Author: Erin Penn

Editing Rant: Too Much Tell

Erin Penn

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Doing a book review for “Soothe the Savage Beast” anthology back in 2018, I broke down each of the stories about what I liked or didn’t like about them. Just one or two short sentences. On one of the short stories within the anthology, I made an editing comment:

In the Quest of the Beast by Jean Rabe – (Hey, the SCA showed up!) I didn’t like the ending because I know women SCAdians are a little more kickin’ than portrayed. Still, the Main Character was a young college student and not a fighter. Good, “safe” monster story. (For editors out there, this story has too much “tell” and that creates an emotional distance in the story.)

A reader contacted me on goodreads through the messaging available on the site: “What does too much “tell” mean?”

My response: 

Tell is when the author writes stuff like – “He said with anger.” instead of “He said, his hand in a fist with the knuckles turning white.” or “All his friends loved him.” instead of “When he arrived, Julie and Adams jumped up to greet him.” – Show is action, let the reader draw their own interpretation from items presented. Tell is a direct narrative, telling the reader things – including how to react. While both are needed, <they need to balance> – too much show can slow down a story, while too much tell keeps the reader from getting involved because they are not being drawn in mentally. 

The fellow reader got back to me:

Okay. I admit that the story with too much tell in it and it wasn’t super great either, but since Jean Rabe is the most famous writer in the book, well, it wouldn’t bother an editor at all. Between it and <another short story in the anthology> caused me to give it four stars instead of five. 

Take-aways. (1) Even more causal readers notice when someone breaks the “show, don’t tell” rule even if they can’t articulate it. (2) Doesn’t matter how famous you are or how great you have been in the past, poor writing habits are poor writing habits. They are easy to develop, especially when looming deadlines tidal wave across the desk one after another. Make sure to surround yourself with people who will keep you honest.

Flash: Sleeper Agent

Erin Penn

Photo provided by freedigitalphotos.net

I keep my head down beside my sleeping coworkers, cursing quietly in my mind. Our new boss is a mentalist. Fuck, fuck FUCK! No wonder O’Connell sold the startup for a song. We all had thought he had caved because the new release had been pushed back until after Christmas.

The Sleeper stood behind Emily, caressing her long blond hair, adjusting her thoughts to be more accepting of the new direction to take our app development Kingsley had announced. And maybe a little more. I had seen how he had looked at her when the powered started the meeting.

What to do before he got to me, the project manager for Boundless and unregistered powered.

I don’t have a clue. I know I’m a neutral, because my brother can’t burn me. He’s a minor pyro – like can create a single flame about the size of a match – and I think the only registered pyro in existence not dragged off immediately to become a solider, but with his eyes, bottle caps glasses are the kindest description, spaghetti muscles, and limited powers, what would they do with him? Me, powers don’t work on me, but it won’t be obvious until the asshole touches me. I’m as much a nerd as my brother and have similar lack of muscles, so punching his lights out isn’t an option.

Jason is getting the treatment now, whatever it is. One more body between me and him. Time to make a decision.

(words 245; first published 3/12/2023, from a FB visual prompt for a writing group I belong to – aiming for 50 words

Book Review: A Fistful of Dust

Erin Penn

Amazon Cover

A Fistful of Dust by A.G. Carpenter

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

During my last days on Malachee, I told Diamondback Jack it didn’t matter how many souls I sent to an early grave, I could only die once for my sins.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Tashndelu of the High Sand got her revenge on the man who defiled and murdered her mother and did his damnedest to kill her, but now she has to pay the price. For his death, and all the others she caused in her quest for vengeance.

Now she lives, if you can call it that, in the custody of the Company that rebuilt her, working off the cost of her resurrection as a living test subject for new regenerative tech to the tune of one death for every life she took. When she has died once for every person she has killed, she‘ll finally face whatever judgment or peace lies in the grave.

She took one hundred and fifty other souls as she hunted down the thirteen men responsible for her mother’s murder.
That’s one hundred and sixty-three deaths that she owes the company, and she feels every one of them.

Now she’s come to the one place she never planned to see again, in the company of a man willing to put a bullet or six in her just to see how the tech works. Against all odds and against her will, Tashndelu of the High Sand has returned home.

There will, once again, be blood.

 

MY REVIEW

Breathtaking voice buried in this Weird West. When I first read A.G. Carpenters Touch: A Trilogy, especially Of Lips and Tongue – the Southern Gothic voice sat me on a porch in a creaky rocking chair with a glass of sweet tea in the heat of July evening, waiting for true dark to creep across the land. A Fistful of Dust may be even better than Touch for the pureness of genre voice. This time the (western) voice swept me across the stars to the new desolate, unforgiving frontier where woman and man would murder for water and kill for justice.

Carpenter is a master of voice and story and has crafted a tale for those that love westerns and science fiction in A Fistful of Dust.

(Read through Kindle Unlimited)

Flash: Attrition

Erin Penn

84942186 © publicdomainstockphotos | Dreamstime.com

Crunching underfoot within a forest is expected from leaves and last year’s ferns; in the forest of bones, the crunching is from some poor soul’s vertebrae from the Wars of Attrition. Not a place to walk through barefoot.

Not a place to walk through in general. The dead don’t like to be disturbed. Mourning for eternity, the skeletal trees radiated a perpetual winter chill from their bare branches, never budding with hope, despite the summer green and ripening fields Malloryson left behind. He would have never entered these damned woods if this wasn’t, ironically, his last hope. A stick, two days hardtack wrapped in a handkerchief, good boots, and, maybe, a ten-minute lead on his pursuers was all he owned at this point.

That lead became infinite the minute he passed into Dead Man’s Forest, for none but fools would follow him here. Walking around the forest takes days; not a single farmer’s path carved through the bones, chill, and unsettled dead of the blighted battlefield. Pushing deeper, Malloryson slowed his rush, confident the investigators would leave the walking dead man to the dead.

Water would be an issue soon, he thought, his mouth dry from his run. Last night’s gentle rains left red-tinted puddles reflecting oily rainbows, sitting strangely in the hollows between white roots digging into the black earth, bubbling yellow ooze clung to the wet edges like puss.

He pushed onward, looking for shelter and water, pressing against the horror each of his footfalls brought from the muffled crunching in the silent woods.

Once wizards walked here, summoning creatures from beyond to fight the rebel slaves. Humans died in droves, but for the hundreds of deaths, one or two of the monstrous beasts would fall, making the wizards vulnerable just long enough the slaves could kill a magical despot.

And then the cycle of destruction and death would start again, and end again.

Again and again.

And again.

The humans surviving the Attrition Wars didn’t win, so much as they didn’t die.

Malloryson’s hope was, like his ancestors, he was very good at not dying, so far. Unlike the burgomaster’s son, who he had accidently on-purpose killed. That soft throat needed to be squeezed to stop the poisonous words bubbling forth. It had been easy to squeeze tighter.

Malloryson didn’t regret the results. Some people are worth dying for.

The crunching of bones softened the spongy, squishing noises in his memory. A bubble, a gasp, a rattled wheeze.

The last echoed against the leafless trees. Not a memory.

The crunch of bones played counterpoint to the scrape of claws from some forgotten creature of the Wars.

Sucking sounds gurgled out from the mud as nearby bones cracked together into a new form.

A grimace splintered the blood-speckled rigor mortis grin engraved on Malloryson’s visage. Really, he had hoped to survive one meal within this cursed place. Part of his mind squealed “run away”, while another part debated if becoming a meal counted as the one meal he had hoped for.

He was done running. Too tired after hours of being chased by the investigators. If he was about to die, he wouldn’t die panting.

Instead he stepped forward to face the bone abomination, dead but refusing to admit it. Just like him.

Approaching the creature weaponless, Malloryson reached out his killer’s hand still dewed with the last breath of a hatemonger. The grotesque froze, tilting the head sideways, confused, before unhinging its jaw, exposing three rows of infinite teeth like a goose.

A mud-red tongue twisted out and looped around Malloryson’s hand, stripping the blood offering. Chill raided warmth from his arm. The tongue jerked back to the jaws of uncountable teeth, and Malloryson stumbled closer. He stared in the non-eyes of the forgotten bones and thought: how magnificent death looked.

A fitting last thought. Malloryson expected never to wake again. The return of awareness wasn’t kind.

(first published 3/5/2023, 650 words – Created from a Workshop attended at Ret-Con 2023 run by Tally Johnson. He provided thirteen possible visual prompts, all ghost/horror related. I choose prompt six which showed a traveler entering a forest of skulls.)