by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler
Howard: How long do you usually set the timer?
Mary: Usually we set it for two minutes. The idea is that you list the takeaway things that you really want the author to think about. Things that they’ve done wrong, or usually things that confused you, things that you did not believe, things that you didn’t care about, and then also things that you thought were cool so the author does not accidentally fix them.
Howard: Okay, I’ll go first. I really liked the story. It had a lot more polish on it than I expected, based on your email that said “raw, raw, raw.” The things that I loved: The reveal of the moon coming up over the horizon. The culture clash. The treatment of languages. I did have a little bit of difficulty believing that the languages wouldn’t have drifted further, but since you didn’t give us a timeframe I can handwave that. The places where I had the most trouble were the blocking of the action scenes, and there was another thing that I’ve forgotten. I was trying to go in a hurry, and I’m only a minute in, so I’ve got a little more time. But I ran out of things to say. So Dan, go.
Dan: Okay. I also liked this story, but I had more problems with it than Howard did, apparently. One of the things that you knew—that I remember we’d discussed in the original brainstorm—that I don’t think you solved, was the conflict in the idea that these two cultures have no idea that the other one exists. Neither side can even fathom anything on the other side of the world. And yet, they are so recently related, but they have no relationship at all. That felt very weird to me, especially the constant references between the captain and the main character going back and forth, “Well, these are your people,” or “You come from here, so maybe you’re more aligned with them than with us.” Things like that seem to push them very close together. Then on the other hand, everyone had these very cool, yet very hard to believe, attitudes about how they refused to even acknowledge that someone could be from across the sea. I don’t feel like that paradox was solved in this draft.
Dan: The other thing is that I loved the whole middle section. Howard mentioned the languages. That really was, for me, the strongest part of the entire story, as they are trying to learn to communicate and you’re seeing that their customs, their religions, and languages are different. I like the constant harping on the oxtail, because that’s exactly the kind of idiom that arises in a language, that doesn’t make any sense to someone from outside that culture. But that took over the story for me and pulled all the focus away from the moon. The moon seemed like it was your excuse to write a story, and then you got really excited about the culture clash. The moon wasn’t as important as I felt it would be. It doesn’t need to be—just because that’s the idea that started the story doesn’t mean it needs to rule over it. But if you want that to be a focus, it totally took a back seat.
Howard: For Dan. It didn’t for me. I thought it was awesome, especially the “cave.” That was great.
Brandon: That whole concept was awesome. She thinks, “Oh, I’ll just sit down in the dark. Okay. This is fine.”
Dan: I just had trouble believing that their problems could be solved by the fact that they don’t think it’s very dark.
Brandon: Howard, I need to see that stopwatch. Let’s do my two minutes. I really did like the idea that something so terrifying to them, the darkness, could be nothing for her. It was really fun for me to read. I liked how clever she was in getting out of it, and the move into proactiveness. I liked when she got back to the sailors and they say, “No. We weren’t going to escape without you.” But then they really weren’t going to. That whole fear and panic on her part was really strong for me. I also really enjoyed the image of the moon. I was prepared for it, but it was just described really well, and it felt beautiful to me.
Brandon: My biggest problem with the story is that it felt like you were cramming so much into this that you had to jump from idea to idea to idea. I’m left at the end of the story saying, “But what was this about? What was I supposed to feel?” Is this an action-adventure story with “We’re escaping from the enemy”? Is this a culture clash story where we come to understand them better? Is this about a dawning of awareness that “My religion is not unique”? I didn’t understand at all what this story was about. That really bothered me through the whole story.
Brandon: With the time jumps between section breaks—and there were so many section breaks—it felt like you were trying to cram a 30,000-word story into 8,000 words. That’s not because this needs to be longer. It’s just that it felt like you’re thinking, “Well, we’ll do this idea and this idea and this idea.” I wanted to know, coming out here, was this spiritually meaningful for her? That didn’t seem to have that much to do with it. When they find out that there are people there, I wanted them to stop and say, “Whoa! What do we do? Do they have three eyes? Are they monsters?” What’s going to be the reaction?
Brandon: I had a little bit of trouble with how they acted. If you were going to sail to a new country even on your own continent without any context, you would be frightened about the laws. You would want to know what the tariffs were. You would want to know all these things. They didn’t even think about that. They just sailed up and said, “Hi. We’re from the new world. You guys don’t have three eyes. That’s cool. Oh, wait. You’re shooting us.” That really bothered me at that point. They didn’t have any plan. They didn’t have any idea what they were doing. I’m out of my time though, so I will stop. All right, Mary. I assume this is the part where the writing group turns back to you and you start asking us questions?
Mary: Yes. First of all, thank you. This was very helpful. I also felt like I had too many ideas crammed into this. One of the things that we had talked about when we were brainstorming was that this was a story where I had this idea of someone coming over the edge of the world and seeing the moon for the first time, and that was really all I had. I don’t actually need to focus on the moon. I just wanted a story in which I could have that moment happen. Thank you for the note about asking for more details. I originally had a scene in which they bargained with the trader that they first met, and got a map and a little bit of an idea. Basically, they looked at the landmass on the map and thought, “Holy crap, this is not what we were expecting.” Dan, you said that you had trouble believing that these two cultures would have no idea that the other one existed, and then were less freaked, but then everyone kept saying, “But you came from here.” My intention was that there were legends that referred to where she came from. If I punched that up a little bit more and made it a more concrete thing—where her people absolutely believed that there was an island on the other side of the world, and that they were scoffed at by the rest of them—if I punched that up, would that solve that for you?
Dan: Well, the fact that those legends existed came across strongly, particularly through the religion of the sisters. Because I knew that that’s where they came from. That religious connection was there.
Mary: I may not have understood what the problem was that you were citing.
Dan: Well, I suppose part of the problem was her assumption—and maybe this was just her insecurity and I misread it, but this came up a couple of different times—that the crew of the ship wouldn’t trust her because she came from here. I think the captain even said something about, “Why are you so weirded out? This is where you come from.” Or something like that. Which seemed to be at odds with the idea that nobody else believed it was even possible.
Mary: Oh, I see.
Dan: I hope you see. I don’t know if I’m expressing this correctly. I suppose part of the idea is that once they finally get there, it is so alien and so hostile, that those suggestions that just because she believes that this place exists— It’s like, if I believe in Atlantis, and then we get there and it’s full of jerks who hate us and throw us in jail, no one is going to assume that I will side with them over any issue, just because I believe in Atlantis.
Brandon: I think you’re overemphasizing that. Because I got that she was worried they thou
ght that. But then he says, “No, we didn’t. We wouldn’t leave you behind. You’re not one of them,” that sort of thing.
Dan: That was just a part of the issue, though. The language was another one. Maybe that secretly is what my issue was about.
Howard: I don’t know if this will address either of those, but I hit a speed bump early on, which was “I’m not sure exactly whether this is the story that we brainstormed, because we had these concepts in the brainstorming.” And then I said, “You know what? I need to forget about what we were brainstorming, because I just need to pay attention to what’s on the page.” Once I cleared that in my head, I was able to enjoy what’s on the page. I had the same problem when I was reading Brandon’s, which is that—
Brandon: You brainstorm something and then if it becomes something different, you’re going to talk about it.
Howard: Yeah, I had already told myself the story that you were going to write. And then you wrote a different story, and I need to address the story you wrote, not the one I told myself after we brainstormed. That’s hard to do when the critique group has been through both phases.
Mary: Readers, I will say that this is one reason that I and other people often suggest that you not run a story through the same group twice. Because they are pre-prejudiced. They come with a set of baggage for your story. So do recognize that some of that is going on.
Brandon: Can I mention one other thing about the story that I have notes on, that I just noticed, scanning back through? This might get with my other point. But the context of their trip bothered me a little bit. I think it’s that her whole order hired them to come out here, but there is only one of her on the ship. That bothers me. If you’re going to rent out a ship, you don’t send one person. You send her and her guards. Or her and a whole bunch of them. Part of me thought, “Shouldn’t the sailors have more in this?” It would be wonderful if they had more skin in the game. This is getting prescriptive, but it’s just that they’ve been hired. Part of the problem is that once they see a fully populated empire, I don’t think any ship captain’s going to say, “Okay, let’s go sail there.” He’s going to say, “My job was to bring you this far. Now we have an empire. I don’t know anything about them.” Every seafaring empire out there will confiscate your ship if they can get away with it. Right? The reason they don’t is because of hostile nations and things like that. I think sailing into an unfamiliar port with no treaties is something that very few ship captains would ever do just because they’re hired. That context was bothering me, I think, and that has to do with my other issue. Maybe if there were more of a reason that he is going to try this thing, and she gets on board and says, “Well, take me along.” I don’t know. I’m trying to fix your story, and I shouldn’t do that. But that thing bothered me a lot.
Mary: No, I see what you’re talking about there. I have to think about how to fix that, because that introduces . . .
Dan: I was making the assumption—and this was admittedly not in your story—that the place where they came from had multiple nations. So it was normal for him to arrive in a strange seaport, and that the anomaly here is that they were this kind of fascist religious group that was extremely suspicious of outsiders. Therefore, he had a good reason to show up, and they took him by surprise.
Brandon: Okay. I could buy that. Maybe I just didn’t add that to the story myself.
Mary: It was there, but not very heavily, and I can bump that up.
Brandon: If this captain said, “I can get myself into any port and trade. I’ve sailed the most exotic places on our side of the world. I’ve never had any trouble. Maybe we get chased off, but I always get away with the goods.” If he’s that type. But this doesn’t seem very safe to me. Maybe you should actually talk to a primary source.
Howard: If you actually make that a flaw in the captain—
Mary: If I make him Han Solo?
Howard: Yeah, if you turn him into a little bit of a Han Solo type, I’ll totally buy it. Because I was almost all the way there. I was enjoying the story. I was having a good time.
Mary: What if part of what’s at stake, and I’m just—
Howard: Spitballing.
Mary: Yep. I was not going to use as polite a term. What if the deal is that he gets the rest of his money after they come back, and the only way he’s going to get the rest of his money is if he actually finishes.
Brandon: That could be it. But once again, I need to know his personality, and why he’s— Again, why there’s only one of her. But also, it just seems so dangerous. Normally stories like this—and I’m glad you didn’t go this way, because it’s overdone—go with the whole Columbus thing. There are riches to be had. If you go you get to plunder the place and come back with the riches. Sailors seem a superstitious lot, in my expectation. The idea of “Go sail to this foreign port where you don’t speak the language, and then sail back”? I don’t know. That seems so dangerous to me, that I feel a lot of captains would say, “No. We’re turning around. They’ve got a navy.” But maybe I’m totally wrong, and this is just something I’m adding to the story. Dan and Howard didn’t seem to have this reaction.
Mary: Yeah. I also have to look at some historical things. I think that this is an issue that is not an issue. But I think that bumping up the fact that there are multiple countries, that he’s—
Brandon: I guess I’m getting at the core idea of, I thought the way they acted when they sailed up was so foolhardy. Maybe it wasn’t. But I just felt like they were asking to get shot or something like that. That was my response. I thought, “Well, what do you expect? Unfamiliar port, you don’t speak the language, you’re not obeying their orders, you can’t obey their orders.” It seems like a really dangerous place to be. But maybe I’ve read so many stories that I know that that’s a dangerous place to be in a story, because that’s what happens. It happened all the time in our world, I guess.
Howard: The captain totally went into the basement all by himself in the dark.
Mary: I will go and look at other first contacts, historical first contacts.
Brandon: First contact between West and East might be a good one, because that was advanced cultures.
Mary: All right. Cool. Thanks, guys.
EDITS: A FIRE IN THE HEAVENS
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL
Katin was awake before the sailor knocked on the door to her cabin. She had slept poorly since they had left Marth and tonight the sway of her hammock mixed with uneasy dreams. Her heart sped. Had the crew finally decided to mutiny? No. A mutiny would not begin with a knock. SheAt the simple rap upon her cabin door, Katin sent a prayer to the SevenFive Sisters to grant her calm. Closing the Principium, she tucked the small book of scripture into the sash at her waist.
“Enter.” KatinShe swung her legs over the side of her hammock and set her bare feet on the smooth wood floor of her cabin. She had removed her leg wraps to sleep, letting the loose fabric of her leggings puddle on the bridges of her feet.
In the deep night, the light of the sailor’s glowdisc cast swaying shadows againstin the tiny space. Lesid ducked his head into the cabin. “Pardon, Mother, but the captain says we are in sight of land.”
“Praise the Sisters.” Months at sea, and they finallyeven she had land in sightbegun to think there was no other shore. She picked upslipped the chain of her own glowdisc and flippedover her neck, with the cover flipped back to expose the phosphorescent surface. Ashore, a disc would fade to darkness as its dust settled during the course of a night, but the constant motion of the ship agitated the powder trapped within and kept themdiscs always glowing at least dimly. She shook hers to brighten it further. With its light, she took a moment to bind her scarf of office around her neck before following the sailorLesid above decks. The heavy beaded ends swung about her waist as she walked.
Katin looked up for the cluster of stars that the SevenFive Sisters inhabited in the heavens and murmured pra
ise to them for guiding the search this far.
The captain turnglanced over his shoulder as she approached. Stylian’s tall form swayed easily with the rocking of the ship. “Well. You were right.”
Katin did not take the triumph that he offered her, tempting though it wasHis words made her feel more alone among the Markuth sailors than ever. She had no one of her faith aboard the ship to share her joy.
Stylian had mocked her goals, but how was that different from the mockery that the followers of the Five Sisters faced daily? He had taken the church’s commission nonetheless. His acknowledgment that she had been right could be counted a victory, but it did not belong to her. The triumph lay with the Sisters. She was toonly grateful that he had been willing to sail on a course other captains had considered foolhardy, following the trail of ancient stories about a land far to the Wwest. She looked past him to the horizonAnd the storm chased the Five Sisters from Selen, across the dark sea.
A glow lay on the horizon, marking the division of the worldocean from the sky with its light. The sea retained its dark mystery while the sky brightened as though dawn were approaching, but the sun would rise behind themIn the darkness, she could just make out the rounded shadow of land. Katin closed her glowdisc, tucking it into the pocket inside her left sleeve so that it didwould not interfere with her night vision. She frowned, slowly understanding what the glowlight meant. She must be seeing a mountain with a city at its base. “I don’t know why I expected the land to be uninhabited.”
Captain Stylian grunted in agreement. “It must have a massive city ahead, to cast so much lightI’m of two minds about this. One part of me is relieved, because this means we can definitely restock. The other is apprehensive, because big cities have more regulations than others.”