RE: Your Submission - "Weather" by Chelsea Allen
How the editorial sausage gets made.
Welcome to our first ‘RE: Your Submission’ where editors Autumn Watts (ex-fiction editor for Guernica) and Steve Chang (fiction editor for Okay Donkey) publicly breakdown and provide feedback on a story submitted by our subscribers, offering craft tips and editorial insights along the way.
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Ever had a story rejected and wanted to ask the editor some choice questions?
Well now you sort of can!
Welcome to the trial run of the column we’re calling RE: Your Submission—in which two editors answer questions about your knottiest, most hopeless pieces and offer insight into how we evaluate work. Basically, you get mini-lessons about craft and narrative while we help stories find their feet faster.
Pretty sweet, right?
We’ll have some questions for you too, if you want to play along, and if you’re impatient for the takeaways—look at you with your ambitions!—just scroll down to find them below.
Steve: Today we’re responding to Chelsea Allen and her flash piece “Weather” (989 words) in which a young Irish (?) woman is set adrift by her father’s disappearance. The piece offers evocative setting details—slick cobblestones, town market, potato farls—as this woman looks into the faces of the men in town. She’s haunted by dreams of a mysterious man on a cliff. She’s visited and assaulted by a stranger. And we end with an image of her holding a moth in pinched fingers—she watches it wriggle and wonders when it will stop.
Great components here but Chelsea says:
“To me, it feels like the assault is there just for the sake of being there, it feels like it's forcefully added and doesn't really belong in this story. But it was there when I first imagined the story. Thing is, if I take it out, I'm not really sure what I have in this story. AND this Father Disappearing thing is such a tired trope that I haven't done anything new with here.”
I mean—we’ve all written stuff that feels like it matters and not known what to do with it. Very common, very relatable. Chelsea wants to know whether an assault belongs in this story but what I’m hearing is the REAL question behind that question: “What even IS the story here?”
The logline Chelsea provided corroborates my suspicions:
“Protagonist grapples with her father's disappearance.”
Check out the main action: “grapples.” Immediately, I worry. Often, when a writer describes their work like so, they have a character with a spiritual need… but no actionable goal. The story has thoughts and feelings…but no real vehicle through which to deliver them. In other words, it might have the illusion of motion but the story doesn’t move.
Something’s missing.
Grace Paley says what I mean more concisely: “Every story is two stories. The one on the surface and the one bubbling beneath. The climax is when they collide.”
In ”Weather” what we’re missing is the surface story that overlays, shapes, and drives the “grappling.” What we’re missing = tasty actionable goals. What does our character want? They need things to pursue!
So how do we find such goals in our stories?
*Light bossa nova plays while you think…*
OK. Ready? In this case let’s consider Chelsea’s opening:
“At dinner, as the wind whips at the window, Annie remembers the muffled clops of their horses when she returned from riding with her father five days ago. A man was there, by the garden gate. Still, stone-eyed. As she took the horses round to the stable, the voices behind her dropped, low and brittle. Later, when Mam asked, Da shrugged: He’s Walsh. From the…the dock.”
In terms of narrative, this is fantastic. Look how quickly we get the inciting incident and breakage of the status quo: the last sight of the father, the intro of the mysterious Walsh, the suggestion of secrets.
So if her father’s gone missing, what are the potential actionable goals? The possible paths of pursuit? What’s the promise of the premise?
…think about it…!
OK. Ready? We see how this setup presents us with questions, right? Who is Walsh? What happened to the father? Is there a connection there? If so, what? And, most importantly, what’s the daughter going to DO about any of this?
These questions lead to what Paley calls “the surface story.” By exploring the who, why, so what, etc. of all that, our characters—and story—are ‘activated,’ so to speak. They’re no longer just “grappling.” Now they have quests through which to do so. To uncover things about themselves and others, about the world and their places in it. Such surface stories are the vehicles through which we deliver the beautiful prose and insights we want from literary fiction.
Very important.
And if the assault still makes sense in the context of the surface story—in pursuit of actionable goals, along a chain of causality—then maybe it can stay. If reframed to fit.
Autumn: About that assault scene and whether it can be reframed to fit: Let’s talk about necessary clarity versus the power of suggestion. The writer’s question is: does the scene work? Here’s my general answer to all assault scenes: no. Unless they’re absolutely necessary to clarify the surface story. Meaning, the story absolutely cannot work without it. Meaning, there’s no other way to propel this character to change or action in the way the story needs.
I’m totally willing to follow you into the terrible dark places but…make it worth it. In this case, the assault serves as proof that the perpetrator is horrible. And to heighten the terrible precarity and vulnerability of Annie’s situation. But we already knew that!
Steve: So I might ask: what purpose could this assault serve beyond delivering info we can get elsewhere? How can it be repurposed to be generative: to offer more story, to open doors, to align with the mystery around dad’s disappearance and its connection to Walsh?
What do we think?
Autumn: For now, we can do more with less here. In the original scene, the perpetrator sits next to Annie, talking about the weather, one hand drumming the table top, the other groping her thighs. An excerpt from the original:
His fat fingers, nails trimmed well past the edges, strum on the bare boards . . . His hand is rubbing her knee underneath her skirt. Her eyes drop to it, to this hand that’s sliding effortlessly now into the small gap between her thighs . . .The world is a din and a blur.
But how about:
His fat fingers, nails trimmed well past the edges, strum on the bare boards. His leg presses her knee. A finger slides effortlessly now into the small gap between the boards, rubbing it. The world is a din and a blur.
Steve: That finger rubbing the gap is super gross. I love it.
Autumn: The violation is now carried out through unwelcome contact (leg pressing knee) and the weird, gross actions of that finger. It’s still horrifying in what it signals ahead. Yet in holding back, that moment keeps with the story’s terse restraint without overstepping
But the author says: “if I take it out, I'm not really sure what I have in this story.” My question for the author then: is the assault the heart of the story, or is it the missing father? What happens if you remove one or the other? The answer is in the understory.
Steve: The emotional, psychological, ‘spiritual need’ stuff.
Autumn: In the surface story, Annie’s danger is directly linked to her father’s disappearance. But what is the weightier problem for Annie: the predator or the missing father? Or whatever is going on with Mam?
To get there, I want to talk about a repeating dream Annie has:
Mr. Walsh visits more often. A dream visits Annie often: she’s running in the dark towards a figure standing at the edge of a cliff. She’s sure it’s Da. Every time. And she calls him out. And the figure turns. It’s Mam. Come back here, Annie yells, you can’t swim. And Mam smiles, and falls backwards.
I actually love this: it’s so eerie and painful. And in this dream, Annie’s fear centers on Mam. So Mam is the emotional center here, not Da or Walsh.
So how does centering Mam in this dream serve the understory?.
Steve: There’s definitely some ‘spiritual need’ stuff going on with Mam. So how should we explore that? Do we convert whatever’s happening into actionable goals? Or do those intangible feelings stay hidden…until they bubble over? And how does this all connect to the promise of the premise: what to do about the missing father?
TAKEAWAYS
Steve: If we have a story that flounders or a character who’s stuck, we can try to activate things by asking:
What are the potential actionable goals here?
How might a character’s ‘stuckness’ offer new ways of seeing and being?
And so what?
Set the character in motion, along a purposeful path. What’s in their way? What will they discover? About themselves or others or the world and their places in it.
Of course, this is not the ONLY way to solve such story problems. But we only have so much space today.
Autumn: In a flash piece like this, every sentence has to be as tight and efficient as possible. You need clarity of time, action, and motivation, as you don’t have several pages to get the character moving and discovering – the propulsion has to happen within a very short span, with much of it suggested. Understanding the emotional center of the understory that’s pressing up beneath the surface story will help.
Steve: If you’re not sure how to start, try thinking of your character as either a Crook or a Detective. How will they pursue the emotional understory through quests and goals? Will they start breaking rules and social conventions? Will they start ‘investigating’ their world and its mysteries and limits?
The consequences of those actions will lead the way forward.
And if you’re wondering how to make those actions matter more?
Those are questions for next time!
If you enjoyed this content and want to see more, let us know in the comments.
And if you’d like to get feedback from Autumn and Steve on your own work, you can purchase it through our Flexible Feedback portal.
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This is fantastic feedback. Better than a lot of what I see in my creative writing classes.
This is a fantastic breakdown. Something not all writers get to experience unless exploring feedback from others. It's always eye-opening to read pieces like this from editors. Writers often struggle with feedback (good or bad) unless it comes from a source they see as "authoritative", so this is indispensable information. Thanks!