty gets a Haircut” is a change in emotion. It’s a story that, although it has a serious subject, also deals a lot with wordplay and pop-culture references, and is generally a lot of fun for readers. I felt that by now the readers probably had enough misery and ambiguity, and perhaps might like a little play.

“10 New Metaphors for Cyberspace,” a flash piece, marks what is close to the middle of the book. It is a prose poem of sorts, and so seemed a good accompaniment for Ms. Liberty, as well as also being somewhat experimental.

“Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Dtars,” moves us back into more straightforward narratives and also away from the comic moments that its two predecessors held.

“Real Fur” is one of my earlier stories, but one that I like very much, and which has turned out to be a favorite with a number of readers, I suspect for its tactile qualities. It’s the first of the trio of what I consider the slightest stories of this section, followed by “Not Waving, but Drowning,” and “Vocobox,” which was one of the very first stories that I published.

After that I hit the last two stories in the book, and wanted to finish with fairly strong ones. I chose for the next-to-last story, the story “Long Enough and Just So Long,” which originally appeared in lightspeed and which is, I think one of my best. Or at least one of my favorites.

The final story, “Legends of the Gone,” is not the best in the collection or even close, but it is one that creates an impression that I wanted the reader to close with, a story about endings and goodbyes. It seemed like a very good choice for the final story of this section, particularly knowing that most readers would turn the book over and begin the Far section at that point.

Questions? Comments? What might you have done differently?

One Response

  1. I might have ended with “Peaches of Immortality”, a stronger story and a better message (as it were) about good-byes. It also offers a different look at the nature of time, something for the readers to think about before flipping the book over to look at FAR.

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Up to One's Hips: Thoughts on Wading Through the Slushpile

I just finished the first pass on the slushpile for If This Goes On. The anthology is intended to be half solicited manuscripts; half from the open call, and I’m happy to say that I don’t think it’s going to be hard to pull that together. I’ve got five or six definites on my list right now, and I’m setting them aside. I did read through every story except for a handful of less-than-serious ones; thank you to the slushreaders and publisher Colin Coyle for winnowing those out.

If I can, I’ll take one more pass through the first third or so of the slushpile, when I was reading and not knowing how strong some of the submissions would be. I suspect at least a third of those can be winnowed. Then I’ll ask the publisher to send out that round of rejections.

By then I am hoping I’ll have narrowed things down to a few dozen stories. These manuscripts have officially made it to the final round. At this point I’ll be looking at some things that include:

  • Is this a common theme or something unusual? A few commonalities have emerged and I will probably only have one underwater people story, one abortions-are-illegal story, one from-a-child’s-POV story, and one post-apocalyptic landscape story, which may or may not be one of the several that featured a particular dietary item.
  • How much bang for the buck does it yield in terms of editorial work? If it’ll be amazeballpants (common editorial jargon), then I’m willing to put more time into it. Along the same lines, I’ve got one serviceable story that would only take a little work to deepen its emotional impact. It’s also a strong contender.
  • What’s the tone? I’ve got lots of gritty, desperate stuff and some humor in there to leaven the mix is necessary. At the same time I don’t want things that will seem incongruous next to each other.
  • What did the slushreader(s) think? Unfathomable as it may seem, I have been known to be wrong. If I was meh about a story but someone else raved, I’ll certainly go back and take another look.

Then will come the final passes, where I’ll be reluctantly saying goodbye to some stories for reasons that might include:

  • They don’t fit the overall theme as strongly as the others.
  • They don’t play off other stories, or else are too similar to another piece.
  • They will take a lot of editing, but the amount of work required by other pieces with similar strengths/themes is significantly less.

I hope that the slushreaders have learned something from all of this, including a better sense of what submitters may or may not want to avoid, and how varied the slush pile can be. With a few of them we’ve done some talking about stories, but not all. For most slushreaders, I would suggest if you’re passing up more than half the stories, you are not being harsh enough, but if it’s only one in ten, you may be leaving out some stuff the editor will want to see, unless your tastes are perfectly aligned.

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What I'm Telling the Slush Readers for If This Goes On

negative-space-woman-reading-philosophy-book-thought-catalogA week or so ago we had the orientation session for the slush readers. I gathered them by posting announcements in my newsletter and other social media, but I also tried to reach out to a range of people in order to ask for recommendations in order to ensure I had a diverse pool. We ended up with over a dozen slushreaders, and one of the things I want all of them to take away from the experience is better understanding of stories and how to sort through things.

We video-recorded the session, and the publisher went over the mechanics of the slush system in that as well. Parvus Press has mentioned recently that I asked to have the slush read blind, which to me seems like a better approach. Studies have shown that perception of the attached name can change the way someone reacts to a scholarly paper, and I’m reasonably sure similar things happen when reading fiction.

One of the things I’ve stressed is that typos and grammatical errors aren’t a dealbreaker – we can fix those. A compelling story with some issues like that is something I want to see. But the world’s most immaculately formatted story won’t do much for me unless there’s a good story attached, by which I mean a story that entertains while at the same informs or engages or makes you think or hopefully some combination of all of that. Look for the stories that startle and amaze you, I told them. Or really piss you off, I added, because sometimes that’s the sign of a good story.

If the story is from a viewpoint radically different than their own, I’d like them to make sure some other eyes check it out. (Nonetheless I’m going to be a pain in the rear and read everything, partly because I want to be able to talk to the slushreaders about stuff as it comes up.)

I emphasized a policy that I have borrowed from John Joseph Adams, who has edited a kerjillion anthologies, and asked people not to talk about the slushreading experience in anything but vague and enthusiastic terms. I know writers will be watching those utterances and often taking stuff to heart that was not intended for them. In my early years, I had the odd experience of having an IGMS slushreader blog about my story submission in mocking terms. This probably would have been more discouraging if the actual editor hadn’t just bought the story, but I will always remember reading through their account of the slushreading party and the lines about all of them laughing about hitting a story written from an elephant’s POV. The vividness of that moment is not something I really want the slushreaders inflicting on other writers.

We closed up by talking a little about how to stay un-depressed in the light of what may well turn out to be a whole bunch of grim stories. It’s okay to step away from the keyboard sometimes, and we have enough slushreaders that plenty of eyes will be looking at the stories.

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