Ten More Plots Taken From Other People's Problems

Today’s wordcount:5006
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 99942
Total word count for the week: 10014
Total word count for this retreat: 27091
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “Days of Sweetness, Days of Want”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes
According to Fitbit, 11646 steps, 85 flights of stairs, 5.26 miles

From Hearts of Tabat:

The journey upward was full of splinters and soot, but both girls made it. They wandered through the rooms here, which were lower-ceilinged but just as once richly appointed as the downstairs had been. Here too, though, looters had stripped away most of the valuable things other than the built in furniture and even there, the shelves that had once held drawers gaped openly. Bales of paper, blackened on the outside, fell aside at the touch to reveal white internals, blank and ready for words that would never come.

There were two separate suites, both facing out over Printers Row, and in one, rather than looting, someone had smashed: a mass of crockery, and a number of terra-cotta house dolls, every Trade God in the house, it seemed. Revelation picked through the fragments, taking out the faces where she could find them, accumulating them into a little heap of smiles and eyes and pointed noses.

“What are you doing?” Grace said irritably. “Those aren’t worth anything.”

Revelation bit her lip and kept down on her knees, sorting through the fragments. She thought to herself, they have value because I want them, even if someone else might think they’re worthless. Anger smoldered in her like a damp match.

“Do you think they’ll have some power, because they’re Trade Gods?” Grace persisted. “That’s foolish. Only the moons are real.”

“I know that,” Revelation said. “I’m not a heretic.”

“Then why are you sorting those out? Do you think you can put one back together?”

Revelation shook her head. Grace pulled at her shoulder. Reluctantly, she swept the faces she had found, two handfuls worth, into her pockets and let Grace move her along.

The fire’s touch had manifested in every room, charring walls, blackening fabrics. It smelled overwhelmingly of burned things, which was not a smell that Revelation had considered unpleasant before this day, but now pressed at her nose until she found herself dipping her face into her shoulder, trying to breathe through the fabric of her cloak. Grace seemed unaffected by the smell, moving quickly to anything she thought might yield some value, and forcing her gleanings on Revelation, whose load grew heavier and heavier as they sorted through the rooms: a brass lantern; half a picture frame, the edges gilded; a small glass jar full of an unknown white paste; a handful of yellowy-gold feathers, so bright that she thought they must be painted at first.

They both froze when they heard the noise from below.

I find that when I read short stories, more short stories of my own come to me and I believe Delany when he says that you can’t write anything better than the best stuff you’re reading. Here’s ten of my most accessible favorites, mostly speculative fiction, but with a few lit writers in there as well.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – Vonnegut is the best of the best, and I don’t just say that because he’s a fellow Hoosier. Welcome to the Monkey House is a great collection to start with and one that I read over and over in high school, but I’m also fond of Look At the Birdie, published posthumously.

Carol Emshwiller – Also amazing, also doing things so skillfully that plain language manages to become part of such a lovely construction that the grain of the words seems ornamental as well as story material. I just love Emshwiller, and getting to publish one of her short stories during my time at Fantasy Magazine was a highlight. I particularly recommend I Live With You and Report to The Men’s Club.

James Tiptree Jr. – For some of the most wonderful titles around, for some of the most subversive and interesting spec fic ever, look no further than Tiptree, aka Alice Sheldon, who shaped the field to the point where they named an award after her. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever and Brightness Falls From Air are both good starting points. (Julie Phillip’s biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, is a fascinating read that brings even more to the stories.) And the award anthologies are FULL of good stuff that shows some of the best in the field.

Philip K. Dick – Dick does ideas, and amazing ones, but he’s also a really solid writer. Start with the volume edited by Jonathan Lethem, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. Like Tiptree, this is one of the people who didn’t just subtly shape the field of spec fic but banged their name into the side of it with a sledgehammer.

Donald Barthelme is one of the writers that falls into the literary side of things, but spec fic readers that like slipstream will find him well suited to their tastes. Sixty Stories should be sitting on your shelf.

Grace Paley is also literary, but holy cow, just go buy her three slim little books of fiction (which is all we have, sadly) and read them. Enormous Changes At the Last Minute, The Little Disturbances of Man, and Later the Same Day are the titles. Having Grace at my dinner table asking for a second helping of the pumpkin cheesecake and warning us all that at some point of the meal her false teeth might fly out of her mouth and that if that happened, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to pretend it hadn’t happened, was one of the greatest moments of my time at Hopkins.

O. Henry is a classic, prolific short story writer. Some stories have aged better than others, but going through his collected works is a good use of time for a short story writer. Three things he’s good at: plot construction, pulling on the heart strings, and dialogue.

Joan Aiken did more than write some great YA fiction. She’s also got a ton of good short stories. Many are adult, but The Serial Garden, which contains all her Armitage family stories, is full of good fantasy.

Theodore Sturgeon was prolific and has done some amazing speculative stories t. The nice thing if you’re a bibliophile is that North Atlantic Press does a complete edition of his short stories (which I covet and wouldn’t mind for Christmas if any spouses named Wayne are reading this), starting with Volume I, The Ultimate Egoist.

James Thurber is another writer that I hit in high school and who I read over and over. His letters are actually one of the books that shaped my life: his good humor in the face of adversity shines in them. Flash fiction admirers should check out Fables for My Time.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.