Fiction Vortex - April 2014 Read online

  “You should go, Spinner.”

  “I’m too frightened to leave. I need your help.”

  “Go.”

  Madd tries to picture a green thing in his hand, but he can’t imagine it anymore. In his mind, the thing he carries is dead. He feels himself giving up. Hope is wasteful. Dreaming is a heavy stone. He pictures a giant scraping out his insides with a spoon like he’s a hardboiled egg.

  ~~~~~

  When the Who Birds glide through the window, his head is resting on the lid of the piano, his mouth open, eyes vacant. One of them perches on his head, the other hovers in the air.

  “They’re here,” Madd says. But the girl is gone. The birds are sitting on top of the piano now; each one looks at him with a single black eye. Their feathers are iridescent: lilac, indigo, magenta. He waits for them to sing.

  Spinner-boy with gumboots red

  Curiosity is death

  Oh Spinner-boy

  Stay here for good

  And keep things growing as they should

  ~~~~~

  His body has learned to sleep while his fingers keep playing. His eyes glaze over; drool runs down his chin. His hands are black and a few of his nails have started to fall off. He knows that eventually his skin will be as dead and as grey as the girl’s. He will become the Spinner-boy; the boy of spiders’ webs spun. He senses her standing behind him.

  “Why won’t you leave?”

  “I wanted to, before. But I couldn’t. The Who Birds needed to speak — to tell you. Otherwise you’d never have accepted it. I’m sorry I lied to you. But if you hadn’t accepted ... things wouldn’t have been complete, and I’d never have been able to leave.”

  “Leave? You have nowhere to go. Your family’s long dead.”

  “Goodbye, Madd.”

  She closes the door behind her and walks out into the forest, standing where Madd can see her, framed by the little window. She removes her coat and drops it to the ground.

  “Stupid girl,” he says. “Where’re you going to go?”

  She is motionless in the light. Then he sees her legs grow into thick roots that plant themselves in the soil. Her arms stretch into branches. Her hands splinter out into leaf-sprays. With her small mouth hanging open, her body widens, becomes a thick trunk.

  After a few moments, a tree, wide and quiet, stands in her place.

  Madd will not try to count the Spinner-trees. There are too many to number, and he must play. Play so that rain falls heavy out of the sky. Play so that rainbows regain their color, so that the wind moves branches instead of keeping them still.

  ~~~~~

  Madd’s mother makes dinner in the quiet of her kitchen and eats it sitting on the roof of the shack. As she gets into bed, she says two prayers in the dark. In the first, she thanks the Spinner for playing again. The second prayer is for her boy, who has been missing for four days, and who would have loved to have seen how the stars had realigned. Out of the dark and with such decisive, sudden light, everything was laid out. Everything was restored.

  Hayley Chewins has published poetry in Amphibi.us, New Contrast and Botsotso. Her short story, “Johannesburg,” about a futuristic society in which people no longer use their ears, appeared in If You Could Only See Yourself and Other Stories. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa with her fiancé and a very small poodle.

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  All that Blah Blah Blah: Why Showing Is Better than Telling

  by Jon Clapier; published April 24, 2014

  If you have taken any creative writing courses, then you have already been beaten about the head and ears with multiple repetitions of "Show, don’t tell!" The internet is full of articles and quotes from authors and editors espousing the careful use of "showing’" language when moving a story forward. And the reasoning is sound. In most instances it is better to show than tell.

  When I read through the slush pile of Fiction Vortex submissions it is often the over-use of telling that causes me to reject a story. Crafting a short story and having a reader enter into a world that you have created without resorting to telling may seem difficult, but there are many times when the information that an author withholds is exactly what compels the reader onward, and in my own experience the "I gotta know what happens" feeling is what makes a story great. So if you are new to writing then I hope you can gain some insight from the following article, and if you are a veteran writer then I hope you can enjoy rehearsing what you already know. As a wise man once said, “We don’t need to learn as often as we need to be reminded.”

  Let us step back in time to when I wrote my first book. The idea was brilliant (really!); the characters were suitably heroic, and the action intense (or so I thought). I trembled with delight at My Creation and couldn’t wait to share it with some of my friends. They weren’t nearly as happy with the story as I thought they should be, and although they gave me plenty of encouragement, as good friends should, my belief in my future as a writer began a slow swirl around the bowl.

  It wasn’t until years later, after I had once again been bitten by the writing bug and authored multiple stories, that I re-read that old "wonderful" tale and discovered that it stank to high heaven. The reason lay in a large part to my tendency to tell, not show. The ideas and the characters from that first attempt are usable, and I am currently writing a novel based on them. I may even some day try to salvage the entire one-hundred and ten thousand words of the original. (Yes, I said one-hundred and ten thousand!)

  So what did I do wrong? I’ll tell you, slight pun intended.

  When I wanted to have a character do an action I simply said it. For instance, “Bill picked up an old axe handle, and held it ready to swing.” Is there anything wrong with stating something like that? Of course not. Sometimes it is not only adequate but desirable to tell instead of show. BUT, compare to this, “Bill’s hand groped madly in the darkness of the tool shed, finding a length of splintered axe handle that he gripped with both hands, determined to go down swinging.”

  Both sentences conveyed the same information, but the second one gave a hint of expected danger as well as urgency. Only the second example had any emotion.

  Imagine going to a movie, the lights come up, the opening credits begin to roll, and then a narrator’s voice begins to tell you what you are seeing. “There are words running up the screen. If you read them you will discover that this is actually episode four, which is quite amazing as it is the first episode to be made into a movie, thus insinuating that there are at least three other episodes. Now there is a really big star cruiser flying overhead. It’s really big.” A scenario like that would quickly become annoying. That is the same frustration a reader feels with non-stop telling in a written work. It is commonly referred to as an info-dump.

  There are many reasons that authors fall into the pit of the info-dump, but the most common is the desire to let the reader know what the author does about the really cool society/culture/world in the book. In almost every instance, instead of telling the reader about your society/culture/world, you should simply show the story and let the environment become apparent as the story unfolds. Remember, characters and emotions drive the story, and it is okay to not tell your reader everything.

  Ernest Hemmingway had an idea about show and tell that has been referred to as the Iceberg Theory. It was propounded in his non-fiction book, Death in the Afternoon, which is about bull-fighting in Spain. (And an excellent read, if you ever get the chance.)

  "If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement on an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."

  —Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon

  When J. R. R. Tolkien wrote his masterful Lord of th
e Rings, he based it on an entire world that he created with languages and customs and a full history for multiple races. He didn’t try to tell us every detail of what he had created in the first chapter, but most of it came out in the course of the story.

  If you need to let the reader know that it is illegal to scratch your nose in your world then you could say, “Lisa’s nose itched, but she knew it was illegal to touch her nose.” Or you might say, “A tiny itch began at the top of Lisa’s nose, tickling its way down to the tip. Her eyes watered, and she subconsciously raised her hand. Realization hit her, and she whipped her hand back down to the safety of her lap, terrified that someone might have seen.”

  In the second example I didn’t expressly say that it was illegal to scratch a nose, but the reader knows that something is odd, and it could have bad repercussions for the character. The problem could be anything from her hand being on fire to her having a nose the size of a Volkswagen. Many times not saying everything is the key to keeping interest.

  Enough of my cheesy examples. Robin Hobb, author of the Farseer Trilogy, has this to say:

  I think the only way to explain this writing precept is to ‘show, don’t tell’.

  Telling: I got on the bus. It started up right away. It was very crowded and smelled bad. There wasn’t an empty seat, so I had to stand for fifteen minutes until I reached my stop.

  Showing: The lurch of the #59 bus sent me staggering into a whiskery man who enjoyed both cigars and sardines but eschewed deodorant. I grabbed the back of a seat to right myself. Beside me in the crowded aisle, a sticky little girl waved her lollipop as she conducted herself through six repetitions of the alphabet song, one for every two blocks we travelled.

  If your protagonist is performing a simple action, try substituting sensory information rather than simply telling the action.

  Instead of: I sat down in an old arm chair.

  Write: The upholstery on the armchair was worn and slightly greasy.

  Instead of: I ate some clam chowder.

  Write: My teeth grated on a bit of sand in one of the clams in the chowder.

  Instead of: I ordered a hot dog from a street vendor. It wasn’t properly cooked.

  Write: I found the cold spot in the half-cooked wiener I bought from a street vendor.

  "Showing" can also be tasting, feeling, smelling, hearing or touching. Use sensory data to put your reader into your story rather than telling him what he can see outside the window of words.

  Robin Hobb knows what she’s talking about; she’s sold over a million copies of her first nine books.

  Most of my favorite books, and I would think most of yours, are the ones that you get into and almost forget that you’re reading. Instead you flow along with the story, riding its highs and lows and enjoying both. If there are times that the author inserts some telling, it is unobtrusive and serves a definite, short-lived purpose. If you must tell, keep it brief and work it into the story so that no one really knows that they have been fooled into learning something about your world. And remember just because you know something about your story doesn’t mean you need to tell it.

  As with most rules of writing, "Show, don’t tell" can be broken successfully. Showing can increase word count substantially. For the short-story writer this can be problematic, especially if you are showing every aspect of an adventure: choosing a camp-site, starting the fire, selecting the right roasting sticks, seasoning the rabbit that was caught with a snare made from the raw-hide made from a young bull who was slaughtered last Tuesday to feed the lemmings so they wouldn’t run into the ocean. Blah, blah, blah.

  Dialogue can be a good place to slip in some information but be careful of the characters that already know something but are given information by other characters, “As you know, Bill, if you stay here while the killer is loose and in the mostly deserted neighborhood, you could be in danger.”

  Now I’ve gone and done it, I returned to Bill in the tool shed. I hope he still has his axe handle, because he is there as part of a religious requirement of all males who turn nineteen in San Salsa Dar, the land where he lives, which makes it possible for the very survival of its people and culture, as well as the awesome warrior society, the Kubriks, that threaten to take the gilded scepter from the hallowed Queen of the Ice-downs, Gina, who has reigned since before the time of the Wolf-Tsars and trampled the uprising of the Shadow-Driven Mutants that carried the golden plague to the western outposts of the Kariri. Her shadow was captured by the Mutants and forced to be bitten by a moose once, really.

  Careful. I almost lost my readers.

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  About Fiction Vortex

  Fiction Vortex, let’s see …

  A fiction vortex is a tornado of stories that pick you up and hurl you through a barn to find enlightenment on the other side. It’s a whirlpool of fascinating tales so compelling that they suck you in, drag you down to the bottom of your mind, and drown you with incessant waves of glorious imagery and believable characters.

  Nope.

  A fiction vortex is an online speculative fiction magazine focused on publishing great science fiction and fantasy, and is run by incredibly attractive and intelligent people with great taste in literature and formidable writing prowess.

  Not that either. But we’re getting closer.

  Founded in the 277th year of the Takolatchni Dynasty, Fiction Vortex set out to encourage people to write and publish great speculative fiction. It sprang fully formed from the elbow of TWOS, retaining none of TWOS’s form but most of its spirit. And the patron god of writers, the insecure, the depressed, and the mentally ill regarded Fiction Vortex in his magic mirror of self-loathing and declared it good, insofar as something that gives writer’s undue hope can be declared good. Thereafter, he charged the Rear Admiral of the Galactic 5th Fleet to defend Fiction Vortex down to the last robot warrior.

  Now we’re talking.

  Take your pick. We don’t care how you characterize us or the site.

  Fiction Vortex focuses on publishing speculative fiction. That means science fiction and fantasy (with a light smattering of horror and a few other subgenres), be it light, heavy, deep, flighty, spaceflighty, cerebral, visceral, epic, or mundane. But mundane in a my-local-gas-station-has-elf-mechanics-but-it’s-not-really-a-big-deal-around-here kind of way. Got it?

  Basically, we want imaginative stories that are well written, but not full of supercilious floridity.

  There’s a long-standing belief that science fiction and fantasy stories aren’t as good as purely literary fare. We want you to prove that mindset wrong (not just wrong, but a steaming pile of griffin dung wrong) with every story we publish. It’s almost like we’re saying, "I do not bite my thumb at you, literary snobs, but I do bite my thumb," but in a completely polite and non-confrontational way.

  We've got more great stories online, with a new story twice a week. Visit our website FictionVortex.com, follow us on Twitter: @FictionVortex, and like us on Facebook: FictionVortex.

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