AFTERWORD
So this is something we haven't had on Fable Factory before: an editorial. SHOUT's recent expansion allowed us the opportunity to add another page to Fable Factory. As has always been the case for Fable Factory, we'll be avoiding a fixed structure but from now on you can expect this sort of editorial thing every week. It is an opportunity for me, the editor of Fable Factory, to have a little chat with you. A chat about what it is I'm publishing this week, and what attracted me to these stories. More importantly I will identify the faults I see in them, so that the writers can use that criticism to, hopefully, improve their writing.
Or not, of course. I'm just a magazine editor, I'm no world authority on fiction, and my criticisms may well be off-base. If you feel that I'm saying things that are clearly wrong, contact me on our page or on the SHOUT Discussion Group and we'll have a friendly argument.
On this page we have Stars, which is a submission from a reader. It's nice to be able to publish the very first story someone sends us, and this is a quite good debut. Its problem is quite obvious: it's a familiar plot. Zahra Shahriar does a great job of working within the bounds of what we expect and still bringing us something new and memorable in the way she tells the story. Stars is full of little, intimate details that help sell the fiction and make you invested in the characters, and thus you feel the pain of the narrator's loss. This quality (making a story seem real and relevant through simple details) is evident in the other stories we have this week as well. I'm particularly pleased with The Enchanted Sea, though there isn't much specific to say about it. It's a simple story that just works very well. Lastly, it's nice to be able to publish Anishta's work again. I'm trying to convince her to continue this series. It's difficult to do so since I published the previous Adventure of a 16 Year-old Girl in January, but hopefully I'll manage it.
We were supposed to publish the winners of the prompt Grades this week. This did not happen because the submissions were not suitable, due to either reasons of quality or length. Offering a new prompt for the next month.
And to close off this editorial, I asked the SHOUT team to give me a prompt to write on. They gave me: Confederacy of Marsupials.
They'd spent decades feeling confused and vaguely put upon whenever they needed to choose which stall to enter at a public toilet, which box to tick at a form. Their children would come home with stories like 'Teacher put me in a class with the birds because I told her I came out of an egg.' Matters came to a head when a petition to allow mothers whose children could not leave their pouches accompany them to school was summarily rejected by the government. 'Animalia is a land of equality', President Barn Owl declared. 'We cannot change laws to allow certain groups differential treatment.' But they were different, and they were unrecognized. They formed the United Marsupials' Front and marched onto the streets, fighting through skunk spray and the restraints of the Octopolice, and into history.
This was a nice chat.
-Zoheb Mashiur, Sub-editor, SHOUT
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