Phew! Well, I made it through March, barely. Turns out there are lots of good stories out there without any sort of character arc whatsoever, which made finding those with them a little tricky.

We’ve got four stories to look at this month:

Review #14: Bearing Fruit by Nikki Alfar A young woman bathing in a creek gets knocked up by an errant mango, then sets off to find the father of her child.

Review #15: The Kiss by Lauren LeBano A little girl has a goblin for a playmate, but as she matures, she learns he’s after more than just her friendship.

Review #16: Saving the Gleeful Horse by K.J. Bishop A giant living under a bridge makes a questionable bargain to save a special little horse from a cruel fate.

Review #17: Bridesicle by Will McIntosh A half-frozen mail order bride’s life depends on the delicate lies and sweet nothings she whispers into the ears of strangers.

So out of the dozen or so short stories I read this month, these four were the only ones where a character arc stood out to me. It’s not a huge sample, but I feel comfortable enough to say that short stories have character arcs at least as often as they don’t. Maybe it’s too much to expect characters to grow in 5000, 3000, 1000 words. Certainly, if the change comes across too abruptly, then the arc will feel artificial or corny. It’s also possible that my tastes for science fiction and fantasy have more of a literary slant, and maybe if I’d read more pulp or action/adventure styles, I’d come to a different conclusion.

Nevertheless, the four stories for this month’s craft focus did character arcs well, and good ones do give me the warm and fuzzies inside. So what made them work? In Bearing Fruit, the character goes through physical changes as well as emotional ones. She’s mysteriously pregnant and being ostracized by her family and friends, and yet decides to take control of the situation and seek out the unknown father of her child. She goes from innocent and carefree to vengeful to calculating along her journey, and tries to claim her happily-ever-after back however she can get it. She makes the hard choices, and as a result, grows as a person.

Annie also makes some tough decisions in The Kiss. She decides not to banish the goblin out of her life completely despite her mother’s worries. She kisses the goblin when she’s feeling vulnerable, and offers up her own child to him when her life as a single parent becomes more than she can bear. Annie appears to be going through changes on the outside — dealing with the complexities of life as she goes from childhood to adulthood, but something at her core remains the same: the way she uses the goblin and is never really a true friend to him. Annie’s arc leads her right back to where she started, a bratty little girl who barely cares about the feelings of others.

The characters in Saving the Gleeful Horse and Bridesicle also make tough decisions, which makes me wish I would have gone back and studied more stories that didn’t have character arcs to see what types of decisions those characters had to make. Maybe forcing characters into these lose-lose situations is an effective tool for revealing character. I’m not going to lie, this craft focus was a tough one for me. I didn’t know what to expect or really what I was looking for, but this definitely makes me want to look more closely at this topic in the future. But at least I got to read some amazing stories, which is never a bad thing.

March’s Must Read goes to the story with the character arc that rang the truest to my ear, a happily-enough-ever-after tale where when life hands you mangos, you make mango-ade: Bearing Fruit by Nikki Alfar!

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. This month, I sifted through over a dozen stories from pro Fantasy/Science Fiction magazines and presented those with the best opening sentences, paragraphs, and scenes, so let’s see what we can learn from them collectively.

First, a recap of February’s reviews:

Review # 8: After the Dragon by Sarah Monette The sole survivor of the latest dragon attack deals with her emotional scars as well as her physical ones.

Review #9: Cory’s Father by Francesca Forrest An exiled mother with five baby-daddies makes a deal that leaves her unable to see one of her children.

Review #10: Stranger by Patricia Russo An old, useless woman scrambling for shelter from the coming storm meets a stranger with a different perspective on the value of life.

Review #11: The City of Unrequited Dreams by Claude Lalumière A lovelorn teen sets forth on an adventure to a fabled land for the chance to reclaim a missing piece from his past.

Review #12: The Economy of a Vacuum by Sarah Thomas An astronaut on a moonbase faces isolation after a war on Earth cuts away all ties to her humanity.

Review #13: Non-Zero Probabilities by N. K. Jemisin A woman arms herself against the improbable when a string of freak occurrences threatens to derail her life.

So what made these stories catch the reader’s eye? Each story worked differently — some were high on concept and others deep with character, while tone varied from somber to reflective to humorous. There’s obvious overlap in the qualities that pulled me in: rich details, urgent problems, and burning questions, but above all, these stories presented the reader with the unexpected.

Tantalizing Details
Short stories need to be compact, but that doesn’t mean sacrificing detail for a slimmer word count. In After the Dragon, the visuals of the dragon’s quartz and obsidian remains were vivid, specific, and haunting. There’s a lot of words dedicated to this description, but there are a couple big payoffs for the reader — one, it grounds us into this reality by touching our senses, and two, it gives substance to the hideousness vs. beauty theme that runs through the piece. Non-Zero Probabilities starts with an odd mash of personal details and humorous parentheticals to quickly paint a character. In the span of a paragraph, we learn about Adele’s ancestry, religion, past relationships, shopping habits, and her preference in undergarments as she prepares herself for what we expect will be one interesting day.

Urgent Problems and Burning Questions
These two qualities cause a buildup of internal pressure within the reader’s mind that keeps us turning pages (or scrolling down as the case may be.) In Stranger, quiet tension builds on the eve of a savage rain storm while an old woman’s fate depends on a distant family member taking her in. She faces a life or death situation, but customs prevent her from pestering her family members. In The City of Unrequited Dreams, we’re sucked in by questions — what happened to Vittorio, and what is this fabled land of Venera? These questions don’t get fully answered, but we’re taken on a thrilling journey that makes it worth getting strung along. Cory’s Father also uses questions, keeping things vague but interesting. We never get to know what’s over there, though the snippet of story we get is satisfying and hints at a bigger, richer world.

The Unexpected
A woman donning ragged panties in preparation for battle, fantasy inducing chocolates, a mother who can’t see one of her sons, and a young woman flamed down by a dragon on a Oregon beach. It’s hard to be original these days, but introducing the unexpected into a story makes them feel fresh. For example, After the Dragon could be the story of any survivor, take away the dragons, but build the world around those dragons and you’ve suddenly given it new life. When I encounter the unexpected, I sit up and take notice, suddenly my nose is three inches from my computer screen and I’m engaged in the story. What makes the unexpected unexpected? One element is the juxtaposition of the two things you’d least expect to find paired together, like battles and panties.

This month’s Must Read goes to the story that took the unexpected to the extreme: Non-Zero Probabilities by N. K. Jemisin.

Go read it now, before a window A/C unit falls on your head.

I’ve learned a lot from reading this first batch of stories individually, so let’s see if there’s anything to take away looking at them as a group. First, a refresher for January’s Reviews:

• A Rose is Rose by Georgina Bruce: Two artists get caught up in their respective love triangles and conflicting realities.
• The Grandmother-Granddaughter Conspiracy by Marissa Lingen: A marine biologist and her meddlesome family try to prove space squid are more than just a deep-fried delicacy.
• The Wing Collection by Eilis O’Neal: A young girl and her quirky cousin discover a shop filled with an assortment of disembodied wings. 
• Bad Matter by Alexandra Duncan: A letter intended for a woman’s recently deceased father leads her to a trans-celestial merchant ship with a strange crewe and stranger secrets. 
• Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs by Leonard Richardson: Dinosaurs. Guns. Motocross. Need I say more?
• Spar by Kij Johnson: A woman trapped aboard an alien escape pod has meaningless sex with a pungent jello-mold. 
• Ambient Morgue Music by Richard Howard: The quest to find the artist of a mysterious instrumental CD sends a reviewer on a short trek up the street to another world.

These stories were selected from pro and semi-pro Science Fiction/Fantasy/Weird magazines at random, except for one story that was recommended to me by a friend. There were a few other stories that I read that I either didn’t feel compelled enough to finish, or didn’t feel strongly enough about to write a review, so these results will be somewhat skewed towards my personal tastes.

The stories were diverse in setting, including India, Baghdad, Dublin, Florida and two off-world (plus another two that had off-world scenes as well.) Some of these were hard to pin with a particular genre, but I’d classify three as Science Fiction, three as Fantasy/Paranormal/Weird, and one as Cross-Genre. The styles leaned heavily towards literary, and I was surprised that several of these stories were very loosely plotted. This is good news for me, since I’m always struggling with plot. Now I know this doesn’t matter so much when selling to top paying markets.

This leaves me wondering what a story must do to compensate for the lack of a strong plot. In Bad Matter it was superb world building, some of the best I’ve ever seen in such a short space.  In Spar it’s the in-your-face vileness of the situation and the rhythm of the words. And in A Rose is Rose, it’s the deep characters working together in an intricate weaving of stories.

Choosing a favorite from this batch was difficult. Ambient Morgue Music had killer concepts, and Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs made me laugh out loud more times than I could count. But in the end, I think characters take the prize this time.

So January’s Must Read is: A Rose is Rose by Georgina Bruce!

Go read it right now, if you haven’t. And if you have, go read it again.