Writing: Description, Details, and Delivering Information

One of Tiptree’s classic stories, “The Women Men Don’t See” may be one of her most celebrated, leading to responses from other writers like Karen Joy Fowler’s “What I Didn’t See” (Kindle version) and my own “Clockwork Fairies” (Kindle version). Tiptree uses her titles to maximum effect and you’ll notice that each of these beginnings interacts in a significant way with the title preceding it.

The title plays off nearly every line: “I see her first,” (who? is it one of the women from the title?) “a double female blur,” “the near blur,” “the younger blur, “registering nothing,” finishing up with “I never would have looked at them or thought of them again,” at which point the reader is screaming why? why don’t you see them? The answer to that question is crucial to the story.

Here’s another Tiptree beginning, this time of “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” which uses the strategy of referring to a memory to reveal the conflict. The memory is connected to gender and embarrassment, which will also turn out to be crucial to the story.

Lorimer gazes around the big crowded cabin, trying to listen to the voices, trying also to ignore the twitch in his insides that means he is about to remember something bad. No help; he lives it again, that long-ago moment. Himself running blindly — or was he pushed? –into the strange toilet at Evanston Junior High. His fly open, his dick in his hand, he can still see the gray zipper edge of his jeans around his pale exposed pecker. The hush. The sickening wrongness of shapes, faces turning. The first blaring giggle. Girls. He was in the girls’ can.

“Houston, Houston, Do You Read” is Tiptree at her best, examining gender norms and conventions with a ruthless, scathingly honest eye. Somehow that first moment of embarrassment, that moment of being in “the strange toilet” encapsulates so much of what that story is about and how alien the sexes can be to each other as well as how strange their container, the norms that make them up, which constitute the walls of “the can” itself, are. Look at how the center of his masculinity is framed visually: the gray zipper edge of his jeans around his pale exposed pecker. There is so much going on in that first paragraph, including sensory details like the twitch of his insides, the blare of a giggle, the pattern and threat of a zipper, that it’s worth copying out, pulling apart sentence by sentence to figure out how it’s working.

Let’s finish up with Tiptree in a moment that puts everything up front, in the short story “We Who Stole the Dream”:

The children could survive only twelve minims in the sealed containers.

Woah. We don’t know what’s going on precisely, but we know crucial details. We have a deadline and it is only twelve minims. While we don’t know how long a minim is, we know it’s not much time because of that “only”. Plus, there’s an auditory echo of “minute” that makes us think they’re of similar length.

What’s at stake? This lives of children, for pete’s sake. Not just child, but children, multiple. And we know how they’ll die: suffocation. It would be hard to write a tauter, more dire beginning.

Writing exercise: write three first lines. They can state the stakes, as in the third example, or refer to some memory or object that encapsulates the conflict, as with the example from “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” Include two titles for each, one that plays off the beginning and one that does not.

For bonus points, read “The Women Men Don’t See” and use that as your inspiration.

Feel free to post some of your best first lines on here, I’d love to see some!

I’ve seen a lot of cover letters in my time. Some ramble, some describe the story, others list thirty small publications, some are misaddressed or rife with typos.

So here’s a cover letter. It’s really all you need to say. Fill in the blanks yourself (and doublecheck to make sure you got the details right.) Italics indicate commentary and should not be included. And always, always – the market guidelines trump anything I say. Read AND follow them. Note: this cover letter is intended to be used when submitting short stories to magazines. You want a different one when submitting to an agent or sending a book to a publisher.

Dear {Editor}: (do make sure you’ve got the right name if you’re addressing them by name)

Attached/enclosed* is my story, “{title}”, ({wordcount}). (“Attached” if it’s e-mail; “Enclosed” if you’re sending by snailmail. Round wordcount up to the nearest 100.)

(The following paragraph is optional if you don’t have publications.)
My work has appeared in {market1 name}, {market2 name}, and {market3 name}. (List your three biggest or most prestigious publications.) In {year}, I attended {workshop name}. (Don’t list stuff if you don’t have it. If you’ve got contest wins that are significant, like Writers of the Future, list that here as well. Again, all of this is optional. This paragraph is intended to make the slush reader pass the work up to the editor by listing reasons you stand out of the herd.)

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply. (If you’re sending by snailmail and include a SASE, mention that here.)

Sincerely, (or the tag of your choice, just make sure it sounds professional. “Peace out,” while charming, may not sound as professional as it could.)

{Your name}

That’s it — that’s all you need. No accolades, no summaries, no previews. The facts and just the facts. Good luck!

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